Already, on Saturday, a half hour before the one week mark to Operation Solid (or Cast) Lead against Gaza, Haaretz reported that “Israel early Saturday morning killed the third top Hamas leader in Gaza since the start of its military offensive in the Strip a week ago. Abu Zakaria al-Jamal, a commander of the Hamas armed wing, died of wounds sustained in an air strike overnight”.
While he may be the third top Hamas leader killed during this operation, he is the eighth Hamas official considered important enough to have been mentioned by name in the Israeli media over the past three days.
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff wrote about these targetted killings in an article published in Haaretz with the title. “IDF sending Hamas a message: Now its personal”, in which they reported that the IDF changed its tactic because the early days of this offensive suggested that they did not want to engage with Hamas.
In the same article, Harel and Issacharoff added that: “Meanwhile, the widely anticipated ground offensive was delayed again Thursday for operational reasons and because Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was in Paris to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy. France is taking advantage of the slow U.S. response to play a central role in efforts to reach a cease-fire. Almost a week into the war it now seems clear that Israel missed a golden opportunity in the first or second day to end the operation as a reprisal action only. The government says it is giving the IDF a chance to achieve the maximum, but in reality the air strikes were to have given the government time to come up with an exit strategy. That did not happen. As a result, Hamas is rallying somewhat while Israel is sliding toward a a ground operation that holds many risks … However, the delays in the start of the ground operation are taking their toll. Unlike the Second Lebanon War, the ground war in the Gaza Strip will be waged in densely populated urban areas. The civilian population in Lebanon fled during the fighting. In the Gaza Strip, however, there is nowhere to run but the beach and the Egyptian border, and many civilian casualties can be expected”. This analytical article can be read in full here .
On Saturday morning Al-Jazeera television was showing pilotless drones (“zanana”, to Gazans) gliding around overhead looking for targets in Gaza. The TV feed also showed pieces of white paper — presumably, more warnings — drifting down from the skies.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported on Friday that the Israeli airforce bombed the house of another “top Hamas … operative”, Imad Akel, on Friday afternoon. The JPost added that “It was unclear if Akel was home at the time, but secondary blasts were heard, indicating the presence of weapons and explosives in the home, the IDF said”. This report can be read in full here .
Haaretz mentioned another targetted killing that also happened on Friday, and reported that “On Friday, the IAF bombed the home of Hamas member Mohammed Madhoun, who was responsible for rocket attacks against Israel. Madhoun’s house was also used as a laboratory for the manufacturing of rockets and explosive devices and as a storage facility for rockets, mortar shells, and various weapons”.
And it reported that “The IAF also bombed the residence of former Hamas minister Atef Adwan. Adwan was the Minister of Prisoner Affairs in the government of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh”.
On Thursday, the IDF targetted four other Hamas leaders, “and [1] dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of one of the group’s top five leaders, Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, killing him and a reported 18 others .. Security officials said Rayyan had served not only as the religious leader for Hamas’s military wing, but also as one of its military commanders. He was often seen in uniform and participated in military exercises”, one of the Israeli papers reported. In addition, the IDF reported that hit had attacked the [2] the house of Nabil Amrin, another senior terrorist and the commander of a Hamas battalion. The IDF reported a series of secondary explosions following the air strike, confirming that Amrin’s home in the Sheikh Raduan neighborhood of Gaza City contained a large weapons and ammunition cache; [3] the house of Muhamad Fuad Barhud (a senior terror operative in the Resistance Committees) in Jabaliya. Barhud is responsible for the wide array of Grad and Qassam rockets, as well as mortar shells, that are in the northern Gaza Strip, and is funded and supported by Hamas. Among other locations, his house was used as a storage site for various weapons including anti tank missiles, rockets, and explosive devices used by both, the Resistance Committees and Hamas; [4] The house of another terror operative, Hasin Drairy, was also attacked in the Sabra (northern Gaza Strip). The house was used as a storage site for rockets and mortar shells. The house was also used as a lathe for rocket manufacturing-2.
Apparently, in a war, or even in a military operation, there is no need for proof, just a simple assertion, then conviction and execution.
Haaretz reported that “Before dawn [Friday], Israeli aircraft hit 15 houses belonging to Hamas militants, Palestinians said. They said the Israelis either warned nearby residents by phone or fired a warning missile to reduce civilian casualties”. This report can be read in full here .
Other sites targetted overnight Thursday to Friday, according to an information note sent out by the IDF spokesperson’s office, included “A mosque in Jabaliya … used as a storage site for a large amount of Grad missiles and additional weaponry. The strike set off a lengthy series of secondary explosions and a large fire, caused by the munitions stockpiled in the mosque. The mosque was also used as a center of operations for Hamas, as a meeting place for its operatives and a staging ground for terror attacks, Headquarters of the military wing of Hamas; A vehicle transporting anti-aircraft missiles (this may have been the one that B’Tselem says could have been just transporting oxygen cylinders. See …); A tunnel used to smuggle weaponry; Rocket launchers armed and prepared for use; Weaponry manufacturing and storage facilities”.
From one international witness on the ground in Gaza, we hear a slightly different view: the mosque mentioned above was “thankfully empty at that time”, but “the Israeli bomb has also struck the building adjacent to the mosque, which was also destroyed. We watched as the tiny bodies of six little sisters were pulled out of the rubble – five are dead, one is in life-threatening conditions. They laid the little girls out on the blackened asphalt, and they looked like broken dolls, disposed of as they were no longer usable”. The witness reported that many people are missing in the chaos and the rubble of bombed building, and at the time he wrote there were “more than a thousand wounded [now, a few days later, there are nearly 2,300 wounded] and, according to a doctor at Shifa, 60% of these are destined to die in the next few hours or days, after a prolonged agony”. The words were translated from the original Italian, from an article published in the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, written by International Solidarity Movement activist Vittorio Arrigoni, who entered Gaza on one of the Free Gaza expeditions by sea from Cyprus. The translation can be read in full here .
And,from a link on the post, “The roots of Hamas resilience” by Helena Cobban on her blog, Just World News, I found what she called “a brief eulogy for Rayyan” [killed on Thursday at home with 18 members of his family, by a 2000 pound bomb] on a Hamas [or maybe just pro-Hamas] website: “Dr. Rayyan is a lecturer at the Islamic university and enjoys widespread respect at the Jbalya refugee camp, especially that he was always at the forefront of demonstration against the occupation, not only that, but he never hesitated to don his military suit and join the Qassam Brigades in defending the camp during IOF [n.b. this stands for Israeli Occupation Forces] incursions. It was Dr. Rayyan, who took the initiative, two years ago, to protect homes against Israeli occupation air strikes by forming human shields which succeeded in stopping this practice by the Israeli occupation, where they used to phone the occupier of the home and warn him to evacuate it in ten minutes because the home is going to be bombed. During the ongoing onslaught against the Gaza Strip, Dr. Rayyan refused to leave his home and go into hiding. Dr. Rayyan is a refugee from the village of Na’leyya near Askalan (Ashkelon). He is a lecturer of Hadith at the Islamic University in Gaza. He graduated in 1982 from Imam Muhammad Ben Saud. He got his Masters degree from the Jordanian university in Amman1990 and his PhD from the University of Quran in Sudan in 1994. He spent various periods in Israeli occupation jails and PA [Palestinian Authority] jails for his anti-occupation activities. This eulogy can
be read in full here.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy — who is no longer functioning as head of the European Union, because the rotating presidency passed to the Czeck Republic on 1 January, is due to visit Jerusalem and the West Bank — but probably not Gaza — on Monday.
On 1 January, Sarkozy received in Paris the Foreign Minister of Israel, Tzipi Livni, just hours after she told the foreign press in Sderot that “there was no other alternative” to the military operation that Israel started on 27 December.
Livni went on to say that “Hamas does not represent any kind of legitimate right or aspiration of the Palestinian people … Its ties are with Iran, Syria, and other radical elements in the region and the there is a point at which any government – and the Israeli government – must decide to stop this … [I]nstead of the creation of something that gives hope to the Palestinian people, as well as to the Israeli people, Hamas took control, after a coup against Abu Mazen and his group, and has been abusing the situation in order to target Israel. Israel tried everything before the military operation … Hamas wants to show that there is a place which is called the Gaza Strip, that this kind of an organization – an extremist Islamic organization that acts by terrorism and which is a designated terrorist organization – can rule. And to make it seem a legitimate regime. So they want the crossings to be opened, not only for the sake of the population, but because this symbolically is how they can show that the Gaza Strip has become a kind of a small state, which is controlled by them. This is something that nobody can afford, neither Israel, nor the pragmatic leadership, nor the legitimate Palestinian leadership or government, nor any part of the moderate the Arab world … Hamas want the Palestinian Authority, the legitimate Palestinian government out. They do not want them at the Rafah crossing, and they do not want Israel or the Palestinian Authority to be at the other crossings, so they can put Hamas flags in the Gaza Strip. And this is something that we cannot afford … what I would like to say regarding the needs of the Palestinian Authority or the international agreement about Rafah and other crossings that involve the Palestinian Authority, is that the legitimate Palestinian Authority serves the interests of Israel, the Palestinian Authority itself, and the entire moderate Arab world … It is also important to keep Hamas from becoming a legitimate organization because, unfortunately, there are those who are now putting Israel and Hamas in the same category, asking both sides to stop, and this is something which is part of my frustration and the frustration of the average Israeli because there is no comparison whatsoever between Israel and Hamas“.
But, Roni Sofer, writing in YNet, takes issue with at least some of Livni’s assertions: “The Israeli government still insists on calling the Gaza Strip campaign a ‘military operation’. Officially, as amazing as this may sound, the events in Gaza are not referred to as ‘war’ or even a ‘military campaign’. In Jerusalem’s view, this is no more than a military operation … [But] The current statistical summary of [Operation] ‘Cast Lead’ shows that the political leadership would do well to discuss defining the operation as a war at this time already [n.b., to avoid a sense of Israeli indecisiveness, the sub-head reads]: So far, the Air Force struck about 700 targets, with Israeli aircraft dropping hundreds of tons of bombs and firing scores of missiles at Gaza targets. Gunships accumulated dozens of hours in the air, patrolling and hunting rocket and mortar cells. About 9,100 reserve soldiers were called up for service, and a large ground force that includes two infantry divisions – the paratroops and Golani – as well armored corps, artillery, and engineering forces is currently waiting around Gaza’s borders … The Palestinians say that about 400 people were killed in aerial strikes, including at least 220 Hamas men identified by Israel. About one million southern residents face a direct threat of Palestinian rockets, 200,000 students are not going to school, the cabinet and especially Olmert, Livni and Barak are determined to continue the military activity in Gaza, and as of now, there is no relevant diplomatic initiative that would put an end to the fighting in the coming days. Now is the time for the Israeli government to take a decision and officially designate the military operation in Gaza the way it should be defined: War. Not much can be done about it – at this time, Gaza is Israel’s eighth official war. This can be read in full here .
But, in another article, YNet reported that Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak has stated that Hamas could not ask Egypt to open the Rafah crossing while it continues to insist that the Palestinian territory is occupied — a funny argument, actually. According to YNet, Mubarak said that ” ‘They say Palestinian territory is occupied territory’ – in occupied territory the occupier is the one in charge of what comes in and what goes out. The problem is that Hamas wants the crossing to itself’… He claimed Hamas’ refusal to allow members of Fatah to participate in the hajj pilgrimage was proof of this. ‘As long as the land is occupied, Israel must observe what goes in – are weapons going in? Is ammunition going in? This is the status with Jordan and all of its crossings’, the president added”. It’s hard to see what Mubarak is getting at here, really. Does he simply want Hamas to be consistent in its arguments — but that would be too simple, I think. Does he want Hamas to declare independence? I think not. But the real aim of this argument is not clear. In any case, YNet reports a response, from Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ representative in Lebanon, who “responded heatedly. ‘This is very surprising .. We expected sister Egypt to act responsibly towards the occurrences in Palestine, and especially Gaza’. He added, ‘It’s surprising because international law states that the crossings must be open during war and we are at war. Thus all the talk about us being occupied is irrelevant’.”
This can be read in full here.
Jerusalem Post reporter Yaakov Katz, who has good sources in the Israeli Defense Ministry, has written that “The IAF bombardment of Gaza that started Saturday has resulted in 400 dead Palestinians and 500 bombed-out targets. The ground operation (that, as of the writing of these words, has not yet been launched) will have the same goal: taking the Palestinians by surprise, and creating the impression of an Israeli government gone “crazy” … [T]he goal of Operation Cast Lead [is] to restore Israel’s level of deterrence, and make Hamas realize that it is not in its interest to fire rockets into Israel. Though the IDF considers this an attainable objective, officers say that there is an understanding that ultimately Hamas will be able to rebuild its capabilities, as Hizbullah has done since 2006. For this reason, there is talk in the defense establishment of allowing Egypt to increase the number of its border policemen deployed along the Philadelphi Corridor, charged with locating and destroying tunnels through which arms are smuggled into Gaza. A source familiar with NATO-Israeli relations said Thursday that there is also talk of the possibility of deploying a multinational force in Gaza. Israel believes the likelihood of this is slim. But officials said they would demand the establishment of a ´mechanism´ to enforce and oversee a new cease-fire with Hamas … The consensus in the defense establishment is that there is a need for a ground operation. As early as Monday, senior Military Intelligence officials, tasked with providing targets for the Air Force, were saying behind closed doors that the “air operation had exhausted itself,” and that it was time for the next stage …A ground operation, officials said Thursday, would be launched in the ´coming days´.” This reporting can be read in full here .
But, Col. (Retired) Pat Lang, writing here in his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, on New Year´s Day, notes that while “the IDF has been moving forces into assembly areas near the border. Available photography shows vehicles parked administratively rather than tactically. This would indicate that the IDF does not anticipate offensive action by the Palestinians before the IDF chooses to cross the border. Some of the vehicles shown in photographs are US made 155 mm. self propelled artillery pieces. This would point to an offensive that will be heavily supported with artillery fire as was the IDF effort in south Lebanon in ’06 … The belief persists in Israel that enemies can be made into clients through intimidation”.
A comment on that post by “Mad Dogs” says that “I still think that any move by IDF ground forces into Gaza will only be as bait to draw out some of the Hamas foot soldiers and reduce their numbers by a tiny fraction. This the IDF can do. That the Israelis would consider this as restoring their image says a great deal about just how far the Israelis’ own self-image has fallen. Tanks, artillery pieces, APCs, and helicopter gunships overhead arrayed against ´shoot and scoot´ bands of irregulars whose transportation has devolved down to donkeys, armed with small arms, RPGs and satchel explosives is not much of a fight. This is an indicator of Israel’s strategic weakness, not strength. Their strategic desperation, not confidence. Notice who the Israelis aren’t picking on (in order of magnitude): 1. Hezbollah. 2. Syria. 3. Iran. Oh how the mighty have fallen”.
And, a second comment on the same posting by “mo” says: “The Israelis, I am betting, will not launch a full scale invasion. Pictures of IDF infantraymen in body bags won´t sell in an election cycle. There will only be a full scale invasion if premliminary incursion go really really well. And if they do go that well, this will mean that either Hamas has really been beaten or that they are trying to lure the Israelis in. I would seriously doubt any Hamas offensive actions on the ground before the Israelis try to go in to Gaza. The border region is too open to give them any advantage”.
And, in a “Flash” on his blog on Friday, here, Col. Lang notes: “Condoleeza Rice came out of the West Wing this morning to announce that no cease fire at Gaza would be ‘acceptable’ to the US unless it results in a basic change in the situation with regard to Hamas’ firing into Israel. Say what? ‘Acceptable’ to whom? The US? Does that mean that we are a party to the war? Yes. That is what it means. pl”
