Hamas returned 4 more dead bodies to Israel last night. Interestingly, they did refrain from parading and making a show. In return, Israel released about 600 imprisoned terrorists. Hamas then was able to display that they had learned something from the previous rounds of hostage swaps. A couple of newly freed terrorists were trotted out to make (scripted?) statements about how badly they had been treated in Israeli prisons. It obviously was a play to counteract the really bad press they got when released Israelis had been shown to be mistreated and starved. Of course, the terrorists were nowhere nearly as gaunt as the previously released Israelis. But the exercise showed that they had been paying attention, and must have been sensitive to the damning coverage they got from the appearance of the freed Israelis.
Iran is still keeping their newly (re)built air defense force on high alert. The possibility of an Israeli (or American?) attack on their nuclear facilities is, at least in their minds, a very real possibility. Iran currently has enough enriched (to 60%) uranium to make about 5 or 6 nuclear weapons. The material still needs further enrichment (to about 90%), conversion to solid state, and to be mated with an ignition system in order to have a usable weapon. The added enrichment could be done in a few weeks. Making a workable trigger might take a little longer. But both India and Pakistan proved that their own scientists could manage to do it. There is no reason to doubt the ability of Iran to duplicate that achievement.
Israeli forces continue to act against Hezbollah in the north. The de facto cooperation between the terrorists and the Lebanese Army has been the reason for several IDF attacks on diverse locations in Lebanon. Other IAF bombing attacks have been aimed at bases and weapons storage locations of the former Syrian Army. Still others have been aimed at Hamas targets, including rocket launchers. Last night another (home-made?) rocket was directed against Israel. This one, like at least two others that preceded it, failed to fly across the Gaza-Israel border and ended up falling inside the Gaza strip.
When the current truce expires, it doesn’t mean an immediate return to more intense fighting. Hamas has always managed low level provocations during periods when major combat was not taking place. Sometimes a single rocket, or a sniper shot, might just be a Hamas experiment to see how much they could get away with before it resulted in a serious IDF response. That also applies to the other borders, to Judea and Samaria, and to Palestinian Authority territory.
Wetherhorn 