DAY 29 OPERATION PROTECTIVE EDGE

I woke today to the sound of an exploding missile just minutes before the 72 hour truce agreed upon by both Hamas and Israel began at 8:00 AM.  It was one of many rockets fired at Israel from Gaza in the last half hour before the truce began. If Hamas wanted to score a definitive victory at the last minute it was disappointed. Some damage occurred to buildings from falling shrapnel but there were no injuries. One rocket hit a home in Bethlehem just 3 km from here. That is  no doubt what I heard. We are now about four hours into the truce and so far all has been quiet. We are all holding our breath to see if this truce will hold.

TISHA B'AV

There is a lot of tension in Jerusalem today. It is Tisha B'Av which is a date with dark significance for Jews everywhere. Tradition has it that it was on this date that the First and Second Temples were destroyed. Tisha B'Av (the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av) is a solemn  day of fasting .

"Tisha B'Av is the culmination of a three week period of increasing mourning, beginning with the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, which commemorates the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem, before the First Temple was destroyed. During this three week period, weddings and other parties are not permitted, and people refrain from cutting their hair. From the first to the ninth of Av, it is customary to refrain from eating meat or drinking wine (except on the Shabbat) and from wearing new clothing. 
 
The restrictions on Tisha B'Av are similar to those on Yom Kippur: to refrain from eating and drinking (even water); washing, bathing, shaving or wearing cosmetics; wearing leather shoes; engaging in sexual relations; and studying Torah. Work in the ordinary sense of the word [rather than the Shabbat sense] is also restricted. People who are ill need not fast on this day. Many of the traditional mourning practices are observed: people refrain from smiles, laughter and idle conversation, and sit on low stools. 
 
In synagogues, the book of Lamentations is read and mourning prayers are recited. The ark (cabinet where the Torah is kept) is draped in black."

http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayd.htm

Apart from the destruction of the Temples, Jews have suffered other tragedies on this solemn day during the course of history, including the Roman massacre of 100,000 Jews at Betar in 132 AD, and .the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492.  Little wonder then that this solemn day is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, and one destined for tragedy.

It is therefore also no wonder that Jerusalem is tense today, especially in view of the fact that yesterday there were two terror attacks in here.One was  carried out by a man in a huge mechanical digger, which first killed a pedestrian and then overturned a bus. Interestingly enough it happened to be a bus on the route that goes to the settlement of Betar Illit.  Fortunately the bus had no passengers at the time, and the driver escaped with only minor injuries.  A short time later a gunman fired at and seriously injured a soldier in the road tunnel that leads up to the Mt Scopus campus of the Hebrew University.

Also adding to the tension are the ongoing riots that have occurred every day in Jerusalem, and in other parts of the country,  since the abduction  and murder of the three Israeli boys, and the consequent murder of a Palestinian boy around 6 weeks ago.


THE PULLOUT FROM GAZA

Yesterday I woke up with a sense of  deep disappointment.  About 24 hours earlier our troops had begun to pull out of Gaza, but the rockets were still coming in at about the same rate as they had before this operation had begun (around 100 per day).  We had all thought that this time we had an opportunity to deal  a decisive blow and destroy the military power of Hamas once and for all, stop the rockets, and furthermore bring about a regime change  in Gaza that would actually make life better there. So, why were we stopping now? What had been achieved? Had  our 67 wonderful soldiers died for nothing? Had all our 80,000 reservists left their families,  jobs and businesses to fight for nothing?  Had all the destruction and loss of life been for nothing?

Then I sat down to pray and I was reading in Psalm 18. It is a long psalm with much in it, but what struck me were the final verses 45-50:

The foreigners fade away,  (in Hebrew: The foreigners are killed)
And come frightened from their hideouts.

⁴⁶ The Lord lives!
Blessed be my Rock!
Let the God of my salvation be exalted.
⁴⁷ It is God who avenges me,
And subdues the peoples under me;
⁴⁸ He delivers me from  (Hebrew: the survivors of ) my enemies.
You also lift me up above those who rise against me;
You have delivered me from the violent man.  (Hebrew: Hamas)
⁴⁹ Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the Gentiles,
And sing praises to Your name.

⁵⁰ Great deliverance He gives to His king,
And shows mercy to His anointed,
To David and his descendants forevermore

(NKJV) with my translation in brackets.

The word here translated 'rock' is the Hebrew word  צור ( 'tsur' ), which can be translated as 'rock' but specifically 'flint rock', a very hard kind of rock, or as 'fortress' or 'cliff'. It is the kind of rock outcrop or cliff that one might take refuge in.  The current operation is called Operation Protective Edge in English but in Hebrew it is      צור איתן  ( tsur eitan) which literally means 'strong flint rock'.  The LORD is our strong flint rock, our fortress and our protector.

In verse 48 the Hebrew says He delivers me from the survivors of my enemies, and the words translated here as 'violent man' is in Hebrew 'hamas' (see my previous post).

I took much encouragement from these verses. We may be pulling out of Gaza but God has not pulled out. He will finish the job. He will deliver us from the survivors of our enemies as they emerge from their tunnels and underground bunkers.  There is always victory in the LORD.

I can now see that the pullout from Gaza was a wise and shrewd move by our leaders. They have stressed that it is not the end of Operation Protective Edge. The ground forces have left Gaza but they remain ready at the border in case they are needed once more. Now intensive negotiations are in progress and Israel has made it clear it will settle for nothing less than the disarmament of Hamas. We are looking to God first, but also to the international community for support in this. We have made an opportunity for the world to do this, now it is up to the nations to take advantage of it.  We need to be delivered from this threat but even more so, the people of Gaza need help desperately.  I have never heard so much prayer going up here on behalf of the people of Gaza as I have lately. We cry for every lost child and we cry for the people who have suffered terribly under the regime of Hamas since they came in to power.

Israel could have continued the ground offensive and wiped out Hamas' military capability. However at what cost? To do this we would have had to occupy Gaza and  there would also have been massive loss of life, on both sides, and an even more  massive degree of destruction in Gaza. No one wants that. The best solution would be that Hamas submit to demilitarization and a new regime is set up in Gaza. The next three days are pivotal. If this does not happen, or at least the framework for making it happen established,  and if firing resumes on Israel, we will have no choice but to resume operations in Gaza. It is inconceivable that our citizens would have to continue to live under the constant rain of rockets and missiles coming out of Gaza. What country in the world would tolerate that?

LOSS OF CIVILIAN LIFE

Israel is being severely criticized for causing a large number of civilian deaths in Gaza. Today the UN released their official figures:
1777 dead in total
1242 of these were civilians, and 393 children and 208 women.
This is awful and we cry for every civilian killed or injured. However these numbers need to be put into perspective. As military operations go, this is a very low number considering that the IDF attacked and destroyed over 3000 targets in Gaza, most of them in heavily populated areas.  No other army in history has ever gone to such great pains to avoid civilian deaths, warning them in advance to flee by dropping leaflets, phoning and texting the inhabitants of areas about to be attacked. We have on numerous occasions held fire and refrained from attacking targets because civilians were seen in the area. The USA and others have been telling us to take more care to avoid civilian casualties. My answer to them is "What more would you have us do?"

Much has been made of schools that were attacked causing many of the civilian deaths. The international media has been quick to accept Palestinian and UN claims that it was Israeli fire that was responsible, before any investigations of the incidents were made. While it is possible that stray fire from IDF forces caused the deaths, it is not IDF policy to attack such places and we have absolutely no interest in doing so.  It must also be noted that Hamas  frequently uses schools, hospitals, homes and other civilian sites to launch attacks on Israel.  This was unequivocably demonstrated when a journalist reporting from right outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza was startled by the firing of a rocket nearby. You can see the video on this link http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=869_1407000336&comments=1.

What is more Hamas threatened to wreck revenge on civilians who fled their homes when warned of imminent attacks on them.  It is part of their propaganda policy to ensure that the maximum number of civilians are killed. They know that this is Israelis weak underbelly. They can cripple us by turning the World powers against us. For more go to http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/27/hamas-uses-palestinian-houses-as-military-compounds/
http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/28/hamas-uses-hospitals-ambulances-military-purposes/



On the other side of the coin Israel has sustained surprisingly few  civilian casualties  (3) in spite of the constant rain of rocket fire and several attempted terror incursions over the last month. Why is this? The answer lies partly in the Iron Dome antimissile system which has proved to be around 90% efficient in shooting down the long range grad missiles fired at cities in the center of the country. However what of the other 10% and the thousands of shorter range rockets and mortars fired at the settlements closer to the Gazan borders. Why have they caused so little damage and  loss of life? One answer is that many of  the civilian population have fled to the north and the remaining are  basically living in their bomb shelters. This still does not account for the fact that most of the rockets are falling in open areas even though they are aimed at  towns and cities. 

I believe that we can thank God for his supernatural protection. In my previous post I mentioned a  supposed interview in which a  Hamas commander said that “We do aim [our rockets], but their God changes their path in mid-air,”  ' after they have been fired. Although the interview was probably a hoax, I believe there is truth in the claim. Here is another quote from a more reliable source, the Commander of the Iron Dome Battery in Tel Aviv,  as it was reported in the Hebrew media here and translated.
"A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.

"We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.

"Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that…sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’
“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24811/Default.aspx?hp=popular_posts

TUNNEL THREAT
 Imagine your children playing in your backyard and suddenly a hole opens up in the ground and heavily armed men emerge, capture your children and then yourselves and your neighbours,  and you are all  taken  back through that tunnel into an underground room in Gaza where you are held captive for months, even years.

This is the scenario that plays out in the minds of the residents of the settlements and towns around the Gaza Strip as a result of the discovery of tens of tunnels passing from Gaza to Israeli territory. And not just the settlements close by face this threat. Yesterday a number of motorbikes were found in a tunnel. Apparently there were plans for an attack further into the interior of the country by motorbike mounted terrorists dressed as Israeli soldiers.

Over the past three weeks or so the IDF has been busy finding and destroying those tunnels. To date around 31 tunnels from Gaza to Israel have been located and destroyed.  Several  terror infiltrations via these tunnels have also been foiled by the IDF.

The Jerusalem Post reported on this phenomenon as follows:
 Hamas has spent five years preparing this strategic threat; the IDF wrecked 31 tunnels in two weeks. By Sunday, all of the tunnels the IDF knew about, or discovered during the offensive, will be destroyed. A few tunnels that Israel doesn't know about may remain intact.

Many of the underground passages were designed to send heavily armed murder squads into Israeli villages for killing sprees, and attack army positions from behind. They were filled with weapons, explosives, and equipment, enabling terrorists dressed in civilian clothing to disappear into a shaft in Gaza, and emerge in Israel, disguised as IDF soldiers and fully equipped to carry out a mass casualty attack. The IDF has discovered motorcycles in some of the tunnels, which were earmarked by Hamas for rapid raids into Israel and subsequent retreats back into Gaza.
http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/The-IDF-destroys-Hamass-flagship-terrorism-project-369809

According to the IDF blog the building of 31 tunnels alone would have cost around 93 million US dollars, enough to have  built  2666 homes, 217 mosques, 186 schools and 589 medical clinics. And this is only a fraction of the amount of money Hamas has spent in the last 5 years in building underground tunnels, not only  into Israel, but also a network throughout the whole of the Gaza strip, underground bunkers. They have also amassed huge stockpiles of  arms and munitions.  At the beginning of the operation it was estimated that they had around 9,000 rockets and missiles. (They have fired about 3000 at Israel and another approximately 3000 have been destroyed by the IDF, leaving an estimated 3000 still in their hands)


http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/26/price-hamas-underground-terror-network/

The Gaza strip has received around 25 x more per capita for reconstruction than Europe received after World War II (this figure takes into account the change in  monetary value) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJdQ7Bx0av4

 In recent years Gaza has received enough financial aid to rebuild it into a magnificent coastal resort and trade center, create jobs, and build all the schools and hospitals and homes it could possibly need.  Instead people are still living in ruins, public services and the economy are in a terrible state and there is around 40% unemployment.  So where did all the money go? Here is the answer. All that aid has gone either into the private bank accounts and  the luxury homes of Hamas' leaders, or into the construction of tunnels and the amassing of arms all intended solely for the destruction of Israel. Here is the true humanitarian crime.

Of course Israel is blamed for the poverty and the destruction of the Gazan economy. It is our blockade that is causing this, they say.   But why must we maintain the blockade? If Hamas succeeded in doing all this with the blockade in place, imagine what they would have done if they had been able to freely bring in military and building  supplies? Israel's blockade has not stopped the supply of humanitarian aid. Even during the current confrontation we have from time to time  called a ceasefire and opened the border to allow trucks through bringing aid. During the first ceasefire 100 truckloads were allowed through, and yesterday alone 250 truckloads entered the Strip. Much of the aid we have offered civilians in Gaza has either been blocked by Hamas or stolen by them to feed and keep their operatives. A  well equipped field hospital set up to treat injured Gazan citizens has seen little use. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-conflict-2014/.premium-1.608949.  Throughout the offensive Israel has continued to trade with Gaza and when Hamas rocket fire downed a power line supplying electricity from Israel to parts of the Strip, it was Israel that called a ceasefire so that its technicians could go in and fix it. 
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-conflict-2014/.premium-1.608949
http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.608670

A THIRD INTIFADA?
There is currently much speculation about whether or not a third Intifada (Uprising) is imminent. In spite of the fact that there has been a increase in terrorist incidents and rioting all over the country in recent weeks, there is little sign of it escalating into a third intifada. During the current confrontation Hamas has repeatedly called for an Intifada  but nothing has really come of it. It is my assessment that the Arabs of the West Bank and East Jerusalem have little desire for another Intifada. They have too much to lose. Life is better in these communities now than it has ever been. They just want to build their state and get on with life.  It is only a minority group of young, disillusioned, angry young men who are participating in the rioting. 

HEZBOLLAH
Hamas has also been calling for the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon to attack Israel from the north. Apart from a handful of rockets being fired into Northern Israel, Hezbollah have not launched an attack. Why? One has to understand that all Muslims are not alike.  Hezbollah and Hamas have the same enemy (the State of Israel) and the same desire to destroy us, but that is about as far as it goes. It is important to understand that Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim group and Hamas is Sunni. Shiites and Sunnis are sworn enemies and regard each other as heretics that Allah desires to be annihilated. Hezbollah does not want Hamas in power in Gaza. They would be quite happy for Israel to destroy the Hamas regime there.

http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/files/2008/07/wa_img_karbala_interactive_map.jpg

PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM AND THE WHOLE WORLD

I will finish this post with a plea that you do not forget to pray for the situation here. It is far from over and it is far from a local conflict. What happens here in the next three days and the weeks to come will be pivotal, not only for Israel and the Gaza Strip, but for the whole world. Do not forget that the most basic goal of fundamentalist Islam is world domination by any means. Your country could be the next front line of this conflict.