patrick martin
JERUSALEM— From Monday's Globe and Mail
With every blast that propels another rocket from Gaza toward Israel, a loud Palestinian cheer goes up.They cheer outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a rocket blasts off from a location uncomfortably near the hospital itself, even as the people gathered there await the inevitable retaliation from Israel and the arrival at the hospital of new patients.
They cheer at the Hamas border post near the Erez crossing separating Gaza from Israel when a rocket is launched 200 to 300 metres away, even though Hamas itself is not firing any rockets and officially opposes the launchings.
So when Fuhair al-Qaissi, head of the Palestinians’ Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was assassinated Friday afternoon by a rocket launched by an Israeli aircraft, Hamas had no choice but to let the PRC and the Islamic Jihad group respond with rockets of their own. To do otherwise would have been seen as weak.
That Israeli “targeted killing” triggered in the past three days the most intense exchange of fire since the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Hamas in Gaza, leaving at least 18 Palestinians dead and hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking shelter in bunkers throughout southern Israel. Read the rest on: The Globe and Mail
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