An Israel Air Force aircraft struck what the Israeli military said were terrorists planning to launch rockets at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.

One man was killed and three injured in the attack, Palestinian media reported following the airstrike on Monday evening. The dead man was identified as Mus’ab Za’aneen, 21, a member of the Al-Quds Brigade, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad.

“The mission was carried out in order to eliminate an imminent attack targeting civilian communities of southern Israel,” according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces spokesman’s office.

“IDF intelligence, operational capability and determination to eliminate a real-time threat keeps Israelis safe in their homes,” IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said.

The airstrike came shortly after Code Red alerts signaling an incoming rocket were sounded near Ashkelon in southern Israel.

On Friday evening, Israeli troops fired on a Palestinian woman who approached the border fence and did not respond to orders to halt, despite being in a military security zone. The woman, according to her family, was mentally disturbed.

Editor’s note: I was looking at this headline and wondering, as you may have, if this sentence is not quite lenient, considering that all of this man’s neighbor’s are serving a life sentence in Gaza.

In any event, according to Ma’an, a Gaza military court on Thursday sentenced a man found guilty of collaboration with Israel to 15 years in jail.

There’s another questionable term in there: what exactly do they mean by “collaboration with Israel?” We tend to think it’s spying, but maybe it’s not? Maybe the man just did something together with his Israeli buddies?

Probably not. But I don’t think it could mean that he told the IAF where to send the killer drones, because he probably would have gotten a more serious sentence for that.

Should Israel insist that all its jailed collaborators be freed from Palestinian jails as Arab murderers are being set free? Food for thought.

A statement from the court said the man, only identified by his initials A.S., was born in 1982 and was from the al-Shati refugee camp.

The decision could be appealed.

Israeli soldiers on patrol at the Gaza security fence shot at a mob of hundreds of rock-throwing Arabs Tuesday, two of whom sustained moderate gunshot wounds.

The rioters also burned tires that were rolled towards the soldiers. None of the soldiers were wounded.

Mohammed El-Omrani Urban, an Arab painter living in Gaza, has been painting three-dimensional pictures on rooftops. I suppose this is the first Palestinian artist catering specifically to the artistic pleasures of Israeli Airforce pilots.

Photo by Emad Nasser/Flash90

Send a drone with a good camera, somebody, there’s a major show waiting to happen!

Photo by Emad Nasser/Flash90

Gaza’s first personal security business has opened up, but its owner says terrorists will not be accepted as customers.

“Secure Land” director Abdul Qader al-Arbid told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that clients will; include banks, hotels, celebrities and banks but not terrorists looking for protection from rival gangs.

“We only work with the private sector,” Arbid said. “This is how security companies work across the world.”

The company’s bodyguards’ first assignment last week was to protect Mohammed Assaf, the winner of the Arab Idol singing competition. Hamas has allowed the company’s 32 security officers to use light weapons, when necessary,

Secure Land also will not provide bodyguards for international aid organizations, meaning that UNRWA, which has increasingly been confronted by Hamas, will have to find its own solution to keep its workers alive.

“We have no problems to have such companies here. We are ready to support and help them in their job,” said Islam Shawan, spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that “the part that defines the religion of the Palestinian citizen has been erased” has been erased from identification cards.

Hassan Olwi, a director in the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that the decision was made a few days ago in accordance with PA law upholding religious and racial equality.

Removing religious identity may be aimed at undermining Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand that Abbas recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” After all, if Palestinian Authority Arabs are not defined as Christians or Muslims, then why Israelis should be defined as Jews, Muslims, Christians or whatever?

More interesting, “religious and racial equality” apparently does not include allowing Jews to live in a future Palestinian Authority country.

However, Hamas, views the announcement exactly in the opposite.

Hamas official Taher Al-Nunu charged that Abbas “is preparing the way for the execution of Kerry’s plan which demands that the Palestinian Authority absorb Jewish settlers into the Palestinian society as binational citizens of its proposed state,” the terrorist organization’s website stated on Monday.

It has been going on for several months, but now it’s official, as reported by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, Egyptian border forces destroyed 10 smuggling tunnels and seven homes in the Sinai on Saturday as part of their new campaign to create a 500 yard wide buffer zone (5 football fields) along the border with the Gaza Strip.

The campaign began with a military operation in the border town of Rafah, where tunnels leading into the Gaza Strip were targeted in border neighborhoods, an Egyptian security source told Ma’an.

The source added that the tunnels were destroyed and the homes they were located in were blown up. The move was part of a wider campaign to set up a buffer zone along the border with Gaza in Rafah that would extend 300 meters in populated areas and 500 meters in open areas.

If anyone was wondering what motivated the Egyptians to act so emphatically to separate themselves from the Hams governed Gaza Strip, the same source also told Ma’an that Egyptian army forces on Saturday successfully foiled three explosive devices placed in military vehicles and armored cars in Sheikh Zuwaid, including two that were placed near the Sheikh Zuweid Hospital and a third on the road to a nearby village south of Sheikh Zuewid.

They’ve had enough of the pesky Palestinian terrorists spreading death wherever they turn, so they cut them off. Let Turkey help them.

The source added that Egyptian army forces raided “militant strongholds” in the village of al-Kharuba south of Sheikh Zuweid and destroyed three homes and five “hideouts.” Oh, and this is rich: they also destroyed an olive grove that was reportedly used to hide terrorists following attacks taking place on the nearby road to Rafah International crossing.

Ma’an reminded readers that until July 2013 tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt provided a vital lifeline for the territory which was facing a “crippling Israeli blockade” since 2006. But since the coup against Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi in July, Egypt has strictly enforced a blockade of its own and caved in the tunnels.

Egyptian Maj. Gen. Ahmad Ibrahim said last October that nearly 800 tunnels had been destroyed since the Morsi toppling, an estimated 95 percent of previously existing tunnels. Last night 10 more went under.

A day before the Egyptian action, during a rally in Rafah, Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior spokesman for Hamas, rebuked Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from negotiations with the U.S. and Israel, as the talks only serve to “terminate the question of Palestine and what is left of Palestinian rights and principles.”

In other words, by ostensibly reaching a resolution for the Palestinian’s plight the imagined peace deal would effectively end the struggle for a resolution to the Palestinian plight. Must be a chicken and egg thing.

“Nobody has authorized you (Abbas) to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, or on behalf of Hamas or any other faction,” Abu Zuhri said. “Why don’t you tell the truth about what is going on in the secret negotiations? If you are honest, go out to your people and tell the truth and give them details.”

Back in 2006, Sami Abu Zuhri was trying to cross from Egypt into Gaza in Rafah, when he dropped a money belt with 900,000 euros in it. The law is one must declare any sum above $2,000. Abu Zuhri said it was all private donations. For the orphans.

Anyway, the Hamas spokesman also declared his movement would regard any international military presence within a future Palestinian state as “occupation” forces. So American and NATO troops are as bad as the IDF as far as Hamas is concerned.

Israel soldiers shot and killed a Gaza man and wounded one other after they tried to approach a restricted area to sabotage the security fence near Gaza City.

The injured man was treated for light wounds in a Gaza hospital. The dead man was identified as Ibrahim Suleiman Mansour, 26.

A Gaza health spokesman told AFP that the men were only collecting gravel while the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported that its journalist said the men were collecting pebbles.

That is an amazing change from hundreds of previous reports that innocent Gaza youth were playing soccer or collecting metal near the fence while refusing soldiers’ orders to turn around and leave the zone that is clearly marked as restricted.

Since Israel recently has agreed to ship hundreds of tons of cement to Gaza so Hamas can use it for humanitarian causes, such as factories that supply jobs to those civilians who build rockets used to attack Israel, why were the men gathering pebbles and gravel?