Israeli soldiers admit 'shoot first' policy in Gaza

BRMLAW wrote:

The same way you excuse decades of palestinian massacres of innocent civillians. You ignore decades of their cold blooded murdering of civillians of all nationalities. Whats your excuse there? Maybe Jewish life is unimportant to you and you wonder why you find yourself volunteering to defend yourself as not an anti-semite when you havent even been accused of it??? That and your almost total denial of the impact of the holocaust puts you in a particular class. Doesnt it?

What does the holocaust have to do with the illegal Israeli occupation?

BRMLAW wrote:

Hamas called for a two state solution? Thats astonishing. If you truly believe that you are truly on some kind of mind altering substance and its pointless to engage in discussion with you people. That's delusional. Hamas charter favors the destruction of Israel. Fucking read something besides Al Jazeera. Dont with my uninformed fools.

I've already quoted what the Zionist leadership believes. Where was your outrage about that?

And the Hamas charter is irrelevant. Did the communist manifesto prevent peace an eventual peaceful settlement between Russia and the West? No. There's one way to find out if Hamas are serious about peace: abide by resolution 242 and then see what happens.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9917.shtml
EI interview: Hamas advisor on talking to the US, Fatah and Israel
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 28 October 2008

Dr. Ahmed Yousef, senior advisor to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza:

Hamas' views on the future

RA: Hamas has long called for a long-term truce with Israel, an offer that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel have rejected already. Is there a possibility that Hamas would consider other options?

AY: We still stick to our political vision which is based on the truce or long-term ceasefire of five, ten or twenty years if Israel accepts to withdraw to the pre-1967 border. This remains our vision of the basis for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

RA: Abbas argues that a long-term truce will give Israel a chance to reoccupy the Palestinian territories. How do you view this?

AY: I don't think that Abbas understands fully what we mean by a truce. The truce means that the Israelis will withdraw in a specified period, maybe six months, from all the occupied Palestinian territories, and they can get a guarantee for security for these ten or twenty years. We think this might set the stage for confidence building. After twenty years maybe the new generation of Palestinians will have different views for how to settle the conflict.

When you do not have bloodshed maybe that would be a good time to talk about peace, but now while the cycle of death continues and we have daily funerals; I do not think this is a good time to talk about a full peaceful settlement. So we need to have time to heal from the injuries and from the bad memories of bloodshed between Muslims and Jews, between Palestinians and Jews. And after that this new generation will have its own political vision about how to settle the conflict maybe through a binational state or a one-state solution. I am sure they are going to come up with different proposals. But today this is what we can offer. A hudna -- twenty years of peace with the Palestinians having their own independent and free state on the pre-1967 borders.

RA: There is a lot of talk about the death of the two-state solution and increased activism calling for a one-state solution as in South Africa. How does Hamas relate to these discussions and what are the current trends in thinking about a long-term solution?

AY: It sounds good to talk about a one-state solution but this will be considered when the two-state solution fails. However, so far we are sticking to our position about a long-term truce. South Africa is a good model for coexistence, reconciliation and atonement. Until now we are still not addressing this issue. But in the future if the world's expectation of a viable independent Palestinian state fails because of expansionist Israeli policies -- already Israel has confiscated and annexed 50 percent of the land in the West Bank -- people will come to this issue and we will address it.

RA: Who does Hamas look to as a political model from other struggles in history?

AY: Of course there is Nelson Mandela, and we do look to non-Muslim and non-Arab countries as models. For example, Michael Collins in Ireland [Editor: Collins was one of the key leaders in Ireland's independence struggle]. I do believe that Hamas also looks at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey as a good model as well. We are not Taliban, we are Erdogan.