After a peaceful rocket-free night,
rocket attacks resumed on Wednesday:
...two Grad rockets landed in central Beersheba, near a school. No one was wounded, but two people were treated for shock and buildings were damaged...
Some 16 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel earlier Wednesday. One person was lightly wounded and a number of people suffered from shock when a Grad-type rocket hit the Be'er Tuvia region near Ashdod. A building on the premises was damaged. Rockets also struck the Eshkol region, the Sha'ar Hanegev area and Kibbutz Sdot Negev...
Over 40 rockets were fired at southern Israel on Tuesday.
Perhaps it is banal to recall here that the Right warned back in 1993 that the Oslo process would lead one day to Katyushas being fired on Ashkelon from Gaza. The Left mocked such predictions when they did not (yet) come true. But even the Right never mentioned Ashdod, which is north of Ashkelon, or dreamed that Be'er Sheva (Beersheba) would be in the cross-hairs.
Meanwhile, while schools remained closed in a 40 mile radius around Gaza, Beersheba pupils took their homework and studies underground.
MK Sylvan Shalom noted, regarding Tuesday's IDF strike on the UNWRA school from which mortars were being fired:
That he learned from the IDF that only 8 to 10 people were killed in the IDF's strike.... Shalom also said that the school had explosives inside of it. He said that many of the dead were killed by secondary explosions.
In 2 strikes on neighborhoods in Gaza City on Wednesday, 1 terrorist was killed and 3 wounded in the Zeitun neighborhood and 4 were killed in the Sheikh Raduan Neighborhood. The IDF also struck targets in the southern Gaza Strip including Rafah and Khan Yunis.
On Tuesday night, the IDF struck 40 targets and hit 10 smuggling tunnels in Rafiah.
The IDF reports that 59 Soldiers remain hospitalized while 6 were killed, 4 by friendly fire. It was reported on Wednesday morning that
1000 targets have been hit since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead.
On the political/diplomatic front,
Ynet's Roni Sofer reports:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday Israel and the Palestinian Authority had accepted a truce plan for Gaza announced by Egypt on Tuesday...
Meanwhile, Osama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Lebanon, said that the Egyptian-French initiative is unacceptable and that new ideas should be discussed.
In
another report, Hamas said no to a permanent ceasefire:
According to the deputy head of Hamas's political bureau, Moussa Abou Marzouk, the group would not talk about a permanent cease-fire... and would instead continue the "resistance."
