The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117294   Message #2525364
Posted By: JohnInKansas
27-Dec-08 - 04:25 AM
Thread Name: BS: Waiting for protests... (Gaza)
Subject: RE: BS: Waiting for protests...
The incident (I think the same one) was reported briefly by a couple of my usual sources, but is no longer visible.

An extended search finds the only thing likely to be the incident cited:

Palestinian rocket kills 2 Gaza girls: medics
Reuters
updated 8:09 a.m. CT, Fri., Dec. 26, 2008

GAZA - A rocket apparently fired by Palestinians on Friday struck a house in the Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinian sisters aged five and 13, Palestinian medics said.

Hamas police said they were investigating the cause of the blast in Beit Lahiya village in northern Gaza, which medics said seemed to be due to a rocket aimed at Israel that had misfired.

Gaza militants frequently fire rockets at Israel from the same area.
The incident came amid rising tensions with Israel, with officials threatening stepped-up military action against Gaza militants to stop rocket shootings from the coastal territory.

Copyright 2008 Reuters.

[end quote]

A currently current article on the general subject of the conflict gives (if one reads the whole article) some context for the state of conflict, and in that context the incident cited is pretty much "business as usual" and not really merit-worthy for the international press:

Israel reopens Gaza border

Hamas rocket, mortar fire continues; Egypt plays mediator role

The Associated Press
updated 8:24 a.m. CT, Fri., Dec. 26, 2008

JERUSALEM - Israel reopened its border with Gaza on Friday to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid, despite continued rocket and mortar fire from the coastal strip and growing expectations of a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Palestinian militants.
The military said approximately 90 trucks would deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife as well as more than 150,000 gallons of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas, the military said.
Israel's Defense Ministry said it agreed to open its cargo crossings into Gaza to avoid a humanitarian crisis there. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the decision came after consultations with defense officials as well as calls from the international community. Israel controls Gaza's cargo crossings, which are used to deliver food, fuel and other goods into the territory.
Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the humanitarian shipment was meant to be a message to the people of Gaza that they were not Israel's enemy.

"We are sending them a message that the Hamas leadership has turned them into a punching bag for everyone," he told Israel Radio. "It is a leadership that has turned school yards in rocket launching pads.
This a leadership that does not care that the blood of its people will run in the streets."

[end quote]

The context needed relative to this incident is actually further down in the article, but it's too lengthy to quote entire here. Rocket launches of the kind believed to have caused the incident cited are almost daily happenings. Neither side in this conflict has rockets sufficiently accurate to expect to hit "only" militarily significant targets, so it's essentially terrorism expected to harm mostly civilians, with only a vague pretense of being military action - or so it appears from here.

John