IRIS Blog

Only those able and willing to pay to fly back to Israel are permitted to participate in the elections...

Likud MK Reuven Rivlin said the only reason that the law remained on the books was due to political considerations on the part of parties who believe that they have something to lose by enfranchising the overseas residents.

In 1996, Rivlin proposed a law to extend voting rights to Israelis living overseas. Although it passed its preliminary reading, a change in what Rivlin described as "demographic pressure" removed some of the urgency in passing the legislation.

Rivlin said that at the time, "it was clear to everybody that allowing votes overseas would benefit Likud. Its no secret that the majority of Israelis in Los Angeles would vote for Likud."

As a result, he said, left-wing parties refused to support the legislation.

Israel Air Force F-16 planes strafed two Hamas terrorist positions, including a police station, in Khan Yunis in south-central Gaza, in the pre-dawn hours Monday. No injuries were reported, but the targets sustained damage.

The retaliation was a continuation of the government's... policy to strike back at pinpointed targets every time terrorists in Gaza attack Israel. Two Kassam rockets hit the country on Sunday.

Hours after the rocket fell, the city's municipality reiterated a request to the Home Front Command to implement a plan to protect educational facilities through rocket-proof reinforcement structures.

Ten schools and 22 kindergartens have no protection whatsoever against rocket attacks, Ashkelon Deputy Mayor Shlomo Cohen said, adding that the ongoing rockets fired at the city came as no surprise to local authority heads.

Pensioners Minister Rafi Eitan said that an agreement that will include Schalit's release in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners could be signed while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is still in office.

"From my experience, I know that it takes time until a new government is formed, and during that period of about six weeks it is possible to progress on the Schalit matter," Eitan said in an Army Radio interview.

Over thirty Qassam rockets, mortar shells and Grad missiles were fired at Israel since the holding of fire.

On Thursday evening, an infiltration attempt was thwarted on the security
fence in the southern Gaza Strip.

An IDF force identified a suspicious man approaching the fence and entered the area, beginning the regular rules of engagement. The terror operative then drew a hand grenade from his bag forcing the soldiers to open fire. The grenade he was holding exploded and the man was killed.

The targets included four smuggling tunnels and a weapons storage facility. Secondary explosions were seen following a number of the attacks.

One, despite known flaws, has racked up several impressive successes in previous posts. The other has amassed an unbroken string of failures.

To understand the extent of Tzipi Livni's failures..., read her own words. In an interview in last Friday's Haaretz, she began... citing the 2005 disengagement from Gaza: "I enabled the disengagement, thanks to the Livni compromise," which reconciled reluctant ministers to the plan. "I led the... processes regarding the settlers... I led and advanced the idea of communal resettlement for the evacuees."

The disengagement was supposed to enhance our security, prospects for peace and international goodwill. Instead... it bolstered Hamas, since Palestinians perceived it as a victory for terror. Hamas consequently won the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections.

The volume of rocket fire on Israel more than tripled post-
disengagement... Hamas can now hit Ashdod, Beersheba and Gedera. Indeed, the daily fire became so intolerable that Livni's own government just waged a war in an effort (thus far unsuccessful) to suppress it. And that war, which the pullout necessitated, brought anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment to record heights.

Livni's "legislation and processes" proved so cumbersome that more than three years later, not one settler who requested communal resettlement has yet moved into a permanent home... People consider disengagement such a failure that Kadima had to shelve its plan to replicate it in the West Bank.

LIVNI ALSO boasted of her role in the Second Lebanon War: "I created the idea of a diplomatic exit... I formulated [Security Council] Resolution 1701." That resolution created an international force to... prevent Hezbollah from rearming. ...Hezbollah has rearmed so effectively that it now has more than three times as many rockets as it did before the 2006 war.

On Iran's nuclear program, Livni proclaimed: "Israel has acted and continues to act on the Iranian issue. We succeeded in getting the message across."

...Iran now has 30 times as many working centrifuges as it did... in 2006, and intelligence estimates put it only months away from enough fuel for its first nuclear bomb.

...When the interviewer accused her of being "in politics for 10 years without having chalked up genuine achievements," she indignantly replied that she had served as director-general of the Government Companies Authority and held "six different ministerial portfolios," including "justice minister, construction minister and absorption minister." ...After 10 years in politics, the only "achievements" Livni could cite were utter disasters: the disengagement, Resolution 1701, the failed effort to halt Iran's nuclear program. If these are her successes, I shudder to think what her failures would look like.

As prime minister in 1996-99, Netanyahu had two signal achievements. First, he slashed the rampant deficits inherited from Yitzhak Rabin, laying the groundwork for rapid economic growth in subsequent years.

Second, he reduced the devastating Palestinian terror he inherited by a whopping 70 percent: Fatalities dropped from 211 in 1993-96 to 63 in 1996-99. He also had significant achievements in other ministerial posts. As foreign minister, he was widely considered one of the most articulate spokesmen Israel ever had. And as finance minister, he crafted a recovery program that not only extricated the country from a deep recession, but gave it five straight years of 5 percent growth.

So why is he nevertheless remembered as a failure? One reason is character. For instance, despite correctly predicting every negative consequence of the disengagement, he lacked the courage to quit the government until it was too late to make any difference. That is a real concern and, under other circumstances, might be reason to vote against him. But not when his rival is someone whose record shows that she cannot even tell the difference between good policies and bad - because that is the fundamental prerequisite for being able to implement good ones. Netanyahu, as his record shows, can tell the difference.

Like all Israelis, I would prefer a perfect premier. But in reality, the choices are Livni or Netanyahu. The former has an unbroken record of failure in every position she ever held. The latter, despite his flaws, has recorded substantial achievements in every position he ever held. To me, that is a no-brainer.

They feared the money would make its way into the hands of Hamas members.

The report further stated that Olmert defended the transfer, saying that the funds were tax money which Israel had collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and it was theirs to distribute.

The Prime Minister's Office said it agreed to transfer the funds in accordance with a request by PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

The officials to be paid are mostly Fatah members.

Olmert agreed to Fayad's request following pressure from the United States, Israel Radio further stated.

The ship had docked in Cyprus, where local authorities said they inspected it to determine to make sure its 60 tons of medicine, food, toys and books did not include weapons destined for Hamas.

Two Israeli helicopters were reported in the area at the time of the
interception, approximately 32 kilometers (20 miles) from the Gaza coast.
Among those on board were a reporter for the Arabic-language Al Jazeera
network, human rights activists and former Greek Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, Monsignor Hilarion Capuccci.

Israel previously had warned that the ship would be breaking international law by trying to reach Gaza, where pro-Arab activists have landed four times since last August despite Israeli threats to stop them. The government reversed its policy and ordered the Navy to stop more activists' ships from reaching Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

The ship was surrounded by 18 Israeli gunboats demanding the crew turn back.

The Israeli army confirmed the report, adding that the boat was towed to the Ashdod port and that the crew was taken in for questioning.

Journalists claimed that the Navy had contacted the ship's captain over the radio and warned him not to continue towards Gaza.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that the navy seized the boat and led it to the Ashdod Port, after learning it was trying to approach Gaza via Egypt.

"The Navy boarded a small vessel making its way to Gaza from Tripoli, despite the sea embargo. The crew told us they understood they could not enter the waters and that they would be turning back to the El Arish Port.

"Once in Egyptian waters, the ship tried to 'crawl' back to Gaza waters, at which point the navy stopped it."

Israel Radio broadcast excerpts of the Arab language Al Jazeera broadcast reporting the boarding of the vessel by Israeli forces. The Al Jazeera correspondent claimed that the Israelis openned fire on the vessel and then boarded the vessel and hit members of the crew.

Convicted gun runner Monsignor Hilarion Capuccci was released by Israel in return for the explicit and solemn promise from the Vatican that he would never again involve himself in Arab-Israeli affairs.

On Wednesday, the navy contacted the ship and told the captain that it would not be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. The captain told the navy that the vessel would sail to El-Arish in Egypt.

On Thursday morning, though, after the ship was already in Egyptian waters, it tried to break the blockade and sail into Gaza. The navy again contacted the ship and warned it to turn around.

"They told us that they're determined to get to Gaza and that they do not plan to stop," explained a senior naval officer involved in the operation. "We told them that we plan to stop them if they break the blockade. They explained that they don't plan to stop. They continued, and we stopped them."

Three of them [the eighteen passengers] - two Indian nationals and one Briton - were taken to Ben Gurion Airport, while the remainder of the crew, from Lebanon and Syria, were transferred to their countries via the Kuneitra border terminal.

On Thursday night, the IDF coordinator of military activities in the Palestinian territories ordered the transfer to Gaza of thousands of blood units carried on the ship in order to ease the humanitarian situation in the Strip. The blood was transferred via the Erez border crossing.

Gunness said Hamas police raided a UN warehouse in Gaza City, snatching 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels - supplied meant for 500 Palestinian families. He said the incident took place on Tuesday evening, and that it marked the first time Hamas had seized UN aid.

In a statement released Wednesday, UNRWA condemned the theft "in the strongest terms," and demanded that it be "returned immediately." The statement added that the organization "has a strict system of monitoring aid delivery and ensuring that its assistance reaches only the intended beneficiaries," and that officials were present "taking all possible steps to avoid its diversion"...

Israeli officials have charged that the group routinely confiscates supplies meant for needy Gazans...

Earlier in the week, meanwhile, former UN and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees chief attorney James Lindsay alleged that the organization does little to check whether its staff or clients are terrorists.

The issue, Lindsay wrote in a 67-page critique of the organization, is not intention but oversight.

"UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff," he wrote.

UNRWA said in response that its staff were prohibited from any political involvement.

Israel Air Force jets bombed tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor and other Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, in response to the firing of a Grad-model Katyusha rocket into Ashkelon earlier in the day.

The rocket struck in a residential area near the city's sports stadium, damaging homes and vehicles and sending three people into shock.

An air raid siren rang out across the city in the seconds before the attack, sending residents fleeing for their safe rooms and bomb shelters.

After the rocket struck, the IDF warned residents of Gazan Rafah to leave their homes.

The recorded messages, in Arabic, said that people who worked in the tunnels, lived near them or provided logistical assistance to terrorists should evacuate the area immediately, residents said.

Around 6 p.m., IAF jets struck back, bombing five weapons smuggling tunnels as well as a Hamas outpost.

19 rockets and 12 mortar shells had been fired at Israel since the conclusion of the offensive.

The tunnel would create territorial continuity allowing for the establishment of a Palestinian Authority-led Arab state in both Gaza and areas east of the 1949 armistice line, he explained.

In an elections conference held at Ben-Gurion University, Barak told students that a tunnel from the city of Beit Hanoun in Gaza to the town of Dura near Hevron would cost two or three billion dollars, an amount he termed "reasonable". The PA would be allowed to make free use of the tunnel, he said.

Israel's withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon were construed as "victories to Jihad."

"History has taught us that capitulating to terror only invites more terror," he said. "In the case of Israel, steadfastness against terror also includes standing firm, without discussing any territorial concessions. We have learned that our concessions over the past 15 years have brought upon us only more terror, rockets and bloodshed."