A 16-year boy was critically injured after a bus driving near the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council was hit, apparently by an anti-tank missile, fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday. He is currenlty being treated for severe trauma to the head, after sustaining shrapnel injuries.
An hour later the fire from Gaza continued, with more than 15 mortar shells launched at Israel. One of the shells exploded inside a town in Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported.
Afterwards three rockets were fired towards Ashkelon, and witnesses reported seeing one of them explode in midair, apparently due to interception by the Iron Dome defense system.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on an official visit to Germany, remarked on the violence in the south. "I have just received updates on this criminal attack," he said, but added that he was allowing officials in Israel to handle the outbreak.
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Student bus hit by anti-tank missile (Photo: Tsafrir Abayov) |
The bus was hit in the rear, causing its windows to shatter. Rescue forces were quick to arrive on the scene to evacuate the victims, and the roads were immediately blocked for fear of additional attacks.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to respond immediately, and Palestinian medics in Gaza reported soon after that Air Force craft had bombed a target east of Gaza City, killing a 50-year old man and injuring at least six people, including a child.
The army said its helicopters had bombed a number of targets, all of which were Hamas headquarters or areas from which rockets and mortars had been launched.
Barak's office stated that the defense minister ordered the strike because "he sees Hamas as responsible for every attack originating in Gaza".
'He's my only son'
Dr. Arnon Vizhenitzer, the lead doctor on call at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, described the 16-year old victim's condition. "The boy came to us by helicopter, unconscious and on artificial respiration, and in very bad shape. He is suffering from multi-system injury and head trauma. He is being operated on by our best specialists, who are fighting to save his life," he said.
Hanania Reich, a paramedic who arrived on the scene, recounted the horror. "We were first to arrive together with soldiers. On the road lay a young victim, unconscious and bleeding. We began to resuscitate him and eventually MDA came and evacuated him by helicopter," he said.
"The driver was hysterical. He had shrapnel in his leg, he was lightly injured." Reich added that the front of the bus had also been hit.
Tamir, who got off the bus just a short while before it was hit, said the critically injured teen was the only one who remained on the bus when the missile hit it, aside from the driver.
"I think he caught a ride with the driver because when we got on at school he was already there," Tamir said. "The ride went to one of the kibbutzim and dropped students off there. When we got off at the kibbutz only he stayed on, he must have had to go somewhere else with the driver."
Tamir got off the bus and began to walk towards his family's place of business. "Then I heard blasts and more mortar fire started. I ran to the clubhouse, which has a bomb shelter, and now I'm here with a few friends," he said.
"It's really scary," the boy added. "There are Qassams and mortars all the time here, but it's the first time the incident was so dangerous. It could hit any one of us."
Ilana Cohen's only son, 13-year old Adir, also disembarked just moments before the attack. She said he had very nearly escaped being on board, but that she had told him to get off at home instead of continuing on to an after-school class.
"Now I know why I said it," she said. "The bus dropped him off, left the kibbutz, and 50 meters after got hit… This is my only son. I don't have any more to give to God. This is a very difficult situation."
Minister rushed to shelter
Ronit, who was driving before the bus, narrowly escaped being hit. "I heard a blast and saw smoke," she said. "The thought that it could have been me was very scary. I just saw the smoke and realized we were under attack."
Minister of Science & Technology Daniel Hershkowitz, who is currently on a visit to the south, was rushed to a bomb shelter in one of the Negev communities.
"It's intolerable that, in a sovereign state, children are murdered and hurt every day," he said. "Israel must put an end to this and I will make sure the government of which I am a part makes the proper decision."
The fire from Gaza Thursday began a few hours after the Air Force bombed two smuggling tunnels in the northern Gaza Strip. The army said direct hits were identified. Palestinian sources reported that four people had been injured.
Dagerous new trend
The security establishment has raised concerns about a dangerous new trend by which Gaza terror organizations use anti-tank missiles to target civilian vehicles inside Israel.
The missile fired on Thursday was the second anti-tank missile launched into Israel in 48 hours.
Unlike mortar shells and Qassam rockets, the anti-tank missile is extremely accurate and launching it requires a high level of skill.
Military officials noted that Palestinian terror organizations, headed by Hamas, need to understand that there are red lines that cannot be crossed.
"We will make it clear to them. We have a large toolbox and these violations will be answered with harsh means," said an IDF source.
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President Shimon Peres sounded a scolding note Thursday during a meeting with ambasadors to the U.N. Security Council, after news reached him that a missile had hit a school bus.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I just got a piece of information that missiles hit a bus of children and two children were seriously wounded," he told the ambassadors. "It cannot be like [this], you know. If you want to bring peace and openness to Gaza, the right way and the shortest way is to tell the people in Gaza - stop shooting, stop smuggling arms, and that's it. We don't ask for anything. We don't want to go back to Gaza."
"And if the United Nations can provide us with the answer to the security - go ahead. But if you cannot provide - be careful," he warned. "Can you provide, can the United Nations provide a guarantee there won't be missiles, there won't be terror, there won't be intifadahs. And what, then, are we supposed to do with the United Nations resolutions?"
"I assume that you gentlemen represent a responsibility," he said. "None of you would give away the security of [his] own people."
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As President Obama enters the re-election campaign in earnest this fall, he'll face a huge problem, largely of his own making: a growing expectation that, by September, the United Nations will declare a Palestinian state without Israel's consent.
President Shimon Peres visited Washington this week to devise strategy with Obama in an attempt to avert this looming diplomatic train wreck. By now, American diplomats well understand the dangers in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' strategy of bypassing negotiations with Jerusalem and enlisting an automatic UN majority to declare a Palestinian state, instead.
"Be careful," Peres warned Security Council ambassadors and envoys of several Arab states yesterday. Speaking during breakfast at the Midtown offices of the International Peace Institute, Peres asked the diplomats what would happen the morning after the General Assembly recognized the state of Palestine: "Can the UN provide a guarantee that there won't be missiles, [that] there won't be terror?"
As Peres spoke, an aide slipped him a note, informing him that a missile from Gaza had just hit a school bus in southern Israel, seriously injuring a 16-year-old boy. Would the Palestinian state in the West Bank resemble Gaza after every Israeli soldier and settler left it in 2005? Peres asked.
Abbas claims that the only item that needs to be finished on the way to statehood is for Israel to leave and delineate a border based on the 1949 armistice line. Yet every document the Palestinians have signed with Israel since the 1993 Oslo Accords clearly states that declaring a state requires the agreement of both sides.
To reach an agreement with Israel, Abbas would need to sign security arrangements, make concessions in Jerusalem and give up the Palestinian demand to flood Israel with Arab "refugees."
Abbas, however, is politically weak, and making such concessions would spell his doom. So, instead, he relies on a plan devised two years ago by his prime minister, Salem Fayyed, to declare a state in 2011 regardless of any progress in talks with Israel.
That plan received its most significant boost last September when Obama addressed the UN General Assembly, expressing his hope that "when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations -- an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel."
That florid piece of rhetoric was dependent much more on "Obama magic" than on a diplomatic breakthrough. Nevertheless, Obama's listeners saw in it an American IOU. The parts about "agreement" and "peace with Israel" were quickly forgotten. By now, all that diplomats in Arab capitals (and everywhere else, including Europe) remember is a due date for Palestine to become a UN member.
Even Obama's own team now recognizes this as a trap. As UN Ambassador Susan Rice told Congress this week, "You can pass a resolution, but that does not a viable state create." A viable Palestinian state "can only be established through direct negotiations between the parties," she said.
Only the Security Council can admit members to the UN, and only Washington can stop such a move, using our veto right. As he enters next year's campaign this fall, Obama knows that other presidential hopefuls will attack his commitment to Israel, which most Americans still support over its enemies. Failing to wield a UN veto would cost Obama dearly politically.
On the other hand, some Obama aides and supporters in the media think that blocking a Security Council Palestinian-state resolution is bound to stir Arab passions and erode American credibility -- just as we are trying our hardest to navigate a fast-changing Mideast.
As Peres said yesterday, pro-democracy forces in the region would get a boost "if we shall relieve them of the Israeli-Arab conflict." But Abbas' plan to bypass negotiations and go to the UN, instead, will surely exacerbate the conflict -- and therefore give excuses to new (or old) tyrants to turn away from the changes necessary to bring the Arabs into the 21st century.
Obama has long believed -- wrongly -- that ending Arab-Israeli enmity is central to resolving the Mideast's problems. Perhaps he still does. Yet, more than on any other issue, this is where he keeps shooting himself in the foot. Long after last year's UN applause has died, he now needs to diffuse a diplomatic landmine.
Obama now must make clear that an American veto is coming. He then should reprioritize his Mideast agenda -- and perhaps thank good old Peres for allowing his rescue. beavni@gmail.com
