The Palestinian Rocket War Inflicts More Israeli Casualties

Palestinian terrorists continue their rocket war, this time firing rockets that slammed into a college campus in Sderot and murdered an Israeli student. 22 rockets were fired in all today. Hamas claimed responsibility.

Residents of Sderot have no more than seconds from the time the rockets are fired by the terrorists until they slam into buildings, homes, schools, day care centers, factories, and parks. The Israeli government knows that, and while it claims that its defense systems can engage rockets within 15 seconds of launch, the sad fact is that most rockets take far less time than that from the moment they're fired until they hit Israel.

Thus, the only way to stop the rocket war is to take out the terrorists before they fire the rockets. And so far Prime Minister Olmert is reluctant to take the steps necessary to safeguard Israeli lives in Sderot and beyond.

The IDF is largely reduced to policing rather than taking aggressive and necessary actions to stop the violence against Israel. I say largely, because the IDF and IAF still manage to take out terror cells using airstrikes.

Fatah is busy claiming that Hamas and al Qaeda are linking up in Gaza, which shouldn't be all that surprising. It's in Abbas' interest to get everyone to go after Hamas, because it extends Abbas' shelf life despite the fact that Abbas is no more interested in peace with Israel than Hamas is.

The IDF broke up a terror cell operating in the West Bank city of Nablus, which is supposed to be Fatah's responsibility, but we've repeatedly seen how Fatah looks the other way as terrorists operate from territory supposedly under its civil administrative control. Still others were arrested for carrying pipe bombs.

UPDATE:
Palestinian terrorists have now fired rockets at Ashkelon (just north of Gaza), and one ripped into a hospital. Carl in Jerusalem has the latest details.

UPDATE:
Israel raises Palestinian standard of living by lowering Palestinian infant mortality standards; Palestinians fire rockets at schools, universities, hospitals, etc., all with the hope of increasing Israeli mortality figures. This is the Palestinian-Israel conflict in a nutshell.

UPDATE:
MSNBC is focusing on the Israeli airstrikes and not on the precipitating events - the ongoing rocket fire by the terrorists at Israel. Figures.