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Enough is Enough, Say MKs about Gaza Escalation – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Soldier holds the remains of a rocket

AFP photo

Enough is enough is what MKs had to say on Saturday night, in the wake of the continued escalation in southern Israel.

After Gaza terrorists hit an IDF jeep with a missile and fired a barrage of at least 30 rockets at southern Israel, MKs called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to take action.

MK Danny Danon (Likud), a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that Israel should turn off the electricity in Gaza in response to the continued terror attacks.

“We must turn off the power in Gaza until the rocket fire on southern residents ends,” said Danon. “We need to send Hamas into its bunkers and shake Gaza until we bring an end to the threat on the residents of the south.”

MK Ofir Akunis (Likud) said, “The Palestinians are proving once again that there is no choice other than broad military action in Gaza. We must do what it takes to restore the deterrence on the streets of Gaza and bring the quiet back to southern Israel’s communities.”

Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein also called for action and said, “The zero hour has arrived. The State of Israel is sinful towards itself when it continues to abandon the lives of a million people. It’s time to deal a blow to the terrorist nests and immediately restore Israel’s deterrence and the quiet in the south.”

Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz, a former IDF Chief of Staff and Defense Minister, said on Saturday night, “It is time for a deep and thorough treatment of Gaza terrorism. The terrorist organizations should be engaged in saving their own lives rather than in planning attacks.”

Mofaz added, “The political echelon should allow the IDF to act powerfully wherever necessary. Stuttering by Israel will be answered by acts of terrorism. The heads of the terrorist organizations should be a primary and immediate target. We knew how to reach them in the past. The IDF knows how act. It should be allowed to do so. Israel’s security comes before any election. I back up the Prime Minister on this matter.”

The chairman of the State Control Committee, MK Uri Ariel (National Union), said, “The Israeli softness in the face of the growing terrorism in the south over the last month must stop. It’s time to let the IDF win once again, to stop being afraid of the reaction of world nations, to work deep inside Gaza and to finally put an end to the terror state that Israel created with its own hands.”

On Saturday night, IAF aircraft attacked a terrorist squad in northern Gaza that was in the midst of an attempt to fire rockets at southern Israel.

The IDF said in a statement that a direct hit was detected. Sources in the Palestinian Authority said that a terrorist from the Islamic Jihad group was killed in the airstrike.

Later airstrikes targeted nine additional terror targets in northern and southern Gaza.

Report: Israel forced to change … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Air force strikes multiple terror targets in Gaza | The Times of Israel.

Attacks ordered after terrorists fire more than 30 rockets at southern Israel and after an earlier attack injured four soldiers near the border

A cloud of smoke rises over Gaza in the wake of an Israeli air strike (illustrative image: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)

The IDF targeted a weapons manufacturing facility, two weapons storage facilities, and two rocket-launching sites in the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, the IDF Spokesman’s Office reported.

The air strikes came in response to a barrage of rocket fire from Gaza Saturday night, during which southern Israel was bombarded by more than 30 rockets and mortars.

The cross-border fire followed an earlier terrorist attack that injured four soldiers, two of them severely.

There were no reports of injuries in the rocket fire, although a woman in Ashdod broke her leg running to a safe area as a rocket alarm sounded. A car took a direct hit in a town in the Sha’ar Hanegev region adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

Schools were ordered closed Sunday in the town of Gan Yavne. Commercial traffic through the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into Gaza was also canceled.

The mayors of Ashdod and Ashkelon were deliberating early Sunday morning whether or not to open schools.

Israel police explosives experts collect a Kassam rocket at a residential area near the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel, Saturday, Nov. 10 (photo credit: AP/Tsafrir Abayov)

Rockets fell in the Hof Ashkelon and Eshkol regions, with at least one rocket reported to have landed near a kibbutz. One rocket hit a power line in a town in the Eshkol region, causing local power outages.

Alarms also sounded in the Ashdod and Ashkelon areas. The Iron Dome missile defense system shot down three rockets heading toward residential areas in Ashdod and Ashkelon.

Residents of communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip were told to remain within 15 seconds of sealed rooms or other safe areas.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the IDF had responded severely to the terrorist fire and will consider additional responses in the upcoming days.

“We will not let such border incidents go unanswered,” said Barak.

Earlier Saturday the IDF reported that it targeted and hit a rocket-launching squad in the northern Gaza Strip just after the squad had fired rockets. The spokesperson’s unit did not report on casualties. Palestinian sources said one member of the squad was killed and one was injured; they said the crew were likely from Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian media reported that Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, claimed responsibility for the majority of the rockets fired at southern Israel, while the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade and various other factions claimed responsibility for the remainder.

Hamas said it had ordered its facilities evacuated in anticipation of the air strike.

The dramatic escalation came after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck and penetrated an Israeli army jeep patrolling some 200 meters inside the Israeli border with Gaza, injuring four soldiers on Saturday evening.

Retaliatory strikes by the IDF against terrorists in the Gaza Strip left four Palestinians killed and roughly 30 wounded.

Palestinians bring a wounded man to a hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Nov. 10 (photo credit: AP/Hatem Moussa)

Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health ministry spokesman, said all four Palestinians killed were civilians between the ages of 16 and 18 and that among the wounded were some children.

In a text message to reporters, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum threatened to respond.

“Targeting civilians is a dangerous escalation that cannot be tolerated. The resistance has the full right to respond to the Israeli crimes,” he said.

The upsurge in rocket attacks followed soon after.

A statement issued by Hamas, which rules Gaza, said all Israeli military targets were “legitimate” objects of attack.

A senior Islamic Jihad official said, following the attack on Gaza, that Gaza terrorist groups “will not give the Zionist enemy calm for free.”

Palestinian missiles again rain down on Israel after injuring 4 Israeli soldiers.

DEBKAfile DEBKA-Net-Weekly November 10, 2012, 10:44 PM (GMT+02:00)

Wounded Israeli soldier on way to hospital.

Violence spewed out of the Gaza Strip again Saturday night, Nov. 10, with a rocket attack on an IDF Givaty Brigade jeep on a routine task some distance from the border, injuring four Israeli soldiers – one critically, two in moderate condition. This time Hamas’ contractor was the Palestinian Popular Front. After Israeli tanks and helicopters fired back, the Palestinians loosed rockets against the Eshkol and Shear Hanegev districts, followed by Grad rockets aimed at Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gan Yavneh. Iron Dome intercepted two. Locations north of Ashdod as far north as Gedera went on missile alert. No more casualties are reported thus far.

Thursday, Nov. 8, Palestinian terrorists detonated by remote a tunnel packed with explosives  against a group of Israeli soldiers. None were hurt. The soldiers were searching for bombs rigged as booby-traps for use against their comrades. IDF units in the Gaza sector have been on high alert since before then as Palestinian attacks have kept on coming in an escalating spate – eight from Oct. 8 until this Saturday.

But before that, on Oct. 6, two days after an Iranian stealth drone flew over Israel, Hamas loosed its heaviest barrage ever of 60 rockets and missiles against the Eshkol district. The IDF made no response this this outrage.

On Oct. 13, after an Israeli air strike killed the jihadist Majlis Shura’s commander, Hisham Saidani, Israeli civilians in Beersheba, Netivot and other locations suffered two running days of Palestinian rocket fire on their homes.

On Oct. 19, an IDF patrol was hit by a roadside bomb near Ein Hashlosha.
For three days, Oct. 22-25, rocket salvoes descended on Ashkelon and other locations. This time, the Palestinians began firing for the first time mobile 120mm multiple-firing “Katyusha” systems. Another roadside bomb near Kissufim seriously injured a senior IDF officer, blowing off both his arms..
There was a further escalation after the Israeli bombardment of an Iranian missile plant near Khartoum, one of Hamas’ arms suppliers. On Oct. 28, Palestinian Grad missiles were again fired at Beersheba and the regional area of Dimona where Israel’s nuclear reactor is situated.
Now, once again, nearly a million civilians living within the Palestinian terrorists’ ever widening radius of fire are being told to stay close to shelters – those who have them – and mayors worry about opening schools.

And once again, they hear that the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called an urgent conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz. The people living in an area between Gedera and the southern tip of the Gaza Strip up to Beersheba wait again on tenterhooks for some action to put an end to their long agony as hostages to Hamas.