You are here
ISRAEL: Rockets rain down on Israel. Tensions rise in the Middle East
By Abu Daoud
VOL's Middle East Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
November 16, 2012
Last night I was watching CNN and Jenny (5) said, "What are those? Rockets?" It was footage of the fighting between Hamas and the IDF. I answered (without thinking about it), "Yeah, they're firing rockets at Israel," and then quickly added, "But not here."
So soldiers are being mobilized and it looks like foot soldiers will be going into Gaza.
In truly worrying news, a rocket from Gaza recently reached the suburbs of Tel Aviv, which is the hub of the entire country. That little coastal strip from Tel Aviv up through Haifa is where most of the population of this little country lives. (Israel is about the size of New Jersey, incidentally.) If the guys in Gaza get better missiles from Iran (which is where they are coming from) then you will start to see serious casualties on the Israeli side, and the government will not permit that.
In the past Egypt could more or less be counted on to make smuggling arms into Gaza hard. No more...
Meanwhile, the fighting in Syria is spilling over into the always-unstable country of Lebanon. And fighting among the various parties (and there are several, not just two) in Syria recently made the Israeli army fire the first warning shots in decades in the Golan cease-fire area. It appears that the Syrians had not intended to cross the cease-fire line, fortunately.
Our neighbors in Jordan, which has the reputation of being a stable country, have recently eliminated fuel subsidies, which has caused massive protests over there. A line has been crossed, in fact, in that some people are openly calling for the abdication of King Abdullah. If he does not abdicate, force will have to be used to suppress dissenting voices. If he does abdicate the monarchy will be abolished, or a sibling of his will become monarch. Either way, Jordan will go the way of Egypt and become much more Islamist-leaning in its politics and foreign relations.
In my e-mail inbox this morning I had a message from the US Embassy-consulates are closed today and the embassy hours have been reduced. Also, diplomats may not travel through the West Bank because of the instability in both Israel and Jordan. Jordan, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what to do with tens of thousands of refugees from Syria. Jordan does not even have enough food or water for its own population.
We have been living in the Middle East now for many years, and I'm quite used to the occasional instability or violence. But it was always isolated to this or that area. The instability is too widespread now. I'm not an alarmist, but I don't see how any of this ends up happily. That having been said, I do not feel our family is in any imminent danger, I am glad to say.
Would you please pray for peace in the region? Pray that the local churches would be part of the solution and not just close their eyes and ears to these difficulties? And pray for us, that in the midst of all of this we would be people of light and hope and witnesses to the grace of our Creator and the love of our Redeemer.
END
