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The big news, other than floods, the NYT issues, and Barbara Walter's response to Star Jones' prior day "resignation" from The View, is that the Israelis have arrested the Palestinian deputy prime minister and other Hamas officials in their march through the Gaza strip today. While Fox News is saying in their reports that these arrest are to secure leverage for the release of the 18 year old Israeli civilian soldier abducted Sunday, the Israelis themselves haven't said exactly why they've done this or what they're going to do with these men they have now detained. Now Palestinian militant group has announce they've executed the soldier, and according to Fox News, the Israeli government says the body "was badly burned."  That'd be ok, except there's this article from The Jerusalem Post:

IDF combat engineers on patrol late Wednesday night in Ramallah found Asheri's body in an abandoned car in an open field. The youth appeared to have been shot to death, and initial findings indicated that he may have been killed as early as Sunday, Israel Radio reported.

Earlier in the day, the Israelis apparently buzzed the Syrian president's house (they believe he and the Syrian government are protecting and aiding Hamas militants), and were supposedly chased away by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles. They've taken out Hamas training camps, a rocket factory, roads/bridges, and damaged the pipes supplying water to the Gaza strip as well as the power plant, so no electricity. Gaza  BTW, has a population of about 700K without power - health crisis an issue with damaged infrastructure like this.

Interesting that Ha'aretz, the English language version of the Israeli daily newspaper, comes up with a "permission denied" error when you try to access it. However, the Israel National News does load, and one article claims that the PRC (a Palestinian Authority terror group affiliated with Hamas - the Popular Resistance Committee) is basically a puppet for another group, Fatah:

Fatah is headed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). His group's involvement in hostage-taking in Samaria would prove damaging to efforts by the US, EU and Olmert government to portray the PLO chairman as a reliable alternative to Hamas.

The same article also claims that Israel had a possible kidnapper in custody and was at that time interrogating him.

Tags: Israel, Gaza, IDF, Palestinian, Hamas