Aid Shot - No Change In Policy
Apr 4, 2008 11:36 | Updated Apr 4, 2008 16:24 Hamas sniper who hit Dichter aide was aiming for minister By HAVIV RETTIG, GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST.COM STAFF AND APA Hamas sniper who wounded an aide to Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, Mati Gill, was aiming for the minister and the group he was leading, the organization told a French news agency late Friday afternoon.
Gill was listed in light to moderate condition at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon after being shot and wounded by a Palestinian gunman Friday while he and Dichter were touring an observation point overlooking the northern Gaza Strip. Dichter was not hurt.
Dichter and Gill had taken a 15-member delegation of the Board of Governors of the Canada Israel Committee (CIC) to the overlook near Sderot in order to familiarize them with the situation in southern Israeli communities bordering Gaza, which have come under frequent Palestinian rocket fire.
The IDF informed Army Radio that while the lookout point visited by Dichter's group is considered "under threat" and defined as a "target" for Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, visits there are not prohibited.
Earlier, Dichter told Army Radio he didn't believe the shots had been aimed at him, but at the Canadian group.
Moshe Ronen, the president of the CIC, described the unfolding of the incident: "We were told by the shin bet to lie down on the sand; an assistant of Avi Dichter was shot in the leg. As soon as the fire started everybody hit the floor and within approximately a minute the IDF started firing back. Within 20 to 30 minutes IDF troops had evacuated the delegation and the minister from the border area."
This was the second time in recent weeks that a Dichter aide has been hurt in a Palestinian attack. In late February, a Dichter bodyguard was lightly wounded in a rocket attack on southern Israel as he prepared for the minister to visit.
Religious Affairs Minister Yitzhak Cohen went to visit Gill in Barzilai Hospital and Mati told him: "Yesterday we went to an hachnasat sefer Torah [a ceremony commemorating a synagogue's acquisition of a new Torah scroll] in Sderot. I want the people to know that they can continue shooting but we will respond with more hachnasot sefer Torah."
In September of 2007, The Jerusalem Post ran a feature on Mati Gill.
Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack, including the military wing of Hamas, a militant offshoot of Fatah, and two little-known radical Islamic groups inspired by al-Qaida, the Army of the Nation and a hitherto unknown group called Defenders of Al-Aksa.
Earlier Friday, agriculturists who toured the fields of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha along the Gaza Strip border morning in a show of solidarity with local farmers - who are being attacked by Palestinian snipers on an almost daily basis - were themselves greeted by sniper fire from the Palestinian side of the fence. There were no wounded in that attack. Three months ago, an Ecuadorean volunteer at the kibbutz was killed by a Palestinian sniper.
Since this is the second aid to Dichter to be wounded I have little hope, no the sad reality is I have no hope of this incident making any change in the way the government handles the security situation.
You could ask if it would make a difference if the Minister was hit, would that be the spark that turns things around.
Based on history the answer would be no since we have had a Minister assassinated in the past and the murder of Ze'evi changed nothing.
What will it take to wake up either the leaders of Israel or the people to rise up against the leaders?
