Two missiles have hit Eilat today – at least two others seem to have hit the Jordanian city of Aqaba, though the Jordanians are denying it at this time. Early reports said two missiles hit Eilat – and two hit Aqaba…then it was changed to three, and back to two hitting Eilat. Jordan is apparently still in denial.

No injuries though it hit in the same residential areas where my husband and I vacationed just a few months ago. Israel has closed the airport in/out of Eilat lest the next potential missile target a plane with dozens aboard.

Eilat…

Eilat is a special place – removed from Israel in so many ways. It is a long distance between Eilat and the center of Israel, both in physical space and in mindset. We go to Eilat to forget the pressures of every day life – to remember the beauty that God has put on this earth.

Gorgeous desert views… Mountains to climb… Salt water fish in colors the mind can barely grasp… Tourist sites to entertain – some with Biblical references, like the theme park called Kings City; cruises, an ice skating mall…and so much more…

People go there to get away from it all – but today, the trouble came to them. To Eilat.

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The terrorists who are building up men and material resources in the chaos of today’s Egyptian Sinai struck again this morning. Two GRAD rockets were fired into – and struck – the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Memo to those lacking historical, geographic or political background: Eilat is not and never has been claimed by Palestinian Arab terror apologists as “occupied territory”… other than by the many extremists who see all of Israel as the territory that is occupied. The readers of the Lebanese Al Manar news website for instance, are seeing a report at this moment headlined “Rockets Hit Occupied Town of Eilat“; Al Manar is a mouthpiece of Hezbollah. The semi-respectable Palestinian Maan News Agency has called Eilat occupied too, though never in the English language.

Times of Israel is reporting that one of the two missiles crashed into a residential neighborhood; the other in an open area on Eilat’s outskirts. Reuters says both hit open areas. Ynet says there were three rockets, and two landed in residential areas. Israel’s Army Radio, which is broadcast throughout the country, is quoted saying that a rocket “had also hit the nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba, but a spokesman for the Jordanian Civil Defense denied the suggestion.”

Fortunately, and this is a matter of divine intervention and human failure, no injuries are reported, at least  not so far. Damage is said to be light.

The IDF’s assessment, hardly surprising and certainly not for the first time, is that the attack on Eilat was made from the nearby Sinai Peninsula. The situation there is chaotic and dangerous, and growing steadily worse; we have written numerous times about Sinai’s spiral downwards into terrorist-driven anarchy [here, here, here and hereamong numerous other posts]. As a matter of consistent policy, the Egyptian authorities always respond to media inquiries with firm denials that rockets were fired from Egyptian territory; this morning they did the same again.

Israel’s security authorities saw today’s attack coming. An Iron Dome anti-missile defense battery has been stationed near Eilat for the past two weeks; there are ongoing intelligence assessments that warned of an act of terrorism like this morning’s. The system however was not utilized today, presumably because the Iron Dome controller knows to compute the expected damage in real time and to avoid firing if it is reasonable to do that.

The IDF created the Eilat Regional Brigade this past December to provide military protection, to the extent such a thing is doable against a jihadist enemy operating under the cover of a neighboring country’s government. The most recent rocket attack on Eilat’s civilian population (the only kind that it has) was an especially worrying one in August 2012; those which came before it are detailed in this Wikipedia entry.

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Jordanians across from Eilat have a new view of Israel today, hours before the beginning of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, thanks to the work of Yemenite Chabadnik Roni Pilo who has painted a gigantic flag on an Eilat Navy hangar that covers almost an entire acre.

The display of the flag can be seen clearly from the Jordanian shore and cities across from the Gulf.

Pilo worked for three weeks, day and night, to finish the work in time for Memorial Day on Monday night and Tuesday, followed by Yom Ha’atzmaut.

The idea was the brainchild of Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzchak HaLevi, and work was carried out with the help of contributions from the French Jewish community and Tambour Paint Company, which donated 740 gallons of paint.

Pilo used special techniques to utilize light and shade and mixed six different shades of blue and six hues of white to make the flag display appear as if it is 3-D and moving on the hangar at the Israeli Navy base.

Mayor HaLevi said he came up with the idea to improve the aesthetics of the huge hangar.

He said there was no intention to irritate anyone, especially the Arabs across the waters. “We are not here to annoy anyone,” he said in a statement quoted by the Yediot Acharonot newspaper.

“Wherever the flag can be seen, that is all the better,” he added. “We have no reason to apologize for that. Displaying the flag permanently in Eilat, an international tourist and sports city that hosts 3 million people a year from Israel and the entire world, demonstrates our national pride and love for the country.

Navy base commander Ilan Mintz said, “There is nothing more symbolic the day before Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers…than a strong and loving embrace.”

The base will be open to visitors on Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Rocket attacks continue to plague the south of Israel, the last one occurring a few days ago.

Only a few weeks ago the IDF deployed an Iron Dome rocket defense battery near Eilat to deal with the incoming rockets.

These latest strikes follow the massive attack which took place on August 5th, which claimed the lives of sixteen Egyptian soldiers and which was finally blocked by the IDF on Israel’s southern border.

These events are not recent developments. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former president, was ousted from his position in disgrace in February of 2011. Since that time, the balance of power in the Sinai Peninsula has changed dramatically, and it seems that the change is to the detriment of all parties in the region, excluding the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and other minor organizations.

Since the deposing of Mubarak, terror organizations originating in the Gaza Strip have taken control of the Sinai Peninsula, along with other terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, which develop their infrastructure of terror everywhere they can, and especially in areas that suffer from lack of government and neglect, such as the Sinai region.

In recent months, they have operated an industry of terrorism at an unprecedented magnitude, including weapons experiments, weapons smuggling, and terrorist attacks.

Since February 2011, the IDF has received several reports on events of weapons experiments in open areas throughout the Sinai. Palestinians terrorists from the Gaza Strip are taking advantage of the lawlessness in the Sinai in order to perform experimentations with weapons of varying grades by firing to areas in Sinai, and receiving way points of the strikes from local collaborators. Through these experiments, the terrorist organizations can improve the weapons’ shooting angles, amount of explosives and projectiles, depending on where the rockets fall.

In addition, the tunnel routes between Gaza and Sinai have developed immensely since the fall of Mubarak’s regime. The tunnel owners have known difficult periods when concentrated joint efforts were made by Israel and the Mubarak regime to create obstacles for these tunnels. They are currently experiencing a profitable period as both their civilian businesses and their collaboration with the terrorist’s industry in Gaza do not encounter any difficulties on the Egyptians part. Some of tunnels are big enough that entire vehicles can be transported through them.

This reality has severely hampered the security on Israel’s southern border. Sinai of the post-Mubarak era has become a focal point for active and brutal terrorism, due to the vacuum created in the region, as the Egyptians do not take responsibility for their sovereign territory and the waste lands are utilized by the terrorist organizations to the outmost.

Member of Knesset Benyamin Ben-Eliezer, an expert on the Egyptian scene stated after the attack: “I hear president Morsi’s statements and I understand he has come to a conclusion that if he does not gain control of the Sinai soon, he will be sitting on a nuclear bomb. Sinai, with all its components – including the Global Jihad, Al – Qaida and other terrorist organizations – is going to become a place that could shake the entire of Egypt.”

During an armed robbery overnight at the La Casa restaurant in Eilat, two policemen who arrived at the scene had their guns taken away by the thieves.

The thieves then fled the scene, hijacked a taxi. Three addditional police cars began chasing them through the streets of Eilat.

During the chase, policemen managed to shoot out the tires of the taxi.

The thieves exited the taxi and began shooting back at the policemen. The police shot back and killed one of the armed robbers, the second was injured.

The thieves were from a village in Israel’s north and are related.

Israeli immigration police arrest dozens of South Sudanese illegal immigrants in Eilat on Monday morning in a raid intended to curb the influx of unauthorized entrants from Africa.

At approximately 5:00 AM, immigration police raided a neighborhood which has become known as a way station for the hundreds of migrants who breach Israeli borders from the south.  Police gave the individuals time to gather and pack their belongings before being deported.  Eight South Sudanese migrants were arrest by the Immigration Authority on Sunday.

Last week, a Jerusalem court ruled that Israel could deport South Sudanese citizens back to their country.

The Knesset on Monday will dedicate special sessions to dealing with strong Israeli reactions to violence and theft brought on by the wave of Sudanese and Eritrean illegal immigrants, in particular in South Tel Aviv and the port city of Eilat.  Discussions will include ways to deal with the various classifications of immigrants – including opportunists as well as asylum-seekers – as well as Israeli violence against the migrants sparked by public outrage at immigrant conduct.

On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation supported a bill to punish Israelis who employ or migrants and Palestinians who are inside Israeli illegally.

Though it is difficult to estimate how many illegal immigrants from Africa are currently in Israel, Ministry of Interior estimates, as of April 2012, 59,858 Illegal immigrants who were never imprisoned in detention facilities have infiltrated into Israel.  A fraction of those are entitled to refugee status, while Eritreans – comprising a whopping 34,000 of those – will not be deported due to the opinion of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that Eritrea has a difficult internal situation and a forced recruitment and that Eritrean immigrants should be defined as a “temporary humanitarian protection group”.

Google Street View has officially launched in Israel, providing images of religious sites and city streets in major Israeli cities Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.

Due to security issues, several sensitive sites will not be visible on the service, including the prime minister’s residence and the military headquarters in Tel Aviv.  Military officials expressed concern over the introduction of Street View in Israel, due to previous admission by Arab terror organizations that they had used internet services to attack Israel.  Islamic Jihad in Gaza has stated that it used Google Earth, which shows images of locations from above, to fire rockets at Israel.

Israel is the first Middle Eastern country to permit Street View to film locations and display them online.  Iraq’s National Museum is also viewable on Street View.

Beersheba, Nazareth and Eilat will soon be added to the service.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved the construction of a railway line from Tel Aviv to Eilat, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“The 350-kilometer line will be for passengers and freight alike,” and according to the statement, “is due to shorten travel time to a mere two hours.”

PM Netanyahu said that, “We have the ability to create an alternative transportation route that bypasses the Suez Canal – this is an insurance policy.  Israel must become a continental land crossing route and create great power interests.  The Tel Aviv-Eilat railway line, which will shorten travel time to two hours, will change the face of the country.  For 63 years, there has been talk about linking up the periphery to the center, but nothing has been done.  The railway line and Israel’s natural gas resources can forge strong links in the economic, energy and industrial fields.”

The project is expected to take five years from the start of construction.