Israel launched a sort of obligatory attack on the Gaza Strip overnight, and has promised to keep doing so in the future. That’s more because it’s a politically popular thing to do, however, than it having anything to do with the rocket fire in Gaza.
Rather, the rocket fire is entirely about an internal rivalry in the tiny enclave, between the Hamas government and the Islamic Jihad movement, which was reportedly behind the attacks.
A top Islamic Jihad commander was killed in Gaza on Saturday, and the group severed ties with Hamas afterwards. The split set the stage for what could be open conflict between the two, except Hamas is much more powerful in Gaza.
Which is why missile strikes, designed to embarrass Hamas’ newly created anti-rocket force and likely to provoke Israel into striking Hamas targets, because Israel’s leadership is nothing if not predictably violent. Islamic Jihad’s rockets needn’t even hit anything, as indeed most rockets barely stray over the border and land in empty fields.
More pseudo-intellectual BS from anti-Semite Jason Ditz. I suppose Israel still would not be justified in responding even if the rockets did hit say a kindergarten (as they have done in the past) since after all it was simply Islamic Jihad challenging Hamas.
Those rockets will still tend to discredit Hamas in the eyes of folks who wouldn't differentiate. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/opinion/israels-shorts... For years, it has been the same story: Israeli intelligence discovers information about an impending terrorist attack from Gaza. The Israeli Army takes pre-emptive action with an airstrike against the suspected terror cells, which are often made up of fighters from groups like Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees or Salafi groups not under Hamas’s control but functioning within its territory. These cells launch rockets into Israeli towns near Gaza, and they often miss their targets. So Who do such groups work for?