Warning Civilians

Imshin reports Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties:

"Do you know what they do before they bomb a residential building? They call up the people living there on the phone, tell them that it is the IDF calling, inform them that there is a weapons factory (or a Hamas terrorist or a weapon storeroom or whatever) on the first floor (or second or third or whatever) and tell them that the IAF is now about to drop a bomb on them, and that they should please vacate the building right now!

"Since this thing started, the IDF has apparently already called up over one hundred thousand Palestinian homes to warn them (as of yesterday) - or so I heard on Kol Yisrael’s Reshet Bet radio station five o’clock news last night! Incredible."

She also talks a little about the implications of what happens in Gaza for the peace process from the Israeli side. Regardless of occasional comments about using disengagement to freeze the peace process, the most important aspect of selling the Gaza disengagement to the Israeli public was based on the idea that Israel didn't want to remain in Gaza, and doing so was actually counterproductive to Israeli security. The possibility of leaving areas of the West Bank was also in the background. It is the fact that both Gaza and southern Lebanon became the bases for attacks on Israel shortly after withdrawals that has pushed Israeli public opinion to the right on the issue of relations with the Palestinians, a development which affects plans for withdrawal based on both negotiation and unilateralism. The Palestinian rejoinder, of course, would be that Israel shouldn't be occupying these territories in the first place, and only left Gaza and southern Lebanon because of the existing campaign against it.