NETANYAHU AND ABBAS IN CLOSED-DOOR MEETING AS DIRECT TALKS BEGIN!
by Gil Ronen (IsraelNationalNews)

Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) began Thursday morning in Washington. Some news agencies labeled the ceremony ‘historic’ but many observers expect the talks to collapse soon after they begin.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were talking directly for the first time since Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in 2009. Talks between Israel and the PA broke off shortly before Netanyahu entered office, when Israel – led by Ehud Olmert – launched a large scale assault on Gaza terrorists.

In her opening statement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she and President Barack Obama believe the talks “can succeed,” but added that “success will take patience, persistence and leadership.”??

Addressing the two leaders, she said: “I truly believe you are the leaders who can make this long-cherished dream a reality, and we will do everything possible to help you.”?Clinton said the US would be an “active and sustained partner” in the negotiations.

Netanyahu said that “mutual and painful concessions from both sides” will be required for peace. “We expect you to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” he told Abbas, adding that the Israelis are “fully aware and respect your people’s desire for sovereignty.” ?

When Abbas spoke, he called for a continuation of the freeze on construction of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and a complete lifting of what he called the “embargo on Gaza.” Abbas made clear he expected negotiations to begin where they had left off in the past, explaining that “we’re not starting from scratch because we had many rounds of negotiation between the PLO and the Israeli government.”

Netanyahu mentioned the murder of four Jewish civilians by Hamas terrorists Tuesday, and Abbas said PA security forces are working to apprehend the people responsible for the attack.??

After the opening remarks, Abbas and Netanyahu entered a closed door meeting that was expected to last about three hours. The Obama Administration’s special envoy to the Mideast, George Mitchell, told reporters that the next meetings between Netanyahu and Abbas would take place on Sept. 14 and 15.

NETANYAHU TO US: BUILDING WILL RESUME!
by Maayana Miskin (IsraelNationalNews)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reiterated his previous commitment to end the Judea and Samaria construction freeze in September in a meeting Wednesday with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Netanyahu said there was “no change to the cabinet decision to end” the freeze.

He and Clinton spoke in advance of Netanyahu’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.

“It is impossible to take the issue of settlements in the West Bank, which is an issue for the permanent agreement and deal with it separately at the beginning of the direct talks,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying by AFP.

Israel has made no demands of the Palestinian Authority, he said. “We came here to find a real solution without preconditions,” he stated.

PA leaders have insisted that Israel cease all construction for Jews east of the 1949 armistice line with Jordan, including in Jerusalem neighborhoods. If Israel allows Jews to build in those areas, the PA has threatened to drop out of the talks.

The 10-month construction freeze is scheduled to end on September 26. The Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria announced Wednesday that it would resume construction immediately, prior to the end of the freeze, in response to a terrorist shooting Tuesday in which four Israelis were murdered.

BARAK: ISRAEL MAY DIVIDE JERUSALEM, INTERNATIONALIZE “HOLY BASIN”
by Chana Ya’ar (IsraelNationalNews)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak says it is likely that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will agree to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinian Authority.

Barak told the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz in an interview published Wednesday that he believes the best chance for peace lies in a peace deal in which all the Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem would be handed over to the PA in order to create a capital for a new Arab country.

“If Netanyahu leads a process, a significant number of rightist ministers will stand with him,” he told the newspaper. “So what is needed is courage to make historic, painful decisions. I’m not saying that there is certainty for success, but there is a chance. This chance must be exploited to the fullest.”

The peace plan described by Barak includes the following:

* two states for two nations

* an end to the conflict and the end of all future demands

* demarcation of a border “that will run inside the Land of Israel” dividing a demilitarized PA state from an Israel that includes the “settlement blocs”

* retrieving and relocating the “isolated settlements” into the settlement blocs or within Israel

* a solution to the refugee problem within the PA state, or rehabilitating them through international aid

* comprehensive security arrangements

* a “solution to the Jerusalem problem.”

As for the “Jerusalem problem,” Barak told the newspaper that the western side of the city plus “12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours.” The neighborhoods in which nearly 250,000 Arabs are living “will be theirs.”

In addition, Barak envisions a “special regime” with “agreed-upon arrangements” to administer the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.

The concept is similar to one raised in the past by the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who recommended the area, which he referred to as the “Holy Basin,” be internationalized under a “special regime.”

Prior to his re-election as Israel’s Prime Minister nearly two years ago, Binyamin Netanyahu warned a gathering at the Jerusalem Conference in January 2009 that leftist politicians would try to internationalize the holy sites in Jerusalem – and he vowed to fight the move.

“Some politicians are trying to blur the importance of the Temple Mount to the Jewish People by referring to it as the ‘Holy Basin’,” he told the crowd at the time. “We, as Jews, know who built the Temple Mount.”

Netanyahu promised the packed hall, “We have demonstrated in the past, and will continue to demonstrate our commitment to a complete, undivided Jerusalem… Everyone knows what will happen if we were to leave those areas and divide Jerusalem. Someone will enter – and that someone will be Hamas.”

Meanwhile, Barak told Haaretz that Tuesday night’s murderous attack by Hamas terrorists was “a very serious incident, the likes of which we haven’t seen for a long time.”

Four Jews — two men and two women, one of whom was nine months pregnant — were shot to death by a Hamas terrorist cell on Highway 60 at the Bani Nayim junction, between the Jewish community of Pene Hever and Hevron just as darkness fell, ending the daily Muslim fast of Ramadan. According to security sources, the terrorists had “confirmed the kill” by approaching the car and firing at point-blank range once the victims were already either seriously wounded or dead. Ten children were orphaned by the attack.

Barak countered demands by outraged politicians and community leaders for Netanyahu to return from Washington, saying the attack had “no doubt” been an attempt to “harm the start of the peace talks” and urged Israelis to support the process.

FOUR JEWS MURDERED IN ARAB TERROR ATTACK!
by Gil Ronen, Hillel Fendel and Elad Benari (Arutz Sheva News)

Palestinian terrorists murdered four Jewish civilians in a shooting attack at the Bani Naim junction just south of Hevron Tuesday evening. Emergency service paramedics could do nothing to save the victims whose bodies were riddled with bullets. The terrorists had reportedly made sure their victims were dead by shooting them from close range after the initial fusillade, as terrorists have done in prior attacks on unarmed civilians and children.

The victims are a husband and wife, parents of six, and two passengers. Their names were cleared for publication Tuesday night by local police:

Yitzchak and Talya ImasKochava Even-Chaim Avishai Shindler - The four were all citizens of Beit Haggai, located between Hevron and Be’er Sheva.

Yitzchak and Talya Imas were the parents of six children, the eldest one being 24 years old and the youngest one being a year and a half old. Talya Imas was nine months’ pregnant when she was killed by the terrorists.

Kochava Even-Chaim was a teacher in Efrat. She left behind her husband and an 8-year-old daughter. Her husband, one of the first Zaka first aid volunteers to arrive at the scene, discovered that his wife was among the victims when he approached the attacked car.

Avishai Shindler had only recently moved to Beit Haggai with his wife.

The funerals of all four victims will take place on Wednesday. Eulogies will be delivered in the Beit Haggai synagogue, and the funeral processions will then take place. During the processions residents of Mount Hebron, Kiryat Arba, Efrat, and Gush Etzion will stand on the road with Israeli flags and pay their last respects to the victims.

One of the victims had a license for a gun that was suspended by police shortly before the attack. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel said at the scene that serious soul-searching must be done “in order to find out how it is that Jews are deprived of the basic right to defend themselves.”

Hamas took “credit” for the terror attack, while PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the attack was “against Arab interests.” Fayyad added that the PA will act to prevent additional acts of terror, though he did not explain how it would do so in the future any better than it has up to now.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi arrived on the scene of the attack along with Head of Central Command Major General Avi Mizrahi and Judea and Samaria Commander Brig.-Gen. Nitzan Alon. Ashkenazi said, “First, we express our condolences to the victims’ families and to Beit Haggai. We have been working in several directions since the event occurred, and will continue to search until we capture the terrorists. The IDF, along with other security agencies, continues to operate non-stop until we capture the murderers who were responsible for this incident. ”

The terror attack is typical of Arab “resistance” attacks that intentionally target civilian victims. A survey carried out by a PA organization in early August found that among the Arab public in the Palestinian Authority, over 55% view violence as either essential or desirable, nearly 31% see it as either acceptable or tolerable, and only 13.7% say it is unacceptable.

The attack was probably timed to coincide with and affect the direct talks between Israel and the PA in Washington, D.C., that are to begin Thursday. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said upon landing in Washington that the talks would proceed as planned, despite the murders, evoking memories of PM Yitschak Rabin’s term “sacrifices for peace” for the post Oslo accord terror attacks, which cost tens of Israelis their lives. Just prior to his meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Netanyahu said: “Terrorism will not determine the fate of Judea and Samaria residents or borders. These issues and others will be determined during negotiations.”

The White House also condemned the terrorist attack and warned that “enemies of peace” would try to thwart direct peace talks.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement. “We express our condolences to the victims’ families and call for the terrorists behind this horrific act to be brought to justice.

It is crucial that the parties persevere, keep moving forward even through difficult times, and continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region that provides security for all peoples.”

BARAK MEETS ABBAS IN JORDAN IN SECRET “DIRECT TALKS”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Jordan twice this week—once to talk with King Abdullah and then return home to update Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and a second time for secret talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

No details of their conversation were revealed, according to Voice of Israel government radio, which first reported the “direct talks” that were held at an undisclosed private home on Sunday, five days before Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Abbas in Washington. Labor Minister Yitzchak Herzog also met with King Abdullah in Jordan on Monday in a previously unreported visit.

Defense Minister Barak previously has said he routinely meets with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, but this week’s meeting in Jordan is the first report in months of top-level direct discussions with Abbas. He has been insisting that Israel extend the 10-month building freeze of new homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria before face-to-face talks between the two sides.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pressured Abbas to give up his pre-condition, but the issue apparently will be top on the agenda in Washington.

The U.S. State Department continues to express optimism about the talks, telling reporters Monday that it does not expect “peace in one meeting” but that the direct talks scheduled for Thursday can serve as the “launch of a vigorous process” with the aim of reaching a final agreement on a new PA country within a year.

In what has become a diplomatic chess game with only a few pieces left on the board, Israel and the PA are in the same position of not wanting to be blamed for spoiling President Obama’s attempt to win political points.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to offer more “goodwill” gestures to the PA in return for Israel’s not extending the building freeze, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. It reported Tuesday that the Prime Minister will offer to remove more security checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, free more PA prisoners and jailed terrorists and offer the PA control over a key route linking Ramallah with a new Arab city under construction. A nearby Jewish town would in effect fall under PA control if Israel relinquishes its sovereignty over the road.

Israel may propose a compromise to continue the building freeze only in areas outside of the large population centers of Jewish communities in Gush Etzion and in Betar Illit, Ariel and Maaleh Adumim. Abbas has built up expectations among his followers that he will accept only a full freeze that also includes parts of Jerusalem where the PA claims sovereignty.

Abbas warned in Ramallah Sunday, “Israel’s government would alone bear the responsibility of threatening the negotiations with failure and collapse if all forms of settlement expansions continue.”

DAVID & ISRAEL TOUR GROUP RETURN!
After enjoying two weeks in Israel (very hot!), 48 people have returned with great joy and blessing! The tour included four days in Tiberias, visiting all parts of the Galilee, and then six wonderful days in and around Jerusalem. The hotels were exceptionally good, and the food, of course, outstanding!!! Our Israeli tour guide has been with David for 38 years - Doron Heileger - and they have a special relationship together. The bus driver - Avi - is always a blessing - and the tour group enjoyed his playing of his accordion and singing praise songs together. The tour agency in Israel was again superb - SAR-EL Touring Agency - and stateside, the tour group was handled by Inspired Travel of Costa Mesa, CA.

The news from the Middle East is now focusing on the peace talks between the Palestinian Authority (Mahmoud Abbas) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. In spite of USA leadership and promises, the talks do not stand a chance of succeeding as long as attitudes remain the same. The Islamic terrorist groups continue to threaten Israel with extinction and say that no peace arrangement is possible under the circumstances of a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel! The land of Israel was given to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and is an “everlasting covenant” and completely unconditional, depending solely upon the faithfulness of God Himself.

It is obvious to most of us who visit Israel on a regualr basis that real peace will NOT come to the Middle East until the Prince of peace, our blessed Lord Yeshua returns! May that day come soon!

It will be good to return home, and to start preaching again at various prophecy conferences. During September David will be preaching at the following:
APPLETON, WISCONSIN
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA (CANADA)
MODESTO, CALIFORNIA

Your prayers are greatly appreciated and your financial support most needed at this time!
Love to you all from Israel - DAVID

ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU POISED TO TAKE OUT IRAN’S NUCLEAR SITES!
by George Will

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hizbullah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.

Since 2006, Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hizbullah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

IRAN LAUNCHES HOLOCAUST-DENIAL CARTOON SITE!
by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNationalNews)

A new website in Iran depicts the Holocaust as seen through Iranian eyes – cartoons, mockery, denial claims, and a dedication to “all those killed in the name of the Holocaust.”

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) reports that the new, extensive website, holocartoons.com, is in the form of a comic book in three languages: Persian, English and Arabic. It begins by stating that it is dedicated to “all those who were killed by those using the Holocaust excuse.”

Claims that the Holocaust either never happened or was exaggerated, long familiar on the Iranian scene, are presented in detail, as are allegations that Israel simply used the Holocaust concept to kill Arabs and take over what was then Palestine.

Mockery is the website’s overriding theme, both in the illustrations and the content. An example: “One day, when Hitler woke up, he decided to suffocate six million Jews. Unfortunately, only 5.4 million Jews were living in Europe, so he invited another 600,000 into Europe, and they arrived within a few days.”

Another page states: “Did the Holocaust happen only during World War Two? No, before that, six million Jews died of hunger and poverty during World War One, but because no one paid any attention, they let themselves be gassed to death again by the Nazis.”

The website takes the familiar approach of accusing Israel of using the Holocaust for the formation of the renewed Jewish State: “Jewish artists re-built the gas chambers, using their mental talents and their imagination… The German government asked the Jews to take everything it had, but the Jews agreed to take only $100 billion, and contributed the rest to their god.”

The site also mocks Jewish claims that Moslems in then-Palestine collaborated with the Nazis: “Researchers have proven that the Great Mufti in Jerusalem looked at Hitler’s picture three times during the war, and therefore Palestine belongs to the Jews.”

ITIC states that this new Iranian website “is yet another expression of the country’s policy of Holocaust denial, and plays a central role in the Iranian regime’s attempt to de-legitimize Israel and deny the historical-moral basis of Zionism. Holocaust denial has been very familiar in Iran since the Islamic Revolution there, but it has increased significantly ever since Mahmoud Ahmedinajad was elected president in 2005.” Since his election, ITIC notes, Iran has held an exhibit of Holocaust denial cartoons and has officially sponsored a Holocaust denial conference.

JERUSALEM MUFTI: WATCH OUT FOR RELIGIOUS WAR!
by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNationalNews)

Is a Moslem cleric making one war-provoking statement too many? Jerusalem Mufti Muhammad Hussein says Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, Hevron could start a religious war.

Muhammad Hussein, known as the “Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine,” calls on all Moslems to take action to save the “holy places” and to support the Palestinian intifada. In keeping with the recent Moslem line that Judaism is barely linked with the Holy Land, Hussein says that Israel is “working subversively to take over Moslem holy sites,” Arab affairs correspondent Dalit HaLevi reports.

Speaking with the Arabic-language internet site Ilaf on Tuesday, Hussein said that Israel has invested great efforts to erase the Islamic characteristics of Jerusalem, Hevron and other cities, in order to falsely prove Judaism’s connection with these places.

Just a few decades ago, however, it was Jerusalem’s Supreme Moslem Council (Waqf) itself that debunked the Arab Moslem position that the Temple Mount is not Jewish. The Waqf published a Temple Mount guide in 1925 in which it stated clearly that the site’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the L-rd…’”, citing the source in II Samuel 24,25.

The pamphlet also makes reference to the underground area in the south-east corner of the Mount, which it refers to as Solomon’s Stables. “Little is known for certain of the history of the chamber itself,” the guide reads. “It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.”

Muhammed Hussein also now denies that Hevron, where the Patriarch Abraham purchased what is now the Machpelah Cave and the area around it, and Bethlehem, where the Patriach Jacob buried his wife, the Matriarch Rachel, are Jewish sites.

He said that the recent Israeli decision to include them in the list of special Jewish legacy sites is an “attempt to take over the religious places and create facts on the ground… We are now in a period of war – not one with tanks and rockets, but one of religion, faith, and distorting Islamic history and tradition… This proves that Israel has no cultural roots in this land.”

Hussein added that all Moslems must know that Israel is preparing to “annex the Al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount) in order to demolish it and build the fake Holy Temple in its place… This is taking place in the framework of the plan by the Zionist enemy to Judaize Jerusalem…”

Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors and publicizes anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian Authority’s media and schools, explains, “The Israeli and world media keep portraying reality as if the PA has peaceful intentions. However, the PA school books and media are full of incitement to hate and violence, glorification of terrorists, denial of Israel’s right to exist as well as demonization of Jews and Israelis… The only answer to these hate messages is to expose them - even if it is again and again - in whatever versions they appear, so that we do not become immune to them. Unless hate education and incitement is stopped, it will destroy any chance for peace.”

IAF STRIKES GAZA WEAPONS FACTORY, TUNNELS IN RESPONSE TO TERROR!
by Chana Ya’ar (Arutz Sheva News)

Israel Air Force fighter pilots destroyed a variety of carefully selected terrorist targets in Gaza overnight in retaliation for a spate of terror attacks on Jewish communities in the western Negev, including two mortars fired at Israel from the region earlier in the day, and two Kassam rockets fired Monday.

Two IDF soldiers were wounded in Tuesday morning’s mortar fire while troops carried out engineering tasks along the Gaza security fence. The Salah ad-Din Brigades military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) terrorist group subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack.

The PRC is one of three groups whose operatives carried out the June 25, 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held captive by the ruling Hamas terrorist organization.

In response to the attack, the IAF carried out air strikes on a weapons factory in central Gaza, two smuggler tunnels, and a terrorist tunnel in the southern part of the region.

On Monday, Gaza terrorists launched a Kassam rocket barrage that struck Jewish communities in the Eshkol Regional Council district.

“The IDF remains committed to protecting the citizens of Israel and will continue to act against terror,” said the IDF Spokesman in a statement. “The IDF holds Hamas solely responsible for terror emanating from the Gaza Strip.”

More than 115 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel from Gaza since January. Over 420 rockets were launched from the region at the Jewish State since the end of Israel’s three-week counter-terrorist war, in the winter of 2008-2009, Operation Cast Lead.