Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Terrorism and prisoners

Two weeks ago to celebrate the Arab League meeting in Riyadh, the Palestinian terrorist groups shot 17 rockets into southern Israel in a three day period. There is supposed to be a ceasefire, but it has only been one-sided. This attack caused the Israeli Govt. to shake itself out of its inertia and announce a more active policy. Defense Minister Peretz announced that from now on the IDF will return to its policy of attempting to interdict the teams of rocket launchers. On Saturday they caught a team of three in the act and using a missile strike killed one terrorist and injured the other two.
At the same time there was a shoot-out in Jenin between an Israel team attempting to arrest wanted terrorists and a gang of gunmen. One of them was injured and it turned out to be Zakaria Zubeidi, the leader of the terrorists in Jenin. Unfortunately he was only wounded in the shoulder and was reported to be receiving treatment. Two IDF soldiers were also injured in this incident.
A 17-yr old Palestinain boy stabbed two border guards at a checkpoint in Hebron and he was shot in the leg, and a Palestinian woman was arrested at a check point in Ramallah carrying two knives that she confessed she intended to use to stab Israeli guards. She had recently been released from prison for a prior similar offense. A car bomb with Israeli license plates was discovered on Friday in Kalkilya near Petach Tikva, after it had been driven into Israel and then returned to the PA. Police do not know why the car bomb was not exploded while it was in Israel, but it allowed them to uncover a cell and find several other car bombs in advanced stages of preparation. All members of the cell were arrested.
These incidents indicate that terrorism is still continuing, whatever they say about peace. At the same time the newly elected PA Unity Govt. was holding a crisis meeting in Gaza because of the admitted chaos there that they are unable to control. The PA Govt. and particularly Pres. Abbas is talking about the release of the Israeli hostage Cpl. Shalit and the kidnapped BBC newsman Allen Johnston. But the fact is that Abbas has neither the influence nor power to release them. They are held by gangs that are barely influenced by the Hamas Govt.
It is all very well for the PA Govt. to give Israel a list of 450 Palestinian prisoners and to dictate to Israel that they must be released. But, in fact it doesn't work that way. The Israel Govt. insisted that Shalit must be released first and then it will release those prisoners it considers acceptable, i.e. those who do not have Israeli blood on their hands. We now await and see whether or not the Govt. will stick to its conditions or will cave into the terrorist demands.
The way that the British Navy and the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, have been dealing with the terrorist states of Iran and Syria respectively, does not give good examples of standing firm in the face of extremism.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home