The Palestinians admitted days ago the assault on the wall was planned for weeks. Now, the Globe & Mail reports that the wall’s destruction wasn’t originally supposed to even break the blockade:
Abu Uday, a 23-year-old member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in an interview yesterday that the initial reason they weakened the border fence was to ambush Israeli tanks if and when they ever moved to reoccupy southern Gaza.
So how can AP spin the border breach as a spontaneous reaction to the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence?
The current border crisis developed at breathtaking speed, typical of Gaza’s volatility.
It started last week with what Israel says was the inadvertent killing of a son of Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar in an Israeli arrest raid. Hamas retaliated with rocket barrages on Israel, and Israel struck back by sealing Gaza hermetically and cutting off fuel shipments. Several days later, Gaza militants blew down the border wall with Egypt, effectively ending the Israeli blockade, which had been tacitly backed by Egypt.
Nobody topples an international border fence with “breathtaking speed.”
UPDATE Jan. 27: The Daily Telegraph makes the same mistake:
The wall fell after a nearly week-long Israeli blockade of fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza, a response to a week of heavy qassam rocket attacks on Israeli towns after Israeli air strikes killed the son of a senior Hamas leader and 18 other people.
