Tension raising (part I)

That feeling has been growing in me for the past few weeks, the fragile truce between Israel and Palestine suffers. Several persons told me that this was not felt from the medias reports in France so I'll try to explain why I think the tension level is raising.

Last month there was an Israeli plan to hand over the security of the most calm cities of the west bank to the PA. The plan stopped after 2 cities Jericho and Tulkram instead of the 5. Israeli police accuses the PA police to not crack down on militants. Were they sincerely hoping for it to happen when they hand over the cities ? I've read several reports saying they weren't doing too bad to promote Israel security by preventing attacks.

The most extremist settlers in the west bank have starting acting instead of just shouting, fortunately most of their actions have been jugulated by the IDF, culminating at the Temple Mount aborted provocation gathering. Israel is continuing to grow the settlements in the West bank. About those, many people imagine settlements as small outposts lost in the mountain, while Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim are real cities. Sharon is trying to build enough houses to link Ma'ale Adumim to east Jerusalem so it would be definitively connected to Israeli land. Obviously Palestinians do not like that, especially that they still have a hope to have East Jerusalem as their capital.

More and more militants in Palestin start to rebel physically against Abbas's authority, it culminated when a few members from the armed wing of his own Fatah shot in the air in the middle of his presidential palace in Ramallah, and then rampaged on the nearby shops and restaurants. What they seem to want is armed conflict, period. They want the negociations to go faster and have better results faster, which is definitely a reasonable thing to want, but not that fast. And that's not by weakening Abbas power that they gonna help.
Palestinian Police is also struggling to maintain a state of law without getting the armed militants to overreact, a good example of what can happen when you got lots of young violent people armed during a truce can be found here, it seems they have to shoot something, fortunately all are not like that and hopefully it won't happen too often.

Finally, I kept the biggest one for the end, last weekend 3 young unarmed from Rafah in Gaza died under Israeli fire in controversial circumstances. Palestinians claim they were playing soccer near a forbidden area and that they ran for the ball and got shot down without warning by IDF for penetrating the forbidden area. 3 persons to grab a soccer ball in an area they obviously knew was forbidden ? Seems not right.
On the other side IDF claims they were trying to enter Egypt to do weapons smuggling. Some press reports say they were paid a few hundred bucks to cross the border. IDF obviously says there was warning shots and they didn't obey. I thought they were building sophisticated tunnels to do so, and even if most are getting uncovered I seriously doubt none remains. And by day? So they can surely get shot, what were they thinking ?
Well, I doubt anyone will say the truce anytime soon. But as one could expect, it triggered a massive retaliation on Gush Katiff and Sderot who received their first Qassams and mortar shells for a few months. Hamas has probably been making stocks these past months... just in case.