Terrorists killed

On Wednesday night, an Israeli undercover unit trapped and killed four men in a car in Bethlehem. They included the wanted Head of Islamic Jihad in Bethlehem, Muhammed Shehadeh, and his Aksa Brigades equivalent, Ahmed Balboul. Shehadeh had been sought for about 10 years since he was responsible for numerous terrorists incidents, including one in Jerusalem in which the daughter of a Minister in the Israeli Govt. was killed. It is believed that Palestinian collaborators were responsible for helping the Israelis to track down hese terrorists. As a result, the Aksa Brigades demanded that the PA crack down on collaborators. This usually means that suspected individuals are dragged into the street, publicly tortured and shot as an example to others.
In response to this incident, the Islamic Jihad vowed revenge and fired 10 rockets into the Negev region on Thursday. Noone was hurt in these rocket attacks but there was property damage. On Wednesday, there was another Grad rocket fired into Ashkelon. So much for the supposed "ceasefire" that had been rumored between Hamas and Israel. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that they hold Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks into Israel, since they control the Gaza Strip and no actions can be taken without their approval.
Pres. Abbas of the PA criticized this and other targeted attacks against terrorists and said that Israel is deliberately trying to prevent a ceasefire and to undermine the Annapolis peace talks. At the same time the Aksa Brigades leadership and other Fatah leaders called for Abbas to fire his PM, Salam Fayyad, who is a pragmatic technocrat rather than an ideologue, and replace him with a coalition Govt. including Hamas.
In Dakar, Senegal, at the annual meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Turkish Chairman called on all Israelis to be tried for "war crimes" since they are killing Palestinian civilians and children indiscriminantly in Gaza! Apart from this intemperate and false accusation, the Israeli Govt. has repeatedly said that there would be no actions in Gaza if the rocket firing stopped! Also, the IDF is under strict orders to avoid civilian casualties, which can be judged by the fact that such as small number of people are killed by IDF actions when they could of course kill many more if they were not targeting terrorists.
Bibi Netanyahu, Likud leader and Head of the Opposition, briefed 20 foreign Ambassadors in Tel Aviv and told them that any PM (obviously meaning PM Olmert) who could not stop the rockets being fired on Israel, and who warned the inhabitants of Ashkelon to get used to the rockets, should resign and make place for a PM (obviously himself) who would stop the rockets. Unfortunately this is not likely to happen soon.