Terrorists form Gaza attacked Israel with one and possibly two missiles on Thursday despite pledges by Hamas that it would halt rocket firing.

Either Hamas is not capable of controlling rival terrorist gangs, which has been the situation off and on for more two years, or it has returned to its old tactic of  pledging ceasefires and allowing others to break them.

One rocket exploded south of Ashkelon early Thursday afternoon south of Ashkelon, exploding in an open area without causing damage, and  a second blast was heard at night. The point of impact has not been determined.

The IDF contradicted a report from local officials that the Iron Dome system intercepted the first missile.

One rocket also was fired on the area on Tuesday.

The Israel Air Force (IAF) and General Security Services (Shabak) are on high state of alert ahead of former Prime Minister Sharon’s funeral, according to a report in Maariv.

Ariel Sharon is to be buried Monday in his Negev “Sycamore Ranch” (“Havat Shikmim”), which is within range of Gaza’s rockets.

There is concern within the security forces that the Gazans might decide to shoot rockets at the funeral, and so, have launched “Operation Kalaniot” to try to prevent any rockets from being launched and hitting the ranch during the funeral.

An Iron Dome anti-rocket system will also be deployed to protect the funeral.

In 2007, a rocket from Gaza hit and exploded on the ranch.

After Sharon pulled Israel out of the Gaza Strip, Gaza became a terror base that has put millions of Israelis within rocket range of Gaza’s terrorists, and semi-regularly requires that residents of Israel’s south go into bomb shelters and reinforced sewer pipes so as to not get injured or killed from falling rockets.

Israel’s security has significantly diminished since the 2005 expulsion of Jews from their homes in Gush Katif and Gaza.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make even deeper expulsions and pullouts from additional Israeli territories.

The Palestinian Authority has embarked on a daily campaign to solidify ties with Bedouin protesters in the Negev, where the Jews are an increasingly smaller minority outside of Be’er Sheva.

“Hundreds of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship demonstrated in Beersheba outside of the office for the Authority for the Regulation of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev on Thursday to protest ongoing house demolitions,” the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported.

“The demonstrators chanted the Palestinian national anthem and waved Palestinian flags,” it added.

It quoted the mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat, approximately 15 miles north of Be’er Sheva, as calling the authority a “second government which endeavors to displace the Bedouins and steal their lands.”

Sound familiar?

If all of the land in Judea and Samaria and more than half of Jerusalem belongs to the “Palestinians” and almost all of the Negev belongs to Bedouin, the Palestinian Authority can call Israel a “Jewish state” just to mock the idea because the government of Tel Aviv has malignly neglected the Galilee, east of Haifa, and all of the Negev, where Arabs and Bedouin are the majority.

It is not a coincidence and it is not just rhetoric when protesting Bedouin call their land “Palestine.”

Dozens of illegal African infiltrators have voluntarily left Israel for Sweden with a $3,500 government grant, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. The move was coordinated with the Swedish government and the United Nations Commission on Refugees, which has criticized Israel for not allowing the infiltrators to remain.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu emphasized on Monday that Israel is taking care of all refugees as required by international law but that every African looking for work in Israel is not a refugee.

Meanwhile, African infiltrators continued their protests in Tel Aviv for the third consecutive day and thousands of them staged a protest march on Tuesday from Levinsky Park to Rabin Square.

Approximately 150 protesters are on their second day of a hunger strike at the Sahaornim detention center in the Negev.

Centuries-old fabrics identified by Israel Antiquities Authority researchers include one that may have been made by means of a technique similar to making the tekhelet (blue)in tzitzit, the fringes that the Bible commands be worn on four-cornered garments.

To date, only two pieces of fabric treated with actual dye-murex have been found in Israel

The fabrics identified by Dr. Na‘ama Sukenik represent the most prestigious colors in antiquity – indigo, purple and crimson, – that are mentioned in Jewish sources

Thousands of fabrics dating to the Roman period have been discovered in the Judean Desert and regions of the Negev and the Arava. So far only two were colored with dye extracted from the murex snail. Now, within the framework of a study conducted by Dr. Sukenik, three other rare fabrics belonging to pieces of prestigious textiles were exposed that might have been used as clothing in the Roman period.

Dr. Sukenik’s doctoral dissertation was supervised by Professor Zohar Amar and Dr. David Illuz of Bar-Ilan University, and the textiles were examined by Dr. Orit Shamir, Curator of Organic Materials at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

These prestigious textiles, from the Wadi Murabba‘at caves located south of Qumran, were revealed in a study that analyzed the dye of 180 textiles specimens from the Judean Desert caves. Among the many textiles, most of which were dyed using substances derived from plants, were two purple-bordeaux colored textiles – parts of tunics that were double dyed utilizing two of the most expensive materials in antiquity – Murex trunculus (Hexaplex trunculus) and American Cochineal insect .

Photo: Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

A third textile, made of wool, indicating the thread fibers were dyed by exposing them to sunlight or heated after having been dyed, represent another use of the murex snail for achieving a shade of blue, and it is possible that the item in question is an indigo fabric made by means of a technique similar to making the tekhelet (blue)in a tzitzit.

The importance of this fabric is extremely significant as there are practically no parallels for it in the archaeological record.

Dr. Sukenik, assisted by Dr. Alexander Varvak, examined the colors using advanced analytical instrumentation for identifying dye substances (HPLC).

The testing of the fabrics, performed by Dr. Orit Shamir of the Israel Antiquities Authority, revealed that the two purple textiles were spinning in a unique manner characteristic of imported textiles, whereas the blue textile was spinning in the same fashion as the local textiles.

Of all of the dyes that were in use, purple is considered the most prestigious color of the earlier periods, but it seems the public’s fondness for this reached its peak in the Hellenistic-Roman period. The purple dyed fabrics attested to the prestige of the garment and the social status of its owner.

There were times when the masses were forbidden from dressing in purple clothing, which was reserved for only the emperor and his family. These measures only served to increase the popularity of that color, the price of which soared and was equal to that of gold.

It is difficult to know for certain how such prestigious fabrics came to be in the Murabba‘at caves. They might have been part of the property belonging to Jewish refugees from the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt and demonstrate their economic prosperity prior to the outbreak of the uprising.

Another possibility is that they were part of the possessions of a small Roman unit, which on the basis of the artifacts was stationed in the Murabba‘at caves following the Bar Kokhba revolt.  It is likely these same soldiers brought some of their belongings from overseas to Israel and others they purchased from the local Jewish population during their service in the country.

Arabs in Canada tried to protest an appearance by Canadian Prime Stephen Harper at a Jewish National Fund of Canada event because trees that the JNF plants are “soldiers in the Zionist army of occupation,” the website of the Yediot Acharonot newspaper reported.

Harper has staunchly stood in support of Israel more than any other leader in the world and plans to visit the country in January for the first time as Prime Minister.

The JNF hosted Harper at the “Negev Dinner” Sunday, and Canadian police prevented disturbances from protesters, already riled up by the Palestinian Authority over the “Prawer Plan,” designed as a compromise to make some kind of order out of chaos on the Negev that has been overrun by tens of thousands of Bedouin in recent years.

More than 3,500 supporters of Israel, including Christians, attended the high-priced fundraiser, where Harper made a personal donation to Israel for an aviary to be known as the Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Center in northern Israel.

He announced his first official trip to the Middle East and was so excited that he broke out into song, singing songs from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

In a videotaped message played after Mr. Harper spoke, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded his Canadian counterpart for “unabashedly, unapologetically,” standing up for Israel.

Outside the convention hall where the dinner was held, Arabs chanted, “Harper, Harper, will you see, Palestine will be free.” The Calgary Herald quoted  activist  Yafa Jarrar as saying, “The main message really is to push Canada to end its complicity with these violations of international law that Israel commits.”

The activist may have been referring the war crimes committed by those “soldiers” who have been planted to occupy Israel.

On Saturday, Israel’s Bedouin community declared a “Day of Rage” to protest the government’s intent to hand over to them only part of the Negev, based on the Government’s Prawer-Begin plan, which takes back some land from squatters.

The main rallies took place in Haifa, where hundreds of hooligans blocked traffic, burned tires and threw rocks at police. They injured at least ten police, including the chief of the Coast District and the spokesperson for the Negev District. Police responded with shock grenades and with quite brutal crowd control measures.

There was another Arab demonstration outside the Shchem gate in East Jerusalem. Dozens of Arabs threw rocks on police there as well.

The signs being carried in those rallies threatened that should the Bedouins not receive better than half the Negev, they’d start a third Intifada.

It’s what they do.

The Prawer Commission, chaired by Ehud Prawer, Benjamin Netanyahu’s director of planning, found, back in 2011, that an estimated 50% of unrecognized Bedouin villages were built within Jewish planning areas. It recommended that the inhabitants of these villages, some 30,000 Bedouin invaders, entering Israel illegally from the vast Arabian deserts over the past six decades—about 40% of the total unrecognized Bedouin population—should be relocated to the seven existing government built Bedouin townships.

The commission proposed compensation payments to the evacuees, between $1.7 billion and $2.4 billion, including $365 million for expanding the approved townships. The compensation would be reduced to zero over a period of five years and if agreement had not been reached the land would be considered forfeited.

Then, in January, 2013, Israel’s government approved the recommendations of then Minister without portfolio Benny Begin, backed by AG Yehuda Weinstein, to change the program.

Benny Begin’s “stinking maneuver” not only confirmed through legal registration what has been essentially an illegal land grab of many thousands of acres by the Bedouins over several decades, but also promised them many new settlements to boot.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu was so committed to this move, that they forced Jewish Home, their National Religious partner, to approve in the coalition agreement item 51 which reads: Both sides will promote the “Law regulating Bedouin settlement, 5772-2012,” should a Jewish Home minister be a member of a ministerial committee to implement said law.

Please don’t forget, it’s a crucial detail: Both Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman supported the Benny Begin plan that gave more than half the Negev to Bedouin invaders.

But Jewish Home and Yesh Atid, together with most of the rank and file coalition members, managed to introduce significant changes to the Begin plan, after it had already been approved by the transitional government after the election. The change, essentially, eliminated the Begin plan in favor of the original 2011 plan, which was approved a much less generous land giveaway to the Negev Bedouin.

MK Ahmed Tibi said the Prawer plan is tragic, since it removes civilians from their land.

By civilians Tibi means Arab civilians, because he had no problem at all approving the forcible removal of thousands of Jewish civilians from Gaza and from Samaria.

Tibi also made sure the press understood he was not behind the violent clashes with police, since, as he put it, “we object to violence, but we are in favor of rage.”

It’s that kind of subtlety that we need more of in mass public demonstrations.

The Jewish Left is united in calling on the government to reward the violent demonstrators by freezing the Prawer plan.

And Avigdor Lieberman, who initially approved the Begin land grab, now compared the confrontation with the Bedouins the historic Jewish reclamation of land in Zion over the past century and a half.

Better late than never.