Israel, Hamas & the Gaza Strip

[aohige]

someone's starting to sound awfully lot like demongod.

It's definitly not a one-sided issue, and this should be observed from shoes on both sides.
Hamas != Palestanians

[7thMethuselah]

In a conflict that has been going on for 60 years the whole "Who started it?" discussion is utterly pointless. And one should remember the line between terrorist and freedom fighter is very small. Not that blowing up a restaurant is a good thing to do, but the same can be said about attack helicopters bombing schools.
This issue can't be solved until a way is found to allow the Palestinians to live in a comfortable way where they can work and live in decent conditions, if they achieve this terrorism from their side will die out due to lack of a reason. However in order to achieve this Israel would need to make some big concessions which will make them very vulnerable to any attacks dring the transition period which, realistically, will take over a decade at minimum, probably more.
In order to even get remotely close to a solution both parties need to trust one another which is extremely hard if half the Israeli government is very anti-palestinian. At the same time the leading Palestinians don't agree with one another (so who to talk to) and on top of that alot of them come from groups that have been blowing up restaurants in the past 20 years. Not a great basis to negotiate any agreement.

This problem is far more complex than a simple "we attack them out of self defense" a statement used by both sides. The conflict is the result of unresolved issues which happened after Israel was created 60 years ago. This isn't a black&white problem where one side are the "good ones" and the other are the "bad ones". Both sides have blood on their hands but at the same time both sides have very valid claims as well.

[yezhanquan]

Aye. For peace to happen, both sides would need leaders to tell them that no, your demands cannot be met 100%, or even most of them for that matter. Take the compromise if you want peace, or postpone the fight for future generations. It's really your call for both sides.

[WanderingKnight]

The Israelis are in this for their survival.

How many Palestinian people died in just a week of Israelite attacks?

Over six hundred. Over six fucking hundred. Most of them innocent civilians.

How many Israelites died in the same week?

Four. Four soldiers. And by their own fire.

You've got to be fucking kidding me if you believe that one of the countries with the most powerful military around the globe, backed both economically and military by the most powerful country in the world, is doing this to survive. Stop eating media shit. Grow a brain, for fuck's sake. Even the conservative US media crap is stepping down a bit from defending Israel.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by TUndead

but the thing is we do want peace we will accept an agreement in which we both would stop fighting... and everyone who says that during the cease fire they stoped shoting rocks that is not true and that is the resone why we atked and for the first time in a long time which is deferent then other wars the israeli country is united and even the people that get atk agree that this operation is inevedble we just didnt have a choise

Hamas didn't launch large scale rocket attack on Israel during the ceasefire. Yes there were some rocket attacks, but they were a few at a time and likely launched by third parties or rouge members. Let's not forget Israel launched raids during the ceasefire too. Neither side really followed the terms of the ceasefire. In fact I've seen reports that Israel began planning this attack while negotiating the previous ceasefire. Though I'm unsure of the source's credibility. If true it shows Israel wasn't serious about the ceasefire, which probably explains why they didn't comply with the terms to allow more supplies into Gaza.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
There's a video of recent news in that link, but I'm referring to the text story under it.

"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well."

u prob know that or ppl at least called u that, and im not sure if im saying this right(forgive me english is a 2nd lang that i know only a few years) but u r fastidious, look I got a heart and im sad about the palastinian kids and the none extremeist but u said urself we atk using our intelligence resources and is it so hard for the moslims to fake intellegence for us so we would hit kids and I wont be suprirsed if u think im lying(sounds pretty made up) but they want to make us hit kids so they can show it to the world. today at school I told my friend who is a bit more let say educated then me in news in general and he told me then they even filled a truck with bodies so they can take photos of it to show it to the world... and did u know that they tease us with photo's and vidoes or 2 soliders they kidnaped and didnt tell us if they are alive, made an agreement with us which says we will free a lot and I mean a lot in the hundreds of palstinian who let say blow up somewhere or helped with it and when we got the bodies turns out one of them have been killed from the start and the other one torture and then killed?

again sry about my english and hope I helped you understand

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That can all be summed up by saying "It's all the Palestinian's fault!" Both sides are responsible for their actions. Until they stop blaming the other side for everything, nothing is going to be accomplished.

So a friend of yours claims they're faking the intelligence to make Israel attack schools and planting the bodies? Sorry, but your friend is not a reliable source.

The rest of that is merely an excuse to try to justify Israel's actions. Hamas doing bad things does not give Israel the right to do bad things in retaliation. This will only end if one side decides to try to break the cycle of violence. Israel is the one in a much better position to do it.

Originally Posted by mg1942

Case in point, Israel sent in a convoy of 30 or 40 trucks with supplies and Hamas fired rockets at it so the Israeli's didn't send in any more convoys.

That's the kind of thing that damages Hamas' credibility though. Every rocket they fire at an Israeli convoy bringing aid weakens Hamas' position among the Palestinian people. Each convoy Israel doesn't send weakens theirs.

[yezhanquan]

Israel is in trouble. Why? Because it cannot even command the allegiance of many of its own Arabs citizens, who unsurprisingly is on the side that legitimacy of Israeli rule is becoming 0. Also, forget the "destroy Israel" howls of the Arab world. It's the Jews they're after.

What's more, the Arab-Israeli population is growing. Demographically, Israeli Jews are staring at a situation which they cannot handle and (for most of them) want to pretend that it wouldn't happen. Only Jewish state in the world? Soon, the Jews would be a minority in that state. What then? A Jewish identity for the state, or an Israeli identity?

[autobachs]

The assumption that if the Palestinians renounced violence Israel would give up its goal of "redeeming" the land God gave them thousands of years ago is silly. Anybody who believes propaganda that blatant has been drinking too much Kool-Aid.

You only have to look at what's happened on the West Bank in the last few years. After Arafat died and Abbas took over, Fatah has been enforcing a ceasefire on the West Bank. The Israeli response has been to expand the settlements and increase the number of roadblocks from 470 to 630.

There are now over 280,000 Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank, and another 200,000 in and around East Jerusalem. Large numbers of those would have to be moved if there was a peace deal with Palestinians. Israeli governments know they could never achieve that. In 1994 when Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslims in a mosque in Hebron, Yitzhak Rabin looked at removing the Hebron settlers. The army warned him there would be civil war if he tried, and instead Rabin moved thousands of Palestinians from Hebron to safeguard the settlement.

Things have got worse since then. Israel can never stick to a peace treaty with the Palestinians and the Israeli governments know it, which is why their strategy is always to delay peace talks

[mg1942]

Originally Posted by autobachs

The assumption that if the Palestinians renounced violence Israel would give up its goal of "redeeming" the land God gave them thousands of years ago is silly.

If Palestinians were puppy dogs to the world instead of rabid dogs, they would have much more sympathy.

Renouncing violence worked for Gandhi, it could have worked for the Palestinian cause.

How many humanitarian aid organizations would have leapt to the cause of the poor disenfranchised likeable Palestinians?

But instead, they brought their cause to the world scene..... through hijacking, kidnapping and murder.

[yezhanquan]

@mg1942: Actually, independence was no antidote to the sub-continent's troubles. With independence came the bloody split of India. The horrors of that period is another of those stories which is not well-known. I dare say that it was the British who got the better deal out of it. They get to leave smelling like roses, while ethnic tensions continue to fester in India and Pakistan.

Founding a state and running it are often two different matters.

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

personally i think the best way to handle the situtation in the ME is to Nuke Jerusalem. and threaten to nuke whoever fires another shot. And also promise to nuke Mecca and every other holy places if the rest of the arab world would quiet down.

I have to say it's a stupid idea... base on good root.
The status of Jerusalem will always be a problem. If Jerusalem could become a city-state like the Vatican, it might help, but it would need to be a independent city-state.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

@Ledgem:

I agree that this is a very complex situation, but bombing civilians is not the way to solve it. Neither Israel nor Hamas are saints, and neither are fully responsible for this situation.

I agree, but there is a distinction between Israel and Hamas here. Hamas is intentionally targeting civilians. They could try to minimize casualties and target Israeli infrastructure (like the Weather Underground, an American terrorist group that attempted to avoid human casualties while carrying out attacks against infrastructure to make a statement). Hell, they could even carry out attacks against the government and/or the military - as long as they're killing anyone they're not going to get much sympathy, but we could at least say that they weren't dragging in your average person into the conflict. (Of course, Israel has mandatory military service, so I suppose that attacks on the military make that debatable.)

On the other hand, Israel is not specifically targeting Palestinian citizens. I'm not going to claim that everyone in the Israeli government or chain of military command tries their hardest to avoid civilian casualties, or that there aren't some who feel gleeful about it. I'm sure there are. But in general they do what they can to minimize casualties. If Israel responded to rocket attacks by randomly bombing apartments and schools then we could make a comparison. They're doing a crappy job at precision revenge killings (which is a ridiculous concept in itself), but that's what they're attempting to do. I also think that Hamas knows this. I don't believe it's a coincidence that rockets aren't fired from deserted areas. They know that Israel will likely clumsily respond with too much force, and as a result civilians will become involved. Having more people against Israel generally translates to more power and support for Hamas. Why wouldn't Hamas want that?

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Palestina should have been granted their place. Israel should have never started the Six Days War. Hamas should have never been born. There are tons of ways to explain what happened to reach this situation, and there are tons of ways to see that it's not a very easy one. But as soon as everyone starts pointing fingers and trying to seek "guilty" people, the rest of us will start digging in the mud and find shit on both sides.

Right, and this is why I say that who "should" be where is no longer important. In a just world Israel probably would exist elsewhere, but similarly the United States of America wouldn't exist, the Native Americans would have their land, and so on. What matters here and now is that there are many people living in that region, and they're killing each other.

What for? Is it worth it? Will it lead to anything? Israel isn't saintly to be certain, but they're not actively going out and killing people - not unprovoked, anyway. Maybe they are attempting to muscle the Palestinians out, but that should be dealt with in a more civilized manner (if possible). It seems that the demand for the Palestinian side is that Israel practically remove itself from the region entirely - an unreasonable demand, and not something that any amount of fighting is likely to accomplish. Not without genocide occurring.

Perhaps the fighting started because the "civilized" manners of Palestinian protest were ignored. Fine, Palestine has showed that it's upset and that it's willing to use force to get what it wants. It's been showing that for some time now, and it's drawn both Israelis and Palestinians into a cycle of violence and suffering. Stop the violence, and attempt negotiations again. Get more people involved if necessary. And if the negotiations continue to fail, consider whether the demands being made are unreasonable.

Originally Posted by aohige

Palestanians are not the only ones that needs to be making social changes before any type of unification can even be attempted.
Both sides have a LOT of work cut out.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by mg1942

This situation is going to get out of control. The damned Palestinians are a people that knows nothing but violence. They continually show that they can not abide by a cease fire as Hamas continually shelled Israel with thousands of rockets during a truce they signed.

Blanket statements like that are all too ignorant. Of course the Palestinians know more than violence. They're poisoning their own society by teaching their children to hate Israel, but they're not a group of savages who aspire to blow themselves up in a crowded market place. Even though I defend Israel on this one, I still respect the Palestinians. Neither side is acting responsibly, and I'm only sorry that the Palestinian people feel that they're being treated so unfairly that they're motivated to take up arms over it.

[yezhanquan]

On Jerusalem, it wouldn't be enough to nuke it. Nukes don't ensure that people in the future would not return. For Jerusalem to be taken off the agenda, it must be made into a wasteland, where only animals or insects could survive. Maybe then would they stop fighting.

[Shadow Kira01]

Considering that Israel had launched an attack on the Hamas which resulted in about 30 civilian deaths near an United Nations school, aren't the U.N. going to do something to intervene? Unlike the Hamas who uses home-made rockets, the Israeli military have advanced weaponry and how did that attack resulted near a non-Hamas infrastructure? No matter how just the Israeli government claims, their actions proves to be questionable. The ones they had killed mostly aren't Hamas, but everyday civilians. Seems problematic..

[Deathkillz]

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Considering that Israel had launched an attack on the Hamas which resulted in about 30 civilian deaths near an United Nations school, aren't the U.N. going to do something to intervene?

Oh they are...

[Aquillion]

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Considering that Israel had launched an attack on the Hamas which resulted in about 30 civilian deaths near an United Nations school, aren't the U.N. going to do something to intervene?

Like I said the last time the UN came up...

The UN can't just 'intervene'. Specifically, anything beyond sending angry letters (and even sending particularly angry letters, for that matter) requires the agreement of all five of the UN's permanent veto-holding nations. This makes sense when you think about it; the purpose of the UN is to provide a forum for diplomacy, not a big stick nations can use to hit each other (they have to do that themselves), and therefore anything it actually does has to have the agreement of all of the world's most powerful nations.

But the US has very close ties to Israel, and will use its veto power to block the UN from doing, well, anything. Having one of the most powerful nations in the world on your side tends to accomplish things like that.

[yezhanquan]

But, do Israel and the US have the same interests? No. They may have similar interests, but when you remember that Israel's location is very unfriendly compared to the US's, unconditional support cannot be justified. Yes, the Israeli lobby in Washington has tons of influence, but perhaps the US might want to do something about it.

[Shadow Kira01]

Originally Posted by yezhanquan

But, do Israel and the US have the same interests? No. They may have similar interests, but when you remember that Israel's location is very unfriendly compared to the US's, unconditional support cannot be justified. Yes, the Israeli lobby in Washington has tons of influence, but perhaps the US might want to do something about it.

I disagree. Considering the US is facing an economic recession with a plummeting market and also failing auto industry, they have a lot of stress on their ends to actually put time into solving the current Middle East crisis which involves 2 long-time enemies who have been launching military attacks at each other for a very long time. It's not that the the new Obama administration won't try to do anything about it, but rather to speak.. They can't do anything soon after the inauguration, it will take time until they have the time to deal with the problems over in Gaza which would actually be too late or maybe not, depending on how to define the term "too late". From the looks of the situation, it would be a few months before the Obama administration would do anything about it, probably until the end of spring or so..

The only interest the two countries share seem to be oil and perhaps, control of the Middle East region. On the contrary, this is merely speculation. The United Nations on the other hand can't really do much as pointed out that it is actually run and controlled by 5 major nations in which 2 of them are siding with Israel, while 2 don't really care. This leaves France who probably can't do much on their own. Generally, I don't expect to see a peaceful end to the current Middle East crisis within these few months.

[yezhanquan]

Israel is probably the no.1 issue in US foreign policy. The new president should probably put a team to work on it.

[TUndead]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

Hamas didn't launch large scale rocket attack on Israel during the ceasefire. Yes there were some rocket attacks, but they were a few at a time and likely launched by third parties or rouge members. Let's not forget Israel launched raids during the ceasefire too. Neither side really followed the terms of the ceasefire. In fact I've seen reports that Israel began planning this attack while negotiating the previous ceasefire. Though I'm unsure of the source's credibility. If true it shows Israel wasn't serious about the ceasefire, which probably explains why they didn't comply with the terms to allow more supplies into Gaza.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
There's a video of recent news in that link, but I'm referring to the text story under it.

"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well."



That's exactly what I'm talking about. That can all be summed up by saying "It's all the Palestinian's fault!" Both sides are responsible for their actions. Until they stop blaming the other side for everything, nothing is going to be accomplished.

So a friend of yours claims they're faking the intelligence to make Israel attack schools and planting the bodies? Sorry, but your friend is not a reliable source.

The rest of that is merely an excuse to try to justify Israel's actions. Hamas doing bad things does not give Israel the right to do bad things in retaliation. This will only end if one side decides to try to break the cycle of violence. Israel is the one in a much better position to do it.



That's the kind of thing that damages Hamas' credibility though. Every rocket they fire at an Israeli convoy bringing aid weakens Hamas' position among the Palestinian people. Each convoy Israel doesn't send weakens theirs.

no my friend told me about the truck with the bodies the thing about the intelligence is from the news... and let say the school we bombs was a place where we got hit from we didnt know that there are 30+ inocent ppl in it and thats what they hoped for... and the reason our ppl die less it because we take care of them, u think theye didnt hit a school with a rock they did but the school was emtpy cos we canceled it... and by the way let see u live in a city that has been atked for 8 years everyday let see if then u will speek in the same way because most ppl(that are not from world war 2) in modern country's never experienced war in their own country so to give us crap about defending ourself is a little ignorent... and btw I dont blame all the palastinian's only the extemist and the only reason that the inocent get killed is because the hamas defend it self before them using the shalters for ammo insteed of kids and women's and why is that so when we kill them they could show it to the world so you will see how bad we are.

and its not like they dont have enough country's that they live in and if you say that they are here bacause of the history that means that they do want to kill us because that is the only way that they will get israel, because if u speak about history i think we win that department considering we are there before there were moslims and arab's or even christian's for that matter

[Irenicus]

^Oh, <bleep>. Fine, you are now responsible for the criminal genocides and enslavement inflicted upon the so-called Philistines, original inhabitants of the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean, done for religious and political reasons and if we are to believe your own mythologies also done horribly.

Pay up. Apologize. They came before you, don't they? Why should you people have it when, far worse than the Arabs, who actually weren't taking the land from you but rather from the Romans, or the Ottomans, who conquered it from the Mamluks, your great-great-great-great-ancestors (may be) took it directly from its original owners, possibly.

Spoiler:

...doesn't that sound ridiculous to you? Yes? Then drop it with that argument. "We came first" is a recipe for Balkan flame wars, on the internet by words, on the real world...yeah, the Serbs and Croats and Bosnians and others would have a thing or two to tell.

Also, cue "my friend" issues on the internet. Why should we trust what you say when you're shown to be completely biased for one side? Where is the link to the "news?" Even if a "news" source doesn't have a website like most do these days something as big as that's going to get uploaded on youtube somehow, so why don't you show us where? And really, did the Palestinians want to die as much as you insinuate they do?

Again with that "they" and "us," neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have clean hands here. Blame on, it's your country, your war, and as you yourself said your sufferings -- we just happen to think you're not ever going to get peace (except for facetious, or if not facetious then bloody racist, "flatten them all" answers) unless you people talk to each other and stop thinking of the other side as evil and inhuman.