2006-06-09-gaza-sderot rocket connection

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM—The idiots are firing rockets at the Defense Minister's home town.

This is not a way to win a war, especially when the available rockets are weak, and the Defense Minister can arrange a lot a damage. Fortunately, it is the other side doing this stupidity.

They have managed to turn a weak head of the Labor Party, which has been the Israeli organization most likely to accommodate the Palestinians, into what they are calling the worst Defense Minister in recent Israeli history. The man at issue, Amir Peretz, came to this position from a background as mayor of Sderot and then the head of the Labor Federation (Histadrut). He built his reputation as a tough bargainer, especially in behalf of strong unions in the Labor Federation. He had no military experience beyond the time when he was a draftee, and was expected to lend his weight to social and economic reforms in behalf of the poor, and advancing the Labor Party's policy of seeking peace through accommodation. Now he is being quoted as telling military leaders to pursue all possible means--including the killing of Palestinian political figures--in order to stop the firing of rockets on Sderot and other Israeli communities.

Most Palestinian rockets do not make it out of Gaza. And most of those that do splash in the sea or make holes in vacant fields. A small number have landed close enough to Israelis to cause shock; a few have damaged structures, and smaller numbers have caused injuries or deaths. Each loss is a tragedy, and the threat of a rocket is no light matter. Any decent country would do what it could to protect its residents.

Israel has feinforced the roofs of schools and other structures; it has produced a high tech system that usually gives a few seconds of warning about an approaching missile. It has also retaliated, and has inflicted considerably more damage to property and personnel than it is has suffered. It has scattered announcements warning civilians to avoid areas from which the rockets are fired, and has been increasingly active in shelling those areas after scattering the warnings. Houses have been destroyed and civilians injured and killed. It is conventional for the military to express regrets about civilian damage, but not apologies.

The international media is filled with detail and photos about the US air strike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Kofi Anan signed on to the applause with a statement that this death was different from other target assassinations. I presume he meant those done by the IDF. Its latest victim was Jamal Abu Samhadana. For this minor league country, he was in a category parallel to that of al-Zarqawi. Samhadana was a key player in the Palestinian rocket industry. He had a leading role in the killing of Americans traveling in a convoy to meet with Palestinians in Gaza during 2003. Also to his credit were deadly attacks on Israelis, including an especially ugly mowing down of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters. Recently he became the head of the Hamas government security organization (the 14th or so security organization in the Palestinian firmament), so his death suggests that the IDF may be less constrained than in the past about moving toward the head of the pyramid.

So far no good words from Kofi Anan.

Sharkansky is an emeritus member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem