Source: Hamas planned Gaza wall blast for months

Hamas operatives had been sawing away the foundations of the wall between Egyptian and Palestinian Rafah for a few months to make it easier to blow it up when the time came, a source close to the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Rafah told Haaretz Wednesday.

A central Hamas operative partially confirmed the report, although he told Haaretz it was PRC operatives who had prepared to breach the wall, while Hamas policemen did not interfere.

In any case, Hamas has for months been discussing the need to take the initiative in ending the siege of Gaza. Apparently, after four days of hermetic closure, following months of siege, the planners believed the political and social conditions were ripe to bring down the iron wall that Israel had put up. Wednesday around 3 A.M., the people of Rafah were awakened by a series of blasts  between 15 and 20, people said. The hospital in Rafah was put on advance alert to prepare for those who might be injured by Egyptian bullets. People started heading toward the blast sites, but a source who knew about the plan ahead of time told Haaretz Hamas men prevented them from going over to the Egyptian side before sunrise. At 6 A.M., the first people started to cross over to Egypt, and their numbers steadily increased. The market on the Egyptian side of Rafah opened early in honor of the visitors.

Butheyneh, about 40, said she did not hear the explosions. She found out about the breach around 8 A.M. and at 9 headed with her two sisters-in-law and two of her children toward Egyptian Rafah. "We were hoping to buy a few things we needed, there are a lot of things we need, but mainly we felt like getting out, seeing people, feeling like we were out of jail," she said Wednesday over the phone.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/947775.html

It's almost like they have near-human intelligence.
:sarcasm:

. . intelligence of Palestinians or Arabs? Why do you find it necessary to be sarcastic about that?

...is that them nigg...I mean Ay-rabs (at least the ones that aren't the rulers of oil-rich emirates, who we have to treat with a modicum of respect) are not only villainous, but also servile, stupid, and cowardly. Why else would Standard Operational Procedure for that region on the part of the western alliance always be "make the Ay-rabs suffer enough, and eventually they'll knuckle under and 'cry uncle'?"

And then we get all surprised when, as in Lebanon last year, those same Ay-rabs respond to scorched-earth bombing raids that destroy their newly-rebuilt infrastructure, not by waving the white flag, but by -- gasp! -- fighting back...and, even more unaccountably, doing it effectively???

and browsing around I encounter you here posting words of wisdom.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Anyone that has been paying attention ought to know that the blockade would not achieve it's stated objective, or even the unstated ones. Since it was and is a PR disaster, it was unwise to pursue it in the first place. In my opinion, it appears that the whole "strategy" is based more on Israeli domestic politics, the need to appear to be "doing something", than on any realistic plan or strategy for dealing with the situation, ending the rocket fire, or anything else. It's all patch patch patch and cover your butt.

"A man has to know his limits" -- Dirty Harry (aka Clint Eastwood)

. . estimates of Palestinian or Arab intelligence?

Israeli policy towards the Palestinians suffers from that flaw, and it has from the beginning. It is that sort of underestimation of ones opponents that lies behind the failures of Israeli policy in dealing with the Palestinians. The blockade is one example of that.

In the particular case, one ought to expect that the wall would be undermined and taken down at the earliest convenient opportunity, because Gazans are clearly intelligent and ingenious, as they must be to survive in the conditions that obtain there, and the wall does not serve them.

The US failures in Iraq stem from much the same sort of blindness.

professor

Things are complex, aren't they?

selective punishment is a crime against humanity

:shrug:

just saying.