The Israel-Palestine conflict

____no5

____no5

Free Man
I'm quiet shocked about it, and the total lack of reactions from the part of EU, seems very strange to me

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Israeli ground troops have started to enter the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials have confirmed, a week after the offensive against Hamas began.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the intention was to take control of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets into Israel.

Witnesses say armoured vehicles crossed into northern Gaza at four separate points, supported by helicopters.

Earlier, Israel intensified air and artillery attacks on the territory.

read the whole article here
 
____no5 said:
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the intention was to take control of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets into Israel.
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I wonder if they really expect to achieve that. from a military point of view, I think hamas will find another way and another place for launchers within a few months. They are guerrillas. they are highly mobile and adaptable.

From a political point of view, I don't know how Israel is expecting Palestinian people to align with them and abolish Hamas, while they are being forced to live in inhumane and non-civilized conditions because of Israel's economic limitations. They think that Israeli State is the reason why they lost their homeland. Hamas is only worsening the situation by killing Israeli civilians in a misguided hatred.

I don't know... I don't know...

WW2 is still going on in these lands.
 
One of history's greatest paradoxes : one that was annihilated by fascism becomes a fascist himself.
 
Its a real mess isn't it?

However assume you lived in my home city of Liverpool, and a group of people who are influenced by a country who's leader publicly states that he would like to see my country wiped off the face of the earth(and may soon have the means to do it), are firing rockets from say, Northern Ireland into my city after first breaking a ceasefire, then I would be pretty pissed off if my government weren't doing something drastic about it.

My understanding of it after watching the events unfolding,are that one of the reasons for this action is to curb the influence of Iran in the area,something they tried to do in the Lebanon but failed.Indeed you'll probably find that countries who still trade with Iran will strongly disagree with this action(France have already done so)and I would expect Russia to follow.

As for the population in the area, yes it is sad to see,but I don't think Hamas have done them any favours themselves anyway.

For those who I observed on the news demonstrating against this action, yes it is your right and I understand why you do it, but where were you when Hamas broke the ceasefire and started launching rockets indiscriminately into Israel!
 
The sad thing is that because of this, even more Palestines are turning to Hamas.  This might just end up helping Hamas in the long run.
 
I'm sick and tired of people declaring Israel fascist.

A lot of their policies are wrong (like the settlements in Palestinian territories - something they are starting to realise now), and much is out of measure. However, what people don't realise is that Israel, in contrary to most other countries in the world waging war or offensive foreign policy, is actually threatened in its existence. Yes, they are a little paranoid about it, but you would be too if people have been out to get you for the last sixty years. In history, a moment of weakness could mean total annihilation for Israel, and they have been close to it a few times too often for their taste.
Israel did not just attack the Gaza strip out of nothing. Hamas fundamentalists were firing missiles on Israeli territory without previous provocation, knowing how Israel would respond. And what was worse, these missiles reached towns previously out of range. And they were indiscriminate of their targets- if civilians died, all the better. What do you want Israel to do? Sit back and drink a cup of tea?
The Israelis have demonstrated their will to negotiate with the Palestinians, but they can only negotiate with those ready to negotiate. You can't negotiate with fanatics, and that is what the Hamas are. They have repeatedly declared that they will not stop until Israel is wiped off the face of the earth. In my opinion, it's only natural that the Israelis don't want that sort of people around.
In my opinion, the Hamas are to be held responsible for the civilian deaths on the Palestinian side. Why? Because they know the Israelis will be coming after them, and they know that they will use heavy weaponry, so they are using the civilians as a shield.
And let's not forget that the Hamas do not stand for all Palestinians. Have you forgotten the near-civil war among the Palestinians not too long ago? What came out of it is that the Hamas have turned the Gaza strip into their stronghold, while the West Bank is in the hand of the moderate Fatah, who support the idea of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Even Egypt has its borders to the Gaza strip closed because they certainly don't want people like the Hamas around. The only friends the Hamas has mostly either nutcases like themselves. Syrian support is limited to the point where Israel withdraws from the Golan Heights, and Iranian support is nominal at best. The government in Tehran believes it owes it to the principles of their revolution to spit out a bad word against Israel here and there. Ahmadinejad would not want to threaten his possible re-election this year by firing missiles against Israel, because nobody but him cares in Iran anyway.
The Hamas are on their own, and that's how it should be.
 
The Hamas might be on their own, but many people voted for them and the Hamas warriors live within the densely populated Palestinian community.

I like to join eddiesson's view. He sketched the balance pretty well:

From a political point of view, I don't know how Israel is expecting Palestinian people to align with them and abolish Hamas, while they are being forced to live in inhumane and non-civilized conditions because of Israel's economic limitations. They think that Israeli State is the reason why they lost their homeland.

vs

Hamas is only worsening the situation by killing Israeli civilians in a misguided hatred.

The rockets from Hamas are wrong. But they are desperate signs of protest against Israel's mailtreatment of the Palestianian people. Still I can understand that Israel wants to do something about it.

However, there's much more at stake than rockets only. Til this very day Israel didn’t mark its exact borders officially. There were many opportunities to talk about peace or to give the lands back. If Israel would have given back the lands that they've possessed for 40 years, things might not have turned out so bad as now.

Israel are the possessors, the Palestinians want more freedom.

Israel has reasons to protect their people, but they should not ignore the other side. Nor should the rest of the world. The Palestinians are the victims. They have lost their land and many more human lives than Israel.
 
The problem is that Hamas does have strong Palestinian support, and we must ask why this has occurred.  Fatah is doing well in the other areas of Palestine, so it is clearly not as widespread as it once was - what this means is that the overtures that Israel has made has indeed made some progress.

In this instance, I tend to believe that Israel is acting within its rights to defend its people.  Surely, if Hamas is launching rockets and killing Israeli citizens, then Israel can't just stand there and take it.  Perun is absolutely correct: Israel is worried that any sign of weakness will lead to extreme difficulties in the future with the other Arab states.

I also believe Perun is correct with his interpretation of Hamas: they are an extremist organization that will not stop until Israel is destroyed.  Israel must today work on reducing the ability of Hamas to strike Israel with weapons; however, they do also need to consider ways to reduce Hamas's support from within the Palestinian people.  I don't think the latter is a priority for Israel, unfortunately.  One of the reasons many people consider Israel the bad guys is because of the fences and because Israel isn't showing the same desire to reconcile with Palestine as it has shown to the independent Arab states in the area.

Israel could give the Palestinians everything it ever wanted, and it might not change a thing.  That is the true tragedy here - that the hatred of Jews (and the converse hatred of Hamas) very well may overwhelm any peace process we can consider.
 
Forostar said:
The Hamas might be on their own, but many people voted for them and the Hamas warriors live within the densely populated Palestinian community.
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Yes, but that does not mean that all those who voted for the Hamas are actually Islamists. Back when those completely nonsensical elections took place, the Hamas were the ones who said what the people wanted to hear, they fed from the hatred of the Palestinians towards the Israelis. What the Hamas said sounded so good to those who voted for them that they did not want to hear the moderate ideas of the Fatah. What most people still don't realise is that the Hamas stands for more than just the liberation of Palestine. They want a theocratic, fundamentalist state like Taleban-era Afghanistan. That idea alone must be fought with every means available.
I already stated my opinion on the Hamas using the Palestine population as shields against Israeli attacks.

However, there's much more at stake than rockets only. Til this very day Israel didn’t mark its exact borders officially. There were many opportunities to talk about peace or to give the lands back. If Israel would have given back the lands that they've possessed for 40 years, things might not have turned out so bad as now.
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Official or not, the borders are there. What lands exactly are you referring to? If you mean the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, those are under control of the Palestinians. As we see. Israel wouldn't need to invade the Gaza Strip militarily if it was under their control in the first place.

Israel are the possessors, the Palestinians want more freedom.
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The Palestinians want their freedom and the Israelis want their rights as a nation. Israel has never attacked a country or a place without being attacked first. The measures were not always comparable, but every Israeli attack was a counter-attack. Israel is determined to grant the Palestinians their freedom only when the Palestinians guarantee that they will leave Israel in peace.
And to state it again, a Palestine under the Hamas is not a free Palestine.

Israel has reasons to protect their people, but they should not ignore the other side. Nor should the rest of the world. The Palestinians are the victims. They have lost their land and many more human lives than Israel.
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No. The victims are the civilians on both sides. Neither the Hamas, nor the Hezbollah, nor the Islamic Jihad and what other despicable organisations there are are any sort of victim. Their interest is to fuel the conflict so they can exist further. The only victims in their ranks are the followers brainwashed to believe that this is the only way.

Please note that I am anti-Hamas, not anti-Palestinian. I am just trying to point out that many who support the Palestinians are overlooking the fact that the Hamas are a criminal organisation in the same league as the Taleban and al Qaeda. They follow the same ideology and pursue the same goals. They have no respect for life and utilise the suffering of innocent people to make other innocent people suffer, abusing a belief that is sacred to many to legitimise their deeds.
 
Let's get rid of this big misconception:

Perun said:
Israel has never attacked a country or a place without being attacked first.
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Not true. http://www.deepjournal.nl/p/7/a/en/729.html
I have posted it earlier, but you have never reacted, so I am not sure if you have seen it.

LooseCannon said:
Israel could give the Palestinians everything it ever wanted, and it might not change a thing.
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A bit more humanity is what the situation needs.
 
I think if you look at the immediate issue, we need to ask ourselves what will make Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel.
 
Yes, and I sadly agree with that.  However, I also think that this is the end to which Hamas wants Israel to go, knowing the more people in Gaza that die, the more recruits they will have and the more extreme they will be willing to be.
 
You see- I don't know what should be done. Everything has been tried. Israel tried it with occupation. And they tried it with giving the Palestinians free hand. The outcome was always the same.
 
I rather stick with the one guy's opinion. Anyway, everyone is free what to believe.

Perun said:
Nevertheless, that does not change what is happening now.
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That's true. I understand this operation.
 
Now, I am not an expert on the Middle East or the Palestinian conflict.  But I had the pleasure of sharing the New Year's with someone who is far more learned on the subject - a guy some know as Iron Duke - and we discussed it in depth.  And what is going on boils down to one word: extremism.  On both sides.  Neither side wants to compromise, Israel has been forced to try but Hamas's extremism has caused it to keep acting violently against both Israel and Fatah, regardless of the situation.  And as before, more extreme elements of Israel are again rising to prominence.

Most things I have read on the subject of the Six Days War suggest that Israel was attacked without much provocation, though I have no doubt that they acted in a semi-aggressive manner beforehand.
 
LooseCannon said:
I think if you look at the immediate issue, we need to ask ourselves what will make Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel.
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I think what is making this problem insoluble is that we are not looking at it in a holistic way. Israel-Palestine problem is a pile of intertwined cycles. If we fail to look at the past before Hamas fired rockets, if we only concentrate on the latest circle of this chain, we will not even have a partial understanding of the situation.

And I blame media at this point. They are only feeding us with the latest events as if there is no past. And they are being very selective too. So-much-opinion-leaders are happy with this, because smaller the content, easier to manipulate. People are ready to buy this as this is simple enough to "understand" and move on. No effort to see and understand the other side. After all, what we have is biased media, biased governments and non-questioning people with the attention span of an eye blink. We are surrounded by insensitivity.

And meanwhile, the 41 year old chain keeps on lengthening, civilians keep dying, some people keep reaping off the profits, feeding on blood & manipulation (and/or religion)
 
It all comes back to the fundamental problems. The State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to defend itself from attacks. Advancing into the Gaza Strip in an attempt to ferret out guerillas who are so brave to hide in civillian populations, using them as human shields. All of this in a conflict that has waged for more than 60 years. I don't know how else the Israelis are supposed to respond to "warriors" who fire rockets indiscriminatley, then run and hide. I don't think that Israel is a fascist state. They are in  a constant survival mode. Hamas may have some political legitimacy, but they have terroristic roots. Just like the PLO. I usually don't comment in these foreign affair threads but the Israeli / Palestinian conflict is a particular interest of mine and I am extremely biased in this topic. If you look at a broader scope, it is an Eastern/Western conflict as well. Look at the situation in France, who has a considerable Muslim populace and you can see where my train of thought lies. I am greatly concerned if it were to happen here in the United States. I may sound a bit paranoid but I lost a cousin and a few friends during the attacks on the World Trade center. Israel has had Heads of State (we know who they are) threaten thier very existence and they need to take every attack as an extension of this. If the Brave Hamas warriors choose to hide out in civillian areas, well they are the ones that are responsible for civillian deaths. I know this sounds a bit callous but war is an ugly buisiness.
 
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