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It was reported today that the military wing of Hamas will resume attacks on Israel following a long self-imposed ceasefire. This follows the shelling of a beach in Gaza by Israeli artillery that killed Palestinian civilians who were having picnics there. At least 7 people died including 3 children. It’s another in a long line of examples where the Israeli military have recklessly used heavy weapons on civilian areas.
Somebody being killed in this conflict is nothing new but yet again the USA in particular and to a lesser extent the EU have failed to take advantage of a lull in the violence to try to make progress in the peace process. First the Fatah government was let down by the West during the ceasefire and lately we’ve seen the Hamas government being ostracized and having sanctions imposed on it. The West has failed to act in good faith with the Palestinians and now it seems like yet another window of opportunity for dialogue has been squandered.
There is still time for the West to act to try to prevent a return of the deadly cycle of violence but I doubt the politicians will do anything. They could try to engage with the Hamas government, they could try to restart negotiations between Israel and Palestine and they could discuss the lifting of sanctions. They should be doing whatever it takes to make the military wing of Hamas reconsider their decision to restarting their armed campaign. What will probably happen though is that the West will twiddle its thumbs until the body count starts mounting up and then they’ll start discussions about how appalling the situation is and how something really ought to be done about it.
The real problem is that the USA is utterly biased in its position as mediator otherwise this conflict would have been resolved years ago. There are enough people in Israel and Palestine who want a 2 state solution and an end to the occupation but the Israeli government holds all the cards and they are under no real pressure from the USA to make the necessary concessions. The Israeli right-wing want to keep Israeli settlements on Palestinian land even though an end to the occupation would enable a peace-deal between Israel and the Arab league. Hamas has even suggested that they might end their campaign if that happened. But there’s no pressure from the USA on Israel to end its illegal annexation of Palestinian territory and that’s why we have this bloody stalemate.
Isn’t it strange Mr Big – there was I thinking that the Israeli’s shelled random sites (including the beaches) in Gaza to prevent the nice young Palestinian gentlemen and Hamas activists from using them to launch mortar and rocket attacks into Israel.
Do you know I had no idea that the Israeli’s just shelled these areas to kill women and children for no reason and totally without provocation from Hamas.
Whatever next. I expect that the Israeli’s will be sending squads of suicide bombers into Gaza to kill innocent civilians, mainly women and children.
I don’t think a ceasefire suits the US and Isreal at the moment. They seem determined to maintain the conflict with Islam on a global scale.
I don’t think a ceasefire suits the Palestinians / Arabs at the moment. They seem determined to maintain the conflict with Israel / the Western world on a global scale.
Remind me who had a ceasefire in place, and who attacked who PB! :roll:
I believe that The Islamist Movement (?Hamas?) announced that it would suspend the murder of Israeli women and children around February 2005 when they declared the end of the Second Intifada, as they tried to realign themselves more as a political movement rather than as a militant murder organisation. Oh yes that’s right, they had an election coming up didn’t they? Must make sure that the world’s Media see them in the best possible light huh?
They largely observed this so-called ceasefire – apart from a few car bombs here and there and an occasional suicide bomber. But hey, it’s only stinking Jews that they maim kill so who cares eh? If all else fails we can blame Blair & Bush etc etc can’t we?
As their openly declared aim is to eradicate Israel and all Jews from the face of the earth, it was only a matter of time before they went back to their usual activities of bombing, mortaring, and generally indiscriminatorily murdering as many Jews as they can. Wasn’t that Adolf Hitler’s aim too???
They love giving themselves military sounding titles as well.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Izzedine al-Quassam Brigade said in a press reslease ”The Brigade will decide the right moment and place to strike back with force against the criminal attacks of Israel. The Zionist crimes open the battle in the Zionist towns”
So no change there then eh? Roll on the Third Intifada.
How can randomly shelling civilian areas be justified? Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth and yet the IDF have frequently used f-16s, apaches, tanks and artillery to bomb places in the Occupied Territories. It’s a well-documented fact that the IDF have a terrible human rights record. 3 British citizens have been murdered by the Israeli military in the past few years and somewhere between 3 and 4 thousand palestinians have been killed in the same period including many civilians and many children. That’s around 4 times as many people that were killed by Palestinian militants. So Israel is not an innocent party in all this.
How is a suicide bomber who kills civilians any worse than an israeli tank commander who fires tank shells into a crowded market place or an Israeli pilot who drops a 1 ton bomb on an apartment complex in the dead of night? All those attacks are unacceptable as was the Israeli attack on that beach.
As for the rockets that had been fired into Israel, those were not from Hamas, they were from other militant groups. The reason some groups didn’t maintain a ceasefire is because they have gained nothing from past ceasefires. Palestinians still get persecuted on their own land, they get killed, they have their land taken away from them and their economy is being crippled. Israel is the one occupying Palestinian territory not vice versa, so it’s up to Israel to leave the Palestinians alone and withdraw back to its own territory.
At the end of the day, there are laws regarding how military forces should behave towards civilians and Israel has been routinely flouting those rules. Israel has no right to illegally annex Arab land and it has no right to persecute an entire nation of people.
In fact is that they have no right to be there at all do they? They simply don’t deserve to live. The best thing to do is to let the assortment of Arabs that live in Gaza kill the rest of the Jews and finish off what Adolf Hitler didn’t quite manage.
Hey they could get some fantastic Media coverage into the bargain. They could blame the Jews for starting everything in the first place; blame us and the Americans for helping the Jews to settle there in the first place; and anyway who cares about a few dead Jews eh? A real win/win scenario.
Oh and BTW look at all that lovely nice land they could take over, all the houses and businesses that they would have, not to mention all the Jewish money as well.
Yup roll on the Third Intifada – kill all the Jews, kill all the Jewish/Zionist supporters then kill everybody else that doesn’t agree with them.
@forumhostpb wrote:
In fact is that they have no right to be there at all do they? They simply don’t deserve to live. The best thing to do is to let the assortment of Arabs that live in Gaza kill the rest of the Jews and finish off what Adolf Hitler didn’t quite manage.
Hey they could get some fantastic Media coverage into the bargain. They could blame the Jews for starting everything in the first place; blame us and the Americans for helping the Jews to settle there in the first place; and anyway who cares about a few dead Jews eh? A real win/win scenario.
Oh and BTW look at all that lovely nice land they could take over, all the houses and businesses that they would have, not to mention all the Jewish money as well.
Yup roll on the Third Intifada – kill all the Jews, kill all the Jewish/Zionist supporters then kill everybody else that doesn’t agree with them.
You clearly don’t care for the Palestinian family who were shelled by the Isreali Army because they were having a picnic on the beach. :-k
Israel was told to leave the Occupied Territories in 1967. Almost 40 years later, not only do they still have no intention of leaving but they have been attempting to annex Palestinian land into the state of Israel. These actions are a violation of UN resolutions, the UN charter and the 4th Geneva convention. The Likud party in Israel don’t even believe that the Palestinians should have their own state. They believe that The West bank is Judea-Samaria, land given to them by God and that the arabs should go live somewhere else. How is that any different from Hamas saying they don’t recognize Israel’s right to a state? An Israeli tourism minister advocated the removal of all Arabs from within Israel and also the Occupied Territories. Understandably the Palestinians were not too pleased about this and they assassinated him.
Hamas has always had separate wings much like the Sinn Fein/IRA relationship. They have always been the political opponents of the PLO it’s not something that recently happened. Hamas was created in 1987 during the first intifada (uprising) against the occupation which started 20 years previously. The first suicide bombing inside Israel didn’t happen until some point in the 1990s following the Hebron massacre by a Jewish settler where around 30 worshippers were gunned down inside a mosque. Obviously the problem is the occupation. The Palestinians would take a more pragmatic view about Israel if they had freedom and self-determination, but while they live under a brutal apartheid style rule by their neighbours then there will be a lot of hostility towards them.
As for the previous ceasefires, Israel refused to negotiate until there was a ceasefire so the militant groups were eventually persuaded to call a ceasefire but then Israel kept shifting the goalposts and still refused to negotiate. You have to remember that Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the ones being persecuted. There have been countless human rights abuses carried out by Israel against the Palestinians including torture, murder, appropriation of land, wanton destruction of property, summary executions, detention without charge, use of heavy weapons on civilians, etc. If anything it’s the Israeli hawks that are behaving like nazis, declaring that they have a divine right to take over somebody else’s land and importing their own ethnic population into that territory while simultaneously calling for the removal of an entire population from that area.
I don’t support Hamas and I don’t support attacks on civilians by either side but I believe that the Palestinians are being denied their fundamental human rights and I do support their right to liberty. Israel should end its illegal annexation of the Occupied Territories and give the Palestinians their freedom. I do blame the USA because they are the mediator and they are supporting Israel in its violation of international law.
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