Dying to get out: 8 things to know for October 14

1. Cracks in the fence: Israeli actions suspected of leading to Palestinian deaths are being put under a microscope after deadly incidents in both the West Bank and Gaza over the weekend.

• In Gaza, seven Palestinians were killed Friday in chaotic border protests, including three people killed as several rioters blew through the border fence and entered Israel.
• According to a Sgt. Omer Kaplan, a field intelligence soldier who monitors the border through surveillance cameras, one of the Palestinians was killed after border camera watchers initially lost track of him.
• Major Ben Hallel, an officer in the Paratroopers Brigade who commanded the troops during the incident, said the Palestinian was armed with a knife and tried to attack a soldier, who opened fire at close range and killed him.
• By Sunday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warning of “powerful blows” to come against Hamas, which he said was “not getting the message.”

2. Tenser than ever: Even before Netanyahu beat the war drums, those watching the border from newspaper offices could see tensions reaching skyrocketing like an incendiary balloon, especially after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman vowed to cut off fuel supplies to the Strip.

• Israel Hayom calls it a “new high in tensions,” writing that “Israel and Hamas are continuing to declare war.”
• Yedioth Ahronoth doesn’t go quite as far, but columnist Yossi Yehoshua still calls it a step up in the potential for wider violence.
• “Twenty terrorists breaking in shows the rise in Palestinian brazenness,” he writes. “Something like this could have ended with a soldier getting kidnapped or an infiltration into a community near the border, which would have forced the army and State of Israel to launch a wider unplanned offensive.”

3. No fuel no peace: Yehoshua notes that Qatar-funded fuel transfers allowed in from Israel had managed to ease tensions for a few days before Friday’s outbreak of violence and Haaretz reports that defense officials privately fear a surge in violence after Liberman ordered that fuel from Qatar and fuel donated for humanitarian purposes both be halted if launches of incendiary devices and tire burning near the border doesn’t stop.

• “In discussions Friday in the defense establishment, it was felt by all those involved that it would be going too far to set conditions regarding incendiary balloons and burning tires, and that this could force Lieberman to renege on his statements,” the paper reports.
• Meanwhile, the Arab-language al-Hayat reports that Hamas warned Cairo it could send tens of thousands of Gazans to rush the borders with Israel and Egypt should the Palestinian Authority attempt to levy new sanctions on the Strip.
• The situation in Gaza “will explode either in the face of Egypt or Israel if Abbas imposes new sanctions on the Strip” and “it is possible that tens of thousands of Palestinians will storm the southern borders with Egypt or eastern or northern borders with the occupation and perhaps thousands of martyrs will fall and we do not want that,” the paper reports Egypt’s spy chief was told.

4. Pic pick: They say there are no winners in war, but AFP photographer Mahmoud Hams has still managed to snag the prestigious Prix Bayeux award for his pictures of unrest on the Gaza border.

Big congrats to @MahmudHams winner of the @PrixBayeux Award for war correspondents!
So very well deserved.https://t.co/PLVAcbn9Ng#PBCN2018 #AFP pic.twitter.com/jwxjZRTwIu

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— Stéphane Arnaud (@StephaneArnaud_) October 13, 2018

5. Double standard for terror? Things are also looking bad in the West Bank after Aisha Muhammad Talal Rabi, a Palestinian mother of eight, was killed after her car was apparently hit by stones, in a suspected attack by extremist settlers.

• There’s a relatively small amount of coverage in the press of the attack, and a relatively large amount of hypocrisy (and pushback) from those who would not hesitate to call an attack by Palestinians on Israelis terrorism but fail to use the term in this case and vice versa.
• Israel Hayom, for instance, who calls Palestinians who even support rock throwers terrorists, doesn’t use the word in its short story on the killing.
• The Kan state broadcaster also does not use the word, along with many others, and Minister Yariv Levin goes as far as to call the attack a “scrap of an incident,” and bemoans the fact that Jews are already being blamed.
• Indeed, likely because of the identity of the alleged attackers, they are being given benefits of the doubt rarely given to Palestinian suspects, as seen by Yedioth Ahronoth’s headline “Shin Bet investigates: Who threw the rock that killed a Palestinian,” underlines that idea.
• In the same paper, Yoaz Hendel writes that “anyone who kills with a stone for nationalist reasons is a terrorist. There’s no relation to religion, ethnicity or gender.”
• On the other side, after former Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer tweets that people “should not calling it a killing, but murder. It was not an incident but a terror attack,” a screenshot makes the rounds with a tweet where he called the death of Adele Biton, an Israeli girl killed in a similar attack, a “killing.”

6. Where’s mom? Speaking to the Ynet news website, Rabi’s husband Yakoub recalls the terrible moment his car was stoned as they drove through the central West Bank, with two of their kids in the back.

• “My youngest daughter started to scream when she saw her mom covered in blood and not answering. She called ‘mom, mom, speak to me. I’m begging you to speak to me. Mom is dead, mom is dead.”
• He adds that “we don’t want revenge, just that they will catch the killers and punish them.”
• Reporting on Rabi’s funeral, the Palestinian Ma’an news outlet writes that “Eight-year-old Rama, Aisha’s youngest daughter, appeared as if she was waiting for some news, looking around her and asking her sisters every once in a while ‘Is mom here, yet?’”

7. Pass the assimilation fish: A secret wedding between Muslim TV anchor Lucy Aharish and “Fauda” star Tzachi Halevy, and an ensuing backlash from some, is continuing to fascinate the media.

• Wading into the fray, centrist politician Yair Lapid speaks out against assimilation, telling Army Radio that “the Jewish people is small, and I want it to grow, not shrink.”
• Haaretz op-ed columnist Gideon Levy asks what the problem is with assimilation in Israel, given that the Jewish state is nothing to write home about: “Is the struggle against assimilation a struggle to preserve Jewish values as they’ve been realized in Israel? If so, then it would be best to abandon that battle. The gefilte fish and hreime (Moroccan spicy fish), the Bible, religion and heritage, can be preserved in mixed marriages as well.”

8. You say he’s not a friend: Meanwhile, Netanyahu apparatchik Minister Miri Regev is going on the attack after she was accused of having another verboten relationship, this one with outspoken Netanyahu critic and businessman Roni Mana.

• After Haaretz reporter Chaim Levinson shares one of the two hugging, calling it “Lucy Aharish Tzachi Halevy 2.0,” Regev lashes out at Mana, saying “he’s far from a good friend.”

מירי רגב: אין לי מערכת יחסים טובה עם @RoniMana. אני לא מבין למה הוא מעלה תמונות שלי. הוא מנסה לפגוע בגברת נתניהו דרכי. הוא רחוק מלהיות חבר טוב. רוני מאנה הוא אחד מהאנשים שמנסה לפגוע במערכת היחסים ביני לבין הגברת נתניהו וראש הממשלה pic.twitter.com/mkTVtC7Hp5

— Tal Shalev (@talshalev1) October 14, 2018

• “Roni Mana is one of the people trying to hurt my relationship with Mrs. Netanyahu and the prime minister,” she says, according to Walla reporter Tal Shalev.
• Mana responds first by saying he doesn’t believe Shalev, and then, after apparently hearing a tape, by saying she is scared of Sara Netanyahu.
• “I understand for Miri Regev to live in the shadow of Sara Netanyahu is not simple,” he writes. “She’s a vengeful person.”