Word: mortars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Despite what it looks like on TV, it's not quite as dramatic as that. Sharon sent his forces into Gaza last night, in response to mortar shells falling inside Israel. But provided he doesn't make a mistake and end up with a large number of Palestinian deaths, he can do that with impunity, at least domestically, anyway. It may cost him some diplomatic pressure, but not much. The international media certainly tires of it pretty quickly. Actions that a couple of weeks ago looked like a dramatic escalation now look commonplace. And that's part of the strategy...
...down in the West Bank and Gaza. Right now, it appears as though they don't. Israel had achieved a measure of success with Arafat in calming things down a little, and then there was suddenly the Hezbollah attack on the northern border over the weekend. Israelis believe the mortar attack on Sdarot inside Israel came from Arafat's people, as an expression of solidarity following the air strike in Lebanon, ahead of Arafat's visit to Syria next week. So you have a sequence of events that starts with a demonstration in Beirut against Syria's presence in Lebanon...
...Passover, we eat charoset, a mixture of apples, wine, nuts and honey to remind us of the mortar that the Israelites had to use to build storehouses for the Egyptians. At our seder this year, the charoset reminded us of the buildings that were being torn down in the West Bank and Gaza and of the settlements that are expanding in violation of the Fourth Geneva convention. We were also reminded of the mortar shells that Palestinians are firing on those Jewish settlements...
...lost children. Like 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, the daughter of Jewish settlers in the mostly Palestinian city of Hebron, who died last month when a sniper put a bullet, apparently intentionally, through her head. Last week, one-year-old Ariel Yered was critically wounded in a Palestinian mortar attack on the Atzmona settlement in the Gaza Strip. Almost 400 Palestinians and 65 Israelis have died since last fall, when peace negotiations imploded over the question of Jerusalem's status...
Perhaps they do not understand that while the Israeli standard of living is much higher than the Palestinian one, we may be as imprisoned by fear of being killed by a sniper on the road or by a mortar fired into a back yard as a Palestinian is by trenches dug across roads. Perhaps they do not understand that Israelis are as human as Palestinians, and that we all weep when our sons, daughters or ten-month-old infants are caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s scope and then blown into pieces...