Things are getting deadly serious in the Mideast, with the Israelis now strafing the Gaza Strip and, incongruously, entering Syria's airspace to buzz the home of that country's persident, yesterday, and then arresting the deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Hamas government.
The cause of this latest conflagration? The killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of a third, 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, plus the execution of a teenaged Israeli settler by militants yesterday by the militants holding him could now trigger open war between not only the Israelis and Palestinians, but apparently, the Israelis' other enemies (i.e., Syria) as well.
The discovery of the 18-year-old soldier's body seems to have given the Israelis an excuse to attack the Hamas-led Palestinian government, and to threaten Syria's Bashar al-Assad as well. Scary stuff. Hamas' deputy prime minister, who seems to have escaped the Israeli raids so far, is now in hiding. From Ha'aretz:
IDF troops launched the major arrest operation against Hamas officials overnight, detaining 64 of the ruling militant group's ministers and parliamentarians in the West Bank and 23 military operatives.
The arrests took place in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian reports. Soldiers carried arrest warrants signed by judges that were issued following cooperative preparatory work by the state prosecution and police.
On Thursday morning, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hinted that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is not exempt from arrest or harm.
"No one is immune... This is not a government. It is a murderous organization," Ben-Eliezer said.
A Hamas official called the arrests an "open war against the Palestinian government and people," and said that Israel must be prepared to pay their consequences.
"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," Saeb Erekat, an ally of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said of the arrests. "This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately."
Israel Radio quoted Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin as having told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the day of the kidnapping: "If the soldier is not returned in 24 hours, Israel will not allow the Palestinian government to survive."
Clearly, Israel doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian government, and I would question whether they would ever recognize the sovereignty of any Palestinian government. And you've got to think that as horrible as the kidnapping of this soldier was, the Israelis are using his death as an opportunity to institute as much "regime change" as they can fit into a single operation.
On the other side, Gaza militants now say they have chemical tipped rockets that they are already firing at Israel.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
