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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel signals scaling down Gaza war operation |
| 2014-08-03 |
| [CHRON] Israel signaled Saturday it plans to scale back its military operation in the Gazoo war and will not participate for now in any cease-fire negotiations in Cairo with Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,. The Islamic Death Eater group suggested it won't hold its fire in the case of a unilateral Israeli pullout, raising the prospect of renewed hostilities in the future. Israel continued to pound Gazoo with In a televised address, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that the Israeli military will reassess its Gazoo operation once troops complete the demolition of Hamas tunnels under the Gazoo-Israel border. Once the tunnels are demolished, "the military will prepare for continuing action in according to our security needs," he said, stressing all options remain on the table. "We promised to return the quiet to Israel and that is what we will do. We will continue to act until that goal is reached, however long it will take and with as much force needed," Netanyahu said. "Hamas needs to understand that it will pay an intolerable price as far as it is concerned for continuing to fire." Since the Gazoo war began July 8, at least 1,712 Paleostinians — most of them civilians — have been killed and more than 9,000 have been maimed, Paleostinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said. Israel has lost 63 soldiers and three civilians, its highest corpse count since its 2006 with Leb's Hezbollah. Hundreds of soldiers have been maimed. Large swaths of Gazoo have been destroyed and some 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. In Israel, much of the country has been exposed to Hamas rocket fire. Earlier Saturday, Cabinet Minister Yuval Steinitz said Israel won't send a delegation to proposed truce talks in Cairo for now. Speaking to Israel's Channel 10 television station, he alleged that Hamas repeatedly violated previous cease-fire deals. "That leads us to the conclusion that with this organization there is no point in speaking about an agreement or a cease-fire because we have tried it too many times," Steinitz said. Already, there were signs of troop redeployments in Gazoo. The Israeli military told residents of the northern Gazoo town of Beit Lahiya that it would be safe for them to return to their homes. The area, from which Gazoo bully boyz had fired rockets at Israel in the past, came under heavy tank fire during Israel's ground operation, forcing thousands to flee. Israeli troops and tanks also started a gradual pullback from the area east of the Gazoo town of Khan Younis to the border with Israel, residents and police officials there said. Israel ended a previous major military operation in Gazoo more than five years ago with a unilateral pullback. From an Israeli perspective, the advantage of a unilateral pullout or troop redeployment to the strip's fringes is that it can do so on its own terms, rather than becoming entangled in negotiations with Hamas. Hamas has said it will only halt fire if Israel and Egypt lift their seven-year-old border blockade of the territory. However, there's more than one way to skin a cat... a unilateral pullback does not address the underlying causes of cross-border tensions and carries the risk of a new flare-up of violence in the future, a prospect underlined by defiant Hamas messages Saturday. "We will continue to resist until we achieve our goals," Hamas front man Fawzi Barhoum said after Netanyahu's speech, dismissing the Israeli leader's remarks as "confused." News of a possible reduction in Israeli military operations in Gazoo came as troops continued their search for infantry 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin. The military has said it believes Goldin was captured in a Hamas ambush east of Rafah about an hour after Friday's internationally brokered and failed cease-fire took effect. Hamas has distanced itself from the purported capture, saying it was "not aware until this moment of a missing soldier or his whereabouts or the circumstances of his disappearance." Meanwhile, ...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth ordered the space pirate fleet to attack Zemblonia... the extent of destruction around Rafah became clear after intense Israeli shelling in response to Goldin's suspected capture killed 70 and maimed some 450. Entire apartment buildings in Rafah were flattened. Rescue teams sprayed water on charred rubble as families searched the wreckage for any salvageable belongings. Nearly two dozen bodies wrapped in blood-stained white cloth lay piled on the ground and the shelves of a cold storage room in a flower farm. The farm's owner, Ghazi Hijazi, said the Health Ministry asked him to keep the bodies. Imad Baroud, his wife and three kids fled by foot from their home near the Gazoo-Egypt border to his parents' home in the center of Rafah to escape the shelling. He said his home was hit by artillery shells immediately after they left. "The situation could not be described in words. The kids were yelling, they were scared, my wife was scared. I felt death was close," Baroud said. Goldin's family, meanwhile, spoke to news hounds Saturday, urging the government not to leave their son behind in Gazoo. "It is inconceivable that now we will leave Gazoo with my brother kidnapped inside. That is a real failure," said his brother, Hemi Golden. His mother, Hedva, was more assertive: "He was sent there to protect Israel. I demand from the state of Israel that it not leave Gazoo until it brings my son home." Paleostinian officials reported more than 150 Israeli The Israeli military said it struck 200 targets over the previous 24 hours. It said it attacked five mosques that concealed weapons and that the Islamic University was being used as a research and weapons manufacturing site for Hamas. The claim could not be independently verified. Gazoo Death Eaters, meanwhile, fired about 90 rockets at Israel since midnight, according to the Israeli military. Seven were intercepted by Israel's rocket defense system, it said, while a mortar attack seriously injured a 70-year-old Israeli civilian. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Hamas engagingly reprises the Black Knight bit from MP & the Holy Grail. |
| Posted by: 2sealys 2014-08-03 09:17 |