This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2117

Israel at War - Tzfat and Nahariya resident killed - Over 100 missiles fall in Israel- video of Haifa hit - Arabs attack nationwide

July 14, 2006

Haifa Hit by Long-Range Missiles

Friday, July 14, 2006 / 18 Tammuz 5766

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=107263

Hizbullah fired a long-range missile at the major Israeli port city of Haifa Thursday evening. Tzfat, Nahariya and Carmiel were struck again as well. A Tzfat resident died of his wounds.

A simultaneous wave of missiles struck Tzfat and Nahariya at around 7:30 PM. Twenty people were injured in the Tzfat attack and one man killed. As the 8 PM news programs began and Israelis prepared to break the Fast of the 17th of Tamuz, two long-range missiles struck Haifa's Stella Maris neighborhood - though no injuries resulted.

Throughout Thursday, nearly 100 Katyusha missiles were fired at various towns and cities in northern Israel, injuring 90 people and killing two.

Eleven people were wounded lightly by shrapnel in the latest attack on Nahariya. One rocket hit a multi-level apartment house and a second destroyed a house. Residents have been ordered to remain in shelters and a small fire raged for over an hour in one of the town's parks.

Rockets also hit Rosh Pina and Hatzor. Residents of northern Israel were instructed to spend the night in bomb shelters, while residents in the Haifa region were instructed, due to lack of shelters, to find rooms with no outside walls or windows to sleep in.

Arab Violence Spreads
Kassam rockets continued to be fired on western Negev towns throughout the day from the Gaza areas abandoned by Israel under the Sharon regime's Disengagement Plan.

In Judea and Samaria, Arabs threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli targets Thursday afternoon and also fired at Israeli soldiers. No one was injured.

Rocks were thrown at Israeli vehicles in Samaria, and a firebomb was thrown at a bus near Bethlehem.

IDF soldiers found ammunition and weapons in an Arab car at a checkpoint west of Hevron. The driver was arrested and is being interrogated.

Terrorists threw two firebombs at Israeli vehicles traveling on Highway 60 neat Efrat in Gush Etzion Thursday night. No one was injured and no damage was reported.

An explosive device was discovered at a hitchhiking post in the city of Ariel, in Samaria. Army sappers neutralized the bomb.

---------


IDF tanks and soldiers gather on a road in Shomra in northern Israel Thursday.
Photo: AP


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885995199&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israel at War

by David Horowitz

Two days of dizzying escalation, and there can be no illusions: Israel is at war.

A tactical failure by the IDF on the Gaza border barely two weeks ago prompted a drastic escalation on that front. Wednesday's still-graver tactical blow in the North has now led to a confrontation affecting immense numbers of civilians on either side of the Lebanese border, with the potential to impact other nations as well.

There are those who have branded this latest conflict a continuation of Israel's War of Independence, and there is no little truth in the assertion. On both of the fronts on which Israel has been drawn into heavy fighting, its enemies can make no legitimate claim to be pursuing a territorial dispute: as of last summer, Israel relinquished its hold on the Gaza Strip; in Lebanon, it pulled back to the UN-certified international border six years ago.

Except that, in both cases, the Jewish state's assailants are indeed pursuing a territorial ambition - to unseat Israel from its own sovereign lands.

Israel has watched Hizbullah build up its offensive capability in the years since the security zone was dismantled - watched it, ever bolder, establishing its positions up against the border fence and saw it developing its missile capability - and chose not to act. That stance was misinterpreted as weakness.

Wednesday morning's cross-border attack, complete with the barrage of shelling and rocket fire that served as cover, highlighted the IDF's intolerable absence of room for maneuver in such circumstances. And an Israeli government with a defense minister who had genuinely hoped to oversee a return to the peace path was obligated to militarily "change the rules of the game."

Hizbullah is a wily and well-prepared enemy, all-too-demonstrably capable of wreaking a degree of havoc in northern Israel and beyond, and the goal of dismantling its offensive capacity will not be easily achieved. Thursday's air onslaught certainly impacted Lebanon's civilian infrastructure; it is less clear how deeply Hizbullah was harmed.

Still, in contrast to the asymmetrical struggles against terror cells and Kassam rocket crews, the IDF has now been unleashed in a context where it can expect to use more of its strengths. And woe betide a nation under attack inside its sovereign borders if it does not decisively prevail.

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2117