Is war brewing with Gaza? Israeli tank. Illustrative. By Joshua Spurlock
Just one day after three Gazan terrorists were caught in Israel after sneaking across the border, suspects on Wednesday set fire to a structure surrounding the security fence separating Gaza from Israel. The IDF Spokesperson posted to Twitter that the suspects “did not cross the security fence and did not infiltrate Israel.” The Times of Israel clarified in their article on the incident that the targeted structure was a wooden platform attached to an old Gaza border crossing.
In response, Israeli tanks fired at a pair of Hamas observation posts, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Twitter feed. Noted the Tweet, “The IDF views with great severity any attempt to damage the security fence, as well as security infrastructure.”
The fence attack not only follows an infiltration incident, but also comes ahead of plans for a mass march by Palestinians towards the border area, per the Times of Israel article. The leader of the Hamas terrorist organization reiterated their support for the march in comments on Wednesday posted in an article to the Hamas website. While Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh claimed that the march would be peaceful, he made it clear that Hamas would continue to use violence against Israel to pursue their goals.
Haniyeh was quoted by the article on his organization’s website as saying that the allegedly peaceful nature of the planned march “does not mean that Hamas gave up the other forms of resistance, which are the main part of its strategy to fight.”
He said the march would continue until so-called Palestinian refugees all came to their homes inside of Israel. This “refugee” status is due to many Palestinians who fled the wars in which Arab states either invaded or threatened Israel but did not assimilate into their new countries—and in some cases were prohibited by other Arabs from doing so. This makes them something of an anomaly in the “refugee” world.
Since multiple generations of these pseudo-refugees have continued to maintain a unique refugee situation, they now allegedly number in the millions and would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state if they all claimed land inside Israel.
Hamas certainly isn’t concerned by the potential overwhelming of Israel, however, as they continue to refuse to recognize Israel.
Haniyeh said Hamas was investing “every means” in the Palestinian struggle and also listed the American peace plan under development as one of threats facing the Palestinians.
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, March 28, 2018)