In light of the recent IAF activities in Syria, Israel has repositioned two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries to the country’s north.

One has been placed near Tzfat (Sefad), the second near Haifa.

IAF attacked targets in Gaza, after rockets from Gaza hit Israel on Saturday night.

The IAF says they hit a weapons cache in southern Gaza.

In response to the Gazan terror attack, Israel also completely closed the Kerem Shalom crossing. The Erez crossing has also been closed to all transfers and traffic except for humanitarian purposes.

Residents of the Eshkol region, near Gaza, almost managed to sleep last night, until a midnight Red Alert siren broke the silence, as one, or possibly two Gazan rockets hit in open areas.

No injuries or damage was reported.

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.

Visit This Ongoing War.

Following 3 rocket launches from Gaza on Tuesday evening, the Israel Air Force struck back at targets within Gaza.

This was the first time that Israel has responded with an air assault to the Gaza rocket launches since the Pillars of Defense cease fire. No one was reported injured in the IAF strike.

The Gazan rockets hit in the Eshkol region.

There was also a mortar launched earlier in the day that fell short and landed within the Gaza Strip.

The IDF Spokesperson said,

“The IDF will not accept any attempt to attack Israeli citizens or IDF soldiers, and the IDF has no intention of allowing the return to the situation as it was before Operation Pillars of Defense.
The IDF views the attacks on Israel as very serious, and holds Hamas responsible.”

Earlier in the day police also found the remains of the Palestinian rocket that targeted Israel during President Obama’s visit on March 21.

The Gaza rocket had hit a kindergarten in Sderot. The school was closed and empty at the time for the extended Passover vacation.

Israel’s security apparatus at this point is calling the single missile drop that damaged a road outside Ashkelon “a local event,” but makes clear that the IDF will respond forcefully if more launches happen, the Walla website reports. Which means that the other side gets one freebee. If the reader is in tremendous hurry, we should reveal that the above bit of information is the most crucial, outshining anything else we could possibly report next. Because in societies where maintaining law and order is considered the most elementary part of a government’s duty to its citizens the criminals don’t get a freebee.

You see, on the eve of the “disengagement,” as the transfer buses and the bulk of Israel’s internal security forces were moving in on the Jews of Gaza, then prime minister Ariel Sharon swore an oath, that should a single rocket be fired out of Gaza following the disengagement, “we will react with greater force than ever before.”

Since that promise, Israel has stood twice with its boot on the neck of Hamas and its minions, and twice it let go, each time bragging that walking away from the festering wound that Ariel Sharon had cut open was, somehow, the mature, responsible, even brave thing to do.

Well, here we go again. Eager to show that they’re just as angry as their brethren in the PA over the death in jail of an Arab youngster arrested for stone throwing, Hamas ordered its subordinate gang of thugs, the Islamic Jihad (which is just another name for Hamas, in the end) to shoot a trial missile over the line. A shot across the bow.

Israel is determined to react only to the second one. Which means we should alter Sharon’s famous threat to “should two rockets be fired out of Gaza.” Must keep up with the changing realities.

And IDF sources are saying today that they’re not surprised, that they’d been expecting something like that, it only makes sense, what with all the clashes between a smattering of Arab youths (the PLO is only able to raise a couple dozen rock throwers in each location because its funds have been dwindling—but now, that Israel has renewed the flow of money, they’ll be financing much larger groups).

Here’s a question: If the IDF was well aware that this was coming, how come the sirens didn’t go off in Ashkelon? And how come that glorious expression of the Jewish genius, the Iron Dome, didn’t stop the rocket?

American slang uses the metaphor of a male bovine’s droppings to suggest that a particular statement is entirely unrelated to the truth. In the case of the following disclosure from our brave spokespersons in uniform, the heaps of bovine refuse are high enough to bury the entire bovine:

“This is an isolated incident and not a system-wide decision to return to rocket firing against Israel. It’s merely a few rogue activists who decided on their own to express solidarity with what is happening in Judea and Samaria regarding mostly the issue of the prisoners, which is sensitive not only in Judea and Samaria. We must not forget that there are security prisoners released into Gaza in the Gilad Shalit deal, instead of to their Judea and Samaria homes, and they are engaged in terrorism from morning to night.”

Moo…

Now here’s something a bit closer to reality, another statement, same IDF sources, this time with facts:

A senior security official told Walla this morning that “It doesn’t make sense that while Hamas is negotiating with Israel through the Egyptian, it would be trying to bend Israel’s arm. The launch this morning is against its own strategy. And so, the new reality will be examined over time. If there are additional launches, the IDF will respond with force. There is no intention to allow a return to the time of missile trickles.”

Now the picture is clearer: Hamas, which looks to open up the border passages and increase the flow of incoming goods, including cement (to fortify new rocket launchers replacing the ones destroyed last November), orders its subordinate organization, the Islamic Jihad, to shoot one. The message has nothing to do with prisoners. The message is: we’ll keep the rockets quiet as long as you adhere to our demands. We are in complete control of the rocket fire, no one shoots anything unless we say so – now, do you want quiet or a new war on your border?

Yoni Alper, on his Terror Watch facebook page, posted the above photo from the Temple Mount, taken on Thursday morning.

While Jewish children in Jerusalem are building snowmen and having friendly snowball fights, The Arabs, on the holiest site to Judaism, and a site the Arabs claim is holy to them too, are building symbols of hate, M-75 missiles out of snow, to show what they want to do to Israel.

The M-75 is the Gazan long-range missile that targeted Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during the “Pillar of Defense” operation.

During the war initiated by Gaza, the Palestinians launched M-75 rockets  at Israel from heavily populated areas. Gazan rockets were often launched at Israel from sites next to schools, and mosques.

As far as snow art goes, placing it next to the Al Asqa mosque is true to life.

When Israel evacuated the Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, few imagined that the area would become a platform for the thousands of rockets targeting Israelis living in cities as far as Tel Aviv. As the international community continues to pressure Israel into limiting the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and eventually withdrawing, one can only wonder who in the UN will guarantee that another terrorist entity will not emerge on Israel’s eastern border.

Most likely, Europe has not even considered what would happen if terrorist elements in Judea and Samaria would start firing rockets at civilians living across Israel. But Europe, like Hamas, has plenty to say about the settlements.

On Monday morning, December 3, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom was formally summoned to the Foreign Office, to personally hear condemnations of Israeli settlement building. France and Sweden also followed suit, summoning their Israeli ambassadors, while Germany appealed to the Israeli government in a news conference asking Israel to “desist” from building more settlements, stating that the new plans “undermined” efforts to revive peace talks.

Hamas welcomed the international response with spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, stating that the settlement plans “were an insult to the international community, which should bear responsibility for Israeli violations and attacks on Palestinians.”

Some, however, were not impressed by the almost-panicked address by international European diplomats. Director of the UK-based Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, Jonathan Sacerdoti, pointed out that:

“The Palestinian representative to the UK was not summoned to the Foreign Office when Palestinians unleashed what some in Israel have called a “third intifada” on Israel, with lethal rockets launched in their hundreds into Israeli civilian areas.”

Indeed, it seems that any sort of terrorist activity coming from Gaza or its prime supporter, Iran, very rarely garners any sort of international public outcry, particularly from Europe. Last week, a U.S. official told CNN that “Iran is finding ways to re-supply Hamas” with long range rockets and other weapons despite the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told CNN on Monday, November 26, that Iran is subjected to a UN resolution prohibiting it from exporting arms, and neighbors of Iran are obligated to enforce this measure.

“We are hopeful that the nations in the region take appropriate steps to halt any attempts to transport weapons to Gaza through their territory or airspace,” said Nuland to CNN.

No echoes of distress were heard from any European leaders on the Iran-Hamas weapons deal.

Furthermore, according to Israel Defense Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, Iran “tried during the operation itself to push more and more rockets into the Gaza Strip. Iran is deeply involved with Hamas inside Gaza.”

Even more worrying is the education of future terrorists training to attack Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas enlists, educates, and trains as many terrorists as possible to fire rockets into Israel and fight the IDF, along with other Gaza terror groups; the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and Islamic Jihad. Only this past summer, the first class of a new military training academy in Gaza called Shahid Imad Hamad Academy of Military Training, established by the third largest Gaza terrorist organization, PRC, graduated, having received specialization training in fighting Armored Corps, according to an August Ynet article.

The academy trains students for combat and antitank missile weaponry as well as defense and military studies. According to senior PRC member Abu Suhaib, the school instills religious values, so that students “can confront the Zionist enemy with complete faith in the triumph of God.”

It is these sorts of developments that the international community continues to ignore, indulging instead in constant criticism of the Jewish state. If rocket terrorism against Israeli civilians would be addressed with the same urgency as Israeli settlement building, then perhaps there would be some kind of progress towards a viable, realistic peace. Blind finger-pointing at Israel by France, Britain and others, does not promote peace.

(Anav Silverman lived for two years in the city of Sderot, Israel where she experienced constant rocket attacks on the city while working as international media liaison and frontline reporter between 2007-2009.)