Not the most impressive title I'll grant you but over the last couple of days the main topic of discussion has been what day it will be today so you'll excuse me if I've not exactly been playing out of the top drawer recently.
One of the things I've missed was the IDF's release, three days ago, of this video which purports to show a precision Israeli air strike against a Hamas rocket launching team killing seven militants. The next day it emerged that rather then being militants loading rockets onto a truck to take them to a launch site the people killed were actually employees of a local family firm loading Oxygen cylinders onto a truck to take them to a local hospital. The secondary explosions you can see in the video are those compressed gas cylinders exploding. The release of photographs of the wrecked vehicle and interviews with the owner of the business prompted the IDF to accuse Palestinian militants of trying to "manipulate the media" in a repeat of an incident in the Lebanon war when they accused Lebanese militants of lying for announcing that the IAF had destroyed an ambulance with missiles when in fact the IAF had destroyed it with cannon fire.
Today the Israeli Defence Force has allowed foreign passports holders to leave Gaza. Officially this has been done in response to immense diplomatic pressure from the countries such as the US, Germany, Russia and the UK who have issued those passports. It may however simply be an attempt by the Israelis to control the flow of information leaving Gaza by removing people who may be tempted to contact their relatives in western countries. International journalists are of course banned from reporting within Gaza because the Israel much prefers them reporting from Israeli towns like Sderot using pre-approved IDF press releases.
Israeli air strikes within Gaza have settled into a routine 60 a day although it is hard to identify how many separate targets are being engaged because the IAF seem to have adopted the tactic of bombing a target and then returning ten minutes later to bomb the same target. This is reminiscent of an old terrorist tactic of detonating a car bomb in order to draw in first responders before detonating another car bomb to kill those police officers, fire fighters and ambulance crews in order to maximise civilian casualties. Confirming the number of individual strikes and casualties is made even more difficult by a seemingly endless naval artillery barrage.
More details are beginning to emerge of the senior Hamas official, Nizar Rayyan, who was killed in a Israeli air strike yesterday. As the head of Gazas military Rayyan is considered by Israel to be one of Hamas five key decision makers although as with the often killed "Head of Al Qeada in Iraq" I fear that rather then making the post disappear all Israel have done is create a vacancy.
Whatever his true position within the Hamas political structure Mr Rayyan sounds like a bit of a character. The 49 year old law graduate who always appeared in combat fatigues was known as "the teacher" for his work training suicide bombers including two of his own sons. He went on to marry three of the widows of bombers he'd trained and fathered 12 children. He, his four wives and five of his children were killed when a 1 tonne Israeli bomb struck their home in Jabaliya. The targeting of such a colourful personality does make me wonder if rather then using it's bombs to hit hard military targets Israel is using it's military muscle to play a sort of "Gazan Big Brother" picking off the local celebrities with the most interesting back stories in order to create a bit of telephone chatter to help the "viewers" solve some of the mysteries of everyday life. It does also make me ask the question; Is there nothing Britain's Channel 4 won't do for a bit of attention?!
Hamas are continuing to deploy military grade rockets deep into Israel. There have been no reports of any fatalities but there have been several of what the Israelis are calling minor injuries. In the skies over Croydon the black helicopters are back and not the civilian ones from the local heliport either. No this one's a much beefier American model that's being a bit vague about it's registration marks so Good Luck!
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