WarSclerotic

Israel holds off on Gaza operation at Egypt’s … JPost – Defense.

    Israel delayed a military operation in the Gaza Strip to stem Palestinian rocket fire due to an Egyptian request to give an additional 24 hours to cease-fire efforts, The Jerusalem Post learned on Tuesday.

A small jihadi terror cell in Gaza, and not Islamic Jihad, was behind a wave rockets on southern Israel on Monday night, the defense community believes.

Irrespective of that evaluation, defense sources stressed that Israel views Hamas as being responsible for all attacks out of Gaza, and had intended on launching an operation that would have been significantly wider in scope than the pinpoint strikes against terror cells seen until now.

Shortly before the operation was due to go ahead, Egypt asked Israel to pause for a final effort at getting Gazan terror organizations to halt the rocket attacks. Egyptian officials held rounds of talks with Palestinian factions in Gaza aimed at achieving calm.

Israel does not recognize any ceasefire with terror groups in Gaza, but it is observing developments on the ground and formulating its military response accordingly, defense sources added.
The lack of an Israeli response so far does not mean that Israel isn’t prepared to go ahead with a more forceful response should the rockets resume.

By Tuesday evening, no rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel.

On Monday, terrorists fired six rockets at Israel. One Grad was intercepted over Beersheba. Other rockets fell south of Ashkelon, as well as in agricultural areas in the western Negev. No injuries or damages were reported.

If the calm continues to hold, local officials in southern cities will reopen schools on Wednesday, after shutting them for three successive days due to security concerns.

The school closures were maintained despite instructions from the IDF Home Front Command to allow pupils to return to class on Monday and Tuesday.

This entry was posted on November 1, 2011 at 7:19 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.