"Bomb, bomb, bomb Gaza" is the extent of Israeli strategic thinking these days, notes Saleh Al-Naami Last Saturday night, Adel Zareb was on his way home in Rafah, near the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, when a massive explosion shook the area. Its force made Zareb take to the ground, and when he rose again he found that his hand was bleeding. The explosion's source was an Israeli F-15 fighter jet that was attacking the border strip with bombs that weighed up to a tonne, and flying shrapnel from this attack struck Zareb's arm. Zareb, who is a spokesperson for the Palestinian Crossing Authority, told Al-Ahram Weekly that he's lost count of how many times Israeli jets have attacked the border area. Its features are unrecognisable due to the many deep pits caused by bombing aimed at destroying the tunnels that Israel claims are used to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip. The hopes of Zareb and his neighbours for calm following the declaration of a ceasefire and an end to the war were dashed at the end of last week when the Israeli government announced that it cannot agree to the Egyptian truce proposal that Hamas has agreed to. Many Palestinian families who live in the Egyptian border area have begun to search for other apartments to rent since it has become difficult for them to remain in their homes. Area resident Hassan Al-Shair told the Weekly, "We're no longer able to sleep due to the intense shelling, not for even an hour. It feels as though an earthquake were taking place -- the glass in the windows breaks, the walls shake, and my children are terrified." Ever since the ceasefire announcement that ended the war on the Gaza Strip, Israel has acted as though it emerged from the war victorious, and as though it had the right to conduct whatever military measures it sees as appropriate. The Israeli army has continued to conduct limited invasions into the Gaza Strip and has uprooted large swathes of agricultural land. It has also continued to impose the siege, along with all the suffering that it brings to thousands of Palestinians, and particularly those whose homes were destroyed and have been left without shelter. Some of the smaller Palestinian factions have taken the initiative and announced that they will respond to these Israeli measures. Since Israel has violated the ceasefire declaration, goes their reasoning, they too are freed from the obligation to abstain from military action. In turn, Israel has placed a ceiling on its response to the small Palestinian factions' firing of missiles on settlements in southern Israel. Following each missile firing, the Israel army is bombing targets in the Gaza Strip, in particular the border area and some of the few security headquarters and other institutions that were not already bombed in the war. Yet Hamas has remained committed to the ceasefire and is not taking part in the launching of missiles. Those firing missiles into Israel are the Popular Resistance Committees, the Hizbullah Palestine Brigades, and Islamic Jihad. According to Israel and its army leaders, however, Hamas and Ismail Haniyeh's government are responsible for every missile launching because Hamas continues to rule the Gaza Strip. The Hizbullah Palestine Brigades is a small group that was formed shortly prior to the recent war on Gaza and which has close ties to the Lebanese Hizbullah. After firing missiles on Israeli settlements, the group issued statements that said its military operations were a response to the suffocating siege that Israel was imposing on the Gaza Strip and to Israel's aggression, including that against Palestinians in the West Bank. For its part, Hamas holds Israel responsible for the deteriorating security situation since it continues to conduct raids and open live fire, in addition to its prolongation of the siege. Prominent Hamas leader Ayman Taha says, "the party that continues to attack, uproot, and invade, and which insists on imposing a siege, this is the party that holds responsibility for security falling apart. It is unreasonable for Israel to continue killing and destroying without there being a deterrent Palestinian response." In a statement to the Weekly he said, "Israel made a huge and foolish mistake when it thought for a moment that it could act like a bully without there being a response to its crimes." He said that Hamas could only mobilise the rest of the factions to comply with the ceasefire after Israel had stopped attacking the Gaza Strip and lifted the siege. Taha attributes Ehud Olmert's refusal to reach a truce with Hamas to his desire to push Hamas towards offering concessions with regard to the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. "Anyone who thinks that the issues of the truce and Shalit can be tied together is deluded and doesn't know what's going on," he says. "Each file has its own demands." What has worried the Israelis is the fact that the Palestinians have begun to fire more advanced missiles than those fired during the war. Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot has reported the Israeli police as saying that the missiles fired by Palestinians have begun to hit the shelters built by the Israeli army. And what has provoked the ire of decision-making circles in Israel is the growing belief among wide sectors of the Israeli public that the war on Gaza, which was widely condemned around the world as constituting a war crime, still did not meet its goals and wrought results opposite to those intended. Military commentator for Yediot Aharonot Ron Ben Yeshai has written that wide sectors of the Israeli populace are bitterly disappointed, and in particular the settlers of the south, for whom the promises of the government and the army leadership to put an end for good to the missile threats did not come to fruition. "Israel refused to reach a truce agreement with Hamas that would guarantee calm for Israel and lift the siege from the Palestinians in Gaza, indicating that the war had not met its goals," he wrote. Israeli journalists Avi Segarov and Amos Hariel have reminded readers that Jewish settlers in southern Israel might take action against the government's security policies because Palestinian resistance movements have fired more than 100 missiles and shells at settlements since the end of the war. In an article they published in Haaretz newspaper, Segarov and Hariel wrote that the Israeli army had set two primary goals for its war on the Gaza Strip: deterring the resistance movements and stopping the smuggling of arms into Gaza. "Missiles are still being fired, and this leaves no doubt that Israel has failed to deter the Palestinian resistance," they wrote. Last Friday, Israeli channel two broadcast Israeli intelligence reports that Hamas has recently succeeded in smuggling in a number of missiles, including anti- aircraft missiles, as well as advanced explosive materials. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who knows how disappointed Israeli public opinion is with the war's results, has threatened a harsh response to the Palestinians in Gaza should missiles continue to be launched into southern Israel. At the opening of an Israeli government session that convened last Sunday morning, Olmert said, "Israel will not fail to respond to the rise of missile attacks on southern settlements, and will take all necessary measures to end the threats facing them." Olmert said that his government has decided to respond in a "forceful, painful, and unexpected" way should missiles continue to be launched. He has stressed that Israel has a number of options that it can resort to so as to halt the missile attacks. A high-ranking commander in the Israeli army has said that the continual launching of missiles from the Gaza Strip has chipped away at the Israeli army's deterrent strength that had been built up during the war. This commander has criticised the Israeli response to the launching of missiles, saying, "It's unreasonable every time a missile is launched from the Gaza Strip for the Israeli response to be striking the tunnels in Rafah. It's known that the army has many targets that it could strike and which would strongly impact Hamas and send a clear message that it is paying a hefty price for each missile that is fired from the Gaza Strip on settlements in the south." The Likud Party, which is busy forming the new Israeli government, has made it clear that the response to the continual firing of missiles will be the resumption of assassinations. Likud leader and former foreign minister Silvan Shalom holds that Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip must be assassinated so as to put an end to the firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel. In a television interview last Saturday, Shalom said that assassinating Hamas leaders "is the only alternative to waging another war like the Molten Bullet war." Confrontations between the resistance and the Israeli army are currently on a low simmer, but if a truce agreement is not reached between Israel and the Palestinian factions that guarantees an end to invasions, a lifting of the siege, and reconstruction, the start of a larger scale confrontation will be only a matter of time.
