The murdered men were Oleg Lipson, 37, and Lev Cherniak, 53 - both from Be'er Sheva. Lipson was an oleh (immigrant to Israel) from Tashkent and was married with a son. Cherniak also made Aliyah from the Former Soviet Union and left behind a wife. The victims were employed by the Israeli Dor Energy company.
Heavy Palestinian mortar and rocket fire prevented ambulances from reaching the casualties. Military sources report around 4 Palestinian gunmen carried out a well-planned raid on the Nahal Oz terminal, through which the Gazan population receives its fuel supplies from Israel. As they shot up the facility, heavy mortar and rocket fire pounded the Nahal Oz and Alumim sectors on the Israeli side of the border. Israeli troops returned the fire, killing one assailant and two Palestinians driving past the Nahal Oz terminal.
Civilians were told to stay indoors as heavy fire continued. Security forces are guarding the entrances to all the region’s towns and villages. Goods traffic into the Gaza Strip is halted until further notice. Israel holds Hamas, as the governing authority of the Gaza Strip, responsible for the attack on the source of its own fuel. It therefore has no grounds to complain about an Israel blockade.
Military sources report that the Palestinian raid took place as Israel’s civil defense exercise was drilling a terrorist sea landing on Tel Aviv.
They succeeded in breaking through the border fence and striking an important facility. The Palestinian raid demonstrated a capability to combine rocket fire with a direct ground assault on an Israeli location. This is a far cry from the scenarios practiced in Israel's national civil defense exercise.
Military experts warn that Palestinian terror planners are no longer waiting for Israel to finally launch its long-deferred major military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They have run ahead with their own scenario, a war of attrition made up of small-scale sorties synchronized with missile and rocket attacks on the Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon and strategic installations, like the Nahal Oz fuel terminal. Israel forces will have to re-configure their tactics to cope with this form of warfare.
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