Ethan Bronner of the New York Times has an excellent piece today on Hamas’s arms buildup in Gaza, based on a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
AJC’s Terrorism Expert Yehudit Barsky examines Hamas’s quest for legitimacy, and its quest for arms, in this AJC briefing:
The repercussions of Hamas’s border breach into
Sderot, an Israeli town under daily rocket attack from Hamas-controlled Gaza, is the focus of efforts by AJC for international attention.
The New York Times published over the weekend a letter from AJC’s Director of Communications Kenneth Bandler:
More than 7,000 Qassam rockets have landed in Sderot since 2001. Residents have barely 15 seconds to get to the safety of an air raid shelter after the “red alarm” sounds. That can happen 20 or more times in a single day, Mayor Eli Moyal told me on a recent visit.
Infolive.tv, Israel’s first web-based television news site, featured the recent visit to Sderot by AJC’s Board of Governors. AJC President Richard J. Sideman was extensively interviewed.
SDEROT, ISRAEL – This small town of 20,000, located within walking distance of Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip, should be on everyone’s mind. As things go in Sderot, so they will go in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And, for all who truly desire peace, what’s happening to Sderot, and how the predicament of its residents has been virtually ignored, gives scant hope. The international community ought to be paying closer attention.
Sderot, and other communities in the western Negev region of Israel, has been the target of some 2,400 rockets since the beginning of 2007, and thousands more since 2000, launched by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. That’s about one rocket every three and a half hours over the last year, targeting almost exclusively civilians. Imagine trying to live, raise children, conduct normal civilian activities under these conditions.
Already in its death throes after seven years of futile struggle against Israel, the Palestinian national movement suffered a fatal blow last week, when Gaza fell in the hands of Hamas. Now, instead of a state-in-the waiting, Palestine is two failed states, under two governments at war with one another.
Hamas in Gaza might still pursue its fight against Israel; and Fatah in the West Bank might still voice the rhetoric of grievance against Israel as the occupier. But the two are now locked in a deadly struggle. Anti-Zionist rhetoric has been waving the ghost of a one-state solution - implying that Israel might disappear, replaced by a united binational state comprising the West Bank and Gaza as well as present Israel. It now looks as though there will be a one-state solution after all - Israel, alongside two failed states, both Palestinian, and fighting each other.
As international news networks were reporting Hamas’s onslaught against Fatah, I began trawling the internet to see what, if anything, the various pro-Palestinian websites and blogs had to say about the brutal civil war raging in the Gaza Strip.
The short answer: not much.
Over at the Electronic Intifada (EI) commentators were undisturbed by the fragmentation of Gaza into a burning enclave reminiscent of Afghanistan or Somalia. Just at the moment when Hamas was blasting its way towards an intra-Palestinian version of the two-state solution, the talk at EI was of a single state between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
One of the parking signs in New York City used to blare, “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here.” Another declared, “No Parking. No Standing. No Stopping. No Kidding.” Parking has always been tough in New York, but airline travel has grown increasingly more difficult for everyone since 9/11. If going through airport security hasn’t been difficult enough, the six imams who were removed from U.S. Airways flight 300 in November are attempting to make the thought of boarding a plane even more of a hassle.