Reality Strikes
Years and years of cowardly terrorism - launching rockets, shooting civilians, or blowing up busses, and then running to hide behind the UN's skirts - have somehow failed to instill in Hamas a proper respect for the laws of warfare. They had to learn some time:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday instructed army to act against Palestinian militants 'without restrictions' using 'any measure' to dismantle their infrastructure as war planes pounded suspected hideouts of Hamas and Islamic Jihaad in Gaza... For the first time, Israeli artillery units fired their heavy guns at open areas in Gaza. In a largescale operation in the West Bank, Israel also arrested 207 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists.
It's graduation day for Hamas: instead of being an occupied civilian population, they're now partisans conducting an irregular war against a soverign nation-state. Hamas could not act with total impunity even when Israel was the occupying power in Gaza, with all of the legal obligations entailed by international law. But now that excuse has been dispensed with, and the IDF is committed to demonstrating that the consequences for bombing Israeli towns - as Hamas did this weekend - will be those of one nation-state at war with another nation-state.
Hamas was clearly unprepared for what they unleashed against themselves:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel said Sunday that he had given the military free rein to act against Palestinian factions firing rockets at Israel. Hours later, the militant group Hamas announced that it was halting all attacks from the Gaza Strip. The surprise statement by Hamas, delivered late Sunday night in Gaza City by a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, offered the possibility that the escalating violence of the past three days could be brought to a halt.
While Hamas limited itself to making empty boasts about its vast military prowess, Israel was content to let them be. But when the terrorists actually started believing their braggadocio and resumed their attacks against Israeli citizens, the IDF had to take their delusions of grandeur a little more seriously. It took those brave Hamas murderers less than a weekend to crumble.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday instructed army to act against Palestinian militants 'without restrictions' using 'any measure' to dismantle their infrastructure as war planes pounded suspected hideouts of Hamas and Islamic Jihaad in Gaza... For the first time, Israeli artillery units fired their heavy guns at open areas in Gaza. In a largescale operation in the West Bank, Israel also arrested 207 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists.
It's graduation day for Hamas: instead of being an occupied civilian population, they're now partisans conducting an irregular war against a soverign nation-state. Hamas could not act with total impunity even when Israel was the occupying power in Gaza, with all of the legal obligations entailed by international law. But now that excuse has been dispensed with, and the IDF is committed to demonstrating that the consequences for bombing Israeli towns - as Hamas did this weekend - will be those of one nation-state at war with another nation-state.
Hamas was clearly unprepared for what they unleashed against themselves:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel said Sunday that he had given the military free rein to act against Palestinian factions firing rockets at Israel. Hours later, the militant group Hamas announced that it was halting all attacks from the Gaza Strip. The surprise statement by Hamas, delivered late Sunday night in Gaza City by a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, offered the possibility that the escalating violence of the past three days could be brought to a halt.
While Hamas limited itself to making empty boasts about its vast military prowess, Israel was content to let them be. But when the terrorists actually started believing their braggadocio and resumed their attacks against Israeli citizens, the IDF had to take their delusions of grandeur a little more seriously. It took those brave Hamas murderers less than a weekend to crumble.
