Olmert says he'll respond to Qassams - eventually

Ehud Olmert today re-affirmed his vision of an independent Palestinian Arab state - and then said something even dumber:

Olmert said that if the Kassam rocket attacks on Israel continue, Israel would have to retaliate. "We are not going to restrain ourselves forever," he said. "The continued attacks challenge Israel's patience. In the end, if the attacks continue, we will respond."

Funny...where have we heard that before?

In late November, when the "cease fire" was new:

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday morning that any attempt to fire into Israeli territories would be considered a breach of the cease-fire and treated with severity.

According to Peretz, Israel is interested in quiet, but would not accept attacks on its citizens.

A couple of days later, Olmert admitted that he was "a little disappointed" that Qassams were still being shot daily into Israel.

In late December, after a month of straight Qassam attacks in the wake of Olmert's "cease fire", he asked the UN to intervene. Yeah, that really worked.
------------------------------------------

Here is my best shot at keeping track of when rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza so far this month. On the 8th, 10 were claimed to have been shot by Islamic Jihad but only four or so were recorded as having landed. Most of the rest of these numbers were rockets that actually landed in Israel, with links back to the news stories. Numbers in parentheses are Arab claims.

Remember that Israel still regards this as being "calm" and has only rarely responded to Gaza terror since the "cease fire" announced in November.

February 2007 Qassam attacks

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
				1	2	3
				3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
		4	4	(10)	4
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
1	5			3	2	2
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
(4)	(2)	(8)	4(9)		1(2)
25	26	27	28
	(5)	(2)