Truce? What Truce? Anyone Notice A Truce Around Here?

Stop the presses! This just in! SkyNews announced tonight that Hamas is probably not going to renew its truce with Israel! The Jerusalem Post wrote "Senior Hamas officials in Syria announced that the Gaza cease-fire with Israel, set to expire on December 19, would not be extended."

WHAT truce?!

1,212 rockets and 1,290 mortar bombs fired from the Gaza Strip have struck southern Israel between January 1, 2008 and November 20, 2008. This doesn't count the missiles and mortars that either misfired or fell on Gazan territory. These are actual "hits" in Israel.

Some truce.....

I gather we can all assume that Hamas is nicely armed to the teeth by its friends in Tehran and the Arab League, and is now ready to resume non-truce hostilities.

"We have used the 'calm' period to prepare and we have many surprises," Hamas officials said.

Ah, surprises! And just in time for the holidays!

In fact, I suspect it has more to do with the upcoming Israeli elections than anything else. Hamas would love to see Livni and the Kadima/Labor axis out, since that crowd is still working the lounges for a 'peace process,' and Hamas is quite well-versed in the Israeli temperament (remember Operation Defensive Shield?) -- blow up a few buses, shoot up a kindergarten, and voila! Bibi/Likud will take the election in a landslide.

And rightly so. There is no comparable "peace movement" in the Palestinian territories. Today Ahmed Qurei called for the "transfer" of all Jews out of the West Bank, even if they wanted to remain as Palestinian citizens. This is Arab racism, pure and simple. The very suggestion that Umm el Fahm rightly belongs on the Palestinian side of the border elicits howls of outrage and accusations of ethnic cleansing (note that this is a border adjustment, not a massacre) by the Arabs--Israel can't evict Arabs, even those openly promoting sedition, but the Palestinians get a pass on their racist insistence on expelling Jews.

As long as the Arabs, whether Hamasnikim in Gaza, or racists in Ramallah, aren't willing to budge an inch, then the peace process and the moderates in the Israeli government will fail.