Hamas Is NOT Defeated, It Is In This Fight For The Long Haul. It Must Be Destroyed Or It Will Come Back Stronger.

Ceasefire Ends: Rockets from Gaza Attack Southern Israel

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The ceasefire is over. Hamas began firing a barrage of rockets into southern Israel and Israel has responded with targeted airstrikes.

A kibbutz in southern Israel. (Photo: Atara Beck)

Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued their terror assault on southern Israel after a 72-hour ceasefire. A Hamas official said the terrorists would renew activity because Israel did not agree to their demands.

Terrorists resumed firing rockets into southern Israel on Friday morning – as warned – after negotiations in Cairo failed to move forward and the 72-hour ceasefire had expired.

The IDF, in response, targeted terror sites across the Gaza Strip.

“The IDF remains alert and maintains a high level of preparedness with both defensive capabilities and striking capabilities in order to address the renewed aggression. The IDF is determined to defend the civilians of the state of Israel,” according to an IDF statement.

IDF Responds to Hamas’ ‘Bad Decision’

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, IDF Spokesman, said: “The renewed rocket attacks by terrorists at Israel are unacceptable, intolerable and shortsighted. Hamas’ bad decision to breach the ceasefire will be pursued by the IDF; we will continue to strike Hamas, its infrastructure, its operatives and restore security for the State of Israel.”

Lt.-Col. Peter Lerner, IDF spokesperson (Photo: Facebook)

Terrorists fired at least 30 rockets and mortar shells into the south. Two were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.

Two people sustained shrapnel injuries. Sapir College director Dr. Nachmi Paz, 71, was classified as being in moderate to serious condition, and a 20-year-old soldier was lightly injured. Several homes were damaged.

The resumption of rockets aimed at Israel began at 8 a.m. The Israeli response came at approximately 10:40, following orders to the IDF by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Written by: United with Israel Staff

Will The Latest Gaza/Israeli Ceasefire Hold Or....

Gaza ceasefire sets stage for Cairo talks

Humanitarian truce brokered by Egypt holds in Palestinian enclave as both sides agree to take part in indirect talks. Last updated: 05 Aug 2014 18:37 LISTEN

A 72-hour truce took hold in Gaza on Tuesday as Israel withdrew troops following four weeks of bitter fighting and Palestinians ventured out to find scenes of destruction. The guns fell silent after 29 days of fighting, bringing an end to the bloodshed that killed at least 1,867 Palestinians and 67 people in Israel. Officials on both sides confirmed they had sent small delegations to Cairo for talks aimed at securing a permanent ceasefire after the 72-hour window closes. Just minutes before the truce took hold, sirens wailed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as Hamas fired 16 rockets over the border, while Israeli warplanes carried out at least five strikes on Gaza. Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beit Hanoun in the territory's north, said he could hear the Israeli air strikes just before the clock struck 8am local time. "We haven't heard anything outgoing or incoming since 8am," he said. Tyab said large numbers of Israeli ground forces had left the Beit Hanoun area, and residents were returning. Israeli troops had also left the southern Rafah area, according to Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford. As well as brokering the truce, the Egyptian government invited Israel and the Palestinians to attend indirect talks in Cairo aimed at securing a permanent end to violence. Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, Israeli military spokesman, earlier said Israeli troops would "be redeployed in defensive positions outside the Gaza Strip and we will maintain those defensive positions". He said the army overnight destroyed the last of 32 tunnels located inside Gaza. "Today we completed the removal of this threat," he said. Three similar ceasefire agreements have collapsed since the violence began, and Israel  had resumed  air strikes on Gaza after a patchy and limited seven-hour humanitarian truce ended on Monday, with one attack killing two people and wounding 16. Both Hamas and Israel earlier confirmed the deal to Al Jazeera, with officials from each side pledging to commit to the truce and warning the other against violating it. "The deal is that we will have a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire," Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas leader, told Al Jazeera, adding that he hoped Israel could "control itself". "During those 72-hours there will be a delegation from Israel coming to Cairo. There will be indirect negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli sides for a ceasefire and the lift of a siege on Gaza and other Palestinian demands." Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, told Al Jazeera that Israel was ready to discuss all of the issues on the table, but that it still had concerns. "Our goals in this operation have always been ultimately defensive," Regev said. "If that goal of protecting our people from the rockets and the death squads can be done diplomatically, through this Egyptian agreement, then wonderful. We'll be looking very closely to ensure that Hamas does in fact ... live up to its obligations." Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from West Jerusalem, said while the negotiations would be difficult, this time "neither side is prepared to have a stopgap deal". "Last time the Israeli military were continuing their operations. This time around it is different and it has a bigger chance," Bays said. Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, urged "utmost restraint" after the truce was announced. He urged both sides to "commence, as soon as possible, talks in Cairo on a durable ceasefire and the underlying issues," his office said hours after the announcement was made. "In this regard, he welcomes the proactive engagement of the Palestinian delegation under the leadership of President Abbas."

Israel Has Destroyed 30 Tunnels,. However IDF Believes There May Be Thousands!

'Hamas will resume tunneling as soon as we leave'

Author(s):  Mitch Ginsburg
Source:  The Times of Israel.     Article date: July 27th, 2014

Israel will not find all of the cross-border tunnels in Gaza during this operation. And if Hamas is able to secure ceasefire terms that give it sufficient room to do so, it will commence digging anew after this conflict is over, a former senior commander in the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps said Sunday.

“We won’t find all of them,” said Col. (res) Atai Shelach, former commander of the elite Yahalom unit that tackles the tunnels, “and the moment we leave. they will start digging again.”

The Israeli army has found more than 30 tunnels that cross underground from Gaza to Israel. The channels are often wider than a man’s shoulders and close to six feet high; they are supported with hundreds of tons of concrete arches and frequently reach a maximum depth of 20 meters below ground level. Most of the tunnels are well lit and properly ventilated. Soldiers on the ground in Gaza have reported finding explosives and arms stashed within the tunnels and, on several occasions after thwarting underground infiltration attempts, have found Hamas operatives armed with zip ties and narcotic drugs meant to facilitate a kidnapping.

Security sources assert that the tunnels were built for a mega-attack to be carried out during the Jewish New Year, in September, the Israeli news site NRG reported on Friday. The attack was to include 200 terrorists simultaneously surging across the border and seizing control of six civilian communities in the western Negev, NRG reported.

Hamas gunmen dressed as IDF soldiers targeting Israeli forces after emerging from a tunnel near Kibbutz Nir Am, July 21, 2014.
(Screen capture: IDF)

Six IDF soldiers have been killed by Hamas gunmen emerging from the tunnels into Israel in the course of Operation Protective Edge; some 20 Hamas infiltrators have been killed in five such attacks.

Shelach said in a conference call arranged by The Israel Project that tunnels have been in Gaza for two decades and that they are “actually part of the culture.” He said that at first the tunnels were used primarily for smuggling and then for an economic industry dominated by several families. Only later did the tunneling intensify, at first against Israeli troops inside Gaza, and, after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, against troops on the Israeli side of the border.

In June 2006 Corporal Gilad Shalit, a soldier in the armored corps, was kidnapped from a tank in an ambush launched from a cross-border tunnel. Shelach said Israel’s intelligence has known about the tunnels for a long time, including during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, when the government opted for a ceasefire after eight days of aerial warfare rather than address the tunnel threat.

IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner recently described the network of defensive and offensive underground tunnels in Gaza as akin to arteries and veins, crossing the length of the Strip and feeding one another.

Shelach put the total number of tunnels in Gaza at “between hundreds and thousands.”

He said military intelligence has provided “a very good picture” of the extent and location of the tunnels prior to this operation and that Hamas operatives taken captive, “if I may say, are answering questions.”

He said completing the destruction of the several dozen tunnels crossing into, or toward, Israel was “just a matter of time” and that there was “no other obstacle.”

The work is dangerous when performed in a combat zone, but can be done from the outside of the tunnel, drilling holes into the surface with heavy machinery and inserting the explosives into the tunnel.

Hamas, he noted, pays families near the border “to hire” a room in their homes from which operatives then begin carefully digging a tunnel shaft within the house. “One of their tools,” he said, “is to use the population for their own purposes.”