In the Oct. 9 Toronto Star, Mideast correspondent Oakland Ross filed a cautiously optimistic piece about the ceasefire that appears to be holding in Gaza, much to the relief of Sderot, an Israeli town close to the border that had been the target of countless rockets launched by Hamas “militants.”
Writes Ross: “Lately…the cloudless firmament over Sderot has been mostly free of deadly ordnance, and the community is doing its best to resemble what for a long time it has singularly failed to be – a halfway normal town.”
He reiterates a point that the Israel advocacy community often makes – no Palestinian violence means no action by the IDF: “…since last June, under Egyptian mediation, the Israeli government reached a ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“Since then, with only a few violations, the rocket salvoes from Gaza have stopped.
“So have the punitive Israeli military incursions into the neighbouring strip – attacks that had been a frequent and deadly feature of Palestinian existence prior to the laying down of arms in June.”
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