There is only one way of stopping Quassam fire : clearing Gaza of all the guns and explosives. It represents a 48 hours operation, no more. Joint operation PA/EU.... All the protection amounting to NIS 45 millions will do nothing, and certainly not clear the root cause of the problem.

TRUTH EXPOSED: am very very fearful for my children. It doesn’t matter how much you guide children and tell them to put their hands over their head. A hand over the head will not protect them from a Qassam which will open a hole in the ceiling HOW SILLY OF YOU ISRAELIS TO FEEL THIS WAY. THE LEFT GOVERNMENT AND THE ARABS LIVING ON YOUR LAND FEEL THAT THE SONIC BOOMS ARE SO MUCH MORE DAMAGING THAN ANY BOMBS CUTS & GASHES THEY THROW YOU. YOU ISRAELIS MUST UNDERSTAND THEIR PLIGHT. THE HOMES THAT YOU HANDED THEM WERE NOT FURNISHED, THE HOT HOUSES WERE NOT WATERED, THE SHULS DID NOT HAVE BUCKETS OF GOLD PAINT FOR THEM, THE LAND DID NOT HAVE MOWED LAWNS . YOU ISRAELIS ARE CRUEL DISPASSIONATE PEOPLE. HOW DARE YOU PUT YOUR PERSONAL SAFETY EDUCATION AND DREAMS OF BUILDING A FAMILY IN FRONT OF YOU? ARE YOU TRYING TO BE A NORMAL PEOPLE. ARE YOU TRYING TO LIVE A LIFE ?HOW CAN YOU HAVE FEARS FOR YOUR CHILDREN LIFES WHEN THE ARABS HAVE SHOWN YOU SO MANY TIMES THAT A CHILDS LIFE IS NOT IMPORTANT. THAT A BOMB AROUND THE CHILD IS PERFECTLY HONORABLE. ISRAELIS...LEARN FROM THEM. THEY HAVE MUCH TO OFFER.

I guess this is even, no? Silly Ynet.

Either you are stupid or ignorant. For your information israel, since 1967 has been trying to use force to clear Gaza from weapons. What makes you think that they can do it nopw in 48 hrs????? STUPID. The only solution is for israel to be fair and square and stop behaving like an outlaw state. Making love and friends not making wars.....PLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"A CHILDS LIFE IS NOT IMPORTANT. THAT A BOMB AROUND THE CHILD IS PERFECTLY HONORABLE." DACON9, you are a very very sick person. Please, get help (and stop typing in caps, its annoying, use exclamation marks if you want). The gaza strip is about 100 square miles. Plus, a significant amount of it is urban. A military operation to completely disarm the strip would take way longer than 2 days and it would be strategicly hell. Going building to building disarming terrorists that are firing AK 47s and launching RPGs and mortars at you is not easy nor safe. Just a quick example: It took coalition forces 3 days and 28 deaths to just cross across 7 miles of an urban area with insurgents in Iraq. They weren't even on the offensive there. John, please give an example of Israel being unfair or acting like an outlaw state.

DACON9 was being sarcastic in his opinion.

there are plently of examples to Israel not being fair and square. In Gaza there are around 1.2 million people. Only few terrorists in percentage terms cause trouble. It is wrong, very wrong, to terrorise the population with supersonic flights that are set to give all people living in Gaza hell. It would be more effective to keep the population out of it. Not to make their life hell on check points and ....etc. At the end of the day the population can put pressure on those terrorists to stop if they see a humaine IDF and Israel. But when all they see is hell and collective punishment then they will hate israel and some more terrorists will be produced. You se israel did not collectively punish israelis for what few rightest did...they dealt with them only....the same should be applied to palestinians who want to live in peace.

Thanks Newt for pointing that out. Sorry DACON9, the caps just got to my head. To john: " In Gaza there are around 1.2 million people. Only few terrorists in percentage terms cause trouble." First sentence, that sounds about right. Second sentence, not so much. Just to throw some numbers in the air: from September 29 2000 to September 29 2005, palestinian terrorists attempted to commit 26,159 acts of terrorism (http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/pro_13_10_e.htm). In 2002, 68% of palestinians supported the use of suicide bombs (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2072851.stm). If you ask me, thats a whole lot of "trouble". Now, I don't know that much about the IAF operations in gaza other than the fact that they are doing an amazing job killing terrorists and not civilians (not to mention keeping their lives at fairly low risk doing it). As for the check points: it might not be fun getting frisked but that doesn't compare to the pain and agony these check points are preventing. Israel is not looking to ruin innocent lives, its looking to save lives. If you pay attention to Israel's high court, you'll notice that Israel has gone a long way to make these counter-terror measures as painless as possible, but getting rid of them would be devastating. Again: airport security is not collective punishment on the world for the relatively few terrorists that have abused the airlines (I'm so proud of that analogy).

John, you assume that Islamic Jihad thinks the same way you do. If they did -- if they actually intended to establish a peaceful relationship -- then you would not be far off. The trouble is that PIJ doesn't give a rat's assets about peace. Their job is to kill civilians and disrupt the peace process. They get paid to do this. They get honored when they do it. They get their jollies when they do it. There are people like that in any society; they are sick, evil and twisted. In most societies, they are not armed with rockets and shooting at kindergartens because their government does something about it.. The PA refuses to do anything about this. So Israel needs to do something. Should it flatten Gaza with artillery like the Syrians and Iraqis would have done? Should it send suicide bombers to blow up mosques as the Palestinians would have done? Should it simply nuke Gaza? Should it massacre thousands of Palestinian civilians? It is doing none of these things. Instead, it is making sonic booms because these are non lethal but make the point. The Palestinians are, as usual, incredibly lucky that Israel is Israel; any of their other neighbors, except maybe for lebanon, would not tolerate their BS.

JK, Palestinian Arab kids may be exposed to sonic booms, as you sarcastically note, but those kids are not going to be killed because of them. Many Israelis have been killed or wounded by Qassams, you fool. Also, Israel has to fly its planes above because of all the terrorism from the Arabs. If not for that, the Arabs would not have to be "traumatized" by sonic booms. Go to your anti-Israel sites, silly JK.