Israel Update for March 2011

The British Foreign Office confirmed that the sole immediate fatality was a visiting British student-tourist named Mary Jean Gardner. They said the 59 year old Christian woman from Orkney Scotland was in Jerusalem studying at the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University, where she resided in a dormitory. She was learning the ancient holy language in order to return to her missionary posting in Togo Africa where she hoped to help translate the Hebrew Bible into the local language. The death of a foreign student in a terrorist blast brought back painful memories of an atrocious attack inside of the university's Frank Sinatra cafeteria during the Al Aksa uprising which also took the lives of several foreign and Israeli students who were dining there.

While naturally expressing deep shock and condolences to the victim's family and friends, Israeli government officials also expressed concern that the death of a foreign student in such a blast-especially at a crowded public site frequented by both Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens and many long-term foreign nationals-might further reduce the flow of overseas tourists to the country. Numbers had reached record levels in 2011, with almost three and a half million people arriving in the Holy Land from abroad. However the figures were already down in February from last year's monthly total, apparently due to the growing regional turmoil which has received massive media attention all over the world for nearly three months. In early March, before the Jerusalem terror attack took place, tourism officials launched a $10 million dollar overseas media campaign designed to boost flagging tourism to the land.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority government headed by Mahmoud Abbas wasted no time in publicly denouncing the attack as "harmful to Palestinian interests," which was not exactly the clear condemnation that the Israeli government was hoping for. Soon afterwards, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned the terrorist groups that they will 'discover that the government, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli public have the iron will to defend the country and its citizens.'

It had been over three years since a major terrorist assault took place in the contested Israeli capital city. However just three weeks before the late March atrocity shook the city, a municipal worker was severely injured when a bomb placed in a garbage bag on Hebron Road exploded near him, ripping off one of his arms. Other isolated terrorist incidents have occurred as well, including the attempted kidnapping last October of an Israeli security guard in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, located near the southeastern corner of the sacred Temple Mount.

The last major assault directly involving terrorist offenders took place in 2008 when two Palestinians driving bulldozers attempted to run over nearby civilian pedestrians. The separate assaults took place in two Jerusalem locations, one further east on Jaffa Road and the other near the King David hotel. The last attack taking many lives occurred just one block from my home in February 2004, when a Palestinian homicide bomber blew up a packed city bus leaving eight passengers dead and dozens injured. One month before that, a suicide terrorist destroyed a bus near the Prime Minister's official office not far from the central bus station, leaving ten people dead.

Showdown Looming In Gaza?

As mentioned above, Palestinian militiamen operating inside of the fenced off Gaza Strip sharply stepped up their rocket and mortar attacks as March progressed, hitting several new targets for the first time in the process. Schools and many businesses were shut and emergency alarm systems were activated as rockets were fired at several large Israeli cities, including Ashkelon, Beersheva and the city of Rishon Letzion-located just eight miles south of Tel Aviv and considered a suburban bedroom community with most residents working in the heavily populated metropolitan area.

Military officials instructed local residents in the affected cities and towns to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary while keeping close to area bomb shelters. At least two other Israeli towns suffered their first ever rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, including Gedera which is just 17 miles southeast of Tel Aviv and due east of the port city of Ashdod, which was also the recipient of several Iranian-produced grad rockets.

Although they are hoping to avoid it, Israeli officials warned that another major IDF military operation may become necessary if the mushrooming rocket and mortar barrage did not come to an end very quickly. This came after the Hamas movement denied that it was behind most of the firings, claiming that Islamic Jihad activists armed by Iran were carrying out the almost daily assaults. Islamic Jihad fighters belonging to the so-called Al Quds (Jerusalem) Brigades took responsibility for at least some of the assaults in a statement handed to journalists based in Gaza City.

Whoever is ultimately behind the attacks, Israeli leaders repeated what they have clearly stated many times before-Hamas will be held ultimately responsible for all armed assaults emanating from the Gaza Strip since the powerful Muslim fundamentalist group is in overall control of the crowded Palestinian coastal zone.

Speaking at a press conference with visiting American Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just hours after Palestinian rockets struck near the strategic port city of Ashdod, Defense Minister Ehud Barak demanded that Hamas control groups under its overall authority, especially the Islamic Jihad terrorist militia, or pay the direct and swift consequences. After meeting privately with Gates, PM Netanyahu stated he was ready to order that "full force" be used against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, telling the visiting American official that "no country could accept such attacks." Two days later, he ordered that new anti-rocket Iron Dome defense system be deployed near Beersheva to bolster the city's defenses.

In the meantime, the Israeli Air Force bombed dozens of Islamic Jihad and Hamas targets as the hostile rocket fire upon Jewish civilian centres escalated. Israeli army tanks stationed outside the border fence opened fire as well on a number of nearby areas from where rocket and mortar fire was detected. Just back from an overseas trip, Defense Minister Barak ordered stepped up security measures in all military outposts in the widening vicinity of the rocket fire. He did this while holding emergency meetings with senior military leaders to discuss the options for halting the rocket blitz. The Grad rockets are of especial concern, being considerably more powerful and destructive than the Kassam rockets usually fired by Hamas terrorists.

The Region Is Erupting

The pace of regional developments was so swift and furious during March that Israeli officials themselves had trouble keeping up with all of the monumental developments swirling around them. Possibly most intriguing was said to be the growing violent unrest in nearby Syria, which could easily lead to a major war with the heavily-armed Arab police state if the besieged regime were to attempt to divert public attention away from the fierce government crackdown on protestors by focusing on a longtime external enemy. Media reports said over one hundred protestors had been killed by late March, with untold numbers injured. Scenes of the violent crackdown were broadcast on some Arab satellite networks that are viewable in Syria, while state-controlled television channels naturally pretended that all was calm.