Day 18 of Operation Protective Edge begins with Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) having followed Tzipi Livni’s lead from last Friday and declared that Israel might retake the Gaza Strip in order to completely root out the Hamas terrorist threat there, destroy its infrastructure and prevent kidnapping attempts.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid. (photo credit: (Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90)
“We won’t stand aside and watch Israeli citizens being hurt and tunnels being dug to kibbutzim, to children’s houses or dining rooms,” he told Channel 2 late Wednesday.
Earlier, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal, speaking in Qatar, said Hamas insists on the blockade of Gaza being lifted for a ceasefire — something the Egyptian ceasefire proposal does not provide. He also claims the hundreds of rockets — over 2,200 now — fired by Hamas into towns and cities all over Israel, as well as the five attempted attacks through cross-border tunnels, are not aimed at civilian targets.
“Our fatalities are civilians. Israel’s fatalities are soldiers,” he says.
Channel 2′s Ehud Ya’ari snorted that the speech was designed to sound like a victory speech, but didn’t quite come across that way.
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