Security forces successfully tested a special wall designed to protect buildings from Qassam rockets on Thursday. In a first experiment in Rishon Letzion, headed by Home Front Commander Yitzhak Gershon, a number of rockets resembling Qassams were fired at the wall. The wall stood up to the rockets, which failed to penetrate.
It was specially designed by a number of defense companies, and is aimed at protecting buildings in the cities, towns, and villages of the western Negev. After successfully testing out the wall, the defense establishment could adopt it for beefing up structures in communities on the Gaza border and Sderot, with a special focus on educational institutions and kindergartens. A military source explained that the wall can be place at the front of the building and will repel a strike by a Qassam rocket.
And it’s cheap too. The IDF may not be rolling into Northern Gaza but the IAF has not been idle reports the Jerusalem Post:
Hours after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put the brakes on a massive ground incursion into northern Gaza, IAF fighter jets struck close to a dozen targets before dawn Friday hitting the Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry and a Fatah office in Gaza City. Missiles also struck a Hamas training camp on the outskirts of the city.
Other targets hit by missiles included a Kassam rocket production warehouse affiliated with the Fatah-backed Aksa Martyrs' Brigades.
An IAF helicopter also fired upon and critically wounded an Islamic Jihad operative who tried to launch a rocket at Israeli forces. The man, 25-year-old Abdel Rael, later died of his wounds. His death marked the first fatality since the IDF incursion began on Tuesday.
An IDF statement said that the strikes would continue as long as Hamas terrorists refused to release kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, taken hostage on Sunday during a terror attack on his IDF outpost near the Kerem Shalom crossing. IDF artillery cannons also pounded Kassam launch sites overnight Friday. Since the beginning of the current Gaza campaign called "Operation Summer Rains" the IDF has fired over 400 artillery shells.
The IDF said the attack on Interior Minister Said Siyam's offices in Gaza City was caused by its being used as "a meeting place to plan and direct terror activity." Cpt. Jacob Dallal of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit told The Jerusalem Post that the operation's purpose was simple: "To gain the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit." According to Dallal, the strikes would be "ongoing," though the operation was being done "in a calibrated, studied fashion," the IDF "has many means at our disposal" for escalating the attacks.
Since Israel traditionally refuses to negotiate with terrorists Egypt has stepped into the breech and is negotiating on Israel’s behalf. The Jerusalem Post gives a status on the Egyptian negotiation:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak demanded from his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad to deport the Syrian-based Hamas leadership unless it agrees to release kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Palestinian sources said on Friday.
The demand was made in the context of a compromise that Egypt was attempting to draft between the Israel and Hamas, whose Damascus leader, Khaled Mashaal was demanding that thousands of Palestinian detainees, held in Israeli prisons, be released. Mubarak warned Mashaal that his position was leading the Palestinians to disaster, Israel Radio reported.
According to the Palestinians, the Egyptian compromise calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, as well as the release of prisoners who were already scheduled to be released within the next year. Meanwhile, Mubarak stated in an interview to Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram that Shalit's kidnappers have agreed to his conditional release, but Israel has not yet accepted their terms. Mubarak said, "Egyptian contacts with several Hamas leaders resulted in preliminary, positive results in the form of a conditional agreement to hand over the Israeli soldier as soon as possible to avoid an escalation.
The president said he had asked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "not to hurry" the military offensive in Gaza, but to "give additional time to find a peaceful solution to the problem of the kidnapped soldier." Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, was expected to go to Gaza on Friday, as Mubarak's representative, to advance the compromise. He was also scheduled to travel to Syria to meet Mashaal.
MK Ephraim Sneh (Labor) dismissed the Egyptian initiative, saying "a diplomatic option is when someone brings about the unilateral, unconditional release of the kidnapped [soldier], not when someone serves as a mediator between us and the Hamas head in Gaza," Army Radio reported.
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