Monday, September 23, 2002

Gil Shterzer has found an excellent Israeli blog called "Mideast: On Target", which offers very interesting commentary about the situation.

From yesterday's posts: "The quiet of the past weeks is also in the ear of the listener. Reported, but not emphasized, have been almost daily mortar and rocket attacks in Gaza as well as frequent shootings in both the West Bank and Gaza. As long as few Israelis were dying, it was deemed peaceful.

The attacks of the past few days are the result of a number of factors, bad luck being the first. Second, the shock of the IDF successes of the past months is wearing off and the terrorists are adapting to the new reality of IDF presence in the territories. Simultaneously, for the soldiers of the IDF the action of the first weeks of the operation is slipping into the danger of routine, as it is impossible to remain "alert" in perpetuity.

Last but not least, the terrorist organizations are hard-pressed to show the Palestinian population that they have not been destroyed by the IDF activity, and as a result are stepping up their attempts, understanding that at this stage quantity is more important than quality: we are likely to see a surge of poorly prepared attempts, most of which (like 99+%) will fail, but an occasional one will get through. With tragic results".


One of Gil's readers, Haggai, comments that he "started checking that site earlier this year after seeing a great talk by Elliot Chodoff" one of the contributors to the blog "about terrorism. As a prime example of how terrorists have been hoodwinking the world for decades, he explained how only one country was accused of violating international law after the Entebbe raid. No accusations were made against the various states who sponsored the terrorists, and none were made against Libya and Uganda for having allowed the hijackers to land the plane on their soil--the only country which technically violated any existing law was Israel, which of course landed in Uganda without permission to rescue the hostages!"