Rockets are fired from Gaza Strip towards Israel, July 31, 2014. (Photo: AP)
On the 26th day of “Operation Protective Edge,” Israel pounded the southern Gaza town of Rafah Saturday as troops raid above and below looking for 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, from Kfar Saba, who was captured by Hamas in an ambush that violated a humanitarian cease-fire. Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said one Hamas fight detonated a suicide vest in the attack.
The Israeli Security Cabinet decided after a five-hour meeting Friday night that Israel will no longer attempt to reach a cease-fire with Hamas, adding further that they will not send a delegation to the Cairo truce talks due to the repeated cease-fire violations by Hamas. An official in the prime minister’s office said Israel “expects the United States and the international community to respond strongly to a terror organization that so blatantly defies them.”
The official, who spoke anonymously because there was no official Israeli announcement, said “Hamas and other terror groups will bear the consequences of their actions.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House after the incident not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel. Netanyahu told senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, that the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on Hamas. The source also said Netanyahu told them he should be “trusted” regarding the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into talks and abide by cease-fire terms.
The Israeli military has said it believes the soldier was grabbed roughly one hour after an internationally brokered cease-fire took effect Friday morning. Two other soldiers were killed in the attack, raising the number of Israeli military fatalities to 63.
In the past 24 hours, we struck over 200 terror targets in Gaza, including a weapons development center located in the Islamic University.
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) August 2, 2014
With such heavy heat coming down on them, the terror group Saturday not only dened involvement in the soldier’s capture, which has even prompted widespread condemnation by the increasing pro-Palestine international community, but also blamed Israel for his death.
“We believe all members of this group have died in an (Israeli) strike, including the Zionist soldier the enemy says disappeared,” a Hamas spokesman said.
Yet, Hamas first said it was “not aware until this moment of a missing soldier or his whereabouts or the circumstances of his disappearance,” and also that the clash began about an hour before the start of the 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) cease-fire.
Hamas could be using a tactic long used by them and other Middle East terror groups. Withholding information about the soldier could very well be a ploy to garner concessions from Israel, a strategy used in the past by the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which did not disclose whether two Israeli soldiers it seized in 2006 were alive or dead until their remains were handed over in a prisoner exchange.
Even President Barack Obama and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon accused Hamas of violating the cease-fire and have called for the soldier’s immediate and unconditional release. Also, the July 8 Israeli bombardment of Gaza began after another kidnapping incident, which involved three Israeli teenagers, who were later found buried in a shallow grave in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, a senior IDF officer said Saturday morning that the Israeli army was “very close to completing” its mission of destroying tunnels in the Gaza strip, and that four tunnels have been destroyed in the past 24 hours. The IDF released a video showing Israeli Defense Forces blowing up tunnel networks near the location the soldier was kidnapped.
Since fighting began, Hamas has fired more than 3,000 rockets into Israel, with nearly 200 falling short and landing in Gaza, itself. A U.N. school, which was first blamed on an Israeli strike, was a causality of one of the Hamas rockets that fell short. Many have been reaching most major cities and forcing millions to seek cover. Hamas has also infiltrated Israel through the terror tunnel network multiple times and killed 63 Israeli soldiers.
Early Saturday morning, militants from Gaza fired missiles at Israel’s largest population centers, including Tel Aviv. Several rockets were successfully intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.
Since fighting began on July 8, more than 1,650 Palestinians — mostly civilians — have been killed and more than 8,000 wounded, according al-Kidra. Israel has lost 63 soldiers and three civilians, its highest death toll since the 2006 Lebanon war.
The prospect of an abducted soldier struck a particularly raw nerve in Israel and looked to further escalate the fighting.
Israel has shown a strong willingness to get their captured soldiers back in the past. In 2011, it traded hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for just one Israeli soldier who had been captured by Hamas five years earlier. Hezbollah’s capture of the two soldiers in a cross-border operation back in 2006 that started a 34-day war between the Iran-backed Shiite group and Israel. Israel later traded Lebanese prisoners for their dead bodies.
Outside the home of the soldier’s family, which is located just a block away from the city’s military cemetery, family and friends gathered and later went to an adjacent synagogue to pray for the soldier’s safe return. The town has already seen one funeral for a Kfar Saba soldier from the fighting in Gaza at the cemetery.
Goldin, who was recently engaged to get married, also has a twin brother in the military on the Gaza front-lines.
The officer’s father, Simha Goldin, said he expects Israel to “not stop before it turns over every stone in Gaza and returns Hadar home safe and sound.”
