Signs mount of possible Israeli invasion of Gaza
An Israeli solider rides on top an armored personal carrier close to the Israel Gaza Border, southern Israel,Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. / AP Photo/Ariel Schalit
Updated 11:05 PM ET
JERUSALEM Israeli aircraft pummeled the rocket arsenals of Gaza militants on Friday and signaled a ground invasion might be growing near as troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers massed near Israel's southern border with the Palestinian territory.
Fighting between the two sides escalated sharply Thursday with a first-ever militant attack on the Tel Aviv area, menacing Israel's heartland. No casualties were reported, but three people died in the country's rocket-scarred south when a projectile slammed into an apartment building.
The death toll in the densely populated Palestinian territory climbed to 19, including five children according to Palestinian health officials, as waves of Israeli fighter planes and drones sent missiles hurtling down on suspected weapons stores and rocket-launching sites.
The fighting has already widened the instability gripping a region in the throes of war and regime upheavals. Most immediately, it is straining already frayed relations with Egypt, which plans to send its prime minister to Gaza later Friday in a show of solidarity with its militant Hamas rulers.
Israel and Hamas had largely observed an informal truce since Israel's devastating incursion into Gaza four years ago, but rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes on militant operations didn't halt entirely. The escalated fighting was sparked with what Israel called a "targeted assassination" of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari and his son in an airstrike, CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports. Israel then attacked dozens of rocket launchers. The offensive follows weeks of rocket fire out of Gaza.
More than a thousand people turned out for Jabari's funeral, Pizzey reports. Militants vowed revenge on Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military reported early Friday that its aircraft had struck more than 350 targets since the beginning of its operation against Hamas' rocket operations.
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On Thursday, Israeli warplanes struck dozens of Hamas-linked targets, sending loud booms echoing across the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip at regular intervals, followed by gray columns of smoke. After nightfall, several explosions shook Gaza City several minutes apart, a sign the strikes were not letting up. The military said the targets were about 70 underground rocket-launching sites.
The onslaught has not deterred the militants from striking back with more than 400 rockets aimed at southern Israel. For the first time, they also unleashed the most powerful weapons in their arsenal -- Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
The two rockets that struck closest to Tel Aviv appear to have landed in the Mediterranean Sea, defense officials said, and another hit an open area on Tel Aviv's southern outskirts.
No injuries were reported, but the rocket fire -- the first in the area from Gaza -- sowed panic in Tel Aviv and made the prospect of a ground incursion more likely. The government later approved the mobilization of up to 30,000 reservists for a possible invasion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was hitting Hamas hard with what he called surgical strikes, and warned of a "significant widening" of the Gaza operation. Israel will "continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people," said Netanyahu, who is up for re-election in January.
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At least 12 trucks were seen transporting tanks and armored personnel carriers toward Gaza late Thursday, and buses carrying soldiers headed toward the border area. Israeli TV stations said a Gaza operation was expected on Friday, though military officials said no decision had been made.
"We will continue the attacks and we will increase the attacks, and I believe we will obtain our objectives," said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel's military chief.
An Israeli ground offensive could be costly to both sides. In the last Gaza war, Israel devastated large areas of the territory, setting back Hamas' fighting capabilities but also paying the price of increasing diplomatic isolation because of a civilian death toll numbering in the hundreds.
The current round of fighting is reminiscent of the first days of that three-week offensive against Hamas. Israel also caught Hamas off-guard then with a barrage of missile strikes and threatened to follow up with a ground offensive.
However, much has also changed since then.
Netanyahu: Hamas "committing a double war crime"
Israel has improved its missile defense systems, but is facing a more heavily armed Hamas. Israel estimates militants possess 12,000 rockets, including more sophisticated weapons from Iran and from Libyan stockpiles plundered after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime there last year.
Netanyahu, who has clashed even with his allies over the deadlock in Mideast peace efforts, appears to have less diplomatic leeway than his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, making a lengthy military offensive harder to sustain.
What's more, regional alignments have changed dramatically since the last Gaza war. Hamas has emerged from its political isolation as its parent movement, the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, rose to power in several countries in the wake of last year's Arab uprisings, particularly in Egypt.
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Egypt recalled its ambassador to protest the Israeli offensive and has ordered his prime minister to lead a senior delegation to Gaza on Friday in a show of support for Hamas.
At the same time, while relations with Israel have cooled since the toppling of longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, Morsi has not brought a radical change in Egypt's policy toward Israel. He has promised to abide by Egypt's 1979 peace deal with Israel and his government has continued contacts with Israel through its non-Brotherhood members.
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if you are humans ... I am really ashamed to be one ...
1st of all .. if HAMAS is getting arms .. Israel have no right to go in and attack them ..? if you believe they do have a right ? then why cannot the people in Palestine go in and attack the Zionists who are committing war crimes every now and then ..with support of so called UN .. which gave USA the right to attack Iraq .. and control the arms around the world .. forbidden the Muslims .. while arming the Zionists to the teeth ... well .. you are simply Zionist ! if not .. you are simply not human !
Dear World,
I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel.
Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry.
Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish people - upset you.
We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset.
We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.
And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home - home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please.
Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.
In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?
And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried "no" and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of "upset" then?
The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not "repress" them.
Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres.
You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. If that bothers you, dear world, well think of how many times in the past you bothered us.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care less.
You are a successful people that is seen as working in the background, pulling the strings of every nation and running the most lucrative of businesses.
In times of trouble, when everyone else is struggling, you are getting by, even thriving. You are survivors and we are jealous of your success. Sadly this will never change, it is human nature.
You have done right by keeping your country and arming it to the teeth. You are right to defend yourselves.
I used to think that you kept Gaza like a prison. I used to think that the muslim mob's should push you out of Israel. And it was only a few years ago that I felt like this, but really sitting down and thinking about it, I changed my views, to the point where now I can't believe I thought the way I did.
For all my past bad fealings, I am sorry and wich you well.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/guide-israel.htm
The n
Two texts are fundamental to this discussion. The first deals with the basic question as to what right anyone has to arbitrarily partition the land at all. The text is found in Leviticus 25:23. It deals with the Jubilee law of ancient Israel, whereby purchasers of property were to return the land to the original possessors every fifty years. The text reads: "The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with me."
The basis of the entire matter, then, lies in the fact that, not only the ancient land of Canaan, but the land of the whole world as well, belongs to God who created it, and he has a right to divide it as he chooses.
A second foundation scripture deals with the intent of God in apportioning the real estate of the earth among all the nations of the world. This text is found in Deuteronomy 32:8, 9 and reads: "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."If the nations of the world say to Israel, 'You are robbers because you have conquered the lands of seven peoples,' they can reply to them: 'All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom he saw fit. When he wanted, He gave it to them, and when he wanted, he took it from them and gave it to us' " (Rashi on Genesis 1:1). The covenant is recorded for us in Genesis 15:7, "I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." Verses 8 through 12 of this chapter are a historical record of the various animal sacrifices Abram offered to ratify the covenant. Then, in verses 13 through 15, Abram is informed that he would not personally inherit the land at that time. In verse 16 he is told that his descendants would be the ones to come into possession of the land in the fourth generation—in the time of Moses and Joshua. After sealing this covenant, in verse 17, God outlined the scope of the promised land in verses 18 through 21: "In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the River of Egypt unto the Great River, the River Euphrates: the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.'"
Consider, after three years of relative calm, Israel suddenly assassinated a top Hamas leader two days ago, a man who Jews For Justice For Palestine report was negotiating a peace treaty with Israel at the time, along with a seven year old girl and seven others. For Netanyahu to all of a sudden provoke rocket barrages with that assassination as an intentional precursor to bring in ground troops Gaza Strip is disgusting, it's perverse, and requires both denouncing and a renewal of the Obama administration's 2010 threat to sanction Israel if they do not desist the escalation immediately. Americans voted against neocons spilling blood and treasure in two electoral college landslide victories, and we didn't do that just to fund the murder sprees of neocons in allied countries.
According to their reports, (they interviewed the Egyptian PM), and apparently, since Hamas got new leader the terrorists in Gaza have re armed (poss from Iran. Having obtained longer range rockets,they are now "trying them out" in a manner of speaking.
Of course,Israel could just lie down and die, as their opponents want, but if nutheads in a location nr USA loosed off at a US City, just what would you want the Army to do? Or the AirForce for that matter??
The BBC also reported that Israel had called up military reservists.
(and has used airstrikes to take out Stores of munitions in Gaza)
Of course, our newly elected President is not making a move, and as the Israeli situation is a result ot IT defeating HALF the Arab world in a past (Fairly short) war, you would have thought that those who instigated THAT war would not be keen to repeat the process!!
Of course, Israel actually TOOK all of Gaza when they were invaded. The Arabs, under Yassar Arafat had a deal, (negotiated in USA at Camp David) within reach which would have ensured an Arab Homeland in Gaza.
But Arafat rejected it!
Bearing all that in mind how would YOU respond to these later Arabs aiming at three of your most populous cities??
In that failed/rejected deal the Arab leadership showed complete disregard for their OWN PEOPLE!
According to BBC reports, which normally are reliable, the Hamas began the rocket firing competition!
Now they will no doubt cry "foul" when the Israelis retaliate.
Nothing changes in the Muddle East!!