Two Israeli men in their 30s were killed Wednesday afternoon in exchanges of fire that erupted near the Nahal Oz terminal in the central Gaza Strip, the Magen David Adom emergency services reported. Medical teams were making their way to the scene of the incident.Ha'aretz adds:
Three Palestinians were killed in an ensuing Israel Air Force strike in Gaza City, sources in the Strip said.
The IDF reported that an army aircraft struck and hit a vehicle carrying gunmen who were involved in the shooting attack in Nahal Oz.
...
"This a cynical attack," an official added. "On the one hand, Hamas complains of the blockade on Gaza, and on the other hand it is responsible for the attack on the fuel terminal, which provides gas and fuel to the residents of the Strip," he stated.
Channel 2 TV said the infiltrators set fuel depots afire.
The extent of damage to the facility was unclear, but the attack threatened to exacerbate Gaza's already delicate humanitarian situation . Plumes of smoke billowed up from the depot, the sole conduit of fuel to Gaza's 1.4 million residents.
People try to find logic in the targets that Palestinian Arab terrorists hit, but they miss the point:
The terrorists hit wherever they can. Certainly they might try to abduct rather than kill Israelis, but for the most part they will kill any Israeli in the Middle East that they can. Thanks to Israeli defenses, they don't have the luxury of choosing targets based on perceived symbolic value; they will choose the weakest point they can find and kill whomever they can, not caring if the victims are women, children, Arabs or Jews, and cause all the damage and panic they can.
In this case, the fact that they set Gaza's main fuel depot on fire shows that their bloodlust and intense desire to feel powerful is more important than prosaic concerns like the humanitarian situation in Gaza. (Not to discount the fact that they have a great interest in maintaining a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but that wasn't the goal.)
These are crimes of opportunity, plain and simple.