Monday, April 20, 2009

Killings continue

On Sunday March 15 two Israeli policemen were shot dead in a patrol car as they drove near the settlement of Massua in the Jordan Valley north of Jericho. Their assailants, Palestinian gunmen, escaped. Although the West Bank, partly controlled by the Palestine Authority and partly by Israel, has been relatively calm compared to the war that erupted in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip that escalated into the IDF Operation Cast Lead, nevertheless there is continuing violence there.
In the past few days there have been four more incidents. A Palestinian youth was killed and another injured by security guards when they threw petrol bombs at the settlement of Beit El on Fri evening. Another Palestinian man was captured Sat night when he tried to run down two IDF soldiers at a road block with his Mercedes car. A Palestinian man was shot and injured when he attacked IDF troops with a knife and several Israeli soldiers were injured and hospitalized in these incidents.
A Palestinian protester was killed when a tear gas canister hit him in the chest during a violent altercation near the village of Bi'ilin against the Israeli Security Fence. There has been a continuing series of violent demonstrations there as international provocateurs (from ISM and other groups) try to make it into a cause celebre, because Palestinians are separated from their farms (although they are able to access them daily thru a convenient gate). The Israeli Supreme Court has already ruled that the route of the Security Fence there is appropriate, after it had already been changed by court order. The fact that Palestinians are inconvenienced was ruled less critical than the fact that Israeli civilians are protected against suicide bombers by the Fence. It works!
Also, Hamas continues to lob rockets into southern Israel, although fewer than before Operation Cast Lead, about one every few days. Note that there has been no official ceasefire to that Operation, since at the end of his tenure PM Olmert backtracked and made a ceasefire contingent on progress in the release of Cpl. Gilad Schalit from captivity in Gaza. Hamas has demanded from 450 to 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit, but now things have got more complicated. Because of the schism between Hamas and Fatah, Hamas no longer wants Fatah leaders imprisoned by Israel to be released and Fatah in charge of the PA no longer wants Israel to release Hamas leaders. In neither of these cases have they stated these preferences publicly, but it's clear, for example Hamas dropped the name of Marwan Barghouti, a leading Fatah Tanzim leader and a potential rival for Hamas, from it's list of preferred exchangees.
Nothing is simple and nothing is what it seems. The current series of "lone" attacks by Palestinians on Israelis on the West Bank are a way of Fatah asserting its leadership of the anti-Israel "resistance," while still calling for a continuation of the "peace process." It's their equivalent of the occasional rockets that Hamas fires over the Gaza border, another way of reminding everyone that they are still fighting by sacrificing their young men and Israeli lives for the cause.

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