DEBKAfile
Special Report March 13, 2014, 5:45 PM (IST)
The Israeli Air force struck 7 terrorist
targets in southern Gaza Thursday,
March 13, after a second round of rockets were fired at
Ashkelon and Ashdod. The Jihad
Islami then reported a ceasefire was negotiated through Egypt.
This was not confirmed by Israel.
Earlier, Israel’s security cabinet met to
determine how the IDF should handle Jihad Islami’s massive assault of
70 missiles against Israel
Wednesday, executed on orders from its boss, Al
Qods Brigades chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as payback for Israel's seizure
of an Iranian missile ship last week.
Military sources reported that the
barrage had consisted of up 100 rockets fired, but
one-third fell short and exploded inside the Gaza Strip. Israel
hit back overniight Wednesday with 29 air strikes against its
positions.
debkafile reported earlier:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense
Minister Moshe Ya’alon warned that Jihad and Hamas too, as overlords of the
Gaza Strip, would rue the day
they harmed Israel. This placed the military initiative in the hands of
Jihad Islami and its puppet master, Gen.Soleimani.
So far, Israel and Iran
have kept their undeclared war within certain limits.
But the capture of the Iranian missile ship
led Iran’s Palestinian proxy, Jihad Islami, end-users of its arms
cargo, to even the score. On Tuesday, three Jihad operatives fired
mortars from southern Gaza at an Israeli military patrol. They were shot dead as
they fled the scene. Jihad had fabricated the pretext for letting loose a
continuous volley of Qassam and Grad missiles across a broad front that sent
more than half a million Israeli civilians running for shelter.
Iron Dome batteries intercepted no more
than three, although property was damaged in downtown Sderot.
The day was overcast and rainy, which the Palestinian terrorists judged
would obviate Israeli Air Force retaliation. But that night, the Israeli air
force pounded 29 Jihad positions up and down the Gaza Strip.
By then, they had emptied out and so no one
was hurt. Neither were there casualties from the Palestinian rocket
offensive, the most extensive since the Israel’s Pillar of Defense Gaza
operation in 2011.
This was because the Palestinians in their
first round aimed for the shock effect of surprise rather than precise targeting
and so most of the rockets landed outside residential areas. Jihad possesses more accurate weapons with far longer ranges than
those used Wednesday, but held them back until
Thursday.
Israel and Iran are conducting an unusual
kind of war: Israel has struck Iranian and allied military targets in Syria,
Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the Red Sea. Tehran has hit back by activating
allied Palestinian and Lebanese pro-Hizballah terrorist organizations against
Israel. Israeli reprisals were confined to air strikes on empty terrorist
buildings.
So both sides
appeared to be keeping to certain boundaries.
But the Jihad was
ordered - or tempted - to carry on.
The Jewish
festival of Purim begins Friday, March 14, with children
parading in costume and carnivals in Israeli towns, presenting an attractive
target for provoking violence that would spread to additional sectors in
southern Israel, or even Sinai and northern Israel’s borders with Syria and
Lebanon.
The first three rockets
fired from the Gaza Strip Thursday morning appeared to have come
from Salafist groups linked to al Qaeda. They also demonstrated the
tinderbox quality of the atmosphere around Israel’s borders and provided Jihad
with a surrogate of its own for blasting Israel untouchably from Egyptian
Sinai.