"Is Israel Creating A Buffer Zone In Gaza?" Topic

"This narrow strip of land that used to be called "the Gaza Strip," already one of the more densely populated places on Earth, is growing dramatically smaller. The Israeli military, relentlessly and methodically, is driving people out of the 3-kilometer (1.8 mile) buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gaza's territory.

What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gaza's eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. Apartment blocks are fields of rubble, and as I move through this hostile landscape the phrase that keeps ringing in my head is "scorched earth."…"

Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Why not . It would .

Stand easy Boys … we have been warned – TMP link The Sheriff ain't putting up with no …

I expect the Russians are looking at the West's reaction to this with interest……

One can but hope, and watch Israel's R&D in underground weaponry.

Makes sense, given the length of the many tunnels they've found.

Tried to warn you guys …

Armand, the Israelis are already preparing .

The IDF was incapable of defeating the resistance in Gaza. In fact, it only penetrated about 3km and was not able to go into the very densely populated areas.

There was already a 300m buffer

Now that they have totally destroyed most of the buildings and farmland in that 3km buffer, I doubt that they will declare it as a "security" zone. Rather they just wish to squeeze the population even more and make it easier next time they go into Gaza to "mow the lawn".

Very. The occupation has to end so that both Israel and Palestine can be at peace.

Geez. Now they've reduced Palestinian livable space to a mere strip of the mere strip!

The more the people feel they have nothing to live for, the more desperate and brutal are the attacks. But, of course, Israel has known this all along and yet they continue to corner the Palestinians.

"Do not thwart an enemy retreating home. If you surround the enemy, leave an outlet; do not press an enemy that is cornered. These are the principles of warfare."- Sun-Tzu

"Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight.
If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth their uttermost strength.
Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard." -Sun-Tzu

This is interesting …

It's all about "Methodically suppressing desperation …
An enemy retreating home is one defeated. Or, at least, not one who threatens. A defeated enemy should be allowed to complete our task himself.
Surrounded, the enemy retreats into a death mentality. This will cause us great loss to overcome. Subvert such an opponent's desires and await events."
link

Basically, there's nothing more dangerous than a man that has nothing left to lose.

Israel must know this. So, the only conclusion to be drawn is that they are counting on more suicide bombings and other extremely brutal attacks.
Dan

The Israelis have been out of the hysterically misnamed Gaza 'buffer zone' for weeks. They cleared that area in order to find and destroy Hamas' attack tunnels. Job done, they have left again. They will come back when and if they need to.

Obviously the Israelis can go wherever they like in Gaza, whenever they like. If they had pushed another couple of kilometers, Hamas would have been treading water. The Hamas leadership seems confident that will never happen. It would cause massive Arab civilian casualties, a real massacre, and the Hamas leaders are sure Israel will never do that.

In 1999, the Gaza borders were substantially open. Goods moved freely in and out and many Gaza Arabs worked in Israel. Although Gaza residents could not officially move permanently to Israel, many were staying for extended periods, unofficially and illegally; others could move to any other country that would let them in. If this momentum had been allowed to build, I think the border would have tended to erode more and more over the years and a two-state, or a bi-national one-state solution might have emerged.

But in 2000 Arafat started his Second Intifadeh and deliberately destroyed all the progress that had been made toward a final peace settlement. The PLO and Hamas competed and cooperated to send suicide bombers from Gaza against targets in Israel. Israel was forced to seal off Gaza to block the attacks. Israeli evacuation of the Gaza settlements in 2005 led not to peace, but to a Hamas coup and the start of Hamas' rocket offensive. If not for the blockade, Hamas' attacks would be more destructive.

This current war was sparked by Hamas' kidnap-murder of three Israeli civilians, teen-aged boys. They've admitted that they did it, and that the operation was part of a general ramp-up of terror activity in the West Bank. Israel reacted swiftly and accurately, and rolled up the Hamas West Bank terror organization which, no surprise, included many Hamas cadre who had been freed in the prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit. When Hamas began another rocket offensive, Israel took the occasion to clear out the tunnel network that Hamas was planning to use for a major offensive at the time of their choosing.

Israel has gained all their aims in this operation. Now Hamas will not agree to a permanent cease-fire, will not stop shooting. In exchange for ceasing fire, Hamas demands an end to the Gaza blockade, which would allow them to accelerate their arms build-up. Israel can never agree to that. So, instead of a pointless, endless exchange of fire, Israel is now methodically targeting the Hamas leadership, killing them two and three at a time, although this kills and injures the civilians they hide behind. Either Hamas will cease fire or they will die. That's war.

I have no hate for the people of Gaza. I wish they would learn to live in peace with their Israeli neighbors. Conditions were better for them, and were improving, before they went to war. If there must be a war, I am for Israel.

zippy, just to address the current massacre, it is false to say that it was started by 'Hamas' kidnap-murder of three Israeli civilians' and that they admitted it. In fact, Hamas denied night and the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem confirmed this.

Let's take the current episode. In June, 3 Israelis were abducted. The Israeli gov't, despite knowing that the three were almost certainly dead, began a heavy handed operation in the West Bank to find the three and blamed Hamas. Mickey Rosenfeld, chief of police in Jerusalem, recently told Jon Donnison of the BBC that Hamas was not behind the murders. In that operation, the Israelis killed 9 people, demolished homes, ransacked businesses and private residences and arrested 800 Palestinians, mostly with ties to Hamas. Many arrested included those released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, in contravention of an agreement with Hamas. Netanyahu declared that Hamas would be punished. In one Israeli strike in Gaza, several Hamas people were murdered.

So, if Israel knew the three were already dead, and had no evidence of Hamas' involvement (Hamas claims responsibility for attacks they are involved in), why rampage through the West Bank? You don't have to go too far back to figure it out. Remember the end of the so-called peace process? In the aftermath, Hamas and the PA agreed to form a unity government. Hamas agreed to the conditions set by the Quartet. The Quartet (inc. the US) cautiously welcomed the formation of the unity government. The Israelis were furious.

So, now Israel has a pretext for its massacre. If you cast your mind back, there was no talk (ok, there was some but not as an issue; in fact there is an interesting side issue about tunnels) of Hamas tunnels, just of preventing rocket fire which did not commence until well into Israel's atrocities and hooliganism in the West Bank. The Israeli regime is extremely right wing; some of the ministers are calling for the Palestinians to be driven out of Gaza into the desert and, if any are left, for them to be killed. We must be honest and say that some Hamas people say the same, but the key difference is that they do not have the means and that they are not occupying Israel.

So, Hamas retaliated to the West Bank incursions and now there is a full scale assault on the Gaza Strip. The real reason is a response to the Palestinian diplomatic moves. See, Israel has no intention of a just settlement with the Palestinians. Israel's occupation, in its eyes, is permanent. Despite being offered everything they asked for by Kerry, the Israelis still turned down a chance to reach a settlement. This is the reason that relations between the two, prior to the massacre, have been so poor.

As regards the ceasefire proposal, Israel demands that the Palestinians surrender and give legitimacy to the illegal siege. Hamas demands that the illegal blockade is lifted, Israel abides by previous agreements it has broken, and plans are made to rebuild ports. The initial Cairo proposal, co-authored by the vampire Tony Blair, parroted the Israeli demands. It was designed to be rejected so that Netanyahu could continue the massacre.

If there must be a war, I am for the resistance to a brutal, illegal occupation.

"The Israeli gov't, despite knowing that the three were almost certainly dead"

Really? And you know that how?

"The Israeli regime is extremely right wing; some of the ministers are calling for the Palestinians to be driven out of Gaza into the desert and, if any are left, for them to be killed."

Do you have a specific quote for that?

"the illegal blockade"

Nope, Israel's declared naval blockade is perfectly legal under international law. Try again. The fact that Hamas has acquired thousands of rockets to fire into Israel does rather support Israel's assertions that weapons are being illegally smuggled into Gaza, which is the reason for the blockade in the first place.

"the vampire Tony Blair"

No argument from me…

"If there must be a war, I am for the resistance to a brutal, illegal occupation"

Absolutely! All those Muslims will be far happier in southern Arabia, where they originated from… Oh, sorry, not THAT brutal occupation…?

If Hamas were not responsible this guy needs to be told.

link

Or is this the usual shell-game, played by the extremists, to claim two contradictory things?

'Current massacre' what evidence? The Hamas approved casualty figures? Take care, even the BBC is now urging caution on those and Hamas played exactly the same trick during operation Cast Lead. Ridiculously under-claim your own casualty figures and then, when the deception has served it's purpose, quietly reveal the true figure, which tallies very closely with the claims made by the IDF(700+ fighters killed).

If the rockets and mortars were only a response to heavy handed Israeli policing, who fired the 135, launched between January and May?

What is your source for your alleged legality of Israel's siege? Your quip about Palestinians (they're not all Muslims) originating from elsewhere was exposed as a hoax decades ago.

Max Blumenthal wrote about the murder of the three settlers – link – quite some time ago. Others, inc. the BBC's Jon Donnison confirmed that Hamas did not order the murders. But even if they did, that does not excuse Israel's subsequent crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. You can find ther reports, such as this one – link – if you look.

Jemima, I will amend my earlier post to say "leading politicians and academics" if you allow me. Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, called for 'conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters' and the establishment of 'tent encampments' while 'the city of Gaza and its suburbs' are rebuilt as 'Israeli touristic and commercial cities.' Ayelet Shaked, of Jewish Home party, posted a rather nasty call for the genocide of Palestinians on Facebook. There have been op-eds from academics and intellectuals calling for massacre, ethnic cleansing and genocide in mainstream Israeli papers.

Milites, review the source and then compare it with others. Hamas, which tends to claim responsibility for its acts, denied this one. Besides, this doesn't excuse Israeli crimes in the West Bank and the massacre in Gaza.

The IDF routinely undertakes the killing of civilians and what is to say that they do not falsify figures. You haven't even seen their "evidence". According to everyone else, around 75-85% of the casualties are civilians.

Milities, I don't call the targeting of children and adult civilians in the West Bank, the ransacking of homes and businesses, the demolition of homes, the wounding of hundreds and the kidnapping of hundreds more as 'heavy handed Israeli policing'.

If you really believe what the Israeli government says, then you probably believe what your own one says as well…

Open-ended cease fire announced for Gaza. No major concessions by either side. I have to think that the direct hits lately scored on top Hamas commanders influenced the outcome.

I hope this time the truce will hold, and it will be possible to ease the blockade, and once more begin movement toward a true peace. Of course that can't be if Hamas simply regroups and resumes the attack.

What do you really wish for your friends, Stuart?

'An analysis by the New York Times looked at the names of 1,431 casualties and found that "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza's 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided."

"At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71% of the population and 33% of the known-age casualties".

link

link

Thanks to the internet these clarifications are taking far less time to be identified and investigated but only because blogs are picking up stories the major news organisations seem to initially 'ignore'.

Fred M. Gottheil in the Middle East Quarterly had a good article looking at Aran immigration to Israel during the 20's and shows McCarthy's analysis, often used to propose the unique stickiness of Arab migration, to be flawed.

link

As for the targeting of children, I assume you are referring to the incident near the Ofer Prison in Beitunia? If so, there are a number of questions about the veracity of the claims, as I'm sure your aware. including a remarkably intact bullet and an edited CCTV tape. Of course it would not be the first time this has happened.

Stuart, if you believe Hamas…….

Gaza Truce Reached, Hamas Says

"Hamas officials said Tuesday that a truce has been reached that would end the fighting between Israel and militants in Gaza.

But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said word of a deal was "just reports."

A senior Egyptian government official told CNN on Tuesday that there was no ceasefire deal, but added, "We may have an announcement later today or tomorrow."

Tuesday marks the 50th day of Israel's Operation Protective Edge. The Israel Defense Forces reported that militants destroyed a home in Ashkelon and fired a rocket that landed near a kindergarten in Ashdod…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

No, zippy, I just hope the brutally oppressed people of Palestine can have their freedom. And so some will keep on blaming the victim; this ceasefire allows the resistance to claim a hollow victory and the occupier to renege on yet another agreement.

Milites, I find your defence of mass murder of civilians to be quite sickening.

I find deliberately firing from hospitals, places of worship and residential areas sickening. I find killing 160+ children and diverting resources to build tunnels to cause mass casualty attacks sickening. I find perverting the school curriculum and hijacking children's TV programmes to extol martyrdom and unthinking hatred sickening.

Now you have resorted to personal insults lets get back to the manipulation of casualty figures by Hamas. Do you accept that the headline casualty figures, like many things in Gaza, are grossly distorted? Do you accept that Hamas creates 'atrocities' and covers up it's own?

Not personal, just your characterisation of the massacre.

I find it disturbing that $3 USDbn a year is siphoned from US taxpayers to fund Israel's barbarism. Israel spends many thousands of times the money on its military than does the resistance in Gaza. Perhaps Israel should spend it on ending the illegal occupation and moving their illegal colonists off stolen land.

I refute your claims about casualties. Do you really trust the IDF? Really? The vast majority of civilian casualties were civilians. About 500 children were murdered, 3000 wounded. That's disgusting, Milites, esp. when there is so much evidence of the deliberate targeting of civilians.

I stand in awe of the courage of the Palestinians. Faced with the regional military superpower, massacred for 7 weeks, their home destroyed, they still wouldn't surrender.

The resistance faced the IDF and the invader was only able to advance a few hundred metres into Gaza. Learning from the Hezbollah's victory over the IDF in 2006, the resistance used the tunnels to attack enemy soldiers inside and outside of Gaza (note that tunnels were not used against civilians). In Shujaiya, two battalions of the Golani Brigade were almost totally overrun by the resistance, leading one IDF source to exclaim that if they did not take 'drastic action' they 'would be getting 600 body bags back.' link

Most moral army in the world? Orwell would smile; the IDF is the most cowardly army in the world.

Stuart, most of the tunnels were dug under Israeli territory as an offensive measure before the war began. They already had plenty of experience in building smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border. Their intent was and is to launch raids into Israel, just as the rockets are designed to indisriminately kill Israeli civilians. Their defensive utility is secondary.

The rockets were smuggled into Gaza, yet you say that Israel's (legally declared) naval blockade is 'illegal and unnecessary'. The facts would tend to suggest otherwise.

The tunnels were built with massive resources diverted from 'humanitarian aid'.

Please provide proof that civilians were deliberately killed. That is, that an Israeli commander actually said 'There are civilians – kill them' or gave orders to that effect. If that's the case, why are the casualties so light? The RAF could kill more French civilians in a single morning when trying to kill Germans. We killed 20,000 French railway workers alone while trying to hit German military targets – are you saying that they were also 'murdered'?

The civilian casualty rates are a direct consequence of Hamas committing war crimes by employing 'Iraqi tactics' – launching attacks from within, behind and beneath civilians and and civilian infrastructure. Like Iraq in 2003, Hamas military installations are probably easy to spot – they'll be the ones covered in children and red crosses/crescents. The dense population and urban landscape multiplies the problem.

Well four children playing football dont look like a rocket launcher do they? They were targeted, they were shelled, they ran, they were shelled again untill hit – simple murder nothing else.
As for proving israel does it deliberately "just obeying orders"? A hundred times over Israel blows up a house killing 20 innocent people because one might have been a terrorist? Simple murder. Of course it can blow up anything it likes and say it "had intelligence" theres no one left to argue but seriously youre arguing its Ok to punish (ie Kill) their relatives? The Israelis who burned alive the palestinian teenager in a racist revenge attack – they didnt have their homes demolished did they? Hundreds werent arrested and detained indefinitely on suspicion were they?

On probability – schools, mosques, hospitals, UN facilities all terrorist hotspots? Doubt it.

Its a strange logic blaming people for defending themselves; that its a war crime to cause the other side to commit war crimes? Strange logic – and odd that it only seems to apply to palestinians. Presumably you would condemn the warsaw ghetto for not sitting quietly and behaving itself?

Youre justifying the state sponsored murder of civilians because theyre the wrong ethnicity and have the temerity to resist being penned up and shot at? Really?

Think youre wasting your breath here Stuart.

And Godwin's law strikes! Anyhow, since most of the architects of the latest butchery and the real obstacle to peace are now finding out if Allah really does approve of their actions, the people of Gaza can enjoy a long term ceasefire.

Milites, just over 250 of the Palestinians killed were combatants. Jemima, the Israelis call it "mowing the lawn" when they go on one of their murderous rampages in Gaza. Even the US was exasperated, though only after the fifth time the IDF targeted a UN haven and slaughtered innocents in their sleep.

According to human rights organisations the blockade is illegal. Even the British PM described it as a 'prison camp'. And Israel is the one that uses human shields. Investigations into alleged Palestinian use of human shields in the 2008/9 massacre found that the cowardly IDF used children as human shields as they have done often in the West Bank.

The Palestinians have a right to defend themselves and a right to use force to resist a brutal, illegal, foreign occupation. Israel spends many billions a year on its occupation forces it could save by ending its aggression.

No doubt Israel will renege on any agreement as it does with every single agreement with the Palestinians and they can go and "mow the lawn" again in a couple of years time.

If Hamas don't want to be attacked, don't indiscriminately fire rockets over or tunnel under your neighbour's border and hide behind/among/underneath civilians. That is offence, not defence.

If they want to kill Israelis on their own side of the border, good luck to them. But why did Israel cross the border in the first place? Could it be the small matter of rockets being fired willy-nilly at anything and everything east of Gaza?

Were the Israelis actually targetting children? If so, that would absolutely be a war crime and the perpetrators should absolutely be pursued and tried, as any British soldier would be for committing such an act in Afghanistan or wherever.

Or were they mis-identified? happens and it's tragic and the victims should receive compensation and the circumstances investigated in an attempt to prevent any similar event happening again. If Israel does not do that, it is to their eternal shame, I agree.

But that is not murder and it is not a war crime.

Were the children killed because they had the misfortune to have Hamas operating next door? If so, the war crime is on the part of Hamas for deliberately putting them in harm's way and for failing to prevent civilians from approaching their positions, weapons and facilities.

I agree entirely that Israel's actions are counter-productive and WAY over-the-top in the modern age, but they simply don't care. They simply point to the fact that their actionas are actually within the definitions of the Hague Conventions and are absolutely no worse than our own actions in WW2 when fighting an enemy in built-up area such as Caen, Arnhem, Nijmegen or indeed Dresden. You might not like that, but they have a point.

"According to human rights organisations the blockade is illegal"

But not according to international law. It is a legally declared and maintained naval blockade. We might not like that, but repeatedly calling something 'illegal' or a 'war crime' does not automatically make them so unless they are defined as such in international law (see also cluster bombs, WP smoke rounds, UAVs and other things that human rights organisations like to describe as 'illegal').

As I've already stated, Hamas have proved to the Israelis the necessity of the blockade by the fact that they've just fired thousands of imported rockets over the border. They're hardly likely to lift it simply to allow Hamas to re-arm and start all over again.

Jemima, the occupation is illegal and international experts, such as Amnesty, have always said that Israel's blockade is illegal, despite Palmer. The blockade on Gaza amounts to collective punishment. Why do you think there is such strong pressure for the Palestinians not to go the international legal institutions? The World Court investigated the wall and the occupation very thoroughly in 2004 and it is the view of all countries in the world (except Israel) that the occupation is illegal.

Even the Americans admonished the Israelis for targeting civilians, even the comatose puppet, Ban Ki-Moon, raged against what he called Israel's 'war crimes'.

Israel engineered this massacre and started the conflict. The Palestinians retaliated to Israel's crimes and breaking of teh Nov. 2012 agreement and Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. Israel maintains its illegal occupation in flagrant breach of international law.

Israel has no right whatsoever to target anyone in Gaza. Israel has the right to get out of the West Bank, dismantle its illegal colonies and end the siege of Gaza. That's it. The Palestinians have a legal right to bear arms against the illegal occupiers.

Let's at least agree that there may be a case to answer. Then we can support a Palestinian petitioning of the ICC and we can see alleged criminals brought to answer for their actions.

This current ceasefire – which Israel will renege on – is just a pause waiting for the next massacre of civilians when Israel decides it has to "mow the lawn" once more.

At least look at the argument and try to understand the other side, without this ridiculous black and white mentality. You are obviously passionate about the situation but it might be useful to see the other side of the hill. Your accusations about the conduct of IDF soldiers, for example, shows a complete lack of understanding about the make up and composition of their armed forces and how that affects their society.

My criticism has been primarily against Hamas, who have subjected the people of Gaza to a hideous rule, . The Palestinian people (never a nation by the way and many descended from migratory Arabs who moved to Jewish areas for work) have been badly led, but are partly architects of their own misery. Seduced by the idea of reversing history by violence, in which they have been cynically aided and abetted by self-serving Arab states, . In fact a peaceful Gaza would cause far more problems for Israel than a violent one.

What rubbish, Milites, Hamas has been totally censured by the illegal occupier and the US. As soon as Hamas joined the unity government and agreed to the Quartet's principles – recognise Israel, abide by earlier agreements between the PA and Israel and renounce violence as a tactic – and the US cautiously accepted, Israel planned its massacre.

The migratory Arab guff was exposed as a hoax decades ago. These people aren't 'partly architects of their own misery', they are victims. This trick of turning reality on its head and turning the victims into the victimisers is the reason this conflict attracts such passion and such controversy. The conflict is actually very straightforward.

Rhetoric about the IDF? They were unable to defeat the Palestinians, who used tactics similar to the Hezbollah, who delivered a defeat to the Israelis in 2006. Go and read the US reports into the conduct of the IDF in that war.

I won't be intimidated by any of the posters on here and any cowardly attempts to hint at anti-Semitism; you should be ashamed and apologise, racism and bigotry of any sort is an abomination. Israel is an illegal occupier that oppresses the Palestinians. That is a cold, hard fact. There is no argument and no controversy about the legality of the occupation. Israel has no intention of ending the occupation whatsoever.

The beaches on Tel Aviv are good for relaxing Stuart, though the proportion of babes makes concentrating hard! Whilst your there, perhaps talk to some people, go to the occupied territories and talk some more. Find out the reality, behind the self-serving copy of journ's and overpaid, biased NGO's, especially the UN.

Who said you were anti-Semitic? I just pointed out your making historical parallels with Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto, and constantly talking about the Israelis planning massacres was uncomfortable. Anyway, I'm glad you unequivocally condemn bigotry as it means we both share a condemnation of Hama's methods of governance, especially the hijacking of the school curriculum, though they were following an unfortunate tradition in Arab schooling.

Migratory Arab guff? You obviously didn't read the link to the paper I posted. Quite simply, every time there has been a regional disparity between income and investment, workers have migrated to the more prosperous region. Jewish Palestine, in the 20's and 30's, was significantly more prosperous both in terms of capital investment and economic output, so Arabs migrated there. Simple, if you want to argue against history and economics then you better have a cast-iron argument about the unique stickiness of the Arab population.

The IDF were not there to defeat the Palestinians, they were there to

1. Attrite Hama's rocket capability, which most independent sources say they have done (losses of 2/3rds seem to be the ballpark figure).

2. Take out, or seriously degrade the tunnel network, which they did.

3. Ensure Hama's achieved none of it's demands, namely open the borders so they can build more terror tunnels and get more rockets, which Israel did.

So, who won again? Stop looking at it from a wargamer's perspective. Great, you stopped one of your opponents armoured columns, by ambushing and outnumbering him, knocked out an aged APC and killed a fraction of their units, but failed to prevent him achieving any of his main objectives, as enumerated above. You also militarised an entire civilian neighbourhood and in doing so, strengthened one of your opponents main arguments against your governance. Keep telling yourself you won, you'll need it when the consequences of your actions bite and bite they will.

Interestingly, the latest UN figures suggest that over 600 militants were killed, as I said before the figure will eventually stabilise to come close to the IDF's figure. Thankfully this correction is taking far shorter than after previous incursions.

Electing Hamas was never a wise move, borne of desperation and an unwillingness to move away from a failed strategy. Hamas accepted the quartets principles, did they? Some one should tell the UK government then. From a briefing paper in 2011

link

It's also news to Hama's deputy leader.

link

I thought recognition of the State of Israel was a key principle of the quartet.

My final word is this. The Palestinians bet the farm, literally, on the hope they could crush the state of Israel by force and get everything. They lost, and never got over the fact their enemy won. They cannot get over the fact he keeps on winning and .

The PA recognised Israel decades ago and the unity government agreement was in June, 2014. And I don't see what wargaming has to do with the aftermath.

Nobody won the "war" – those massacred, maimed and dispossessed in Gaza lost the most – but Israel achieved nothing and took another backward step. Many, many more people than before see that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation and this event will finally allow Hamas to move into the political arena where they should have been allowed years ago.

Let's take a look at your claims of IDF success.

1/ Rockets: the resistance indeed has deplted a large percentage of its smuggled rockets, but shorter ranged ones and mortar rounds are made locally. Once Israel reneges on its agreements and breaks the ceasefire – which history shows is a certainty (in fact, they already have this week) – then the resistance will have plenty of rockets to fire once more.

2/ Tunnels: not mentioned at the start of the massacre, introduced afterwards. The real problem with tunnels was not those into Israel – they could have dealt with them without the massacre, as Egypt did – but those inside Gaza which prevented the invaders penetrating very far into the territory.

3/ Hamas' legitimate demands: indeed, the agreement reached is not unlike the one brokered in November, 2012, which Israel did not honour.

Your 'final word' just doesn't make sense, assuming you refer to 1948. There was never the remotest chance that Palestinians could threaten Israel existentially at any point in history. Modern historians such as Benny Morris, Zeev Maoz, Ilan Pappe, etc., have debunked the myth of '48, just as the "land without a people" hoax has been debunked. Chuck your Joan Peters book in the garbage, it's a fake.

Your solution, if I am not mistaken, is to maintain a brutal, illegal, military occupation and blame the victims for their suffering. The only hope for peace is through justice for the Palestinians. No justice, no peace, and .

This whole thread should be nuked. Why are we doing this on TMP? This has nothing to do with wargaming, there's not so much as even a 'fig leaf' in this mess…

Wow Stuart.

That point of view is pretty messed up. All I can assume is that you are pretty irrational on this point, given the nature of HAMAS, it's history and stated goals of destroying israel, murdering as many Jews as they can wherever they are found and murdering their own people at the drop of a hat for just about any reason if they even suspect them of sympathy toward Israel.

Frankly I am boggled and saddened.

Careful Warlock.I got deleted for being troubled that someone could fail to see ISIS as terrorists. Your obviously misplaced morality will be your undoing.

Which part{s) make you "boggled", Only Warlock?

Just Jack has it.

Yes. I agree. But since when has logic outweighed drama here? It's apparently more entertaining to watch people get dawghoused for responding to prog trolls.

prog trolls?

Hasbara trolls more like

"Hasbara trolls more like"

:-)

Arabs are a semitic people. Actually, they are more ethnically semitic than most Israelis who are European Ashkenazi Jews descended from the Khazars who settled in Russia in the 8th Century………

Funny how the there is so much support for Israel's actions against their problem muslims but so little for the Russians in Chechnya or the Serbs in Kossovo and Bosnia…..

What would have been the reaction if the British had used Israeli methods in Northern Ireland against the IRA and their civillian supporters?

This thread is inane. Tango shame on you for feeding the inanity. It should not be on TMP.