Now, Are you saying that you support terrorism as a means to get the land back instead of diplomacy?
and if you do, how would you like Israel to respond to that terrorism?
if terrorism means defending your family and home... well then yes, I support them... just as I supported them in Northern Ireland. I would like Israel to respond in the ONLY way that works... talking.
Hamas always have been, and always will be, nothing but terrorists. They couldn't care less about the innocent Palestinians..you know, with all the killing they've done of their own and instead of smuggling in food/medical supplies and smuggling out civilians, they only cared about brining in weapons..
But hey if you want to support that........
RM, I feel embarrassed for you after reading your posts. What you write is propaganda only one so delusional could actually believe is fact. As everyone can see here, you provide no evidence that Hamas was only bringing in weapons. You provide no evidence that they don't care about the innocent Palestinians. Unfortunately for you, that evidence does not exist. It's not logical for you to assume Hamas does not care for its fellow Palestinians. It's a completely irrational thought driven by nothing but hatred for a group resisting against what you thought was a state that can do no more wrong than Hamas. Yes, you try to play the impartial card by condemning Israel "as well", but you spend much more time painting a far worse picture of Hamas. Let's compare the numbers though, as it's much more simple.
Israel is more technologically advanced. Hamas uses nothing but fertilizer to power explosives that hardly ever cause serious damage. If you notice, most news reports that report the firing of rockets at Israeli towns often use "left the town of Sderot in shock." On the other hand, Israel leaves tens of thousands of people in Gaza homeless (keep in mind 80% of Gaza's population is already refugees), thousands dead or dying, half of whom are likely to be children. Is this a way a "technologically advanced" country with some of the most superior weaponry fights? Is it logical for Israel to shell schools, homes, etc, in one of the most densely populated place in the world?
I know what your argument will be - rocket attacks. When the ceasefire went on during the past half year, little to no rockets were fired from Hamas. It was not until Nov 4 when Israel broke the ceasefire (yes, they did break the ceasefire, even CNN admitted it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEwzmJQD8eA) that Hamas fired rockets IN RETALIATION, and even those stopped abruptly. If Israel wants another ceasefire with a cease in rocket attacks, all Hamas asked was the SAME THING nearly every country in the world asked: LIFT THE BLOCKADE AND ALLOW BASIC FOODS AND NECESSITIES IN. Israel refused something the entire world asked, whilst Hamas was complying with everything the world is asking. Who is really the terrorist?
Who is the real terrorist? Oooh, I'll play!
Up to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a "new massacre." One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then -- But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story.
The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers."
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders."What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah," he said. "Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?"
Why, waiting for the ceasefire, of course. That turns out to have its own costs, even though they are not widely recognized. But when the cost-benefit of leaving Hamas in posession of Gaza was calculated, was the price of reprisal included in the bill?
Now, Are you saying that you support terrorism as a means to get the land back instead of diplomacy?
and if you do, how would you like Israel to respond to that terrorism?
if terrorism means defending your family and home... well then yes, I support them... just as I supported them in Northern Ireland. I would like Israel to respond in the ONLY way that works... talking.
I would like Israel to respond by abiding by international law and withdrawing from the occupied territories.
By the way, most of those rockets landed in open ground outside Sderot. Sderot legally belongs to the Palestinians. It was built on a village called Najd which was ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948. It was first settled by the Zionists in 1951.
So, if the Zionists don't like living there in the way of Hamas' crappy homemade rockets then they can simply fuck off back to America, or Israel.
RM, I feel embarrassed for you after reading your posts. What you write is propaganda only one so delusional could actually believe is fact. As everyone can see here, you provide no evidence that Hamas was only bringing in weapons. You provide no evidence that they don't care about the innocent Palestinians. Unfortunately for you, that evidence does not exist. It's not logical for you to assume Hamas does not care for its fellow Palestinians. It's a completely irrational thought driven by nothing but hatred for a group resisting against what you thought was a state that can do no more wrong than Hamas. Yes, you try to play the impartial card by condemning Israel "as well", but you spend much more time painting a far worse picture of Hamas. Let's compare the numbers though, as it's much more simple.
Israel is more technologically advanced. Hamas uses nothing but fertilizer to power explosives that hardly ever cause serious damage. If you notice, most news reports that report the firing of rockets at Israeli towns often use "left the town of Sderot in shock." On the other hand, Israel leaves tens of thousands of people in Gaza homeless (keep in mind 80% of Gaza's population is already refugees), thousands dead or dying, half of whom are likely to be children. Is this a way a "technologically advanced" country with some of the most superior weaponry fights? Is it logical for Israel to shell schools, homes, etc, in one of the most densely populated place in the world?
I know what your argument will be - rocket attacks. When the ceasefire went on during the past half year, little to no rockets were fired from Hamas. It was not until Nov 4 when Israel broke the ceasefire (yes, they did break the ceasefire, even CNN admitted it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEwzmJQD8eA) that Hamas fired rockets IN RETALIATION, and even those stopped abruptly. If Israel wants another ceasefire with a cease in rocket attacks, all Hamas asked was the SAME THING nearly every country in the world asked: LIFT THE BLOCKADE AND ALLOW BASIC FOODS AND NECESSITIES IN. Israel refused something the entire world asked, whilst Hamas was complying with everything the world is asking. Who is really the terrorist?
I only got part way into reading this before I saw you are going off topic from what I was writing, which makes the rest irrelevent to me.
In that post I was not talking about "Israel vs.Hamas, who is worse."
I was talking about Hamas vs.Palestinian civilians. It was Hamas who admitted to having the tunnels so they can get weapons. It is Hamas that have done nothing to build up Gaza..what happened to the money given them from their own civilians? Who knows, all I can say is it's known they aren't doing squat with it to help civilians. And it was Hamas that put the delicate 3 week cease fire in jeapordy, and no doubt, the potential sustaned cease fire after that point, by continuing to fire rockets into Israel. It is Hamas that is attempting to take control over West Bank from Mahmud Abbas(who, despite being Palestinian, and not Israeli, has said all the same things I am repeating..curious thing, huh?) who has maintain relative peace there. If they cared about the civilian's they would leave West Bank alone. But they want to bring the terror there too, cos like Israel, they want more territory, no matter how the civilians feel about it, or what is best for their safety.
That's not propoganda. Feel embarrassed only for yourself.
Who is the real terrorist? Oooh, I'll play!
Up to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a "new massacre." One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then -- But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story.
The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers."
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders."What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah," he said. "Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?"
Why, waiting for the ceasefire, of course. That turns out to have its own costs, even though they are not widely recognized. But when the cost-benefit of leaving Hamas in posession of Gaza was calculated, was the price of reprisal included in the bill?
-- Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
You just brought to light something I was meaning to post back to Commy about...Like we always are left to choose between here, Fatah was the lesser of 2 evils.
For those who think Fatah is the lesser of two evils read the article below. Collaboration with Israel against Palestinian civilians may seem good for YOU but I highly doubt it is good for Palestinians civilians.
Common Western political wisdom has it that when Western countries support Israeli military action against Arab countries or the Palestinian people, they do so because they support Israel's right to defend itself against its enemies.
This has always been established wisdom in Israel itself, even before the colonial settlement was established, wherein its predatory army is ironically named the Israel Defense Forces, not unlike the South African apartheid army, which was also known as the South African Defense Forces. This defensive nomenclature is hardly exclusive to Israel and South Africa, as many countries rushed after World War II to rename their Ministries of "War" as Ministries of "Defense." Still, Israel's allegedly defensive actions define every single war the colonial settlement has ever engaged in, even and especially when it starts these wars, which it has done in all cases except in 1973.
Thus the war of 1948 which Zionist militias started against the Palestinian people on 30 November 1947, a day after a Western-controlled United Nations General Assembly issued the Partition Plan, is presented as "defensive," as was its expulsion of about 400,000 Palestinians before 15 May 1948, i.e. before the day on which three Arab armies (the Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi armies) invaded the area that became Israel (Lebanon hardly had an army to invade with and hardly managed to retrieve two Lebanese villages that Israel had occupied, and Jordanian forces only entered the areas designated by the UN plan for the Palestinian state, and East Jerusalem which was projected to fall under UN jurisdiction).
Yet until this very day, Israel, its Western and Arab and Palestinian allies, seem to agree with the major Israeli lie that the refugee "problem" resulted from the 1948 war which Israel fought as a "defensive" war and that the responsibility of the refugees lies with the Arab governments who "started" the war. While the remaining 370,000 Palestinians Israel expelled were driven out after 15 May 1948 and before the end of January 1949 (when armistice talks began), they could ostensibly be included in the argument that their expulsion was a result of the war, but it remains unclear why the first 400,000 would be included in that category. The thousands of Palestinians who would be expelled after the armistice agreements were signed, especially those of the city of Majdal, now Ashkelon, whose population was loaded onto trucks and expelled to Gaza, does not even enter these calculations.
The argument in fact must be extended to the post-15 May refugees. After all, it was Zionist expulsions of the Palestinians for over five months prior to the Arab armies' intervention in May 1948 that was used as a casus belli for the Arab armies whose intervention was carried out under the banner of defending Palestine and the Palestinians against Zionist aggression. None of this however seems to matter and Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and their UN-designated state continues to be presented as part of "Israel's right to defend itself."
Ironically, Israel's unprovoked invasion of Egypt in 1956 and occupation of Sinai also seems to fall under the category of Israel's right to defend itself as far as the Israelis were concerned, although United States President Dwight Eisenhower and the Soviet Union thought otherwise at the time, which forced Israel to withdraw. Israel's massive invasions of three Arab countries in 1967 was/is also presented as another defensive war, wherein if it is ever admitted that Israel is the party that started the war, the admission is quickly followed by the "explanation" (hasbara in Hebrew, which is also the word for "propaganda") that it was a "preemptive" war in which Israel was "defending" itself. This also applies to Israel's 1978 and 1982 and 2006 invasions of Lebanon, its continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, and its massacres against the Palestinians there in the last three weeks.
The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should.
Indeed, as The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the best friend of Israel and the Saudi ruling family, has argued recently, in doing so, Israel is engaged in a pedagogical exercise of "educating" the Palestinians. Perhaps many of the Arab businessmen's associations who regularly invite Friedman to speak to their organizations in a number of Arab countries and pay him an astronomical speaking fee can invite him back to educate them on Israel's pedagogical methods and on The New York Times' war propaganda on behalf of Israel.
The major argument here is two-fold, namely that while Israel has the right to defend itself, its victims have no similar right to defend themselves. In fact, the logic is even more sinister than this and can be elucidated as follows: Israel has the right to oppress the Palestinians and does so to defend itself, but were the Palestinians to defend themselves against Israel's oppression, which they do not have a right to do, Israel will then have the right to defend itself against their illegitimate defense of themselves against its legitimate oppression of them, which it carries out anyway in order to defend itself legitimately.
This is why, not only does Israel have the right to arm itself and to be a nuclear power and to have a military edge over the combined militaries of the entire region in which it lives, but it also must ensure that the military power of its neighbors is used to quell the Palestinians and not Israel, indeed to help Israel lay siege to the resisting Palestinians. When and if Palestinians try to arm themselves to defend their lives against Israeli invasions and slaughter, Israel makes every effort to prevent them from doing so and considers this "illegal smuggling."
The recent signing of an agreement between Israel and its US sponsor and the volunteering of European countries (France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Spain) to police the waters and borders of Gaza with Egypt to prevent the Palestinians from "smuggling" arms to defend themselves is the most recent application of this understanding. Israel's US sponsor and European allies are horrified by the Palestinians' attempts to arm themselves (to which they have no right) in order to defend their very lives against Israel's right to slaughter them in order to defend itself.
Indeed, Israel has included the erstwhile Palestinian leadership for the last 15 years in its efforts to repress all Palestinians who resist its right to defend itself by oppressing them. This is precisely why the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created in the first place. The PA that the Oslo Agreement established on paper in autumn 1993 and came to life in the form of institutions and a collaborating Palestinian elite in 1994 has finally, however, come to an end in the winter of 2009. While the PA tried its best to be a repressive force on behalf of Israel and has killed scores of Palestinians who resisted the occupation and PA collaboration since 1994, its ability to control the surge of Palestinian resistance was checked by its failure to win the last elections and its failure to defeat Hamas militarily. Fifteen years after its establishment, the PA has run its course. In Gaza, Israel destroyed all the bureaucratic and administrative offices of the PA run by Hamas and thus has returned Hamas by default to its erstwhile status as the major Palestinian guerrilla group resisting Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel's criminal siege of Gaza, and Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
In the West Bank, the process of finishing off the PA has been more gradual. While an ambivalent war against the PA started with Israel's reinvasion of West Bank cities and towns (around which it had redeployed earlier) in 2002, a reassessment occurred after Yasser Arafat's death and after his successors promised to collaborate with Israel as much as Arafat used to before the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. Israel's kidnapping of Hamas officials elected in January 2006 to the Palestinian Legislative Council and its government ministers, followed by the war launched against Hamas officials and rank and file members by the Fatah leadership who lost the elections, and by the illegal coup d'etat staged in collaboration with the US and Israel against Hamas with success in the West Bank and with utter failure in Gaza by Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, have sealed the fate of the PA. The final coup de grâce came in the last few days when the term of Abbas in office ended on 9 January 2009, his ongoing illegal attempts to extend his term for one more year notwithstanding.
Abbas was the only member of the collaborating group in the West Bank that still had any legitimate and legal status given to him by the elections. Today, as a result, there is no longer a Palestinian Authority as a legal entity or as one that has any popular or juridical legitimacy. The PA was born by Israeli fiat and a collaborating Palestinian elite and has died by Israeli fiat and the actions of the collaborating Palestinian elite. Mahmoud Abbas's absence from the Arab summit in Qatar a few days ago, which convened to support the resisting Palestinians in Gaza, and his characterization of the summit as an "ambush" to divide the Palestinians have exposed him further in the eyes of the Palestinian people as an unrepentant collaborator with the Israeli occupation and with the Arab dictators allied with Israel and the United States. His subsequent attendance of the Sharm al-Sheikh summit with European powers that seek to help Israel decimate the Palestinian people is therefore hardly surprising.
As the PA continues to usurp political power in the West Bank, it remains clear that nothing short of a third Palestinian uprising there will end the illegitimate rule of the PA whose collaborators continue to refuse to pack up and leave. Indeed, the new move by the US and European allies of Israel is to shower money on the PA in the form of reconstruction funds slated for Gaza in the hope of seducing the Israeli-impoverished, -butchered, and -devastated Palestinians in Gaza to stop supporting Hamas and switch allegiance to the illegitimate and collaborationist PA whose European funds will be dangled before them as bait.
If a generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals came to believe since the 1970s that armed struggle would not be able to end the Israeli occupation and that negotiations would be the only way to do so, a whole new generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals (some of whom are liberal) now understand that negotiations with Israel have only served to intensify the occupation and will only serve to do so in the future. The benefits of 18 years of negotiations with Israel, as is evident for all to see, has been not only more Jewish colonial settlement and more massacres and more confiscation of land, but also the destruction of the Palestinian national movement through imploding it from within. It is true that negotiations have enriched the Palestinian business class in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the comprador intellectuals and the bureaucratic and military class that were inducted in the PA game of non-governmental funding via the so-called peace-process, but these benefits have been delivered to the few by taking away the livelihoods of the many.
What has ended then with Israel's ongoing butchery in Gaza is not only the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority but also negotiations as a viable or a credible path to ending the occupation. This is the situation that the incoming rabidly pro-Israeli American President Obama will be facing soon. The half-white and fully Christian Obama, who, when denying the accusation of being a Muslim assured Americans that not only was he raised by his white Christian mother and her family but also of his belief that the blood of Jesus Christ will "redeem" him, and that he prays to Jesus every night, will continue, along with his pro-Israel operatives, to support Israel's war crimes and to buttress the illegal authority of the Palestinian collaborators in the West Bank.
Israel destroyed the PA in Gaza because it could no longer ensure its collaboration there after Hamas was elected and assumed political power there. After Hamas won the free elections, Israel arrested the majority of Hamas elected officials to ensure that the Fatah leadership continues to collaborate unhindered. The PA survives as an illegal entity in the West Bank today, because Israel still banks on its collaboration, most evident in PA police repression of demonstrations across the West Bank which sought to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Injecting the illegitimate and illegal PA with more funds with which to torture the Palestinian people and stuff the pockets of its collaborators will hardly make it a more attractive choice to the majority of poor Palestinians who have been the ultimate losers of PA rule and the Oslo Accords.
In the meantime, the West and Israel will continue to defend Israel's right to defend itself and to deny the Palestinians the right to defend themselves. While some call this international relations, in reality it is nothing short of inter-racial relations wherein Jews, who since World War II have been inducted into the realm of whiteness, have rights that the Palestinians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the non-European world who are forever cast outside the realm of whiteness, do not. Thomas Friedman is right; Israel has been trying to educate the Palestinians that it will punish all their attempts to check its white colonial power to oppress them and that they must understand that they deserve to be punished and defeated for not being white.
The problem is that the Palestinians, students of a universal humanism in which they consider themselves equal to everyone else, keep failing Israel's racial lessons and tests. What the Palestinians ultimately insist on is that Israel must be taught that it does not have the right to defend its racial supremacy and that the Palestinians have the right to defend their universal humanity against Israel's racist oppression. Will Israel and its allies ever learn that lesson? Israeli history tells us that as students of racial supremacy, Zionists have always failed the test of universal humanism.
Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006).
All I have to know is that Hamas-ruled Gaza is devastated, and non-Hamas-ruled West Bank is not.
Obviously, Hamas don't make for great leaders. Regardless of anyone's opinion of them.
1. You probably did not read the article.
2. Going by your logic, since the Vichy French avoided bombing by the Nazis because they collaborated with them and the British got bombed like crazy, that should mean the British had lousy leaders and Vichy French were great. Great stuff.
3. Hamas were not given the opportunity to lead. Once they got elected to power they were stripped of funds, they suffered a major blockade, their MPs were kidnapped and the list goes on. How exactly do you expect them to lead?
4. You will mention the rocket fire, well as outlaw posted Hamas halted rocket fire during the ceasefire until the Israelis broke it. But you decided to ignore his post because he "went off topic". Which parts of my post will you ignore?
5. If you think the Palestinian areas of the West bank are not devastated then think again. The people there suffer continuously under OCCUPATION.
Who is the real terrorist? Oooh, I'll play!
Up to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a "new massacre." One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then -- But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story.
The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers."
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders."What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah," he said. "Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?"
Why, waiting for the ceasefire, of course. That turns out to have its own costs, even though they are not widely recognized. But when the cost-benefit of leaving Hamas in posession of Gaza was calculated, was the price of reprisal included in the bill?
-- Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
1. For my first point, for argument's sake, let's assume that this is true. How does Hamas shooting up to 80 Fatah members equate to Israel killing hundreds of children alone, not to mention all the women, men, policemen, schools, hospitals, mosques, etc that were wiped out? Israel was able to destroy enough buildings and crops to total billions in damage in just 3 weeks. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza for a little over 2 years and someone is actually trying to compare the little they have done, as outlined above, to the destruction Israel was able to do in a timeframe that makes your point laughable to say the least. Not to mention the fact that Israel's blockade of Gaza was absolutely despicable and created an almost impossible way to rule the Gaza Strip for Hamas.
2. You are actually quoting someone who is not only defending the corrupt Fatah members, but actually advocating on their behalf and quoting them. That's ridiculous. Fatah as led by Dahlan is nothing but a group of gangsters and are absolutely corrupt in their leading of Gaza. That's why the elections resulted in a Hamas win. NoK posted a great article that I'm sure you, along with RM, will not bother reading. It might make a bit too much sense for you.
3. Richard Fernandez provides no context and no real evidence to anything. All you post is simply propaganda. A man trying to defend an actual massacre in Gaza by the Israelis by distracting people to look at bullshit.
I only got part way into reading this before I saw you are going off topic from what I was writing, which makes the rest irrelevent to me.
You're a joke. It's not off topic and it's not irrelevant. The correct word you are looking for is irrefutable.
In that post I was not talking about "Israel vs.Hamas, who is worse."
I was talking about Hamas vs.Palestinian civilians. It was Hamas who admitted to having the tunnels so they can get weapons.
Your post originally said "so it can ONLY get weapons." I'm not denying that Hamas brings weapons through tunnels. But you said instead of them bringing food, they bring weapons. In the english language, that's a very distinct way of saying something. Also, you fail to provide any proof, again.
It is Hamas that have done nothing to build up Gaza..
Yes, because Israel has not allowed anything into the country that could be used to buy supplies. Right now the UN is demanding supplies to be let into Gaza so that they can begin reconstruction because they have NOTHING there. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7841430.stm
what happened to the money given them from their own civilians? Who knows, all I can say is it's known they aren't doing squat with it to help civilians.
They can't buy anything when Israel allows nothing into the Strip.
And it was Hamas that put the delicate 3 week cease fire in jeapordy, and no doubt, the potential sustaned cease fire after that point, by continuing to fire rockets into Israel.
You're nothing but a liar. You provide no evidence, no links, nothing. Just your lies. Everyone here can see that you simply give propaganda (the worst kind, by the way. You suck as an Israeli spokesperson), and that you can't back anything up with logic or facts.
It is Hamas that is attempting to take control over West Bank from Mahmud Abbas(who, despite being Palestinian, and not Israeli, has said all the same things I am repeating..curious thing, huh?) who has maintain relative peace there.
Again, you try to distort facts. You act as if Hamas is trying to "seize control" against people's wishes. The Palestinian people have been voting in favor of Hamas because they see Abbas as nothing btu a collaborator and a traitor who does nothing for the Palestinian people, but rather for Israel. There has not been relative peace in the West Bank, Palestinians are still living under harsh occupation, they're still getting shot, and abused by settlers in the area. The only reason there is no peace in Gaza is because Israel won't allow it.
If they cared about the civilian's they would leave West Bank alone. But they want to bring the terror there too, cos like Israel, they want more territory, no matter how the civilians feel about it, or what is best for their safety.
The civilians are voting for Hamas so clearly Hamas is doing something right for them. The rest of what you say is just ridiculous. "They want more territory." They want Israel out of occupied lands. They offered a 20-year ceasefire if Israel simply withdrew from the occupied territories like the rest of the world wants. Why is Hamas proposing what the world wants, yet they are persecuted, whilst Israel simply massacres innocent people and goes against peace?
That's not propoganda. Feel embarrassed only for yourself.
Now I'm embarrassed for myself because I'm responding to someone who clearly has no idea what he's talking about.
Does anyone know much about George Mitchell? (the man that Obama appointed middle east envoy). I know his relation to North Ireland but can't find much about the middle east. (outlaw, byrnzie, commy, roland and driftin'?)
But I am not talking about Vichy French, and the like, I am speaking solely about what Gaza has turned to look like since Hamas took control.
Again, I was not talking about Israel, so it had no bearing on what I posted.
I didn't really go have a look at West Bank last time I was in Israel, so I won't argue what you say about that.
outlaw- Irrefutable? How? I was not talking about Israel at all, and what you wrote was about Hamas vs Israel..
It had nothing to do with what I was talking about....
Hamas has said about the weapons. shall I disagree with them? Why are everyone but the militants starving? That's what they keep showing, how starving all the people are..If Hamas is bringing in the food, why are they all suffering from hunger?
They could get supplies in thru the tunnels, why haven't they?
I'm a liar? They were reporting all about it hours after the cease fire agreement was made. It was right on the front pages of AOL and Yahoo no less..
West Bank has been in relative peace between them and Israel.
If anyone has claim to West Bank, it's Jordan, the last country that fully controlled the region. since they stopped controlling it it has been considered noone's land. I forget the term..I used it previously. The region is up for grabs. Any powerful military can claim it if they want it.
Voting for someone doesn't say anything about how good they are...
Case's in point- Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, saddam Hussein, Hitler..just to name a few...
I've said it twice, I'll say it again, Israel are bullies and should recognise Gaza and West Bank as Palestine. I'm not bringing them into this..not when Nok has a tendency to ignore when I say things like the above, pretending I'm oh so pro-Israel and never criticise them. The only thing I'll talk about is my criticism of Hamas. Nothing more. Hence why your post was irrelevent (irrelevant?) to me.
if it wasn't for the underground tunnels most of Gaza would starve. 80% of Gazans rely on food aid to survive. when Israel unleashed its military in this last round of aggression-UN food shipments were stopped, as a truck driver was shot in the head by Israeli forces. without those tunnels Gaza would be a graveyard. moreso than it already is.
sure they smuggle weapons through them, but they are primarily used to feed the 1.5 million or so Gazans.
"The important point is the disregard for human life in using entrances to civilian homes,"
nah, can't be true..cos they care about their civilians and all they are doing is trying to help their people to freedom..right.
Yes because I'm going to believe the IDF. Regardless, it is irrelevant. Gaza is too overcrowded so anywhere Hamas fires from is likely to contain civilians. If the Israelis did not inflict such a lethal blockade, break the ceasefire and attack Gaza, Hamas wouldn't be firing as we have proven to you previously.
But I am not talking about Vichy French, and the like, I am speaking solely about what Gaza has turned to look like since Hamas took control.
Again, I was not talking about Israel, so it had no bearing on what I posted.
Your arguments, as Norman Finkelstein puts it, "reverse the cause and effect dilemma". Gaza turned into what it is not because Hamas took over but because of the Israeli blockade and other reasons I have mentioned numerously. To "not talk about Israel" does not make them any less responsible.
I didn't really go have a look at West Bank last time I was in Israel, so I won't argue what you say about that.
Hamas has said about the weapons. shall I disagree with them? Why are everyone but the militants starving? That's what they keep showing, how starving all the people are..If Hamas is bringing in the food, why are they all suffering from hunger?
They could get supplies in thru the tunnels, why haven't they?
West Bank has been in relative peace between them and Israel.
The West bank is not being bombarded because there are Israeli settlers among the Palestinians. The Palestinians in the west bank are subjected to different forms of aggression (the wall, occupation, land stealing, checkpoints, etc.).
The tunnels were used to smuggle food and necessities, and probably used to smuggle fertilizers and such by Hamas. I'd like to see you try and feed 1.5 million people through smuggling in tunnels. There are a great article about how the smuggling through tunnels was the most dangerous "job" in the world since these tunnels had a tendency to collapse at any moment in time. Do you think it is acceptable for them to have to resort to smuggle food and water? That violates International Law.
If anyone has claim to West Bank, it's Jordan, the last country that fully controlled the region. since they stopped controlling it it has been considered noone's land. I forget the term..I used it previously. The region is up for grabs. Any powerful military can claim it if they want it.
Ever heard of "British Mandate of Palestine". Just because Jordan occupied it doesn't mean its theirs to keep. Same applies to the Israelis.
I've said it twice, I'll say it again, Israel are bullies and should recognise Gaza and West Bank as Palestine. I'm not bringing them into this..not when Nok has a tendency to ignore when I say things like the above, pretending I'm oh so pro-Israel and never criticise them. The only thing I'll talk about is my criticism of Hamas. Nothing more. Hence why your post was irrelevent (irrelevant?) to me.
We can both agree that in reality you blame Hamas solely for the problems in that region. Any criticisms you make of Israel are only to save face and make your arguments slightly more acceptable. It seems I am not the only one that's seen through this.
It is Hamas that have done nothing to build up Gaza..what happened to the money given them from their own civilians? Who knows, all I can say is it's known they aren't doing squat with it to help civilians.
Actually, Hamas have been very successful at building Gaza's infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. Nothing you've said here is true.
Instead of simply spouting these untruths, why don't you provide some evidence to support your statements? Maybe because no evidence exists that supports your statements?
And it was Hamas that put the delicate 3 week cease fire in jeapordy, and no doubt, the potential sustaned cease fire after that point, by continuing to fire rockets into Israel.
Another lie. Israel broke the ceaefire on November 5th when it killed 6 Palestinians in an incursion into Gaza. It also broke the terms of te ceasefire by refusing to fully lift the blockade which was described by the U.N as a crime against humanity.
I notice that you chose to conveniently leave these facts out of your post.
It is Hamas that is attempting to take control over West Bank from Mahmud Abbas(who, despite being Palestinian, and not Israeli, has said all the same things I am repeating..curious thing, huh?) who has maintain relative peace there. If they cared about the civilian's they would leave West Bank alone. But they want to bring the terror there too, cos like Israel, they want more territory, no matter how the civilians feel about it, or what is best for their safety.
Hamas is attempting to take control of the West Bank you say? Please provide some evidence to support your statement.
You talk of the 'relative peace' in the West Bank. Do you have any idea what Israel has been doing in around the West Bank since it's non-withdrawal from Gaza? Do you have any idea how many new illegal Jewish-only settlements Israel has built in the past 5 years?
No, of course you don't.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/D ... y/4222.htm
'...In a stunning admission, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser said that the purpose of the Israeli government's policy was to suspend diplomatic moves to establish a Palestinian state. "The significance of the 'disengagement' plan is the freezing of the peace process," Dov Weissglas told Haaretz....
"You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... [W]hat I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ja ... -palestine '...Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison...'
'..Article 28 of the Convention expressly prohibits the use of civilians as human shields by placing them alongside soldiers or military facilities, with the hope of attaining immunity from attack. The official commentary of the Convention refers to this practice, which was common in the Second World War as "cruel and barbaric." The Convention, in Articles 31 and 51, also prohibits the use of physical or moral coercion on civilians or forcing them to carry out military tasks.
Despite these prohibitions, for a long period of time following the outbreak of the second intifada, particularly during Operation Defensive Shield, in April 2002, the IDF systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields, forcing them to carry out military actions which threatened their lives...'
'...His orders were, he told the Guardian, "'Every person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do it."
...Assaf is not alone. In recent months dozens of soldiers, including the son of an an Israeli general, all recently discharged, have come forward to share their stories of how they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed people without fear of reprimand.
The soldiers were brought into contact with the Guardian with the assistance of Breaking the Silence, a pressure group of former soldiers who want the Israeli public to confront the reality of army activities. The group insisted on anonymity of its witnesses to protect the soldiers from persecution and prosecution.
Although those speaking out are a tiny proportion, their testimonies reflect a widespread culture of impunity, according to Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem...'
Does anyone know much about George Mitchell? (the man that Obama appointed middle east envoy). I know his relation to North Ireland but can't find much about the middle east. (outlaw, byrnzie, commy, roland and driftin'?)
Wow, I didn't know he was appointed middle east envoy... good choice :shock: the man done good in Northern Ireland
The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
What the fuck is wrong with them? All those kids killed - there's no excuse for that.
And that should really be the bottom line... end of discussion... but I'm guessing it won't be :(
The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
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SkeeterB
If I knew where it was, I would take you there... Posts: 422
What the fuck is wrong with them? All those kids killed - there's no excuse for that.
And that should really be the bottom line... end of discussion... but I'm guessing it won't be :(
It's not because Hamas is firing rockets in the exact same locations where kids are. Israel is striking targets where rockets are being fired from. So how can it be end of discussion?
Keep in mind that in 2005, after occupying Gaza for 38 years, the Israeli government forced 8,500 of its own settlers out of Gaza, leaving the future of Gaza to the Palestinians. But, instead of buying peace, the response of Hamas has been over 3,000 rocket attacks on Israel.
Secretary-of-State-to-be Hillary Clinton's recent speech about the Palestinian-Israeli War in Gaza showed a steely resolve when she said that the U.S. will not negotiate with the Hamas-backed Palestinians unless Hamas recognizes the State of Israeli's right to exist.
Think about it this way in terms of the United States. Say we were enemies with Canada but decided that in order to instill peace, we gave them Michigan. A few years later, they weren't satisfied and began launching rockets (behind women and children) all over the country.
It's not because Hamas is firing rockets in the exact same locations where kids are. Israel is striking targets where rockets are being fired from. So how can it be end of discussion?
Keep in mind that in 2005, after occupying Gaza for 38 years, the Israeli government forced 8,500 of its own settlers out of Gaza, leaving the future of Gaza to the Palestinians. But, instead of buying peace, the response of Hamas has been over 3,000 rocket attacks on Israel.
Secretary-of-State-to-be Hillary Clinton's recent speech about the Palestinian-Israeli War in Gaza showed a steely resolve when she said that the U.S. will not negotiate with the Hamas-backed Palestinians unless Hamas recognizes the State of Israeli's right to exist.
Think about it this way in terms of the United States. Say we were enemies with Canada but decided that in order to instill peace, we gave them Michigan. A few years later, they weren't satisfied and began launching rockets (behind women and children) all over the country.
Have you read any of the articles posted? Your first statement is bullshit. The Israelis were carpet bombing the Gaza strip regardless of whether Hamas has fired from the location or not. The UN has been bombed even though there were no Hamas militants in site and THE ISRAELIS ADMITTED THIS. There are reports of people being asked to leave their homes to be searched by the IDF then getting shot at by the same soldiers. Listen to the reports on Democracy Now! about the father who watched two of his girls get shot and killed while they walked out of their house (OBEYING ORDERS) and the third getting serious spinal injuries.
You obviously try to ignore the stranglehold the Israelis placed on Gaza. The Palestinians are living under constant subjugation. There is no peace until the occupation is removed.
Finally, your analogy is false. First off the Israelis are dismantling settlements that are on OCCUPIED LAND. They are not giving them land they are returning what they stole and then stealing other land in the West Bank. If you had read what Byrnzie posted earlier you would see that even the Israelis admit the reason they did this is to STOP PEACE.
Anyone who thinks Clinton has a steely resolve because she said she would not negotiate with Hamas has no idea what is going on. How exactly would spewing what has been said in the past 8 years give her steely resolve? Steely resolve would require her condemn the occupation and the bombing and destruction in Gaza that killed so many civilians.
WOW MAN! What a whopper! She doesn't want to negotiate with Hamas. DID YOU HEAR THAT! This is HUGEEEEEEEEE MANNNNN lets celebrate.. Oh wait isn't that whats been going on for fucking centuries already.
Wow, I didn't know he was appointed middle east envoy... good choice :shock: the man done good in Northern Ireland
Yah he's already been dispatched as well to try and strengthen the ceasefire. I've heard he's done good in Ireland, still trying to see his position on the middle east though.
Keep in mind that in 2005, after occupying Gaza for 38 years, the Israeli government forced 8,500 of its own settlers out of Gaza, leaving the future of Gaza to the Palestinians. But, instead of buying peace, the response of Hamas has been over 3,000 rocket attacks on Israel.
Did you not read anything posted above? No, thought not. Most of those poor unfortunate illegal settlers were probably re-housed in new illegal Jewish-only settlements around the West Bank that same year.
On Israel's supposed withdrawal from Gaza:
From Norman Finkelstein - ' Beyond Chutzpah':
'In a study entitled 'One Big Prison', the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem observed that the crippling economic arrangements Israel had imposed on Gaza would remain in place. In addition, Israel would continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza's land borders, coastline, and airspace, and the Israeli army would continue to operate in Gaza. "So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands," B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's claim of 'an end of the Occupation' is questionable". HRW (Human Rights Watch) was even more emphatic that evacuating settlers and troops from inside Gaza would not end the occupation: "Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around it's periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control."
'...Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Protective action must be taken immediately to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life, and in view of the emergency situation that is producing a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding day by day. However difficult politically, it is time to act. At the very least, an urgent effort should be made at the United Nations to implement the agreed norm of a 'responsibility to protect' a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a Crime Against Humanity.'
Nok- okay I'll give you that, but they are still a terror. How stupid do you got to be to not realise that firing missiles at the folk holding you down is only going to piss them off? You get more with honey than vinegar.
Regarding Jordan, any land like that can be taken..if you have the military power to do so, it's your's to take. It's how countries formed in the first place. It's barbaric, but truth. Which actually reminds me of something I had completely forgotten. Territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, including Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, are rightfully theirs, no matter what any previous mandate was made. You fight, you win, it's yours. That is how it's been since the dawn of the concept of owning territory.
Funny, I clearly recall stating things like Israel prevented aid from getting in, etc...solely blaming Hamas? No.
Byrnzie- You want me to show evidence but you do not provide any for your own statements. I've said before I go by what my family tells me and what I've seen. I already stated it is a piss poor source for arguements on here, but it's more than what you are giving for this one.
Nov.5? I'm talking of the current cease fire guy...
Members of the Hamas terror group are the rightful representatives of the Palestinian people and should control the entire West Bank just as they rule the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, told WND in an exclusive interview.
the Israeli government has been negotiating the evacuation of most of the West Bank as part of U.S.-backed talks aimed at creating a Palestinian state.
Haniyeh said earlier this week that Hamas had no intention of repeating its Gaza takeover in the West Bank, where Abbas' secular Fatah faction remains dominant.
"Israel says the party in Ramallah [Fatah] serves Israel, and if Israel quits the West Bank, Hamas will take it over. And we say this is true," Zahar said at a rally for Hamas supporters in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
As for the rest of what you said, see what I wrote to Nok about the 6 day war. Argue till your blue in the face. Israel won it, the territories are theirs.
The problem with that RM, is that Israel is violating international law whenever they take more land.
International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power [from undertaking] permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,043
The problem with that RM, is that Israel is violating international law whenever they take more land.
International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power [from undertaking] permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
Local population meaning the Palestinian population ALREADY in place . Not the settlers.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The problem with that RM, is that Israel is violating international law whenever they take more land.
International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power [from undertaking] permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
When did the rules of war to seize territory get so complicated :?
The problem with that RM, is that Israel is violating international law whenever they take more land.
International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power [from undertaking] permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
Local population meaning the Palestinian population ALREADY in place . Not the settlers.
right. local population being palestinians in this case.
Comments
Israel is more technologically advanced. Hamas uses nothing but fertilizer to power explosives that hardly ever cause serious damage. If you notice, most news reports that report the firing of rockets at Israeli towns often use "left the town of Sderot in shock." On the other hand, Israel leaves tens of thousands of people in Gaza homeless (keep in mind 80% of Gaza's population is already refugees), thousands dead or dying, half of whom are likely to be children. Is this a way a "technologically advanced" country with some of the most superior weaponry fights? Is it logical for Israel to shell schools, homes, etc, in one of the most densely populated place in the world?
I know what your argument will be - rocket attacks. When the ceasefire went on during the past half year, little to no rockets were fired from Hamas. It was not until Nov 4 when Israel broke the ceasefire (yes, they did break the ceasefire, even CNN admitted it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEwzmJQD8eA) that Hamas fired rockets IN RETALIATION, and even those stopped abruptly. If Israel wants another ceasefire with a cease in rocket attacks, all Hamas asked was the SAME THING nearly every country in the world asked: LIFT THE BLOCKADE AND ALLOW BASIC FOODS AND NECESSITIES IN. Israel refused something the entire world asked, whilst Hamas was complying with everything the world is asking. Who is really the terrorist?
Up to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a "new massacre." One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then -- But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story.
The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers."
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders."What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah," he said. "Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?"
Why, waiting for the ceasefire, of course. That turns out to have its own costs, even though they are not widely recognized. But when the cost-benefit of leaving Hamas in posession of Gaza was calculated, was the price of reprisal included in the bill?
-- Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
I would like Israel to respond by abiding by international law and withdrawing from the occupied territories.
So, if the Zionists don't like living there in the way of Hamas' crappy homemade rockets then they can simply fuck off back to America, or Israel.
I only got part way into reading this before I saw you are going off topic from what I was writing, which makes the rest irrelevent to me.
In that post I was not talking about "Israel vs.Hamas, who is worse."
I was talking about Hamas vs.Palestinian civilians. It was Hamas who admitted to having the tunnels so they can get weapons. It is Hamas that have done nothing to build up Gaza..what happened to the money given them from their own civilians? Who knows, all I can say is it's known they aren't doing squat with it to help civilians. And it was Hamas that put the delicate 3 week cease fire in jeapordy, and no doubt, the potential sustaned cease fire after that point, by continuing to fire rockets into Israel. It is Hamas that is attempting to take control over West Bank from Mahmud Abbas(who, despite being Palestinian, and not Israeli, has said all the same things I am repeating..curious thing, huh?) who has maintain relative peace there. If they cared about the civilian's they would leave West Bank alone. But they want to bring the terror there too, cos like Israel, they want more territory, no matter how the civilians feel about it, or what is best for their safety.
That's not propoganda. Feel embarrassed only for yourself.
You just brought to light something I was meaning to post back to Commy about...Like we always are left to choose between here, Fatah was the lesser of 2 evils.
Israel's right to defend itself
Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada, 20 January 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10221.shtml
Common Western political wisdom has it that when Western countries support Israeli military action against Arab countries or the Palestinian people, they do so because they support Israel's right to defend itself against its enemies.
This has always been established wisdom in Israel itself, even before the colonial settlement was established, wherein its predatory army is ironically named the Israel Defense Forces, not unlike the South African apartheid army, which was also known as the South African Defense Forces. This defensive nomenclature is hardly exclusive to Israel and South Africa, as many countries rushed after World War II to rename their Ministries of "War" as Ministries of "Defense." Still, Israel's allegedly defensive actions define every single war the colonial settlement has ever engaged in, even and especially when it starts these wars, which it has done in all cases except in 1973.
Thus the war of 1948 which Zionist militias started against the Palestinian people on 30 November 1947, a day after a Western-controlled United Nations General Assembly issued the Partition Plan, is presented as "defensive," as was its expulsion of about 400,000 Palestinians before 15 May 1948, i.e. before the day on which three Arab armies (the Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi armies) invaded the area that became Israel (Lebanon hardly had an army to invade with and hardly managed to retrieve two Lebanese villages that Israel had occupied, and Jordanian forces only entered the areas designated by the UN plan for the Palestinian state, and East Jerusalem which was projected to fall under UN jurisdiction).
Yet until this very day, Israel, its Western and Arab and Palestinian allies, seem to agree with the major Israeli lie that the refugee "problem" resulted from the 1948 war which Israel fought as a "defensive" war and that the responsibility of the refugees lies with the Arab governments who "started" the war. While the remaining 370,000 Palestinians Israel expelled were driven out after 15 May 1948 and before the end of January 1949 (when armistice talks began), they could ostensibly be included in the argument that their expulsion was a result of the war, but it remains unclear why the first 400,000 would be included in that category. The thousands of Palestinians who would be expelled after the armistice agreements were signed, especially those of the city of Majdal, now Ashkelon, whose population was loaded onto trucks and expelled to Gaza, does not even enter these calculations.
The argument in fact must be extended to the post-15 May refugees. After all, it was Zionist expulsions of the Palestinians for over five months prior to the Arab armies' intervention in May 1948 that was used as a casus belli for the Arab armies whose intervention was carried out under the banner of defending Palestine and the Palestinians against Zionist aggression. None of this however seems to matter and Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and their UN-designated state continues to be presented as part of "Israel's right to defend itself."
Ironically, Israel's unprovoked invasion of Egypt in 1956 and occupation of Sinai also seems to fall under the category of Israel's right to defend itself as far as the Israelis were concerned, although United States President Dwight Eisenhower and the Soviet Union thought otherwise at the time, which forced Israel to withdraw. Israel's massive invasions of three Arab countries in 1967 was/is also presented as another defensive war, wherein if it is ever admitted that Israel is the party that started the war, the admission is quickly followed by the "explanation" (hasbara in Hebrew, which is also the word for "propaganda") that it was a "preemptive" war in which Israel was "defending" itself. This also applies to Israel's 1978 and 1982 and 2006 invasions of Lebanon, its continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, and its massacres against the Palestinians there in the last three weeks.
The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should.
Indeed, as The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the best friend of Israel and the Saudi ruling family, has argued recently, in doing so, Israel is engaged in a pedagogical exercise of "educating" the Palestinians. Perhaps many of the Arab businessmen's associations who regularly invite Friedman to speak to their organizations in a number of Arab countries and pay him an astronomical speaking fee can invite him back to educate them on Israel's pedagogical methods and on The New York Times' war propaganda on behalf of Israel.
The major argument here is two-fold, namely that while Israel has the right to defend itself, its victims have no similar right to defend themselves. In fact, the logic is even more sinister than this and can be elucidated as follows: Israel has the right to oppress the Palestinians and does so to defend itself, but were the Palestinians to defend themselves against Israel's oppression, which they do not have a right to do, Israel will then have the right to defend itself against their illegitimate defense of themselves against its legitimate oppression of them, which it carries out anyway in order to defend itself legitimately.
This is why, not only does Israel have the right to arm itself and to be a nuclear power and to have a military edge over the combined militaries of the entire region in which it lives, but it also must ensure that the military power of its neighbors is used to quell the Palestinians and not Israel, indeed to help Israel lay siege to the resisting Palestinians. When and if Palestinians try to arm themselves to defend their lives against Israeli invasions and slaughter, Israel makes every effort to prevent them from doing so and considers this "illegal smuggling."
The recent signing of an agreement between Israel and its US sponsor and the volunteering of European countries (France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Spain) to police the waters and borders of Gaza with Egypt to prevent the Palestinians from "smuggling" arms to defend themselves is the most recent application of this understanding. Israel's US sponsor and European allies are horrified by the Palestinians' attempts to arm themselves (to which they have no right) in order to defend their very lives against Israel's right to slaughter them in order to defend itself.
Indeed, Israel has included the erstwhile Palestinian leadership for the last 15 years in its efforts to repress all Palestinians who resist its right to defend itself by oppressing them. This is precisely why the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created in the first place. The PA that the Oslo Agreement established on paper in autumn 1993 and came to life in the form of institutions and a collaborating Palestinian elite in 1994 has finally, however, come to an end in the winter of 2009. While the PA tried its best to be a repressive force on behalf of Israel and has killed scores of Palestinians who resisted the occupation and PA collaboration since 1994, its ability to control the surge of Palestinian resistance was checked by its failure to win the last elections and its failure to defeat Hamas militarily. Fifteen years after its establishment, the PA has run its course. In Gaza, Israel destroyed all the bureaucratic and administrative offices of the PA run by Hamas and thus has returned Hamas by default to its erstwhile status as the major Palestinian guerrilla group resisting Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel's criminal siege of Gaza, and Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
In the West Bank, the process of finishing off the PA has been more gradual. While an ambivalent war against the PA started with Israel's reinvasion of West Bank cities and towns (around which it had redeployed earlier) in 2002, a reassessment occurred after Yasser Arafat's death and after his successors promised to collaborate with Israel as much as Arafat used to before the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. Israel's kidnapping of Hamas officials elected in January 2006 to the Palestinian Legislative Council and its government ministers, followed by the war launched against Hamas officials and rank and file members by the Fatah leadership who lost the elections, and by the illegal coup d'etat staged in collaboration with the US and Israel against Hamas with success in the West Bank and with utter failure in Gaza by Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, have sealed the fate of the PA. The final coup de grâce came in the last few days when the term of Abbas in office ended on 9 January 2009, his ongoing illegal attempts to extend his term for one more year notwithstanding.
Abbas was the only member of the collaborating group in the West Bank that still had any legitimate and legal status given to him by the elections. Today, as a result, there is no longer a Palestinian Authority as a legal entity or as one that has any popular or juridical legitimacy. The PA was born by Israeli fiat and a collaborating Palestinian elite and has died by Israeli fiat and the actions of the collaborating Palestinian elite. Mahmoud Abbas's absence from the Arab summit in Qatar a few days ago, which convened to support the resisting Palestinians in Gaza, and his characterization of the summit as an "ambush" to divide the Palestinians have exposed him further in the eyes of the Palestinian people as an unrepentant collaborator with the Israeli occupation and with the Arab dictators allied with Israel and the United States. His subsequent attendance of the Sharm al-Sheikh summit with European powers that seek to help Israel decimate the Palestinian people is therefore hardly surprising.
As the PA continues to usurp political power in the West Bank, it remains clear that nothing short of a third Palestinian uprising there will end the illegitimate rule of the PA whose collaborators continue to refuse to pack up and leave. Indeed, the new move by the US and European allies of Israel is to shower money on the PA in the form of reconstruction funds slated for Gaza in the hope of seducing the Israeli-impoverished, -butchered, and -devastated Palestinians in Gaza to stop supporting Hamas and switch allegiance to the illegitimate and collaborationist PA whose European funds will be dangled before them as bait.
If a generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals came to believe since the 1970s that armed struggle would not be able to end the Israeli occupation and that negotiations would be the only way to do so, a whole new generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals (some of whom are liberal) now understand that negotiations with Israel have only served to intensify the occupation and will only serve to do so in the future. The benefits of 18 years of negotiations with Israel, as is evident for all to see, has been not only more Jewish colonial settlement and more massacres and more confiscation of land, but also the destruction of the Palestinian national movement through imploding it from within. It is true that negotiations have enriched the Palestinian business class in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the comprador intellectuals and the bureaucratic and military class that were inducted in the PA game of non-governmental funding via the so-called peace-process, but these benefits have been delivered to the few by taking away the livelihoods of the many.
What has ended then with Israel's ongoing butchery in Gaza is not only the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority but also negotiations as a viable or a credible path to ending the occupation. This is the situation that the incoming rabidly pro-Israeli American President Obama will be facing soon. The half-white and fully Christian Obama, who, when denying the accusation of being a Muslim assured Americans that not only was he raised by his white Christian mother and her family but also of his belief that the blood of Jesus Christ will "redeem" him, and that he prays to Jesus every night, will continue, along with his pro-Israel operatives, to support Israel's war crimes and to buttress the illegal authority of the Palestinian collaborators in the West Bank.
Israel destroyed the PA in Gaza because it could no longer ensure its collaboration there after Hamas was elected and assumed political power there. After Hamas won the free elections, Israel arrested the majority of Hamas elected officials to ensure that the Fatah leadership continues to collaborate unhindered. The PA survives as an illegal entity in the West Bank today, because Israel still banks on its collaboration, most evident in PA police repression of demonstrations across the West Bank which sought to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Injecting the illegitimate and illegal PA with more funds with which to torture the Palestinian people and stuff the pockets of its collaborators will hardly make it a more attractive choice to the majority of poor Palestinians who have been the ultimate losers of PA rule and the Oslo Accords.
In the meantime, the West and Israel will continue to defend Israel's right to defend itself and to deny the Palestinians the right to defend themselves. While some call this international relations, in reality it is nothing short of inter-racial relations wherein Jews, who since World War II have been inducted into the realm of whiteness, have rights that the Palestinians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the non-European world who are forever cast outside the realm of whiteness, do not. Thomas Friedman is right; Israel has been trying to educate the Palestinians that it will punish all their attempts to check its white colonial power to oppress them and that they must understand that they deserve to be punished and defeated for not being white.
The problem is that the Palestinians, students of a universal humanism in which they consider themselves equal to everyone else, keep failing Israel's racial lessons and tests. What the Palestinians ultimately insist on is that Israel must be taught that it does not have the right to defend its racial supremacy and that the Palestinians have the right to defend their universal humanity against Israel's racist oppression. Will Israel and its allies ever learn that lesson? Israeli history tells us that as students of racial supremacy, Zionists have always failed the test of universal humanism.
Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006).
Obviously, Hamas don't make for great leaders. Regardless of anyone's opinion of them.
1. You probably did not read the article.
2. Going by your logic, since the Vichy French avoided bombing by the Nazis because they collaborated with them and the British got bombed like crazy, that should mean the British had lousy leaders and Vichy French were great. Great stuff.
3. Hamas were not given the opportunity to lead. Once they got elected to power they were stripped of funds, they suffered a major blockade, their MPs were kidnapped and the list goes on. How exactly do you expect them to lead?
4. You will mention the rocket fire, well as outlaw posted Hamas halted rocket fire during the ceasefire until the Israelis broke it. But you decided to ignore his post because he "went off topic". Which parts of my post will you ignore?
5. If you think the Palestinian areas of the West bank are not devastated then think again. The people there suffer continuously under OCCUPATION.
2. You are actually quoting someone who is not only defending the corrupt Fatah members, but actually advocating on their behalf and quoting them. That's ridiculous. Fatah as led by Dahlan is nothing but a group of gangsters and are absolutely corrupt in their leading of Gaza. That's why the elections resulted in a Hamas win. NoK posted a great article that I'm sure you, along with RM, will not bother reading. It might make a bit too much sense for you.
3. Richard Fernandez provides no context and no real evidence to anything. All you post is simply propaganda. A man trying to defend an actual massacre in Gaza by the Israelis by distracting people to look at bullshit.
Your post originally said "so it can ONLY get weapons." I'm not denying that Hamas brings weapons through tunnels. But you said instead of them bringing food, they bring weapons. In the english language, that's a very distinct way of saying something. Also, you fail to provide any proof, again. Yes, because Israel has not allowed anything into the country that could be used to buy supplies. Right now the UN is demanding supplies to be let into Gaza so that they can begin reconstruction because they have NOTHING there. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7841430.stm They can't buy anything when Israel allows nothing into the Strip. You're nothing but a liar. You provide no evidence, no links, nothing. Just your lies. Everyone here can see that you simply give propaganda (the worst kind, by the way. You suck as an Israeli spokesperson), and that you can't back anything up with logic or facts. Again, you try to distort facts. You act as if Hamas is trying to "seize control" against people's wishes. The Palestinian people have been voting in favor of Hamas because they see Abbas as nothing btu a collaborator and a traitor who does nothing for the Palestinian people, but rather for Israel. There has not been relative peace in the West Bank, Palestinians are still living under harsh occupation, they're still getting shot, and abused by settlers in the area. The only reason there is no peace in Gaza is because Israel won't allow it. The civilians are voting for Hamas so clearly Hamas is doing something right for them. The rest of what you say is just ridiculous. "They want more territory." They want Israel out of occupied lands. They offered a 20-year ceasefire if Israel simply withdrew from the occupied territories like the rest of the world wants. Why is Hamas proposing what the world wants, yet they are persecuted, whilst Israel simply massacres innocent people and goes against peace? Now I'm embarrassed for myself because I'm responding to someone who clearly has no idea what he's talking about.
But I am not talking about Vichy French, and the like, I am speaking solely about what Gaza has turned to look like since Hamas took control.
Again, I was not talking about Israel, so it had no bearing on what I posted.
I didn't really go have a look at West Bank last time I was in Israel, so I won't argue what you say about that.
outlaw- Irrefutable? How? I was not talking about Israel at all, and what you wrote was about Hamas vs Israel..
It had nothing to do with what I was talking about....
Hamas has said about the weapons. shall I disagree with them? Why are everyone but the militants starving? That's what they keep showing, how starving all the people are..If Hamas is bringing in the food, why are they all suffering from hunger?
They could get supplies in thru the tunnels, why haven't they?
I'm a liar? They were reporting all about it hours after the cease fire agreement was made. It was right on the front pages of AOL and Yahoo no less..
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast ... tion_world
West Bank has been in relative peace between them and Israel.
If anyone has claim to West Bank, it's Jordan, the last country that fully controlled the region. since they stopped controlling it it has been considered noone's land. I forget the term..I used it previously. The region is up for grabs. Any powerful military can claim it if they want it.
Voting for someone doesn't say anything about how good they are...
Case's in point- Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, saddam Hussein, Hitler..just to name a few...
I've said it twice, I'll say it again, Israel are bullies and should recognise Gaza and West Bank as Palestine. I'm not bringing them into this..not when Nok has a tendency to ignore when I say things like the above, pretending I'm oh so pro-Israel and never criticise them. The only thing I'll talk about is my criticism of Hamas. Nothing more. Hence why your post was irrelevent (irrelevant?) to me.
I'm not a he.
sure they smuggle weapons through them, but they are primarily used to feed the 1.5 million or so Gazans.
"The important point is the disregard for human life in using entrances to civilian homes,"
nah, can't be true..cos they care about their civilians and all they are doing is trying to help their people to freedom..right.
Yes because I'm going to believe the IDF. Regardless, it is irrelevant. Gaza is too overcrowded so anywhere Hamas fires from is likely to contain civilians. If the Israelis did not inflict such a lethal blockade, break the ceasefire and attack Gaza, Hamas wouldn't be firing as we have proven to you previously.
Your arguments, as Norman Finkelstein puts it, "reverse the cause and effect dilemma". Gaza turned into what it is not because Hamas took over but because of the Israeli blockade and other reasons I have mentioned numerously. To "not talk about Israel" does not make them any less responsible.
The West bank is not being bombarded because there are Israeli settlers among the Palestinians. The Palestinians in the west bank are subjected to different forms of aggression (the wall, occupation, land stealing, checkpoints, etc.).
The tunnels were used to smuggle food and necessities, and probably used to smuggle fertilizers and such by Hamas. I'd like to see you try and feed 1.5 million people through smuggling in tunnels. There are a great article about how the smuggling through tunnels was the most dangerous "job" in the world since these tunnels had a tendency to collapse at any moment in time. Do you think it is acceptable for them to have to resort to smuggle food and water? That violates International Law.
Ever heard of "British Mandate of Palestine". Just because Jordan occupied it doesn't mean its theirs to keep. Same applies to the Israelis.
We can both agree that in reality you blame Hamas solely for the problems in that region. Any criticisms you make of Israel are only to save face and make your arguments slightly more acceptable. It seems I am not the only one that's seen through this.
Actually, Hamas have been very successful at building Gaza's infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. Nothing you've said here is true.
Instead of simply spouting these untruths, why don't you provide some evidence to support your statements? Maybe because no evidence exists that supports your statements?
Another lie. Israel broke the ceaefire on November 5th when it killed 6 Palestinians in an incursion into Gaza. It also broke the terms of te ceasefire by refusing to fully lift the blockade which was described by the U.N as a crime against humanity.
I notice that you chose to conveniently leave these facts out of your post.
Hamas is attempting to take control of the West Bank you say? Please provide some evidence to support your statement.
You talk of the 'relative peace' in the West Bank. Do you have any idea what Israel has been doing in around the West Bank since it's non-withdrawal from Gaza? Do you have any idea how many new illegal Jewish-only settlements Israel has built in the past 5 years?
No, of course you don't.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/D ... y/4222.htm
'...In a stunning admission, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser said that the purpose of the Israeli government's policy was to suspend diplomatic moves to establish a Palestinian state. "The significance of the 'disengagement' plan is the freezing of the peace process," Dov Weissglas told Haaretz....
"You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... [W]hat I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ja ... -palestine
'...Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison...'
Interesting. The Israeli's have a long history of using civilians as human shields and also of deliberately targeting unarmed civilians.
http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Sh ... _Hanun.asp
20 July 2006: Israeli Soldiers use civilians as Human Shields in Beit Hanun
'..Article 28 of the Convention expressly prohibits the use of civilians as human shields by placing them alongside soldiers or military facilities, with the hope of attaining immunity from attack. The official commentary of the Convention refers to this practice, which was common in the Second World War as "cruel and barbaric." The Convention, in Articles 31 and 51, also prohibits the use of physical or moral coercion on civilians or forcing them to carry out military tasks.
Despite these prohibitions, for a long period of time following the outbreak of the second intifada, particularly during Operation Defensive Shield, in April 2002, the IDF systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields, forcing them to carry out military actions which threatened their lives...'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/06/israel
Israeli soldiers tell of indiscriminate killings by army and a culture of impunity
'...His orders were, he told the Guardian, "'Every person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do it."
...Assaf is not alone. In recent months dozens of soldiers, including the son of an an Israeli general, all recently discharged, have come forward to share their stories of how they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed people without fear of reprimand.
The soldiers were brought into contact with the Guardian with the assistance of Breaking the Silence, a pressure group of former soldiers who want the Israeli public to confront the reality of army activities. The group insisted on anonymity of its witnesses to protect the soldiers from persecution and prosecution.
Although those speaking out are a tiny proportion, their testimonies reflect a widespread culture of impunity, according to Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem...'
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
It's not because Hamas is firing rockets in the exact same locations where kids are. Israel is striking targets where rockets are being fired from. So how can it be end of discussion?
Keep in mind that in 2005, after occupying Gaza for 38 years, the Israeli government forced 8,500 of its own settlers out of Gaza, leaving the future of Gaza to the Palestinians. But, instead of buying peace, the response of Hamas has been over 3,000 rocket attacks on Israel.
Secretary-of-State-to-be Hillary Clinton's recent speech about the Palestinian-Israeli War in Gaza showed a steely resolve when she said that the U.S. will not negotiate with the Hamas-backed Palestinians unless Hamas recognizes the State of Israeli's right to exist.
Think about it this way in terms of the United States. Say we were enemies with Canada but decided that in order to instill peace, we gave them Michigan. A few years later, they weren't satisfied and began launching rockets (behind women and children) all over the country.
www.amazingathletes.com/northchi
Have you read any of the articles posted? Your first statement is bullshit. The Israelis were carpet bombing the Gaza strip regardless of whether Hamas has fired from the location or not. The UN has been bombed even though there were no Hamas militants in site and THE ISRAELIS ADMITTED THIS. There are reports of people being asked to leave their homes to be searched by the IDF then getting shot at by the same soldiers. Listen to the reports on Democracy Now! about the father who watched two of his girls get shot and killed while they walked out of their house (OBEYING ORDERS) and the third getting serious spinal injuries.
You obviously try to ignore the stranglehold the Israelis placed on Gaza. The Palestinians are living under constant subjugation. There is no peace until the occupation is removed.
Finally, your analogy is false. First off the Israelis are dismantling settlements that are on OCCUPIED LAND. They are not giving them land they are returning what they stole and then stealing other land in the West Bank. If you had read what Byrnzie posted earlier you would see that even the Israelis admit the reason they did this is to STOP PEACE.
Anyone who thinks Clinton has a steely resolve because she said she would not negotiate with Hamas has no idea what is going on. How exactly would spewing what has been said in the past 8 years give her steely resolve? Steely resolve would require her condemn the occupation and the bombing and destruction in Gaza that killed so many civilians.
WOW MAN! What a whopper! She doesn't want to negotiate with Hamas. DID YOU HEAR THAT! This is HUGEEEEEEEEE MANNNNN lets celebrate.. Oh wait isn't that whats been going on for fucking centuries already.
Yah he's already been dispatched as well to try and strengthen the ceasefire. I've heard he's done good in Ireland, still trying to see his position on the middle east though.
Did you not read anything posted above? No, thought not. Most of those poor unfortunate illegal settlers were probably re-housed in new illegal Jewish-only settlements around the West Bank that same year.
On Israel's supposed withdrawal from Gaza:
From Norman Finkelstein - ' Beyond Chutzpah':
'In a study entitled 'One Big Prison', the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem observed that the crippling economic arrangements Israel had imposed on Gaza would remain in place. In addition, Israel would continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza's land borders, coastline, and airspace, and the Israeli army would continue to operate in Gaza. "So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands," B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's claim of 'an end of the Occupation' is questionable". HRW (Human Rights Watch) was even more emphatic that evacuating settlers and troops from inside Gaza would not end the occupation: "Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around it's periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control."
On the 3 year illegal blockade of Gaza:
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane. ... endocument
'...Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Protective action must be taken immediately to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life, and in view of the emergency situation that is producing a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding day by day. However difficult politically, it is time to act. At the very least, an urgent effort should be made at the United Nations to implement the agreed norm of a 'responsibility to protect' a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a Crime Against Humanity.'
Nok- okay I'll give you that, but they are still a terror. How stupid do you got to be to not realise that firing missiles at the folk holding you down is only going to piss them off? You get more with honey than vinegar.
Regarding Jordan, any land like that can be taken..if you have the military power to do so, it's your's to take. It's how countries formed in the first place. It's barbaric, but truth. Which actually reminds me of something I had completely forgotten. Territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, including Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, are rightfully theirs, no matter what any previous mandate was made. You fight, you win, it's yours. That is how it's been since the dawn of the concept of owning territory.
Funny, I clearly recall stating things like Israel prevented aid from getting in, etc...solely blaming Hamas? No.
Byrnzie- You want me to show evidence but you do not provide any for your own statements. I've said before I go by what my family tells me and what I've seen. I already stated it is a piss poor source for arguements on here, but it's more than what you are giving for this one.
Nov.5? I'm talking of the current cease fire guy...
Members of the Hamas terror group are the rightful representatives of the Palestinian people and should control the entire West Bank just as they rule the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, told WND in an exclusive interview.
the Israeli government has been negotiating the evacuation of most of the West Bank as part of U.S.-backed talks aimed at creating a Palestinian state.
Haniyeh said earlier this week that Hamas had no intention of repeating its Gaza takeover in the West Bank, where Abbas' secular Fatah faction remains dominant.
"Israel says the party in Ramallah [Fatah] serves Israel, and if Israel quits the West Bank, Hamas will take it over. And we say this is true," Zahar said at a rally for Hamas supporters in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
As for the rest of what you said, see what I wrote to Nok about the 6 day war. Argue till your blue in the face. Israel won it, the territories are theirs.
International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power [from undertaking] permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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