David Horovitz
Times of Israel, Aug. 7, 2022
“… the Israeli leadership did not claim it was going to destroy Islamic Jihad. It did not assert that it would put a halt to Gaza rocket fire. And it has determinedly sought to avoid drawing Hamas into the conflict.”
Three days into Operation Breaking Dawn, even as Prime Minister Yair Lapid was declaring that the IDF’s assault on Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza would continue for “as long as necessary,” Israeli officials were privately confirming Sunday that they were holding contacts with Egyptian mediators on a ceasefire.
Israel’s readiness to end the operation is understandable. Targeted strikes on Friday and Saturday killed two of the Iran-sponsored terror group’s most dangerous leaders. Several members of a cell that intended to fire anti-tank missiles at soldiers or civilians across the Gaza border were also killed. Ammunition stores, rocket launchers and other Islamic Jihad assets have been destroyed.
The constantly upgraded Iron Dome missile defense system — how untenable Israel’s reality would have been without it — has intercepted almost all of the hundreds of rockets that were headed for populated areas. Israelis in the firing line — across much of the south and into central Israel — have been reliably following Homefront Command instructions to dash for reinforced rooms and shelters, preventing loss of life.
The death toll in Gaza is rising inexorably, but military officials are plausibly asserting that most of the dead are Islamic Jihad operatives. The death of seven Gazans, four of them children, in Jabaliya late on Saturday — initially reported by Palestinian media as a consequence of an Israeli strike — was quickly and credibly shown by the IDF, including via video footage, to have been the result of a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch: Rather than soaring toward its intended Israeli civilian targets, it fell short and exploded inside the Strip, to tragic deadly effect.
