By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Jan 18, 2005
As the bombardment of Jewish towns continues unabated, Israel Tuesday reached into its seemingly bottomless reservoir of tolerance for PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and decided to give the longtime terror boss yet another opportunity to fulfill his peace obligations.
Should Abbas fail to use his power to curb rocket and mortar attacks on Jewish civilians in the coming week, however, senior Israeli officials said the IDF would launch a massive raid on Gaza-based “Palestinian” terrorist forces.
But Abbas, sticking to his policy of protecting rather than combating the terror groups, traveled to Gaza Tuesday to persuade the killers to temporarily halt their artillery attacks in order to enable him to extract further Israeli concessions.
The besieged residents of Sderot, meanwhile, marched on the nearby northern Gaza PA-controlled town of Bet Hanoun to protest their government’s failure to protect their lives.
More than 600 Kassam rockets have been fired from Bet Hanoun at Sderot over the past four years.
Tolerating terror
Despite tough statements from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon following deadly Gaza-based terror attacks last week, Israel Tuesday had yet to launch a substantial military response to the ongoing “Palestinian” aggression against its citizens.
A senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying that while the IDF had a “free hand” to deal with terror, the government had decided “localized operations are preferable to a large-scale offensive.”
Instead, the official said, Israel would limit itself for the time being to the political response of cutting off formal contact with Abbas and the PA.
On Monday, Abbas called for PA security forces to prevent any further attacks on Israeli Jews in and around Gaza. That order was met with skepticism from Israel.
“The real test will be the test of performance, what steps the PA security services will take to implement the decision. So far we haven't seen any real steps,” PMO spokesman Ranaan Gissin told reporters.
Numerous mortar shells were fired at the Jews of Gaza Tuesday.
Defensive Shield II
Should Abbas fail to make use of the opportunity Israel is providing him, the IDF will be unleashed on Gaza, senior government officials said Tuesday.
From this point on, “any Kassam fired by terrorists could be the one that breaks the camel’s back,” Ynet quoted one IDF officer as saying.
“If the situation remains unchanged and there are no drastic changes on the ground, I believe that it is a matter of days, up to a week plus, until the military operation unfolds,” Deputy Defense Minister Ze’ev Boim told the Post .
Boim said the scale of the incursion would be similar to Operation Days of Repentance, launched against Gaza-based terrorists last September after two Israeli toddlers were killed in a Kassam attack.
Other officials suggested the raid could reach the magnitude of 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield, when Israeli ground forces re-conquered towns throughout Samaria and decimated the terrorists based there.
That level of operation is just what former-Deputy IDF Intelligence Chief General Yaakov Amidror said is needed.
“Either we want to stop the Kassams on Sderot, or we don't. If we do, then there is a simple way:to conquer the Gaza Strip,” Amidror told Army Radio Monday.
“True, there will be a price to such an offensive,” Amidror acknowledged, “but just because there will be a price doesn't mean it’s impossible.”
“Those who are afraid to pay this price shouldn't say that we can't do it, but should rather say that they don't want to pay the price,” he said.
No grace period, Sharon says
Jordan’s foreign minister called his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Tuesday to urge Jerusalem to grant Abbas an extended period to deal with anti-Jewish terror attacks.
In response, Sharon said during a visit to the IDF’s Gaza Division headquarters that the PLO chief would not receive, nor did he require any grace period.
Abbas “does not need an adjustment period. He knows what is happening on the ground, he knows the commanders and the people,” the prime minister stated.
A day earlier, Sharon told visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutake Machimura that he did “not see any intention by the Palestinians to fight terrorism and halt terrorist actions against Israel.”
Abbas, Sharon told his guest, could easily “deploy Palestinian police personnel in the areas that [the terrorists] are firing Kassam rockets from” if he chose to.
“We understand that the Palestinian leadership has difficulties [arising from its desire to not be seen in the Arab world as Israel’s puppet] but Israel will not agree to pay in lives for [Abbas’s] difficulties,” Sharon insisted.
Abbas’s ‘crackdown’
For his part, Abbas followed up his order for an end to the violence not by cracking down on the terror groups, but by visiting Gaza Tuesday to negotiate with them.
PA Communications Minister Azzam al-Ahmed said Abbas would try to persuade the terrorists that halting attacks against Israelis at this time was in the best interests of their quest for a sovereign state on ancient Jewish lands.
The terrorists rejected the offer. Abbas is not expected to use force against them, and has emphatically stated in the past that under no circumstances would he do so.
Enough is enough
Meanwhile, residents of the besieged Negev town of Sderot marched on nearby Bet Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday.
Bet Hanoun has served as the launch pad for most of the 600 Kassam rockets that have slammed into Sderot over the past four years.
Declaring, “We won’t be hostages to Kassam attacks,” the demonstrators got to within 300 meters of the PA-controlled town before being halted by security forces.
The protestors accused the Sharon of rendering their blood expendable for the sake of his “disengagement” plan.
Prior to returning home, they fired a symbolic cardboard Kassam rocket into Bet Hanoun.