1. Tensions with Gaza are continuing to simmer, with near daily incidents of cross-border violence.
- On Sunday, Israel responded to the discovery of a bomb hidden inside bolt-cutters by shelling an Islamic Jihad post near the border, killing three, though much of the press attention Monday is on the damage done by incendiary kites flown into Israeli territory.
- Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page is a picture taken from a drone of a nature reserve scorched by a suspected Gazan kite, with the paper bemoaning its sorry state in overwrought headlines like “Land of fire” and “The ground is crying.”
- “It’s a black stain over more than 70 percent of the Beeri Crater preserve. The estimation is that many animals were also burned,” the paper reports, though its attempts to compare the current landscape with a picture of the famous anemone poppies that cover the ground in the early spring is a bit less than ingenuous.
- The paper reports that some 300 kites are thought to have set 260 fires that have burnt 4,000 dunams (990 acres) of agricultural land, causing NIS 30 million ($8.4 million)
- Israel Hayom writes that farmers, fed up with their fields being burnt, are turning to The Hague to launch a war crimes investigation against the kite flyers. Unmentioned is that the move is apparently mostly a publicity stunt and that the kites are nothing compared to the Gazan snipers picking off harvesters (mostly foreign workers) just a few years ago.
2. Most of international attention, though, is on a maritime barrier Israel started construction on Sunday off the Gaza coast, billed as the first of its kind in the world.
Haaretz reports that “the barrier will consist of three layers. The first will be below the water; the second will be made of stone; the third will be made of barbed wire. An additional fence will surround the sea fence. The Defense Ministry described the barrier as ‘an impenetrable breakwater.’ It does not prevent Gazans from going out to sea.”
In Israel Hayom, columnist Yoav Limor writes that the sea barrier sends a message to Hamas that Israel is always one step ahead, should the terror group decide it wants war.
“Israel believes there is still room to create deterrence vis-a-vis Gaza, but as part of its preparations for a possible escalation in violence decided yesterday to publicize the fact that it’s building the maritime barrier,” he writes.
3. Several reports couple the maritime barrier with the news that Palestinians will attempt this week to break the Gaza blockade by sailing a flotilla, on the eighth anniversary of a deadly attempt by the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship.
- Unlike other attempts, this will be a case of a boat trying to break out of the coastal enclave instead of into it, carrying injured Gazans.
- “Organisers said the boat would depart on Tuesday at 11:00 am (0800 GMT) carrying patients needing medical care, students and job-seeking university graduates. Its intended destination was not announced,” the Telegraph reports. “The boat also brings ‘dreams of our people and their aspirations for freedom,’ Salah Abdul-Ati, the organiser, said in a press conference at Gaza City’s port.”
- The Associated Press reports that even with the Rafah border finally open with Egypt, Gazans aren’t exactly allowed to rush the gates, with some 25,000 people on a list stuck waiting up to a year to get out. “Egyptian border officials had been clearing only about 250 travelers a day, about a third of the usual volume in the past. As a result, many slated for travel had to wait for hours near the border, only to be told to come back the next day,” the agency reports.
4. Israel’s land- and sea-based barriers with Gaza can’t stop airborne objects, and on Sunday night, the army said it had discovered an explosive-laden drone flown from the Strip into Israel.
- The army says the drone was meant to injure soldiers, but doesn’t explain how the UAV so badly botched the one job it had, and how the army botched its job of not letting explosive laden drones into the country.
- Making matters somewhat worse, Walla News quotes a defense source saying the drone was much larger than the type usually used by Gazans.
- “Though it was found near the fence, the sources estimate that the size of the drone meant it could make it deep inside Israel.”
5. The last time an apparently explosives-laden drone infiltrated Israel (though Israel has yet to display proof it was armed) it came from Iran, via Syria, and set off an intense round of fighting.
- Tensions in the north remain hot and Haaretz reports that Israeli officials believe Russia is now open to discussing pushing Iranian troops away from the Syrian border with Israel.
- “Russia recently renewed efforts to try to get the United States involved in agreements that would stabilize Syria. The Russians might be willing to remove the Iranians from the Israeli border, though not necessarily remove the forces linked to them from the whole country,” the paper reports.
6. Taking a deeper look at the photo of the F-35 over Beirut, first bragged about, then leaked to the press, Haaretz’s Amos Harel asks where one draws the line between deterrence and hubris.
- “Israel wants to show that the advanced warplane is already in use in operational missions. There is certainly a deterrent value to the sight of the plane above Beirut’s international airport and over the city’s Dahiya neighborhood, home to the city’s Shi’ite population, during a heightened period of tension in the north. But it still comes off like inordinate swagger, and perhaps also an attempt to rehabilitate the IAF’s image following the downing of an F-16 during the previous escalation of hostilities with Iran and Syria, in February,” he writes.
7. Labor MK Eitan Cabel’s week of getting pummeled over an idea to annex (or extend sovereignty to) West Bank settlement blocs is continuing Monday.
- Cabel, who watched his beloved Celtics get booted from the NBA playoffs, was made fun of on Twitter Monday morning to pour some salt in his wounds.
- “It’s over, Boston, who I so wanted to see in the finals, is staying home,” Cabel posted on Twitter, to which dovish former Foreign Ministry head Alon Pinkas quipped “Inside the blocs?”
- Elsewhere on the microblogging platform, lame duck opposition leader Isaac Herzog comes to Cabel’s defense, writing that while he doesn’t agree with everything he said, his broaching of the subject is legitimate.
- “In the end, we all want to stop an Israstine, which would be the end of Zionism! Too bad there’s no discussion like this in Likud, which is too afraid to even ask.”
- In Haaretz, former Meretz MK Tzvia Greenfeld (an iconoclast in her own right) chides Cabel, calling him “more Likud than Likud.”
- “There’s no way to change the world that’s been created by the barbarians,” she writes, “if you give in to them and their ideas, as Cabel has done.”