Civilians in southern Israel spent much of Monday inside bomb shelters, as Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorists fired more than 30 rockets and mortars at them, the Times of Israel reports.
Most missed their targets, and the only casualties were some animals in a petting zoo.
Hamas, which controls Gaza but frequently ducks responsibility for rocket fire, acknowledged firing many of the rockets. They came in response to Israel's attack Sunday on two terrorists on a motorcycle. One died and the other was injured. Israeli military officials say they were part of jihadist network and that one was "a senior operative involved in the planning and execution" of a June attack that killed an Israeli working on a fence at the Egyptian-Israeli border.
The Jerusalem Post reports that in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank, meanwhile, comes a reminder that peace is not on the forefront of Palestinian thinking. "No one has dropped the armed resistance from his dictionary," Fatah central committee member Mahmoud Aloul told a television interviewer Monday.
That shouldn't surprise anyone watching the PA operate. It routinely glorifies terrorists by naming parks, streets and sports teams in their memory and carries programming that incites hatred of Israel.
The current strategy is for "popular resistance," Aloul said, but that could change if certain conditions were met. The PA isn't seeking new peace talks with Israel, Aloul said, and won't until "there is a new atmosphere for conducting the negotiations."
Palestinians have walked away from two Israeli offers that would have led to a Palestinian state since the Clinton administration. Former envoy Dennis Ross described the breakdown of talks at Camp David, when Yasser Arafat turned away the United States' last, best offer. "It's very clear to me that his negotiators understood this was the best they were ever going to get. They wanted him to accept it. He was not prepared to accept it," Ross said in a 2002 television interview.
In her memoir, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a generous Israeli offer from then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that was passed up in 2008. Palestinian negotiators declined to offer counter proposals.