[Ha'aretz] Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff - The murder at the fuel depot at Nahal Oz on Wednesday shows that Israel is having a hard time establishing a sufficiently effective deterrent against the terror organizations operating from Gaza. Even if Hamas is not currently firing rockets at Israel itself, it is continuing to clash with the Israel Defense Forces along the Gaza border and is not lifting a finger to rein in the smaller Palestinian factions firing rockets and sending operatives into Israel. There has barely been a single day of quiet on the Gaza border in the last two years. In the past, there was an attempt to maintain a buffer zone of about a kilometer west of the fence, where Palestinians were not allowed to enter, but this does not happen today. This is partly because the IDF has reduced its offensive operations in the security zone west of the fence. When its activities were more intensive, the number of incidents along the fence decreased. Without creating depth on the Palestinian side of the border, it is hard to thwart terror attacks.
2008-04-11 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive