(1). The Israeli Air Force attacked the Yasser Arafat International Airport in the Gaza Strip, very near the Kerem Shalom crossing at the tri-point where the boundaries of Gaza, Israel, and the Egyptian Sinai meet. The only Palestinian airport has been out of commission since its runways were dug up and other damage caused following the capture of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid near the same point. (The airport was completely destroyed by the Israeli Air Force once earlier, at the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada.) Why would the IAF attack an already damaged-beyond-use airport?
(2). A Palestinian Authority Security officer reportedly stabbed an Israeli soldier through the open window of the jeep the Israeli was riding in at the Tappuah junction checkpoint south of Nablus. The Israeli soldier is also reportedly a settler who lived in the area. He was stabbed in the heart, and his jeep overturned as he tried to veer away from the attack. He was evacuated for medical treatment in an Israeli hospital, but has since died. Was the PA security officer off-duty? Was the Israeli soldier off-duty? Did they know each other? UPDATE: The latest report indicates that they have the same family name. UPDATE TWO: It has just been reported (just before 20h00 Jerusalem time) that Israeli military bulldozers have already demolished the attackers home… UPDATE THREE: Reuters has reported that Israeli military spokesman Major Peter Lerner said that the two men had “no prior connection”, despite the similiarities in their family names. UPDATE FOUR (following day): the Jerusalem Media Communications Center (JMCC) which reported yesterday that the house of the attacker had been demolished by IDF military bulldozers has now issued a correction, advising that there has not been a house demolition, but noted that six family members of the attacker have been arrested. UPDATE FIVE (this is the news business): Ma’an reported Thursday that only two family members were detained (though a total of 26 people — including 21 from the Jalazone Refugee Camp outside of Ramallah — n17 of them were under the age of 18 — were arrested in the West Bank in the middle of the night). But, YNet’s Ali Waked reported that “According to the Palestinians, during the raid on Mohammad Khatib’s home in the West Bank Palestinian village Yabed, which took place during the early hours of Thursday morning, six of his relatives were arrested, and computers were confiscated. It was further reported that the IDF soldiers ordered the Khatib family to evacuate the home ahead of its demolition”. Ali Waked’s story can be read in full here.
(3.) Since publishing his stories about revelations from a disgruntled Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence agent (Fahmi Shabaneh, who headed the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA’s General Intelligence Service, or GIS,who is also a lawyer, and who lives in East Jerusalem), the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has keep up the pressure, until the stories got proper attention. Today, nobody here was interested in anything else. Last night, Israel’s Channel 10 TV apparently showed pictures from the sex tapes that the disgruntled PA intelligence agent had kept. Everybody here knows who is the senior PA aide shown on those sex tapes. According to the stories published by Abu Toameh, the disgruntled PA intelligence agent said he had been given instructions to carry out that raid by Tawfik Tirawi, the former head of the GIS, who was fired last year by the Palestinian President, but who was elected a few months later to the Fatah Central Committee at the long-awaited Fatah Sixth General Conference in Bethlehem last August. Tirawi, however, has denied giving any such orders to Shabaneh. The Presidential aide shown on the sex tapes, who (like the disgruntled PA intelligence agent) is also a resident of Jerusalem, is still in office. Today, the JPost reported that the disgruntled PA intelligence agent gave PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) two weeks to fire all those involved in the “corruption” cases he knows about, or he will go public with much worse material. This evening, the JPost is reporting that the PA has issued an arrest warrant for the disgruntled PA intelligence agent — but the warrant cannot be served, because the agent is living in Jerusalem, under Israeli control. It was the disgruntled PA intelligence agent’s anger that apparently convinced him to go public, after his uncovering of the “corruption” went unremarked in Ramallah — and his subsequent arrest by Israeli authorities (for spying on Israel, blackmailing the Presidential aide shown on the sex tapes, and other charges which have mostly all been dropped . He is still confined to house arrest, banned from travelling to the “West Bank”, and accused of membership in a PA military/security organization that he says employs about 1200 East Jerusalemites. On 31 January, the JPost ran a second story from the disgruntled PA intelligence agent who said that he knew he was about to be killed for his revelations, and he had already bought his own grave, and his own headstone — which he has already inscribed with his name, and only the date of his death is left to be filled in. The PA has issued an arrest warrant for the disgruntled PA intelligence aide — who lives in (East) Jerusalem, so the arrest warrant is not executable…
(4). Clashes continued for a third day at the miserable checkpoint at the entrance to the Shuafat Refugee Camp, where Israeli Border Police had massed vehicles apparently in an attempt to dissuade clashes…
