Israel Ready to Take a Stand Against Hamas in Gaza

It looks like Israel has the 'talk' down to a science:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet on Wednesday voted to declare the Gaza Strip a "hostile territory," approving among other things the disruption of power and fuel supplies to the Strip, as a response to the ongoing Qassam rocket fire at Israeli communities.

The ministers decided, however, not to disrupt Gaza's water supply.

But because Israel needs to feel fully justified--even though Rice announced that Washington agreed to the designation--it will take no action right away, and them will only cut off electricity, and even then--only in stages. And when will Israel begin to take action?

Participants in the security cabinet meeting told The Associated Press, however, that no decision had been made on when to begin cutting electricity.

Just why does Israel feels it has to telegraph every move through the media? It's not as if they use the media as well as Hamas, which wasted no time running to the media and decrying Israel's "declaration of war." Emanuele Ottolenghi admits:

This may be so. But given that Hamas’s charter denies Israel’s right to exist; that Hamas rejected the Oslo accords; that it has been trying to bomb Israel out of existence through suicide attacks since 1994; that it has refused to renounce violence even after countless overtures by the international community and the Palestinian Authority; that it insists “armed resistance” is a legitimate means to fight the “Israeli occupation” of, well, Israel; and that, since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, a barrage of Kassam rockets have been falling daily from Gaza on Israel’s southern areas—given all these factors, should Hamas really be surprised or outraged that Israel finally has taken notice of Hamas’s declaration of war and responded in kind?

I suppose that if you buy into the notion that terrorists are freedom fights and that killing civilians is a justifiable form of liberation--you might be surprised when the country you are attacking fights back.

Which Israel appears to be ready to do.
Maybe.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas.