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March 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
The Israeli military said it had carried out the strikes after receiving
intelligence that they were “in the final stages of preparing to fire
rockets at Israel from separate locations in the northern and the central
Gaza Strip.”
A military spokesman said four Israelis had been wounded, one of them
seriously, during the retaliatory rocket barrage that began on Friday
afternoon and continued into Saturday morning.
“We know of approximately 70 launches yesterday and today, over 20 of
which were long range rockets, meaning Grads,” she said. Most of the
long-range rockets were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome missile interception
system.
Hamas, the Islamist overlords of the Gaza strip, was not involved in the
attacks and is thought only to have fired rockets into Israel once in the
past three years after imposing an undeclared truce.
But Israel said it would hold the group responsible, accusing it tacitly
condoning rocket strikes by its smaller, more militant rivals.
“The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) is prepared to defend the residents of
Israel and will respond with strength and determination against any attempt
to execute terrorist attacks,” the IDF said in a statement.
“Hamas uses other terror organisations to carry out terror attacks
against the State of Israel and will bear the consequences of these actions
in any future operation embarked upon by the IDF in order to eliminate the
terror threat and restore the relative calm to the area.”
Periodic escalations in violence, the most recent of which came last October,
have raised fears that Hamas and Israel could once again stumble into war.
Hamas is believed to want to avoid another conflict and more moderate figures
among its leadership say they support a temporary shift in policy from “armed”
to “non-violent” resistance against Israel.
The group has also distanced itself from Iran, its long-time patron, and is
seeking instead to forge closer ties with Egypt, which is not dominated by
its ideological allies, the Muslim Brotherhood. Although such moves have
given rise to hopes of greater moderation from Hamas, the group remains
committed to Israel’s ultimate destruction.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, dominated by the secular Fatah
party, condemned the Israeli air strikes, saying they had created a “negative
environment” that would “escalate the circle of violence in the
region”.
Adding to fears that the latest escalation could worsen, the Popular
Resistance Committees — one of the smallest but most active militant groups
in Gaza — pledged to avenge the death of its leader.
“We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this
crime,” Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the group, told the French press
agency AFP.
Hamas also condemned the air strikes.
“The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime,” the
Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza said in a statement. “It comes as
part of the destabilisation of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip.”
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