The IDF and IAF targeted several Syrian army positions on Wednesday morning, March 19 which aided and abetted the attack against IDF soldiers on Tuesday according to the official IDF blog. The IDF targeted a Syrian army training facility, military command posts, and artillery batteries, retaliating with artillery fire directed at Syrian military targets.

Earlier on Tuesday morning, March 18, an explosive device was detonated against IDF soldiers underneath their patrol jeep as in the northern Golan Heights. The soldiers had parked their jeep and were outside of the vehicle when the explosion was set off, causing the injury of four soldiers, wounding one of them severely. Before the explosion took place, the IDF identified suspicious movement on the border.
The wounded soldiers were hospitalized in Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

The IDF said that the Syrian targets had enabled the attack on the Israeli jeep on Tuesday. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, IDF Spokesman stated that “the attack against IDF troops today is an unacceptable escalation of violence from Syria. We will not tolerate this threat against Israeli civilians or troops, we will fulfill our mission, prevent, protect and defend against hostilities from Syria.”

Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon said that Israel viewed Syrian President Bashar Assad responsible for what happens in his country.
“If he [Assad] continues to cooperate with terrorists who seek to harm Israel, he will continue to pay a heavy price that he will regret,” Ya’alon stated on Wednesday.

Israel informed the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) of the incident, which it considers a grave violation. This was the latest in a series of similar incidents that have taken place on Israel’s northern border.

Last Friday, March 14, an explosive device was activated against IDF soldiers patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border, injuring no one. Earlier in the month, on March 5, two Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists were caught attempting to plant an explosive device near the Israel-Syria border in the northern Golan Heights. IDF forces responded immediately to the suspects and hits were identified.

Very early Wednesday morning, March 19, the Israel Defense Forces targeted several Syrian military installations. Those sites were specifically targeted because they played a role in assisting the roadside attack on Israeli forces yesterday in the northern Golan Heights, along the border with Syria.

In yesterday’s incident, four IDF soldiers were injured when an explosive device was detonated. One of the four soldiers was wounded severely.

The targeted Syrian sites included a Syrian Army training facility, military headquarters and artillery.

IDF Spokesman Lt. Col Peter Lerner said,”The attack against IDF troops today is an unacceptable escalation of violence from Syria. We will not tolerate this threat against Israeli civilians or troops, we will fulfill our mission, prevent, protect and defend against hostilities from Syria.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah-backed Al Manar satellite network claimed on Tuesday that the bombing of an IDF patrol at the Syrian border was a kidnap attack, but the terrorist organization frequently makes such claims after attacks.

Israel has not responded to the report.

However, Israeli media reported that soldiers were trying to approach and arrest a suspicious man when the explosion occurred.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the government “has turned the Negev and Be’er Sheva into the cyber capital of the Eastern Hemisphere” and that “there will no trickle of rockets.”

Every prime minister for the past 20 years has promised Jews in Gaza, before they were expelled, and residents in the Western Negev, that Israel will not tolerate missile fire from Gaza.

Those promises were worth about as much as the commitment of Ariel Sharon when he encouraged Jews to live in Gush Katif and as much as the intellectual dishonesty of the Labor governments that offered incentives to Jews to live in the same communities in Judea and Samaria that they now want to dismantle.

After the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinian Authority, then under the aegis of Mahmoud Abbas and later under the current Hamas regime, relentlessly pounded Sderot and Netivot with missiles. They developed longer-range rockets to hit Ashkelon, and then Ashdod, both of them key port cities where a single missile blast at the wrong place could blow up strategic  infrastructure, such as the electric generating, fuel depots and gas lines. Defense ministers talked, and terrorists fired. When the missiles stated hitting the area of Rehovot and Rishon LeTzion, cities that are part of metropolitan Tel Aviv, the government ordered the IDF not only to put an end to the attacks but also changed its policy and started retaliating for every rocket attack.

It is a sad fact that the government really does not care that much about the towns of Sederot, Netivot and surrounding rural areas. The votes are in metorpolitcan Tel Aviv, the home of most Israeli factories and offices and the homes of the power brokers, the people who really run Israel.

Tel Aviv is running out of room, Home prices are out of reach of the average family, and the Olmert and Netanyahu administrations made strategic decisions to invest in the wide open Negev, whose “capital” is Be’er Sheva, for decades an ignored outpost for Moroccan Jews and academics who learn and teach at Ben Gurion University.

A revolution is taking place in Israel, and it is in the Negev. A new high-tech park, with international investment, was launched earlier this year. The north-south Highway 6 high-speed highway is being extended to the outskirts of Be’er Sheva.

The IDF is in the process of moving bases, especially Air Force bases, from the Tel Aviv area to the Negev.

“We are in the midst of a revolution that is turning the Negev into a thriving center, not a periphery or branch, into a bustling center of Israel,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

His last line, that “my policy is clear; any firing of rockets will be met with an immediate and sharp response,” was ostensibly irrelevant to the subject of development, but in fact it was part and parcel of the new Negev.

Israel now has a vested interest in the Negev, and it cannot afford even one rocket attack no more than it can allow rocket firing on Ben Gurion Airport.

It is not a very nice message to the pioneers of kibbutzim, moshavim and development towns in the Negev, but the truth is that the Iron Dome anti-missile system is just a Band-Aid.

The developing the Negev as the Cyber Capital of the Eastern Hemisphere is guaranteeing southern Israel peace and quiet.

The IDF shot at Syrian army posts Tuesday afternoon following the bomb blast that  hit an IDF jeep on patrol at the Syrian border on the Golan Heights Tuesday and wounded one soldier seriously.

Three other soldiers suffered light and moderate injuries.

The blast, at the border near the Israeli Druze city of Majdal Shams on the Golan, also scored a direct hit an armored vehicle that absorbed the impact without additional injuries to soldiers inside the vehicle. The fire at the Syrian army posts may have been intended to provide cover for the evacuation of the wounded soldiers to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

Army tanks also retaliated with artillery fire on suspected Hezbollah positions in the Lebanese village of Kfar Kileh near the northern borders of both enemy countries,

Last Friday night, an IDF convoy was targeted by a Hezbollah bomb, and the terrorist organization is almost certainly trying to take revenge for an alleged Israeli bombing of a Hezbollah missile last month.

IDF soldiers definitely know how to dress up, but it is has nothing to do with Purim because soldiers don’t dress up just fun and play.

After the Second Lebanon War, the IDF reached the conclusion that that all soldiers, not just those from the elite units, should incorporate camouflage into their training. “The Second Lebanon War was 33 days long. That’s a long time,” explained Lieutenant Sagiv Kehila, Deputy Commander of the Guerrilla Warfare Center. “We don’t want our forces to be exposed, so as to reduce the threat of the enemy striking. The best way to ensure this is for them to learn camouflage.”

Today, all IDF combat soldiers participate in a three-week course that teaches them everything they need to know about camouflage and how to use nature to optimum effect: how to turn trees and stones in the battlefield into hiding spots, how to spot the perfect tree and how to pay attention to the minutest detail. They apply elaborate war-paint to their faces, hands, necks and chests. Every minor mistake in creating a camouflaged position can lead to discovery.

“Every type of terrain is different.” said Lt. Kehila, “Camouflage in southern Israel is different to camouflage in northern Israel. The color of ground is each area is distinctive, and there are different kinds of trees and shrubs. The soldiers have to know how to blend into any environment.”

The 7th Reconnaissance Company’s newest recruits were tested on camouflage in the concluding exercise of their training. “Every morning, before sunrise, the soldiers had to be well hidden using the camouflage techniques they had learned throughout their training,” explained the company’s training commander Lieutenant Yair Zald. “If we managed to find the teams, it meant that they had failed at their task.”

The 7th Reconnaissance Company is part of the Armored Corps, and its soldiers are responsible for performing operational activities that cannot be achieved by tanks. They patrol the area before the tanks, collect intelligence, build observation posts and help locate wanted persons.

“In recent years, the battlefield has changed. Our enemy hides underground and fires at us from densely populated areas. Our goal is not to shoot even one bullet,” explained Lieutenant Zald, “This is possible only if we are not seen by the enemy.”

The Israel Defense Forces called up a limited number of reservists following a second day of rocket attacks from Gaza on southern Israel.

The reservists — for air defense, according to the Israel Defense Forces — were summoned on Thursday, when 17 more rockets were fired at Israel. Seven landed in Israel and two were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. The remainder hit Palestinian areas. Another rocket struck southern Israel after the announcement was made but caused no damage.

At least seven rockets were fired at southern Israel shortly after the Islamic Jihad terrorist group in Gaza said it would abide by the cease-fire mediated by Egypt in 2012 amid an Israeli operation to stop rocket attacks.

Four rockets were fired Thursday morning at Ashkelon and Ashdod, with two landing in open fields between the cities and one intercepted over Ashkelon by Iron Dome. Ashdod closed schools without rocket-proof shelters following attacks.

Hours later, Israel’s Air Force retaliated by targeting seven “terror sites” in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to respond militarily to the attacks.

“Our policy in the South is clear — we attack anyone who attempts to hurt us and we will react with a powerful force,” Netanyahu said Thursday morning. “I want to clarify that whoever tries to hurt our Purim celebrations, we will respond with force.” Purim begins on Saturday evening.

Israel’s security Cabinet met Thursday morning to discuss the escalation in attacks from Gaza.

The previous evening, Islamic Jihad fired dozens of rockets at southern Israel, with 41 landing in Israeli territory, including five in residential neighborhoods. Iron Dome shot down at least three of the rockets. The IDF responded by hitting what it called in a statement 29 “terror locations” in Gaza with artillery fire. Israeli residents were instructed to remain within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter overnight. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and urged restraint from all sides. The U.S. State Department in its condemnation of the attacks said Israel has a right to defend itself.

Wednesday’s attack was the largest on Israel since the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF said.

Gaza terrorists fired two rockets towards Ashkelon Thursday afternoon, six more on Sderot and other Gaza Belt communities in the evening and at least another two at night in what was a typical signature of a Gaza ceasefire.

All of the missiles exploded in open areas and caused little or no damage.

Israel has denied knowledge of the agreement that Islamic Jihad terrorists said earlier in the day was put into effect with help of mediators from Egypt. Islamic Jihad denied that its terrorists launched the rockets after it said it was holding hits fire.

Sporadic rocket fire by Gaze terrorists is part of a typical Gaze ceasefire.

There have been dozens of announcements  over the past years of a truce or “calm” – the Arabs have all kinds of names to get out of using the word “ceasefire” –  and virtually every one of them goes into effect with a couple of rocket attacks, a farewell salute to another attempt to kill a few more Zionists.

The Arabs love gunfire and rockets. No Arab wedding is complete without fireworks. No Hamas or Fatah rally is decent without machine guns hoisted in the air. And no ceasefire, as temporary as it is, can be consummated without its being broken, just to show everyone how useless it is.

Israel always has played along with the game, unless one of those aimless rockets happens to hit someone, and then the ceasefire is postponed until after the next round of retaliation, attacks and retaliation.

Gaza terrorists always like to get in the last word, or shot, and it is easy for Islamic Jihad or Hamas to say that some small group, perhaps a couple of kids who decided to form their own clubhouse terrorist gang, launched the rockets to show Hamas who really is in charge.

Hamas is certainly not in charge, and Egypt has further isolated it, bypassing it and talking directly to Islamic Jihad leaders, a move that could further weaken Hamas’ control of Gaza.

Hamas either stood by  jealously while Islamic Jihad fired dozens of missiles on Israel this week or simply was not able to wield any influence over its rival terrorists, who were aided by three other smaller gangs.

Gaza has been a hell-hole by all accounts. That is the way it was when Egypt neglected it before the Six-Day War in 1967, and that is the way it has been since Yasser Arafat started making peace with Israel in the 1980s by killing as many Jews as possible. Things got even worse when Hamas ousted rival Fatah faction in a bloody militia war in 2005.

Israel has said it knows nothing of a ceasefire and that it does not negotiate with terrorists, a blatant bluff, if not lie, since that is what it did to conclude the hostilities a year and a half ago when it launched the Pillar of Defense campaign to stop missile fire that reached as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Thursday “quiet will be met with quiet” and that if missile attacks resume, “we know how to hit whoever has to be hit,” de facto confirmations that the shooting is over – for now, unless Hamas continues to lose control over the terrorist gangs and  the rocket attacks continue,