Olmert Keeps Talking With Terrorists Despite Ongoing Rocket War

Despite a pending criminal investigation and continued mismanagement of Israel's national security, talking with terrorists remains perhaps the only way that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert manages to avoid getting run out of office, but I don't quite understand it either. The Israeli electorate has not put sufficient pressure on the Knesset to run Olmert out of office for his failures during the Lebanon War, to say nothing of his complete and utter mishandling of Israeli national security with respect to Gaza.

The Palestinian rocket war against Israel continues unabated, and the Palestinian terrorists continue showering Southern Israel with an assortment of rockets and mortars, including longer range Grad rockets that are capable of hitting Ashkelon. That's exactly what happened today, as rockets slammed into Ashkelon, injuring one Israeli.

All the while, Olmert's government is negotiating with terrorists to engage in a ceasefire. The terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad have absolutely no intention of honoring any such agreement. They withhold firing on Israel only as long as necessary to regroup and rearm. Each time Israel has carried out a ceasefire with terrorists, it has served to undermine Israel's national security, as the terrorists have used that time to regroup and rearm with more dangerous weapons.

Also, the negotiations remain unchanged since the day that Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas in 2006. The terrorists refuse to release Shalit unless Israel first releases hundreds of terrorists from Israeli jails.

Hamas hasn't changed their position one iota no matter how you slice it - they want hundreds of their terrorists released from Israeli jails in exchange for a promise not to fire their kassams (but the other terrorist groups are free to do so at their own whim), and no word on Gilad Shalit. In fact, this is the same situation that I've been reporting on pretty much ever since Shalit was captured by Hamas thugs in 2006. Despite all the "talks" and even Jimmy Carter's meetings with Hamas thugs, there's been absolutely no change on Hamas demands before they'd consider a ceasefire.

It's high time that the world start demanding good faith measures from the terrorists at Hamas, instead of pushing Israel to make concessions that lead to an erosion of Israel's national security. Of course, the world has no interest in forcing the Palestinians to do any such thing, and even the US is interested in getting Israel to move forward with a ceasefire, even though it seriously undermines Israeli and US security interests in the region.

UPDATE:
A 70-year-old Israeli grandmother was killed by one of those rocket attacks directed at moshav Yesha. How long before we hear about the inevitable stories of Palestinian thugs passing out candies to celebrate the successful murder of an Israeli?

The enemy rocket slammed into the residential area of Moshav Yesha, in the Negev's Eshkol region, around 6:00 pm. It landed in close proximity to the victim, killing her almost instantly. She was in the community with her son, visiting a friend. When the Red Alert siren went off, the visitors took refuge in a nearby home, but for a reason that is still not clear, the woman who was killed was standing outside the building when the rocket landed.

A paramedic who was on the scene said that they got ready to move the minute the Red Alert was sounded. Unfortunately, he said, there was nothing for medics to do but find the woman's son in the house and give him the tragic news.

Sounding furious and frustrated shortly after the Kassam rocket attack, Eshkol Regional Council Mayor Chaim Yellin told reporters, "Why are you interested in what's going on here only now? We are at war! Period. We have been at war for years. And the government does nothing!"

You can thank Olmert for that Mayor Yellin. His steadfast refusal to deal with the threat posed by the terrorist groups has emboldened them and led to carnage as we see today.

I can tell you what to expect within the next 48 hours. Israel will launch a series of airstrikes and incursions into Gaza. Perhaps two dozen Palestinian terrorists will be killed, but the media will focus on a couple of Palestinian civilians killed as the result of being caught in crossfire between the terrorists and the Israeli forces. The media might even focus on one such individual - a child perhaps, and claim that the Israelis specifically targeted the child, when the facts will reveal that the Palestinian thugs purposefully engaged in an attack on Israelis in close proximity to children so as to maximize the body count.