An unusual report at Haaretz by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff titled Hamas not likely behind Jerusalem bombing begins with an intriguing introduction:
Despite the escalation, Hamas does not seem to want large-scale clashes yet. The organization actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front.
It’s certainly crossed my mind, but it didn’t occur to me I would read this in the mainstream press. Here are some smidgens from the article:
Is there a direct connection among the recent string of security incidents – the murder in Itamar, the escalation around the Gaza Strip, the Grad rockets on Be’er Sheva and the terror attack in Jerusalem? That was one of the questions occupying defense and government officials on Wednesday…..Wednesday’s bombing in Jerusalem was limited in scope. A suicide bomber was not involved, and the bomb was relatively small. The pattern is different than the one Hamas used during previous waves of terror……The bombing may have been a local initiative. As of last night, no terrorist group had claimed responsibility for it or even praised the perpetrators.
The report includes an overview of the initial escalation of violence:
It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi in Israel, and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed. It is noteworthy that Hamas has not fired at Israel over the past two days, even after four Palestinian civilians were killed by errant IDF mortar fire on Tuesday.
This morning I received an email alert in response to this article. Is it my imagination or is the discourse changing by leaps and bounds?
I heard that also live today from Israel on KPFA’s 8:00 am show about 16min into the show. So you can hear it for yourself. But even more astonishing the killing of the settlement family of 5. The interviewed said it was done by a Thai worker because he was not paid for his services. All on this same program.
