WarSclerotic

IDF Warns Gazans Near Border to Evacuate – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva.

The IDF on Thursday afternoon contacted by phone Arab residents of Gaza living near the security border, warning them to evacuate their homes immediately.

The phone calls were sent to a total of roughly 100,000 Arab residents of the Hamas stronghold. Among the cities and towns targeted in the phone warning were Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Absan, according to Walla!.

In the phone warning, residents were told to evacuate and go to the west or south, in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Over 800 terrorist targets have been struck as of Thursday in Operation Protective Edge; the latest phone warnings indicate that the operation may be moving into a new stage and entering a ground offensive.

The government has already approved a call-up of 40,000 reserve IDF soldiers, with 20,000 having already been called up to the Gaza border in anticipation of a possible ground incursion.

Ahead of the phone warning today, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday announced that the operation would be expanded in coming days.

“We will continue to hit Hamas and other terror groups in the (Gaza) Strip with heavy blows from the air, from the sea and from the ground so as to ensure the security of Israeli citizens. The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy,” warned Ya’alon.

Following Ya’alon’s tone, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Wednesday approved all of the plans for an IDF ground offensive into Gaza according to IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz, who added that the pressure on Gaza will grow in the coming hours.

Also Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would continue to expand the scope of Operation Protective Edge until rocket fire stopped.

“We are all united in the mission to strike at the terrorist organizations and restore quiet,” the prime minister said in a statement following consultation with Israeli military chiefs. “The operation will be expanded and will continue until the firing at our communities stops and quiet is restored.”

“I ask that the public continue to listen to the instructions from IDF Home Front Command – they save lives,” he added

And on the same day, outgoing President Shimon Peres said in an interview that “if they won’t stop their missiles, there will be a ground attack. That is the logical conclusion.”

Hamas has been showering Israeli civilian population centers with rocket fire in recent weeks. Several people have been injured and large parts of the country have been shut down as terrorists utilize long-range rockets to reach central Israel, and as far north as the port city of Haifa.

IDF urges Gazans near border to clear out; West Bank attack thwarted | The Times of Israel.

IDF informs Palestinian citizens in towns along the Gaza Strip border with Israel to evacuate their homes quickly, ahead of military action in the area.

The areas include Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Abasan al-Kabera, and Abasan al-Saghira in the northern Gaza Strip east of Khan Yunis. Over 100,000 people are said to reside in these cities.

The IDF made similar demands during operations Pillar of Defense and Cast Lead, as well as during the 2006 Lebanon War, generally ahead of an airstrike of a particular area.

Hamas asks citizens not to heed the calls to leave the area that many have received during the past few hours.

Israel Hayom | Ground operation necessary.

Uzi Dayan

Israel Hayom | Why did Hamas provoke a war?.

Elliot Abrams

The current battles between Israel and Hamas were provoked by Hamas. Why?‎

When increased levels of rocket fire began about a week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‎Netanyahu responded with restraint. He sent clear messages to Hamas in public ‎statements, and via Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, that he wanted no war, and no ‎incursion into Gaza; if the rocket attacks ended, this confrontation would be over.‎

But Hamas chose to increase the pace of firing, guaranteeing an Israeli response.‎

The question is why, and there are several answers.‎

First, consider Hamas’ situation a week ago. The economic situation in Gaza is dire, ‎due both the reduced Iranian support and to the closure of the border with Egypt by ‎the Egyptian Army. Gazans are unhappy with Hamas, due to the repression and ‎corruption they see in its rule in Gaza, and to the economic situation. When ‎Mohammed Morsi was elected president of Egypt two years ago, Hamas thought its ‎situation would change: It is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Egypt had a ‎Brotherhood president. But even in his year in office, Morsi could not deliver for ‎Hamas; the army blocked him. And then he was overthrown by a military coup, ‎replaced now by a president who commanded that army and is deeply hostile to ‎Hamas and the Brotherhood. The sense of growing power and perhaps inevitable ‎victory for the Brotherhood is gone now.‎

So Hamas needed a way out of its increasingly difficult situation. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace ‎negotiations might have delivered some shake-up in the overall Israeli-Palestinian ‎situation, but they failed. Hamas then tried a political maneuver: a deal with Fatah ‎and the Palestinian Authority to form a nonparty government in Ramallah that held ‎the promise of bringing Hamas into the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization after elections later this year. ‎But that maneuver was getting Hamas little benefit and few Palestinians believed an ‎election would actually happen.‎

Meanwhile, most attention in the region was directed to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Iran, Iraq, and Syria; ‎Hamas, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly, were no longer news.‎

Finally, the arrangement Hamas had reached with Israel — no rocket attacks out of ‎Gaza, no Israeli attacks into Gaza — was becoming increasingly tough for Hamas to ‎maintain. Teenage boys and young men do not join Hamas to police Gaza’s ‎borders and prevent Islamic Jihad from attacking Israel; they join to ‎attack Israel. Hamas was risking the charge from other terrorists that it was an ‎auxiliary police force for Israel, and risking that young men would drift away to those ‎other terrorist groups.‎

So, the Hamas leadership decided it had to shake things up.‎

This new battle with Israel has several benefits for Hamas. To say that Turkey, ‎Jordan, and Egypt are passing messages from the Israelis about mutual restraint, ‎and are urging Hamas to back off, is to say that these governments are now in daily ‎contact with Hamas leaders. Statements from Hamas are now, once again, front ‎page news; Hamas is no longer irrelevant. Hamas is now in its eyes and those, it ‎hopes, of many Arabs, back in the front line of the struggle against Israel. It will also, ‎it must believe, be seen as the heroic victim of Israeli attacks, worthy of solidarity ‎and support — both political and financial. And this episode in its long struggle with ‎Israel allows Hamas to show its capabilities: longer range missiles that attack Tel ‎Aviv and further north, sea-based attacks by swimmers who enter Israel from the ‎beaches, tunnels that would enable the kidnapping of more hostages to exchange or ‎permit heavily armed men to reach Israeli communities and exact a high price in ‎lives, and a high volume of rockets to overwhelm Israel’s high-tech defenses like ‎Iron Dome. Finally, Hamas must believe that Israel desires to damage it and restore ‎deterrence, but not to destroy Hamas and its rule in Gaza. Believing that chaos and ‎anarchy or rule by Islamic Jihad would be even worse for Israel than rule by Hamas, ‎the organization may believe that it will emerge from this round of warfare bloodied ‎but still in place.‎

It is a very big gamble for Hamas, and the size of the gamble is the measure of ‎Hamas’ desperation. For so far, Hamas has not done much damage to Israel. The ‎swimmers were killed the minute they came out of the water. The tunnels have been ‎discovered and bombed. The missiles are causing Israelis to flee to bomb shelters, ‎but thank God (and Iron Dome) they have so far not caused much property damage ‎and no loss of life. Meanwhile Israel targets Hamas’ missiles and especially its ‎missile launchers, headquarters, arsenals and warehouses, and leaders. There is not ‎much Hamas can call a victory except proving the range of its rockets.‎

All this can change in an instant: A rocket can land in a hospital or school, in Gaza or ‎in Israel — and much more likely in Israel, because the Hamas rockets are unguided. Significant loss of life in Israel would be viewed as a “victory” by Hamas, and enough ‎of these “victories” could lead it to seek an end to this round and a return to calm. ‎But Hamas wants more than calm: It has demands. It wants the men who were ‎freed in exchange for Gilad Schalit, and recently rearrested, to be freed again by ‎Israel, and even has demands of Egypt — to open the border with Sinai far wider.‎

Hamas may have reached the conclusion that it must soon abandon those demands ‎and agree to a truce, but be unwilling to stop until it can point to some ‎‎”achievement” like hitting a major tower in downtown Tel Aviv or killing a large ‎group of Israelis. But if there are no such “victories” and the Israeli assaults ‎continue, that will change. This appears to be Israel’s assessment: keep increasing ‎the pressure until Hamas, which started this war because it saw too many threats to ‎its survival and dominance in Gaza, comes to see continued war as the key threat. ‎Those who want the violence to end must realize that the larger is the Israeli effort ‎now, the sooner Hamas will conclude this round must be ended.‎

From “Pressure Points” by Elliot Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Israel Hayom | Support from the people.

Dr. Haim Shine

Israel Hayom | Time is running out.

Dan Margalit

The true champion of Operation Protective Edge is Iron Dome. It is the bunker preventing enemy rockets from reaching central Israel, and it has significantly reduced public anxiety. The residents of the greater Tel Aviv area have adapted to the sounds of Iron Dome intercepting rockets, and are going about their daily routine.

Iron Dome has afforded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz the necessary leeway to opt for a slow-paced, controversial gambit: they were trying to withstand considerable rocker fire from Gaza Strip without repeating Operation Pillar of Defense. It was only after it was made clear that Hamas was interested in more than merely flexing its muscles that Israel went on the offensive.

Operations like these see a dynamic list of objectives. Israel had set out to rescue three of its sons, who were murdered in cold blood, and it re-arrested dozens of terrorists, forcing Hamas to change its objectives and demand their release. Once denied, Hamas proceeded to launch a massive rocket attack, and the Israel Defense Forces revised its operational levels to ones that everyone, it seems, sought to avoid.

These slow, perhaps even cumbersome maneuvers, reflected serious political discord: Right-wing ministers, including from the Likud, demanded Israel launch a wide-scale military operation, including a ground incursion of Gaza Strip that would destroy its weapons caches and most likely topple the Hamas government. But senior ministers, backed by Labor MKs Shelly Yachimovich‎ and Omer Bar-Lev, hedged that Israel would be unable to topple Hamas without Egyptian and Jordanian support, and the operational objectives were limited to curbing rocket fire and re-establishing the familiar premise of “quiet equals quiet.”

The debate itself was important, but it too proved dynamic. Netanyahu, Ya’alon and Gantz have decided on a gradual operation, assuming that “there is time.” This may be militarily true thanks to Iron Dome, but the truth is time is running out, because as desperate as Hamas may seem, the situation is bound to change, if only because of the turbid sentiments of many in the Middle East and around the world.

Even Egypt, which is taking great pleasure in seeing the blows dealt to Hamas, officially disapproves of Israel’s actions. The same goes for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has already accused Israel of genocide, and even for the Israeli Arab sector. The latter was made clear on Wednesday, when Ra’am-Ta’al MK Ibrahim Sarsur completely ignored the massive rocket fire on Israel, and rushed to label IDF soldiers “killers.”

The Arab MKs are not alone — they are merely the first. With each passing day more and more Jewish voices seem poised to join the incitement against Israel. They are just waiting for the first military mishap, for a photo of an Arab child who was killed because his family failed to leave their home when warned to do so, to pounce on Israel — much to the delight of foreign ministries worldwide, which are sure to join them soon afterward.

Operation Protective Edge is as defensive as a military campaign can get, but it too will soon be targeted by a coalition of foreign, Arab and Jewish diplomats. This is why the Netanyahu-Ya’alon-Gantz team must make a decision — controversial as it may be — as to how far the operation will go, and maximize the military’s actions accordingly. The hopes of mounting a gradual operation faded away as the fighter jets took off at dawn.

Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire, aims to deal Hamas long-term blow | The Times of Israel.

( Joining John Prophet to shout, “DRAIN THE SWAMP !” – JW )

Senior official says military goal is to eradicate rocket threat for foreseeable future, not provide ‘a Band-Aid’

By Raphael Ahren July 10, 2014, 1:51 pm

ANALYSIS: Egypt condemns Israel’s attacks on Hamas – with a wink | JPost | Israel News.

 07/10/2014 12:59

Cairo is probably relieved that Israel is carrying out the operation so that it does not have to do so itself.

Egypt has condemned the IDF’s attacks on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though in truth it is most likely content that Israel is hurting a group it blames for involvement in the Islamist insurgency on its own soil.

In fact, Cairo is probably relieved that Israel is carrying out the operation so that it does not have to do so itself. A sign of Egypt’s hostility to Hamas, which in its charter states that it is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is that it continues to keep the Sinai-Gaza border closed despite Israel’s increasingly intense air campaign against the enclave.

The decision to keep the Rafah crossing closed is a political decision, not a military one, an unnamed official in the army’s spokesman’s office told Mada Masr on Wednesday.

“There is no danger on the border between Egypt and Gaza,” he said, adding that the army is aware of “what is happening to people in Gaza.”

In other words, Egypt is aware of the suffering of the Palestinian people in a war zone and the pummeling of Hamas by Israeli forces, yet chooses to do the Islamist movement no favors – boxing it in even as Israel intensifies its operations.

Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took control of the country after ousting Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi last summer, he has embarked on intensive anti-terror operations along with a harsh crackdown on revolutionary Islamist movements at home.

Egypt has destroyed many of the tunnels that connected Egypt to Gaza and has allied itself with the conservative status quo powers in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, against radical revolutionary forces that wish to topple the established order.

Zvi Mazel, who served as Israel’s sixth ambassador to Egypt and today is a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a contributor to this newspaper, told The Jerusalem Post that he thinks  a channel of communication between Egypt and Hamas is open despite the hostility between them.

Although Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood movement, “geography forces them to communicate on common issues such as the Rafah passage which opens rarely.”

The communication is handled by Egyptian intelligence as was done in the past, he noted.

“Egypt is not in a hurry to see the conflict ended even though it’s always dangerous to have an armed conflict on one’s border,” said Mazel, adding, “I don’t believe that the Egyptians shed tears when Hamas is being hit by Israel.”

Mazel explained that Sisi’s government, while condemning the IDF’s raids, has been careful not to be too critical of Israel.

Sisi has not made any public comments referring to Gaza and the country’s media has also been quite restrained, he continued.

“In the coming days Egypt will probably feel itself forced to be more active in order to show its empathy for the ‘their brethren in Palestine,’” Mazel added.

“There is considerable overlap of interests between the Sisi regime and Israel, although neither side likes to say so,” Shadi Hamid, author of the book Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told the Post.

“For starters, Israel backed Sisi’s ouster of Morsi, even though Morsi respected the peace treaty and didn’t actually do much to support Hamas,” said Hamid.

“But the issue here isn’t so much about policies, but about trust, and Israel was never going to trust a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he explained, adding that “Israel and Egypt now both see the
Brotherhood and political Islam more generally as an existential threat.”

In addition, both states share the goal of defeating the Sinai insurgency. “While elements of the Egyptian regime might sympathize with Israel’s offensive against Hamas, the developments of the past few weeks are only likely to strengthen Hamas’s position at home, giving it a newfound popularity as the voice of resistance, in contrast to [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas’s ‘collaboration,’”
Hamid said.

Hence, many of those wishing for Hamas to be pummeled may be disappointed with the results, he said.

‘Moderate’ Fatah joins Hamas and Islamic Jihad in missile launches | The Times of Israel.

Armed wing linked to Mahmoud Abbas’s faction says it shot rockets at Ashkelon, Sderot and elsewhere Wednesday night

By Elhanan Miller July 10, 2014, 12:20 pm

Masked Palestinian Fatah fighters from Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades parade during a rally marking the 46th anniversary of the movement’s creation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh near the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, December 31, 2010 (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Armed groups linked to Fatah say they began launching rockets and mortar shells into Israel Wednesday evening, in the first indication of Mahmoud Abbas’s movement actively taking part in violence emanating from Gaza.

The Nidal Al-Amody force of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for firing Grad and 107 millimeter rockets toward Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot, Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and the Sufa Crossing from Gaza, starting at 5 p.m Wednesday. Communiques specifying the attacks were published on Fatah’s official Facebook page.

Early Thursday morning, another armed force associated with Fatah, the Abdul Qader Husseini Battalions, claimed responsibility for launching two Grad rockets at Ashkelon and four mortar shells at Kibbutz Nir Oz near Khan Yunis shortly after one a.m.

“This blessed operation came as an answer to the enemy’s repeated crimes against our defenseless people,” read a statement on the group’s website. The claim of responsibility was also posted on Fatah’s official Facebook page.

A photo depicting two members of the Husseini Battalions preparing to launch a rocket at Israel was posted on Fatah’s Facebook page, its title reading “The Al-Aqsa Brigades and the Abdul Qader Husseini Brigades have proven today that they are the most loyal to the blood of the martyrs. They were among the first to quickly respond to the aggressive [Israeli] operation.”

Fatah, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is considered a moderate Palestinian faction, which has gained international standing in recent years after forswearing terror.

So far, only Hamas and Islamic Jihad were known to have launched rockets into Israel, though Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated on Tuesday that Palestinians had the right to oppose Israel “by all legitimate means.”

Earlier, Fatah posted a video in Hebrew on its Facebook page from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades warning Israelis to flee the country, Palestinian Media Watch revealed.

“Death will reach you from the south to the north. Flee our country without dying. The KN-103 rocket is on its way to you,” the message read.

Meanwhile, Hamas has begun broadcasting Hebrew messages on its television station Al-Aqsa, threatening to resume stabbings and suicide attacks “on every bus, cafe, and street.”

“Zionists, we can reach you above ground and below it,” one of the clips warns.

▶ Elephants at Safari Park protect their young from missiles – YouTube.

This morning when the alarm sounded throughout the region and the Safari in Ramat Gan, adult elephants made ​​a great uproar and gathered around the young babies Tang and Lana attempting to shield them.

Photo: Guy Kfir