By JPOST EDITORIAL 07/22/2014

Unless a cease-fire plan presented by Ban, Kerry includes mechanism that leads to demilitarization of Gaza and Hamas, Israel will justifiably be reluctant to accept.

IT IS ALLEGED THAT KERRY/OBAMA ENGINEERED THIS AIRPLANE BOYCOTT IN ORDER TO STRENGTHEN HIS NEGOTIATING POSITION WITH ISRAEL AND FORCE ISRAEL TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS.

Israel set to open second int’l airport in Eilat in response to flight cancellations
Transportation minister orders that Uvda airport near Eilat be utilized to replace Ben-Gurion Airport beginning noon local time.

REUTERS, YNET

Palestinian decision-making body decides to back Hamas’ demands, says ‘stopping the aggression and lifting the blockade on Gaza are the demands of the entire Palestinian people’; possible clearing way for ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to seek ways of ending the deadliest violence in years between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist Hamas.
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Eugene Kontorovich  COMMENTARY

For years, peace processors and pundits have threatened that to stop its “growing international isolation,” Israel must make “painful concessions” and withdraw from territory. The “growing isolation” was always a myth. Israel’s trade with Europe has grown constantly in recent years, even as it developed new markets and ties in Asia. Tourism has reached record levels almost every year, as has the number of Israelis traveling abroad. Except to those sensitive to the movements of postmodern dance troupes, the international isolation was a chimera.

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Nearly a decade ago, Col. (res.) Yossi Langotsky warned that the underground passageways of Gaza were a strategic danger, but almost no one took his report seriously.

By Amir Oren, HAARETZ | Jul. 22, 2014

Forty-five years ago, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Eight years after President John F. Kennedy promised to send a man to the moon — and bring him back, a mission just as complex — he realized that goal. It’s true that no armed and hostile moon-men were lying in wait for Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s spaceship to arrive, nor was their landing disturbed by gunfire.

But the Apollo program overcame much greater challenges than the ones that are giving Israel a hard time in its war against Hamas. It is hard to believe that the human mind, and the Israeli intellect in particular, allowed the tunnel issue to swell from a weakness to a monstrous threat in as long as it took to develop lunar travel. In the end, the problem is not the tunnel, but the wall — the one inside the Israeli security agencies and the minds of those who run them. REMEMBER THIS IS HAARETZ REPORTING.
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Military official: IDF drops 120 bombs on Saja’yya, entire Hamas battalion located there

 07.23.14, 07:53 /

DEBKA Reports

[..]

This episode is just one instance of the military’s policy of fashioning a picture of events in the Gaza War for public consumption whic may turn out to be contradictory and is often wide of reality.

Another insistence of this was Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s comment Monday that Israel would finish off Hamas’ terror tunnels “in a day or two.”

A senior IDF officer said the next day that most of the tunnels had been found, but another “week or two” were needed to fully map the structures and demolish them.

Col, Uri Gordin, commander of the Nahal Brigade, was the first senior officer leading the war in the Gaza Strip to level with the public about the state of play in his sector, the northern area of Beit Hanoun. He confirmed that while his men had located most of the tunnels, they were not yet ready to be demolished.

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Caroline Glick

Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began Thursday night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.

We have known for years that tunnels were a central component of Hamas’s logistical infrastructure.

What began as the primary means of smuggling weapons, trainers and other war material from Hamas’s sponsors abroad developed rapidly into a strategic tool of offensive warfare against Israel.
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Historic first – All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm completely but this is meaningless as the EU doesn’t provide a plan to achieve this.

[Unfortunately Israel’s Foreign Ministry welcomes conclusions of the EU foreign ministers ( couldn’t find a link)]

EU Council conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process

Summary: 22 July 2014, Brussels – Council of the European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting conclusions on the MEPP

The Council adopted the following conclusions:

“1. The EU is extremely concerned at the continued escalation of violence in Gaza and calls for an immediate cessation of the hostilities based on a return to the November 2012 ceasefire agreement. In this regard the EU welcomes on-going efforts by regional partners, and in particular by Egypt, and reiterates its readiness to provide the necessary support to this end.
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By Thomas Rose, BREITBART

by Prof. Shmuel Sandler, July 22, 2014

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 256

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The current Israel-Hamas war will have broad strategic implications that go far beyond the immediate results on the battlefield. The war might have an impact on the political future of the Palestinian Authority and the disposition of the West Bank, on the struggle against Iran, on the future of missile wars in the region, and on regional alliance politics.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon were very hesitant to be drawn into a third round of hostilities against Hamas within a decade and into a ground invasion of Gaza. Israel’s hesitation merits exploration. The current confrontation has a strategic context that goes beyond the Israeli logic of a “war of no choice’” that probably influenced the Israeli decision-makers. This paper looks at the strategic rationale that should accompany Operation Protective Edge from several viewpoints. Read more…

Ban Ki Moon was very good too to a point. He acknowledged the crimes of Hamas.

It is clear from these speeches, there is no cease fire any time soon. Ban Ki Moom seemed resigned to this.

Please send me the text of his speech so I can post it.

By William Kirkpatrick, FIRST THINGS, MOSAIC

“Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!”

What’s this? The ravings of a fundamentalist Jewish settler in Gush Etzion? Congratulations from a Christian Zionist hunkered down in his bomb shelter somewhere in the Deep South?

Actually, no. It’s a Twitter message sent out by Azza Sami, who writes for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. Her sentiments are widely shared in Egypt. Why? Because the Egyptians have had firsthand experience of what the Muslim Brotherhood does once it gets in power and they know that Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and, if anything, far more brutal than the Egyptian version. They also know that Hamas allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in its assaults on Egyptian soldiers and citizens. Speaking for many Egyptians, actor Amr Mustafa told Palestinians they should not expect any relief aid from Egypt until they “get rid of Hamas.” He added, “We’ve had enough of what you did to our country.”
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Poll: 73% say Israel more successful than Hamas in Gaza op

ISRAEL HAYOM

80% of the public say they support the operation, Israel Hayom poll shows • 94% satisfied with IDF’s performance • 88% happy with IDF chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, 73% like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance since operation started.

After likening the UN and other Israel critics as a lynch mob. Greenfield offers some sage advice.

By Daniel Greenfield

Israel is being hanged on a public gallows erected on the grounds of the United Nations with yards of rope gleefully supplied by the Muslim world. But the hangmen are mostly Westerners who still think that the Muslim lynch mob at their doorstep can be pacified with the death of a single victim.

[..] Israel cannot survive by accommodating a lynch mob. Only by having the courage to defy it. When the international community at the behest of the Muslim lynch mob dictates the parameters of Israel’s survival, it must expand those parameters by pushing through them to the other side. If they want to recognize terrorists, then kill those terrorists. If they want to unilaterally create a Palestinian state, then annex those territories. Accommodation is a noose. Defiance is the air of freedom. Every time Israel retreats, it is condemned for it. When it advances, it is condemned for it also, but its freedom of action expands.
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by Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2014

With a predictability that is rapidly becoming mind-numbing monotony, various US officials from the president on down have been stressing the need for Israel to exercise restraint in its counter- terror operation in Gaza so as to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties.

In addition to President Barack Obama, this concern has been voiced in recent days in one form or another by none other than US Secretary of State John Kerry, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, as well as the spokesmen for the State Department and the White House.

And just in case we didn’t get the message the fourth or fifth time it was delivered in public, both the president and the secretary of state are said to have repeated it in private telephone conversations with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

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By JOANNA PARASZCZUK, JPOST
07/03/2012

Beirut newspaper ‘Al-Joumhouria’ cites ‘security study’ saying terror group has upgraded underground structures.

Hezbollah has upgraded its network of tunnels in southern Lebanon to secure itself against airstrikes in a future war with Israel, according to a report by a Lebanese newspaper on Monday.

Al-Joumhouria said its source was a diplomatic report issued by an unspecified European embassy, which it said contained information from “a number of Western security agencies.”

Al-Joumhouria claimed the report said that “Iranian experts” had supervised the digging of a new tunnel network in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley region, which borders with Syria, following the Second Lebanon War.
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By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

As Israeli security forces thwarted the latest attempt by terrorists to infiltrate Israel via tunnels from Gaza on Monday, The Jerusalem Post has learned that Israel may be underestimating the extent of tunnel penetration on its southern border.

Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, told the Post in an exclusive interview on Sunday that US intelligence officials believe that Israel is underestimating the number of tunnels.

He said that according to a senior National Security Council official dealing with the Middle East, American satellites – equipped with special high resolution infrared detection technology – have preliminary findings of around 60 tunnels on the Israel-Gaza border.
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Prime Minister Netanyahu said, yesterday,
“The IDF is making progress in the field according to plan and the operation will be expanded until the goal is achieved – restoring quiet to the citizens of Israel for a long period. The achievements in the fighting in the field are outstanding. I am impressed by the operation to hit the tunnels; it is achieving results beyond what we
expected. On behalf of the people of Israel, I tell all the soldiers in the field that we are proud of their strength of spirit and that we pray for their well-being. A military campaign is a complex thing and it has difficult moments. I am certain that together, united, we will reach the goal.”

Amir Rapaport, Israel Defense 21/7/2014

[..] What makes Operation Protective Edge much more difficult than the Operation
Cast Lead is the strengthening of Hamas: the organization has used the
period in which the Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt to establish a real
military industry in the Gaza Strip (with advanced tooling equipment) and to
smuggle a large amount of anti-tank missiles, including Kornet anti-tank
missiles (Russian-made) that were transferred to Syria before the outbreak
of the civil war there.

[..] Hamas will struggle to renew its strength as the Gaza crossings are
currently dominated by the new Egyptian government, who hates it most.
Operation Protective Edge would eventually end in a compromise agreement
presented by Egypt or in a resolution of ceasefire by the UN Security
Council.

by Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

Four days into Israel’s ground operations in Gaza casualties are rising on both sides, but the only ones who seems to be cracking under the pressure are President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. While Hamas remains confident that it can bank on international support and Israel’s government seems determined not to kick the can down the road any further with respect to the ongoing threat from the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, the administration may be panicking and about to make yet another mistake that will sow the seeds for more suffering in the future.

[..] While in principle that seems like the right thing to do at a moment when the conflict is heating up, it is difficult to escape the impression that Kerry’s mission is more an opportunity for an unforced error by Washington–one that will allow Hamas to emerge from the fray with a victory–than a mission of mercy. Read more…

Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — Israel’s military has begun its first major test in underground warfare.

Military sources said the Israel Army was engaged in its first major campaign to detect and destroy Hamas’ huge underground network in the Gaza Strip. They said the campaign marked a test of newly-acquired doctrine, skills and equipment.