Messaging before war: 8 things to know for October 5

1. Marching toward battle: The seemingly inexorable march to war with Gaza is on Israel’s mind heading into the weekend, with fears that border violence will ramp up significantly on Friday.

• Channel 10 news reports that the army is expecting some 20,000 Palestinians to protest/riot along the border Friday, with the IDF ordering extra troops to the area to deal with the unrest, including special forces and snipers.
• According to the channel, the army believes that Gazans may also return to shooting rockets at southern Israel, and if so it will be in “significant volleys.” Thus the army has deployed a bolstered Iron Dome presence to the region.
• The tensions are serious enough to push Yedioth Ahronoth’s interview with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar off the front page (more on that below). The paper reports that the army is ready for a significant round of fighting as early as Friday evening, though it notes that area residents haven’t been given any special security instructions.

2. ‘Ready’: As is usual for times when war drums are beating, Israelis tend to turn more jingoistic, hence the headline on Hadashot news’s website that “we’re ready, no doubt.”

3. Message in a call-up: Yedioth notes that the troop call-up and extra Iron Dome batteries aren’t just meant to protect the border but also to send Hamas a message that “even before an escalation, the army is changing its policies regarding rioters, who have been ramping up the level of violence on the border for several weeks.”

• Israel Hayom’s Yoav Limor writes that the army is telling Hamas “don’t test us.”
• “Gaza and Jerusalem both understand very well that they are playing with fire, and neither side is interested in a confrontation whose results, in a best-case scenario, will return both sides to where they started (minus the death and destruction).”

4. Fueling discontent: Making matters even worse, the one thing that may have helped curb tensions, the delivery of fuel to the electricity-starved enclave, is also seemingly not happening. Trucks were reportedly turned away at the Gaza border Thursday, apparently at the request of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who wants to squeeze Hamas into giving up control of the Strip.

• Palestinian sources tell TOI’s Avi Issacharoff that threats made by the Palestinian Authority to an Israeli gas company and to UN employees delayed the planned transfer of emergency Qatari-funded fuel to Gaza.
• The sources say PA officials called UN employees in Gaza who were to physically transfer the fuel and threatened that they would pay a “heavy price” if they showed up to work.
• “In other words, the PA blocked an improvement in the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, primarily to make clear to the whole world that it must be involved in any step regarding the territory,” Issacharoff writes.

5. Night moves: Though it’s received relatively little media attention, Hamas has also been leading nightly protests along the Gaza border. Haaretz’s Amos Harel reports that Hamas has been deploying special units at night intended to disrupt the construction of Israel’s anti-tunnel barrier.

“It now seems that Hamas’ actions could, for the first time, delay the completion of that barrier, even if only slightly,” he writes.

6. Sinwar says: Yedioth is running its full interview with Sinwar, a day after publishing an excerpt that made a fairly large splash, with the hawkish terror leader claiming he doesn’t want to fight, just for Israel’s blockade on the Strip to end.

• In the interview, Sinwar rejects the idea of Hamas disarming and being protected by an international force, defends suicide bombings as a way to get attention and says arson kites and balloons launched into Israel don’t hurt anyone but are just meant to send a message.
• “The kites and balloons are not a weapon, they are a message: You are stronger than us where it’s not even comparable, but you will never, ever win,” he says.
• He also defends using resources for building tunnels while the Strip continues to wallow in economic despair, saying without them “we would all be dead.”
• And he engages in a bit of media criticism, protesting when reporter Francesca Borri asks about kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
• “Shalit wasn’t a captive. He was a prisoner of war. You understand why we don’t talk much with journalists? We kill a soldier, and you publish a picture of him having fun on the beach, and your readers think we went and shot him in Tel Aviv. No.”

7. Bird-brained: Haaretz reports that shadowy right-wing name-and-shame group Canary Mission is being used by Israeli authorities to deport people accused of supporting boycotts of the country.

• The use of the site, long suspected by activists according to an August Forward report, is confirmed by documents submitted to an appeals tribunal after student Lara Alqasem went to court to fight her deportation.
• The paper points out several flaws with Canary Mission’s claims about Alqasem, as well as her argument that she wouldn’t be trying to study at Hebrew University if she supported a boycott of Israel. (The August Forward report on Canary Mission had mentioned a profile on a Jewish student it accused of anti-Semitism for speaking out against the US embassy moving to Jerusalem at a pro-Israel event)
• Haaretz also notes that in other instances, the government’s case against so-called Israel boycotters includes only “superficial Google searches and that the ministry, by admission of its own senior officials, does not collect information from non-public sources.”

8. No mayorship, and maybe no Jerusalem: ToI’s Adam Rasgon interviews former Jerusalem mayoral candidate Aziz Abu Sarah, whose campaign to become the city’s first Palestinian mayor was abruptly cut short earlier this week.

• Abu Sarah says Palestinians threatening him played a role in his decision to quit, but he was really forced out when Israel challenged his residency in the city, saying his “center of life” was elsewhere. (It’s worth noting that the front-runner in the mayoral race, Zeev Elkin, only moved to Jerusalem a few months ago for the sole purpose of running for mayor.)
• Now, not only can Abu Sarah not run for mayor, he may be forced to leave the city altogether because of rules stripping residency rights from some East Jerusalem Palestinians.
• “My lawyer said that what happened is pretty bad. He said if they don’t see you as a resident, your first problem is you cannot run for office, but your bigger problem is you may not be able to stay here,” he tells ToI.
• Even though he’s out of the race, Abu Sarah says he’ll continue campaigning for the rights of East Jerusalemites: “In the coming days, I will be meeting with Palestinians to talk about how we can serve our city outside the municipality.”