A Truce With Hamas? Not Gonna Happen

There's absolutely no reason to trust Hamas with a truce. It's a bad idea, and even Israeli Prime Minister Olmert understands that there's nothing to gain from such a deal. All it would do is enable Hamas to continue regrouping and rearming for its ongoing war with Israel and would do nothing to stop the terrorist attacks by splinter groups and other terrorist groups that freely operate from Gaza to attack Israel.

Israel, meanwhile, continues to deal badly with the kassam attacks, but they're now going to spend NIS 811 million for a rocket protection system. That's a lot of shekels, but it does little to help the residents of Sderot who continue to deal with near daily barrages as it will be several years before the system is fully implemented.

The security cabinet on Sunday authorized an investment of NIS 811 million in the Iron Dome defense system, which will protect Israel from short range rockets.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the new system could be operational within two and a half years. It was previously stated that two years would be needed to develop the system.

The Iron Dome system was chosen in February by then-defense minister Amir Peretz as Israel's anti-Katyusha and Kassam rocket defense system. The system is designed to be capable of intercepting Kassam and Katyusha rockets with a small kinetic rocket interceptor.

The Jerusalem Post reported last week that the initial $40 million given to Rafael for the system's development had run out, and an additional $80 million were needed by the end of the month for development to continue.

That system will become the base layer of a four-tier overlapping system. The second tier is comprised of Patriot missile batteries, which are already in place, while the third tier is the vaunted Arrow system. The fourth tier, the Arrow 2, is currently under development. The goal of the developers is to design a system which could target cruise missiles even farther out than the Arrow system does now.

Together these would provide Israel with a shield that Barak said would protect it from about 90 percent of short to long range rockets.

The terrorists keep firing the rockets at Israel and despite the decapitation strikes against Islamic Jihad's leadership, that group and others continue their attacks because Israel has not consistently gone after the groups and has backed off at the most inopportune moments when these groups are on the ropes.

It is in those moments that groups like Hamas manage to eliminate collaborators who provide the Israelis with key intel that enables the Israelis to engage in pinpoint airstrikes against the terrorist infrastructure.

I've lost count of how many have hit Israel in the last two weeks (but it's well over 3,500 since 2005), but if Israel were any other country, the terrorists would know the meaning of pain, and Gaza would have been thoroughly bombarded by now and the terrorist leaders all arrested - regardless of whether they're claiming to be members of the political wing or the military wing. As members of the terrorist groups, they're fair game.

It's nice to see that the Israeli government is finally coming around to a position that I've had for some time now - that the Palestinians are at war with Israel, but the Israelis are still reluctant to return the favor.