UPDATES 8:30 am Israel time, Saturday, September 21 2013:
*Another attempted infiltration into southern Israel was stopped on the Gaza border yesterday when an IDF patrol spotted a Palestinian terrorist squad attempting to breach the border fence. The IDF opened fire hitting two terrorists who were subsequently carried back toward Gaza by their comrades. Shortly thereafter Hamas issued its usual statement after such events saying that the IDF shot two “farmers” as “they were working their land.”
*Several days ago, the IDF removed an illegal Bedouin encampment in the Jordan Valley beside an army Kfir Brigade base there–one of many such tent and ramshackle metal encampments that dot the Valley (as well as the Negev).
Yesterday, a group of Palestinians accompanied by Israeli and international left-wing lawbreakers returned to the site and attempted to set up tents. Almost immediately, the IDF was on the scene to remove the tents, but before they could begin they were pelted with “rocks” and even beaten with rods by the Palestinians and “activists.” Reinforcements arrived; the tents were removed, and arrests were made.
Note the antennae of the Kfir Brigade base on top of the hill and the army jeep in the foreground (picture: Observation Agency).
Also, the IDF confiscated a truck that the group had parked beside their new illegal encampment.
Guess what? By last evening, the European Union had filed a protest with the Israeli government saying that the truck was theirs and that it contained emergency medical supplies and tents for all of the homeless people who had been displaced earlier in the week. And that the people whom the IDF had forcibly removed after being attacked were, in fact, “European envoys”.
TODAY’S BLOG:
This picture from Thursday night says it all–Hamdallah bowing to Abbas–and sour expressions all around (picture source AFP).
As readers of this blog know, your humble servant always puts “Palestinian Authority” in quotation marks or denotes it as the PA/PLO because, in reality, the Palestinian Authority is the PLO. “Palestinian Authority” was just the name given as “cover” to the PLO as a result of the Oslo process. Mahmoud Abbas for example, is the so-called President of the Palestinian Authority but only because he is the Chairman of the PLO.
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The “Palestinian Authority” farce continued in Ramallah on Thursday night when Mahmoud Abbas swore in the 16th “Palestinian Authority” government. The government, handpicked by Abbas and the PLO, was exactly the same as the 15th “Palestinian Authority” government.
It consists of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and 24 ministers–none of whom were elected by the people.
You may remember what happened back in June. At that time, Salam Fayyad resigned as Prime Minister, Abbas replaced him with Hamdallah, and days later Hamdallah resigned in protest over the fact that he was given no power and that two Abbas PLO cronies–Mohamed Mustafa and Ziad Abu Amr, were appointed as deputy prime ministers to make sure that he did nothing.
Nevertheless, shortly after Hamdallah’s resignation, he unresigned after publicly apologizing to Abbas for the embarrassment he had caused Abbas by resigning in the first place. Abbas then agreed to keep Hamdallah on as “interim prime minister.”
In any case, on Thursday evening, Hamdallah, the 24 ministers previously chosen by the PLO, and Mustafa and Amr were all made “official” again via a corrupt, crony-driven, undemocratic process.
Following the swearing in, Mahmoud Abbas declared that in the “new” government, Hamdallah will have “complete freedom” to deal with the ministers and deputy ministers. Abbas then proceeded to discard Hamdallah altogether and chair the first meeting of the new government. Poor Hamdallah was not even allowed to address his own government.
And these are the people with whom Israel is supposed to be negotiating with for “peace.”
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.