Israel's attacks on Gaza - consolation, training or maybe both for Iran

It's not really news when Israel kills Palestinians but when zionist sources describe Palestinian retaliation as "Palestinian.... rocket attacks" on Israel you know there's a game on.

In a meeting Saturday night with the mayors of southern Israeli communities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue hitting Palestinian forces in Gaza responsible for a barrage of rocket attacks.

Netayahu praised the residents for their resilience in the face of the rocket barrage.

“We will continue to hit whoever plans to attack citizens of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said. " At the same time, we will continue to improve home front defense including by means of additional Iron Dome systems, the effectiveness of which was shown again over the weekend."

More than 130 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza since an Israeli airstrike killed the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group.

Ah, so it was Israel attacking Gaza not the other way around.

Here's Gush Shalom on the same escalation:

In the beginning of the week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu failed in his attempt to get an American autorization for an attack on Iran, which might raise oil prizes and overthrow the world economy. At the end of the same week, he is setting the Gaza Strip border on fire with an act of "liquidation" which was certain to precipitate a barrage of rockets at the communities of southern Israel and make their children huddle in air-raid shelters on the Purim holiday.

The bombings and killings in the Gaza Strip look like a general rehearsal and test of weapons systems towards the great war to come - and a "consolation prize" for not yet have gotten the authorization.

In recent weeks, there were many indications of a growing distance between Hamas and Iran, and an unwillingness of the Hamas leaders to take part in a war between Israel and Iran, should it break out. A responsible Israeli leadership should have been seeking to deepen this gap, and therefore do all in its power to keep the Gaza border calm. But a responsible leadership is not exactly the right term for Israel's present government.

And what's this distance between Hamas and Iran all about?  Well it could be described as fallout from the Arab spring.  Hamas is distancing itself from Syria's Assad regime.  Here's The Guardian:

Hamas will not do Iran's bidding in any war with Israel, according to senior figures within the militant Islamic group.

"If there is a war between two powers, Hamas will not be part of such a war," Salah Bardawil, a member of the organisation's political bureau in Gaza City, told the Guardian.

He denied the group would launch rockets into Israel at Tehran's request in response to a strike on its nuclear sites. "Hamas is not part of military alliances in the region," said Bardawil. "Our strategy is to defend our rights"

The stance underscores Hamas's rift with its key financial sponsor and its realignment with the Muslim Brotherhood and popular protest movements in the Arab world.

It's curious to see how Israel and Iran both have issues with Palestine arising over the Arab spring, But what attracted my curiosity in the first place was how an attack by Israel on a Palestinian target could be described as a Palestinian attack on Israel.  Perhaps that too was a rehearsal for an Israeli attack on Iran.