Zwei Meldungen vom heutigen Tag:

More than 40 Qassam rockets, Grad missiles and mortar shells have been fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip since Thursday evening, injuring 13 people. Early on Saturday, one person was lightly wounded by a rocket that landed in an open area near Be’er Sheva, while seven others received medical attention either for sustaining wounds while seeking shelter, or for shock. Quelle

Und:

Abbas’s Fatah faction, meanwhile, said that its men would participate in defending the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip against Israeli “aggression.” (…)
“Fatah will be at the forefront of the forces defending the Palestinians with all available means,” he added. “We will fully support the people in their resistance against this aggression.” Quelle

Dazu eine Presserklärung des American Jewish Committee:

Following a series of fatal terrorist attacks near Eilat that killed at least eight people and injured scores more, AJC is again urging the German government and parliament to step up efforts to prevent European support for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

“A Palestinian leadership that refuses to negotiate with Israel, and cooperates with terrorists, does not deserve UN recognition,” said Deidre Berger, Director of AJC Berlin. Yesterday’s terror attacks were coordinated by Hamas, according to Israeli security experts. Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza, reached an agreement of cooperation in May with Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.

Germany’s opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), in a proposed resolution on the peace process, calls on the German government to drop its opposition to UN recognition of a Palestinian state, and demands that Israel stop all settlement activity, which the SPD asserts is the main barrier to peace.

Auch wenn man in der Regel vorsichtig mit den von Debkafile zur Verfügung gestellten Informationen und Analysen sein sollte, ist dieser Artikel doch recht lesenswert.

Die Spannungen zwischen Ägypten und Israel steigen, Kairo hat nun angekündigt, seinen Botschafter zurückzuziehen. Unklar ist bislang in der Tat, warum sich Israel nicht für den Tod von mehreren ägyptischen Soldaten entschuldigt hat, die offenbar von israelischen Soldaten erschossen wurden, als die IDF im Grenzgebiet die Verantwortlichen für die  Terrorattacken  machte.  Sollten die Ägypter dagegen von Terroristen erschossen worden sein und das ägyptische Militär versucht  nun, Israel die Schuld in die Schuhe zu schieben, hätte dies, meint Debka, deutlich gesagt werden müssen:

Israel’s decision-makes missed the train badly on Thursday by failing to take one of two obvious courses:

1.  Proposing directly to Egypt’s rulers that if indeed Egyptian servicemen were hit inadvertently during the IDF operation to end the terrorist attack on its citizens, Israel apologized and would be willing to set up a joint panel with Egypt to probe the alleged incident and make sure there would be no recurrence.
2.  Alternatively, Israel had every reason to be first to lodge a protest – both with Egypt and the United Nations - after 15-20 heavily armed Palestinian gunmen laid up for weeks in Egyptian Sinai carried out a series of deadly terrorist attacks on an Israeli road.

However, our sources report that in the first hours after the attack, the Israeli government and high command were too bewildered to think clearly and react rationally.

Now it is too late. Egypt’s ruling generals are beyond heeding testimony, however credible, demonstrating that al Qaeda – not Israeli troops or helicopters – was responsible for the Egyptian deaths. Egged on by the Muslim Brotherhood, they have taken the first step on the road to revoking the historic Camp David peace accords.

They can only be turned back if the United States intercedes and urges them to think again and abandon this radical and hazardous course.

Zweifeslohne ist der Sinai seit dem Sturz Mubaraks unsicherer geworden. Man sollte allerdings nicht vergessen, dass sich Al Qaida Zellen auch in den letzten Jahren dort recht frei bewegen konnten und mehrere Anschläge verübt haben. Vermutlich hätten das Popular Resistance Comitte einen ähnliches Massaker auch früher durchführen können. Es hätte dann nur eine ganz andere Wirkung gehabt und zumindest nicht zu einer ausgewachsenen diplomatischen Krise zwischen Ägypten und Israel geführt.

Update

Die Lage scheint sich inzwischen etwas zu entspannen:

Barak: Israel regrets the deaths of Egyptian policemen
Defense minister expects to open investigation into incident along border with Sinai; Egyptian embassy official denies recall of ambassador in TA.

und:

Egypt is not planning an escalated reaction in the face of the Israeli killing of Egyptian soldiers

Bislang jedenfalls finden sich (noch) nicht die Massen ein, um in Ägypten gegen Israel zu demonstrieren. In Alexandria waren es heute 150 Islamisten, die zum Jihad gegen Israel aufriefen, in Kairo gestern 200 Demonstranten.

Aus Al Ahram:

Egypt’s Cabinet has approved new legislation on trade union freedoms, consenting to pass the law within days. The new law would eliminate many of the constraints imposed on workers’ unions under Law No 35 (1976), which outlined the structural and electoral regulations of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) among other central organisations. The legislation will allow, for the first time since the 1950s, trade union pluralism and freedoms for workers and businessmen to form their own unions and syndicates respectively.

Activists and workers have been waiting impatiently for the final version of the law, hesitant to believe the new Cabinet’s sincerity in advocating union freedoms, particularly after Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s government enacted legislation criminalising strikes and protests in March. “We are waiting for the new law to be promulgated or else the next trade union elections won’t be serious and the steps undertaken against the state-controlled ETUF won’t be very significant,” says Ali Fatouh, president of the Independent Union for Public Transportation Workers. (…)

Now that the government-controlled trade union’s authority has officially been shaken up, a debate over the future role of independent trade unions looms in the background. The government has, in the meantime, leant independent unionists a sizeable presence in the steering committee as a message of goodwill, with the hope of further inclusion and cooperation. Whether this cooperation entails co-opting independent unionists is yet to be seen, but a number of parties are wary of any government attempt to sideline the independent current. Silmi’s invitation for non-governmental unions to work through the ETUF’s office space could fuel these suspicions.

Zu Recht fragt das Wall Street Journal, wo der internationale Aufschrei bleibt, wenn in Syrien Palästinenser ermordet oder in Sportstadien interniert werden:

In the Department of Bottomless Cynicism, does anything match the treatment of Palestinians by their ostensible champions in the Arab world? In the latest example, Bashar Assad’s regime last week launched an assault on a Palestinian neighborhood in the Syrian port city of Latakia, and some 10,000 residents have fled, died, or gone missing. Will the United Nations now ask Judge Richard Goldstone to investigate? (…)

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the regime’s assaults “unacceptable.” Turkey has wagged a stern finger at Mr. Assad, though it has yet to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia by withdrawing its ambassador from Damascus. President Obama finally came around to doing the right thing yesterday by calling for regime change in Damascus, only days after Hillary Clinton said that doing just that was “not going to be any news.” Mr. Obama deserves praise for superceding his Secretary of State, who seems to rate the influence and moral weight of the U.S. on a par with that of Vanuatu.

Meanwhile, Russia plans to go forward with arms sales to the regime, reminding everyone what the Administration achieved with its Moscow “reset.” Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group long-headquartered in Damascus, recently broke up a small anti-Assad demonstration in the Gaza Strip. We also haven’t heard much by way of support for Latakia’s Palestinians from the usual suspects in the pro-Palestinian movement.

Compare this international reaction to what has happened in Latakia to the outrage after last year’s Turkish flotilla incident involving Israel. No wonder Mr. Assad has spent the past months thinking he can get away with anything.

Wenn es um Israel geht, bleibt der Guardian sich auch im Jahre 2011 treu. Eine aus dem Gazastriefen koordinierte Terroratacke auf israelische Busse mit sieben Toten und unzähligen Verletzten? Die Israel mit gezielten Angriffen auf terroristische Strukturen in Gaza beantwortet?

Nicht ganz, die Überschrift im Guardian Live Blog lautet kurz und bündig:

Israel attacks Gaza

So einfach sind die Regeln der Israelberichtserstattung.

A fierce attack by the Syrians on a Palestinian refugee camp has led Palestinian factions, both Islamist and staunchly secular, to relook at their traditionally close ties with Damascus. (…)

Before the attack on Raml, the Palestinian leadership had been circumspect in speaking out against Assad’s regime, which has fiercely oppressed a domestic mass protest movement since March. But the most recent surge of violence, directed for the first time against the country’s Palestinian population, may be a turning point in Palestinian policy.  Quelle

Siehe auch:

Hamas police forces in the Gaza Strip dispersed a protest on Tuesday night against the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.