It's hard not to try like I'm making excuses for the indiscriminate firing of home made rockets, but that's all they can muster, what else will they do? Is 2000 dead people including 500 children self defence? Is this self defence?
What it is is a predictable response. Hamas knew that this would happen if they continued to fire rockets into Israel, yet they continued to do so. The leadership of Hamas are buying support on the world stage with the lives of their people.
What kind of absurd comparison is that? Are you comparing the Allies to the Israelis? Did the Allies invade and occupy a land to make their own? Did the Allies force those people out of their homes? Did the Allies subjugate the denizens of those cities? Did the Allies lose 3 civilians and in revenge killings, murder thousands? Ridiculous.
I am challenging your use of the word 'murder'. The Allies deliberately bombed those cities in the full knowledge that large numbers of civilians would die. Similarly the Israelis bombed Gaza in the full knowledge that large numbers of civilians would die. You seem willing to call one murder yet not the other.
you are being oppressed, your land stolen from you, a blockade to kill your economy and denied basic human rights so if you lived in Palestine exactly what would you do?
I'm with you Oaf. Add to that the deaths of your family, the destruction of the home you've worked 30 years for. You have no future and little opportunity for a future. What else is there but to make some kind of gesture against the people perpetrating those acts?
was it yassa marofatt that said "nits breed lice" in the 80s when they where putting suicide bombers on school buses. wonder how long it takes to forgive and forget?. just thought i would throw that in to the mix. on my darkest days i never see an end to this.
I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure... Joking of course but I certainly cannot see an end to it
Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing, particularly when doing something will make the situation worse.
This is a great question, and, as someone said, follow the money. As someone else said, War is just an extension of Politics, so who gains from political unrest in the most oil/gas rich area of the globe?
"We went in to Afghanistan to overthrow a vicious, tyrannical regime, to give the population a chance of peace and freedom, and to withdraw as soon as possible" If you believe that then you really do live in cloud-cuckoo land !
"and until Israel accepts Hamas as the representative of Palestine there can be no peaceful solution either" Isn't part of the problem that Irael DOES think that Hamas are the representatives of all Palestinians? They think that as the organisation that claims to represent Palestinians is intent on destroying their entire country that all Palestinians must think the same way - that's why they don't really care who the bombs land on - to them all Palestinians are either Hamas, or Hamas sympathisers...
"what would you do?" "What should they do?" How about stop saying that their over-riding priority is the total destruction of Israel? How about agreeing to a cease-fire and actually meaning it ? How about asking the UN / Egypt / some other party to step in and mediate ? How about accepting that a peaceful, negotiated settlement is the only viable answer ? streta, Pete (et al) - What is YOUR soloution ? Do you want the Isrealis to leave their country and hand it over to the Palestinians ? That certainly appears to be what you atre suggesting... If so, where do you expect them all to go ? As my dad once said "fighting for peace is like f**king for virginity". BOTH sides need to realise that there can never be a military solution to this situation...
Good thread. Unlikely to ever solve the problem but why should it? On the one hand you have a wealthy power which holds all the cards. On the other, people with no future, a young population with no jobs and no prospects, who feel they have little to lose (but are finding out that they had a lot more to lose than they thought). But you can't fit a quart into a pint pot. The Palestinians can't roll the clock back to 1947 no matter how much they may think they are in the right. The Israelis on the other hand are little inclined to try to accommodate the people they originally displaced and refuse to reign in their more militant inhabitants (for whom, one assumes, a dead Arab is a good Arab). There can only be one answer and that is peace and acceptance. Israel radicalises Palestinians through depriving them of any hope, which breeds violence which in turn radicalises Israel. It's same old, same old. This has been going on for nigh on 70 years now. Soon it will be just history book stuff, in the same way as the Orangemen look back to battles won hundreds of years ago. You have to move on. And you have to move on even more so when you weren't even born in the time of the original conflict. Your reality is not the same as that of your grandfathers. Look at a map and see just how tiny Gaza is. It's microscopic, and yet this little piece of land drips a poison that contaminates the entire Muslim world and the West's reaction to it. But even supposing that Israel disappeared and things returned to pre 1948, would that cause an outbreak of peace? Highly unlikely. It would probably bolster the confidence of many Muslims to try to establish themselves as some species of world power. Yesterday I ordered online the new book The Jihadis Return by a columnist for the Independent having seen him talk sense on Newsnight about ISIS and whatnot. I was also moved to read the Wikipedia article on Wahabbism. Many Muslims are not just fluffy people with an Anglican-style belief in Allah - a take it or leave it attitude. Saudi Arabia is Wahabbist, and as the richest (I've not checked this "fact" - don't shoot me if I'm wrong) oil state, finances much of what you will have seen as global Islamic expansion. And where does all the money come from? The West thanks to oil (no doubt China too now). So there is a huge amount of real-politik played out where Saudi Arabia comes in for little criticism or examination. Why does it matter? Because as Israel radicalises Arabs, it is the extremist views of Islam that they increasingly turn to. Young Palestinians want to leave Gaza (surprise, surprise) but they'd like to study in Muslim universities, probably to learn more about the codswallop of Islam, rather than anything very useful. Not overly surprising. There was a good progamme on NI not so long ago where it was apparent that the entire cultural identity of sections of the Protestant community was their hatred of Catholics. That was how they exclusively defined themselves. For Palestinians, it's going to be much the same as regards Jews. How can anything useful be achieved with such a mindset?
