UPDATES
6 pm Israel time, Wednesday, April 29 2015
**The mortar fire two nights ago into Israel was actually fired by the Jaish al-Jihad group which is affiliated with IS. Jaish al-Jihad is now ensconced in the small Syrian border town of Qahtaniya near Quneitra. Islamic State is now just 2.5 kilometers from the Israel border.
By the way, machine gun fire from IS hit the same area of Israel today as the mortars hit two days ago. Once again, the IDF is terming the attacks “spillover”.
**Israel permitted 14,000 tons of construction materials into Gaza today– the largest shipment on one day since the end of the war last summer. The shipment of concrete and steel came on the same day that Hamas military head Mohammed Deif commented that 1000 Palestinians in Gaza are hard at work on building and refurbishing the Hamas tunnel network. According to Deif, the work goes on around the clock in three shifts, six days a week.
And how is Hamas fortifying the walls of the tunnels? Deif says that it is easy for Hamas to buy cement on the black market in Gaza–cement trucked into Gaza from Israel.
Of course, the real hilarity is that it is Hamas that runs the black market.
**Netanyahu coalition talks made major progress today with both Kulanu and United Torah Judaism reaching agreement with Likud. All attention now turns to Shas, Jewish Home, and Yisrael Beiteinu.
**The incident reported in yesterday’s blog entitled “Iran Commandeers American Vessel in the Strait of Hormuz” is far more complicated than first described on israelstreet. As more information has filtered out, this now seems to have been the sequence of events:
1. Last Friday, a U.S. flagged ship, the Maersk Kensington, was surrounded by 4 Iranian naval vessels while making its way through the Strait. The Kensington continued sailing while being surrounded by the Iranians. Eventually the Iranians sailed off.
2. On Tuesday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats fired shots over the bow of another Maersk vessel, the Marshall Islands flagged M/V Maersk Tigris as it was passing through the Strait. That Maersk vessel was subsequently stopped, boarded, and then towed by an Iranian ship to Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran.
Though the second vessel is not American flagged, the relationship between the Marshall Islands and the United States is a special one. Formerly a U.S territory (a part of the U.S. governed “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands”), the Marshall Islands entered into a Compact of Free Association with the U.S. upon declaring its sovereignty in 1986. According to the Compact, the U.S. is pledged to defend the Marshall Islands militarily.
Nevertheless, as predicted in yesterday’s blog, the Obama Administration has no intention of military intervention. A senior state department official blithely said yesterday that “The U.S. believes that the Iranians will send the vessel on its way.”
As of this morning that has not happened. The Iranians are still holding the Maersk Tigris and its crew hostage. The bottom line is that international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is now held hostage to the whim of Iran.
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Speaking of being held hostage . . .
Your humble servant was struck by comments made on Monday by Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington (click here for the full U.S. State Department transcript):
“If the new Israeli government is seen as stepping back from its commitment to a two-state solution, something that all of you and a vast majority of American Jews supports, that makes our job in the international arena a lot tougher. Because our ability to push back on efforts to internationalize efforts to address Israeli-Palestinian issues has depended on our insistence that the best course in achieving a two-solution is through direct negotiation between the parties.”
What is stunning to me is the complete obliviousness that Sherman (and the rest of the Obama Administration) shows to opinion in Israel.
It is Israeli Jews, not American Jews, who live on the front lines and face Palestinian terrorism everyday.
It is Israeli Jews, not American Jews, who should decide on whether “a two-state solution” can provide them the necessary security to survive.
It is Israeli Jews, not American Jews, who are already living side by side with a terrorist Palestinian state in Gaza and another in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria.
It is Israeli Jews, not American Jews, who just had an election to determine Knesset members to represent their viewpoint.
It is outrageous to think that Israeli Jews should be held hostage to the opinions of American Jews.
**Two final thoughts:
1. It is not merely Israeli Jews but also Israeli Arabs who would be hostage to U.S. Jewish opinion. After all 15% of Netanyahu’s vote in the last election came from Israeli-Arabs.
2. The degree to which “the two state solution” has become the holy mantra of the world is appalling.
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.