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This disgrace has been going on for years. It usually culminates ahead of the Feast of Purim, when small, seemingly harmless charges go off everywhere. You can get them at any toy store. Those detonators have already cost people at least one finger, sometimes more, and children got eye injuries, but practically nothing has been done, except for a few token raids on a few importers and merchants.
Now, those fireworks have become the primary weapon in the current Intifada (uprising) in Jerusalem. Well, at least for now.
Those Palestinians fire them directly from magazines of 20-25 units.
Yesterday, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch held a meeting designed to examine any legal means of prohibiting these fireworks from being important, even temporarily, as they are widely used in the framework of the disturbances.
According to estimates, since last July, thousands of fireworks have been fired directly at Israeli police officers in Jerusalem. Several of them have already been injured by this allegedly harmless fire. Some had burns and others suffered injuries to their eardrums. Apparently, three police officers lost their hearing in one ear.
Haaretz daily disclosed that unlike other weapons, these fireworks are not smuggled through tunnels or over the border-fence, but are rather imported legally. They enter Israel by the front door, through the port at Ashdod. According to Israeli Police estimates, the fireworks used by the Palestinian rioters are sold by Israeli import chains, which legally buy them and import them here to Israel.
This effort to find a legal means of stopping the fireworks is doomed to fail. Everything is done for show. They are just going through the motions. They only want to show they are doing something so no one could say otherwise and call them on the fact that Jerusalem is suffering from a violent Intifada. Those who keep denying it, will prevent any firm measures against the rioters’ weapons. Those who not prevent them from using fireworks, will be hard pressed to prevent the use of Molotov cocktails and firearms.
iHLS editor-in-chief
