Gaza could be his downfall

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When a sensible minister like Meir Sheetrit calls on the government to pick a neighborhood in Gaza and reduce it to rubble, it sounds like he's gone off the deep end. When the author David Grossman writes in Yedioth Ahronoth that now we know the army may not always be able to save us, he is sowing despair. When Minister Yaakov Edri says we should bump off Ismail Haniyeh, and all the rest of the leaders of Hamas for good measure, doesn't he realize that the immediate outcome of such an act could spell the end for Gilad Shalit?

The news that 8-year-old Osher Twito had lost his leg in a rocket attack on Sderot sent shock waves around the country. Soon after the attack, a retired general, one of our heroes of old, called me up and gave vent to what all Israel was feeling that night. Why don't we go in there and blast them to kingdom come? What else has to happen for us to bomb their neighborhoods and blow them to bits?

Sderot has been under fire for seven years. Most of the time - in the early years, at least - the shelling was clumsy and off the mark. The residents of Ramat Aviv don't know the feeling, but even so, it is not exactly fun to go to sleep or leave for work day after day, year after year, with your stomach in knots. There is always a risk of tragedy, such as a kindergarten taking a direct hit, and that, according to military criteria, is grounds for massive retaliation. The army's basic mistake from the start was to view Qassams through the lens of statistics. Even when they miss the target, the damage inflicted on a whole city by the constant threat of attack can be just as great. It's strange that Ariel Sharon, who never passed up an opportunity to get rid of a few Arabs, ignored the Qassams when he evacuated Gush Katif. Maybe, as time went on, he had hopes that Israeli withdrawal would whet the Gazans' appetite for a normal life.

When the first intifada erupted in 1987, then-chief of staff Dan Shomron handed out copies of Alistair Horne's book "A Savage War for Peace" to all his generals. The moral of this book, which explores the struggle of the FLN against French rule in Algeria, is that you can't beat a guerilla movement. Like the French, who quit Algeria in the end, Israel left Gaza. But Gaza, as part of a future Palestinian state, must also be committed to Bush's vision of two states for two peoples.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953285.html

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1. Sderot protest clogs central Tel Aviv streets

Around 200 people from Sderot blocked streets in central Tel Aviv yesterday to protest the government's inability to stop Qassam rocket strikes on their city.

Protesters blocked the Ayalon Highway and the intersection of Arlosoroff Street and Begin Way, just by the Central Train Station. Police showed restraint and allowed the demonstrators to block the roads for a few minutes. They raised banners reading "We are not sitting ducks" and "No security, no shelters, no government" and called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation.

During the rally, demonstrators sounded sirens and lay down on the street, simulating a rocket attack. Some of them held the remains of Qassams that had exploded.

"The purpose of the protest is to awaken the people from central Israel from their sleep," Daniel Swisa, 50, of Sderot said. "We expect central Israelis to support us. For seven years, we have been bombarded with rockets. Sderot looks like a ghost town."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953280.html