Jerusalem Post-17/05/2007

TBC, (Jerusalem Post)

"Between Tuesday and yesterday evening, dozens of Kassam rockets hit Sderot, wounding at least 18 people. One of the rockets directly hit a home, seriously wounding a mother and moderately wounding her son. Sderot residents, for the first time in months, slept in bomb shelters on Tuesday night. Yesterday, the schools were closed until further notice.

The beleaguered people of Sderot are demanding action, and they are right. The action, however, should not be what Hamas evidently wants to provoke: a massive land incursion that will distract from the Palestinian civil war.

Despite the cease-fire reached Tuesday night between the Palestinian factions, Hamas killed a Palestinian officer from Force 17, as well as seven bodyguards of a senior Fatah official on Wednesday. Over 41 people have been killed in such battles over the last four days.

A senior Egyptian official was shot in the hand Wednesday as he walked with senior officials from Hamas and Fatah to test the cease-fire. A local journalist told The Jerusalem Post, "The streets are completely deserted and people are afraid to walk out of their homes. This is a real war and people are really afraid."

Hamas is to blame for both of the wars it insists on fighting, against Fatah and against Israel. If Hamas had decided, after its election victory and the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, to focus on ending corruption and improving the Palestinian standard of life, the situation in Gaza would by now have been relatively peaceful and much improved. Instead, Hamas has chosen the path of endless war.

Hamas must be punished for this, but without doing it any favors. This means refraining, for now, from fighting the war that Hamas wants to fight, on the ground, in the alleyways, that will maximize casualties both among Palestinian civilians and IDF soldiers. It also means returning to the intense military pressure that the IDF was able to place on Hamas with air strikes and the work of small military units."

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