Sunday, December 3

'Peace Breaking Out' Index: IDF implores gov't not to widen 'ceasefire' to West Bank


SFX: DING!

SOUND UP: TELETYPE (under v/o)

V/O (1940's-style radio announcer): "And here's the latest 'Peace Breaking Out' Index for Sunday morning, December 3rd – exactly a week into the reputed
ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket into the western Negev early Sunday morning, with the projectile hitting near Kibbutz Kfar Aza. There were no injuries or damage in the attack. This was the seventh such attack since the so-called truce came into effect. The army has been instructed not to respond to any of the rocket strikes.

The security cabinet was to hold a debate Sunday on whether to expand the Gaza Strip cease-fire to the West Bank, with senior security officials warning that such a move could lead to a spike in terrorism.

To back their argument that continued IDF activity was necessary in the West Bank, senior IDF sources in the Central Command said that last week alone Palestinians tried smuggling some 10 pipe bombs out of Nablus through the Hawara Checkpoint, south of the city.

"The terror here never stops and only grows," one officer said of the West Bank. "The only way to keep it under control is by retaining our presence in the territory."

There were 287 terror attacks including shootings, Kassam rocket attacks, stabbings and roadside bombs in November, in comparison to 172 in October, 115 in September and 151 in August, according to statistics released by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies.


MSNBC gives a chilling close-up view of continuing war preparations deep within southern Gaza:
Abu Abdullah scoops yet another spoonful of white powder from a fancy dinner plate into a yellow and black steel tube. The white stuff looks like flour, but it's actually a mixture of store-bought nitrate fertilizer with a dash of ordinary sugar—the 30-year-old Palestinian militant's latest recipe for homemade high explosives. He has almost finished assembling another rocket at a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hideout in Gaza's Khan Younis refugee camp.


Rocketmaker Abu Abdullah with the Moqawana 2 in a hideout
in the Khan Younis refugee camp (Photo: Michael Hastings)

Elsewhere, in Gaza:

"A hitherto unknown group calling itself the Just Swords of Islam issued a warning to Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip over the weekend that they must wear the hijab or face being targeted by the group’s members.

The group said its followers last week threw acid at the face of a young woman who was dressed “immodestly” in the center of Gaza City. They also destroyed a car belonging to a young man who was playing his radio tape too loudly.

In a related story, Haaretz notes that police arrested a left-wing activist during a rally held in Tel Aviv Saturday night against what protesters dubbed Israel's "siege" of Gaza.

There were no reports of the Tel Aviv rally's marchers protesting the extremists' violence against the Gazan civilians, or military preparations against Israeli civilians, as noted in the MSNBC report.

SOUND UP: TELETYPE (under v/o)

This has been a
'Peace Breaking Out' Index update for Sunday morning, December 3rd.

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