GAZA CITY: As the Palestinian carnage enters a fifth day, there has been no concrete action from any country or leader that could halt savage Israeli attacks against defenseless Gazans.
Israel widened its air assault on Saturday, hitting a mosque it said was hiding rockets, as Palestinians said their death toll from the five-day offensive rose to over 125.
The military said it has struck more than 1,100 targets. Officials in the territory said that besides a mosque, the strikes also hit Hamas-affiliated charities and banks, as well as a home for the disabled, killing two women.
Hamas said it hoped the mosque attack would galvanize support for it in the Muslim world.
“(It) shows how barbaric this enemy is and how much it is hostile to Islam,” said Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman in Doha, Qatar. “This terrorism gives us the right to broaden our response to deter this occupier.”
Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said that while using human shields violates international humanitarian law, “this does not give Israel the excuse to violate international humanitarian law as well.”
It’s the holy month of Ramadan, when people throughout the Muslim world meet with friends and family, buy presents for loved ones and break a day-long fast each evening amid colorful street scenes.
But not in Gaza City. The ceaseless Israeli bombing campaign has turned the frenetic hub of the Gaza Strip into a virtual ghost town, emptying streets, closing shops and keeping hundreds of thousands of people close to home where they feel safest from the bombs.
SOURCE: ARABNEWS.COM
AFFRONT: Firefighters try to extinguish a blaze caused by an Israeli tank shelling in the Gaza City’s industrial area. (Reuters)
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Gaza, Israel, Palestine
Rafiq,
The world always sleeps when the terrorists in Gaza bombard Israel with rockets supplied by Iran. After Israel handed over the conquered territories to the Palestinian Authority, the world went to sleep as those territories became launch pads for Iran’s qassam rockets. The world is always in a coma whenever there is carnage against Israel and when it comes to, it blames Israel for being attacked. The solution has always been blackmailing Israel to make more concessions while patting the other side on the back without its being expected to contribute its bit to the ‘peace effort’. That gives encouragement to the terrorists that, with the support of the comatose world, they can do anything and be rewarded for it.
Hamas chooses to place its rockets in the midst of the populace. Any location used for offensive purposes becomes a legitimate military target. That is what Hamas has done to the mosque bombed which it is now using to whip up cheap religious sentiments. It is not the first nor the last time the terrorist organization would do this. It occupied the Church of the Nativity with the sole purpose of destroying it by turning the Christian place of worship into a military target for Israeli attack. Christians did not declare war on Hamas. Every casualty of this conflict should be blamed on Hamas, its sponsors and supporters.
…
One actually is tired of the clumsy way the Israeli government handles this matter. A decisive action is required to end the menace once and for all.
Let the world continue to sleep.
I have not seen a modicum of objectivity in this article which fails to even mention the attacks by Hamas which have led to this escalation. …
The Muslim Times does not support the military struggle of Hamas or any Palestinian organization. That has been a losing strategy for the last 60 years and because of terrorism, has often been even immoral.
The only recourse to justice, in this age of information, will have to be non-violent, which succeeded for Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Failing which more and more Palestinians should seek refuge in USA and Europe.
The ongoing military occupation of the Palestinian Territories By Israel is the oxygen upon which terrorists breathe. The military wing of Hamas could best be described as the bastard child of this brutal occupation. You may rightly condemn the actions of Palestinian militants, but who but a fool believes the forced dispossession and suppression of a people will create anything but violence? The ‘peace’ Israel claims it is, in its current offensive, seeking to reestablish, is the ongoing status quo of an occupier acting with impunity whilst the occupied suffer in silence. For as long as the occupied suffer silently, Israel claims there is peace. Never mind the military incursions, mass arbitrary arrests, economic blockade, attacks by both the IDF and settlers, destruction of farmlands and orchards, daily humiliation of closed checkpoints and ‘settler only’ roads, ongoing theft of land and construction of illegal settlements. All that according to Israel is ‘peace’. ‘Escalation’ is apparently only when Palestinians lash out, albeit illegally and immorally.
As veteran Israeli peace activist Gideon Levy observes:
“The goal of Operation Protective Edge is to restore the calm; the means: killing civilians. The slogan of the Mafia has become official Israeli policy. Israel sincerely believes that if it kills hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, quiet will reign. It is pointless to destroy the weapons stores of Hamas, which has already proved capable of rearmament. Bringing down the Hamas government is an unrealistic (and illegitimate) goal, one that Israel does not want: It is aware that the alternative could be much worse. That leaves only one possible purpose for the military operation: death to Arabs, accompanied by the cheering of the masses.”
http://antonyloewenstein.com/2014/07/14/key-aim-of-israeli-war-plans-is-to-kill-arabs-over-and-over-again/
What can only bring ‘peace’ to the murderous gang in Gaza and elsewhere is the total elimination of Israel and by extension the Jews. Restoration of imaginary ownership to land is never the objective. If it were, then the forced removal of settlers by a Prime Minister who was, before then,widely misconceived as intransigent and evil would have launched all the parties on the road to peace. Instead, it became the crucible for creating more insecurity for Israel. It brought Israeli communities within the sight and range of thousands of rockets supplied to Hamas by Iran. Had they been no pull out, all that would not have happened.
The very existence of Israel is the oxygen on which terrorism breathes. Before Hamas, there were others. They are all different generations of the same family. Never mind too the frequent bombing of school buses, attacks on schools and hospitals, the abduction and gruesome murder of hapless teenagers, the sending of kindergarten children scampering into underground shelters or the maiming of diners at a cafe.
There is nothing new about the rants of ‘activists’ whose understanding of peace is the total destruction of a people and their country because, unlike the victims they want to create who have no where to go, they can always retire to a save heaven. Anyone who thinks that the road to peace lies in the tubes of rockets should think again.
What can bring peace is prosperity. And what can bring prosperity? Opening of borders, opening of airports, opening of seaports. Free movement of people so that they can have economic progress. Try it and you will see that I am right.
@Namelee
Whilst I’m sure you mean well, your response is a confused and disingenuous mix of implied victimhood and contradiction. The removal of settlements from Gaza was accompanied by a consolidation (and eventual expansion) of settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank. It was a case of, ‘Here, you have this miniscule strip of land, boxed in on all sides by us, while we further squeeze and encroach on the larger prize of the West Bank’. It was, in Israel’s thinking, political capital in any potential future negotiations where it could declare that it had already made concessions and was, on their part, a pre-empting of the drawing of future border lines in a way which favoured their control.
The fact that Iran continuously supplies rockets to Hamas indicates that this is a conflict which will never be won through the current ongoing military activities and occupation by Israel. Such an approach is not lessening the conflict but potentially widening it. But if your argument is that Iran is part of the problem as a supplier of arms, then what level of problems are the billions of dollars of ongoing military aid by the US to Israel creating?
The tired mantra that all Palestinians want is the destruction of Israel is just that – tired. Fatah has long since abandoned such a position. And Palestinians in Gaza, if given the right to economically breathe, if given the right to exist as something other than captives in an open air prison, have no reason to adopt such a reactionary position. The claim of Israelis to victimhood from the occupied, even as they continue as the occupiers, is nonsensical. The claim that a nation with the second most effective standing army in the world, a major arms producer, a holder of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, is vulnerable to destruction from crude rockets and terrorism is laughable. Israel is a non signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.
For peace to be achieved, extremists on both sides need to be marginalised. This includes the extremist settler movement who spawned the murderer of the last Israeli Prime Minister to seriously consider peaceful compromise – the late Yitzhak Rabin. This cannot happen whilst the military occupation has become the accepted norm as a defensive strategy for civilians one side at the expense of the other. This cannot happen while Israel favours division amongst Palestinian leadership as a method of control, and now refuses to negotiate with a unity government. Just as it at one time was happy to encourage Sheikh Yassin and an emerging Hamas as a counter to the then unifying PLO of Arafat.
No the road to peace does not lie “in the tubes of rockets”, but nor does it lie in an ongoing, unjust and illegal military occupation.
Rafiq,
Prosperity will remain elusive if borders are used to smuggle explosive devices which are detonated among civilians. It will be interesting to know that country which is so generous that she will have no border control and allows anyone to come and go as he likes. For there to be prosperity, both sides must see the need to peacefully co-exist. That Hamas has vowed never to do.
Yes, we wonder how ‘Iranian missiles’ can reach to Gaza, all of the borders of which are controlled by Israel. Even cement for reconstruction can hardly enter. The number of cement bags are carefully counted and approved. Something fishy over there …
Rashid M,
Israel has made it clear that in a negotiated peace settlement she is willing to give up parts of her territory in exchange for the areas where settlements have been built. These may mean leaving the Jewish settlers to determine where they want to belong. Abbas responded that his Palestine will be Jew free, thus foreclosing any possibility of Palestinian citizenship for the Jews. Israel does not aim to be Arab free.
The ‘tired’ suspicion that Israel is a nuclear power ‘is just that-suspicion’. No one has produced evidence of any seismic reading arising from either underground or surface nuclear test. Israel is not the only country not to sign the non nuclear proliferation treaty. Others have similarly refused to sign and have not been picked on. India and Pakistan, which have actually detonated nuclear devices, are non signatories.
In spite of the ‘tired’ suspicion of Israel’s military might, the leader of Hezbollah described her as being ‘as weak as a spider’s web’. It is the conviction that Israel is not what she is taken to be which encourages attacks on her.
Al-Qaeda did not use any nuclear, chemical or biological weapon on the US to have caused destruction worth trillions of dollars. In this situation a constant barrage of improvised explosive devices can be quite effective. The fallout of a nuclear explosion will not be confined to Israel. Hamas’ missiles are called ‘crude’ because Israel has rendered them ineffective and that, to some, is annoying. They should be allowed to kill Israeli civilians.
America supplies billions of dollars in military aid to many countries in the Arab world. Some of these are Hamas sympathizers, even if they do not come out openly to say so. Hamas gets its arms from a variety of sources which include N.Korea, a nuclear power, and countries armed by America. In terms of human resources Hezbollah has quite a reservoir. The Iranians just called on all muhammadans to see it as their duty to aid Hamas. Israel cannot boast of such support and solidarity.
The US routinely castigates Israel and even subjected the Prime Minister to a humiliating treatment. Such an attitude of reining in Hamas is yet to be seen from the Iranians.
While Fatah reluctantly accepted the existence of Israel, Hamas which is a partner in the government of the PA, has an avowed aim of destroying Israel.It is in its charter. To their supporters that is trivial. But there is nothing jovial or trivial about the quest to exterminate a whole race. No sensible leader will negotiate with a government whose part wants its demise.
Jews, including Israelis, often times criticize the ‘hardline’ posture of their government. It will be difficult to point out the number of Palestinians who have ever considered that their government should show some flexibility. As far as they and their supporters are concerned, their government has never been hard enough.
If there is any ‘occupation’, it is bred by the actual show of insecurity. There has to be mutual respect and the willingness to make concessions.
The on going, unjust and illegal military occupation” is on the invitation of the ‘harmless peace loving civilians’ whose sense of peace emanates from rocket launchers, guns and IEDs.
To see who the peace lover is, Israel has accepted the Egyptian cease fire proposal unconditionally and has stopped air strikes. Hamas answered with a salvo of rockets into Israel and the promise to fire more before giving conditions. That is Hamas’ “defensive strategy for civilians on one side at the expense of the other”.
The only thing that Israel has made clear that it wants ‘negotiations’ to drag on for ever without any result. Even new words were created for the dictionary: ‘peace process’, ‘road map’. The only real ‘creation’ of all this is ‘collateral damage’. Israel, being by far the stronger side, could have come up with a ‘peace plan’ a long time ago. They could ‘impose’ peace, if they really wanted to. They do not, simple as that. They make life for the Palestinians as difficult as possible so that as many as possible continue to leave. That is their ‘road map’. (Road away from home).
Rafiq,
Israel should have imposed peace, if she wanted? Without doing that Israel is accused of high handedness. There can be no lasting peace if it is imposed by one side. A peace agreement is the best option. Tell your people to be serious about it.
Cement bags and even vegetable carts have been known to contain explosive devices. Such materials are not for construction or the table but for destruction.
That is what is fishy over there…
Hamas’s Sami Abu Zuhri is quoted as saying “WE AREN’T LEADING OUR PEOPLE TO DESTRUCTION. WE ARE LEADING THEM TO DEATH”. As a result, Hamas fired more than 50 rockets into Israel yesterday and more than 60 as at 1.00 pm today. All these in a bid to provoke retaliation from Israel.
That is what is fishy over there..
Namelee: so no cement and no vegetable? The Israelis are otherwise so clever, (in technology, trade, banking – you name it) why are they so inefficient in making peace? (answer: because they do not want it).
Why Hamas are firing rockets into Israel when they know that it will bring back havoc on Gaza? Israel could do some good work to only use some restraint and cause less damage. But that is up to them to handle things they find better.
Palestinians should come to some good terms to make peace with Israel. Losers can’t be choosers. Palestinians or Hamas think they can alone win the war. That is impossible when the combined power of the Arab world lost everything to Israel in 1967 war.
Continuation of a war or militant struggle is no solution. It is increasing suffering and damage.
Blabla … ‘sophisticated technology’ to kill children Playing on the Beach …