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Day 27 – UN Compromised Again; Truce Declared ; Tunnels Destroyed

Today was the twenty-seventh day of Operation Protective Edge and the sixteenth day of ground operations in Gaza.

At a time that the United Nations is criticizing Israel for responding to threats near one of its facilities, The Cable reported on a new way the UN was used (or allowed itself to be used) to help Hamas perpetrate terror against Israel.

Hamas went to extraordinary lengths to hide construction of the tunnels from Israeli intelligence and military forces. In a scene straight out of the classic film The Great Escape, fighters emptied bags of flour — humanitarian food aid from the United Nations — and then used them to remove dirt from tunnel construction sites, Yakubovich said. Whenever Israeli air forces saw the bags on the surface, they assumed they were food deliveries, not evidence of Hamas secretly building an underground infrastructure. “This was a very clever way to make sure the IDF would not fire upon them,” Yakubovich said. “Hamas exploited international goodwill to hide terror activities.”

Israel has declared a limited seven hour humanitarian truce for Monday.

Israel said its military would hold fire in most of the Gaza Strip for seven hours on Monday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and for displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, but would fight back if attacked.

The Tower today quoted from Jonathan Kay who observed that rather than suffering isolation as a result of Operation Protective Edge, “Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam.”

Later in the dayIsrael started redeploying troops out of sections of Gaza over the weekend as it began considering the next stage of Operation Protective Edge.” Having destroyed the last known terror tunnel, Israel removed most of its ground forces from Gaza. Nonetheless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that “all options are on the table.”

[Photo: idfnadesk / YouTube ]