IDF forces today rescued Qaid Farhan Elkadi in Gaza. Elkadi was kidnapped on 7 Oct. He is a Bedouin resident of the Israeli. town of Rahat and was working as a watchman in a Kibbutz, Another Bedouin watchman was kidnapped that night, along with three of his children. Two of them were released in an earlier prisoner swap. As far as I know, the father and an older son are still being held captive (illegally!).
In a separate incident, a bus travelling in the eastern part of Gush Etzion (that’s the region where we live) was attacked. The vehicle sustained some damage, This incident was so far away from us that we did not even hear the explosion. We do frequently hear jets overhead and sounds of gunfire, but most of the time the latter is due to a wedding or celebration in an Arab village. It’s a bit like living in Chicago and not hearing the sounds of a drive-by shooting (except Chicago is many, many times more dangerous than Gush Etzion).
Iran has closed its’ airspace (again) leading to lots of speculation about an attack in the next 3-4 days. I wonder if they are actually ever going to make another big attack like last April. They might choose to attack a synagogue in Europe or some other symbolic target. It seems that what is important is to be able to spin whatever they do as a great success to the media.
Wetherhorn 