The Israel/Palestine Conflict Mk. IV

There are again some inaccuracies in your post. Israel doesn't "keep the Palestinians under control". There are no Israelis in Gaza (prior to the latest flare up) and large areas of the West Bank are under complete Palestinian internal control since Oslo. Israel does continue to extend settlements which is very wrong but they do not bulldoze existing homes to do so.

Israel did back off from Gaza in 2005. They withdrew completely giving the Palestinians there the opportunity to get on with their lives free of Israeli control. There was no blockade when Israel withdrew. Unfortunately the Palestinians voted for Hamas who then killed their Fatah rivals and established a dictatorship over Gaza. Since then they have repeatedly attacked Israel with no reasonable hope of achieving anything except publicity through dead Palestinians.

If you look objectively at the situation you will see that the West Bank has been very quiet for years and it is Gaza that keeps causing trouble. In the medium term Israel needs to stop settlement expansion and find a way of giving the Palestinians a state of their own. But in the short term Hamas must be stopped because they are causing harm to everyone and benefitting nobody but themselves. Note that the leaders of Hamas live very comfortably in Qatar and Haniyeh (the Hamas leader in Gaza) fled to Qatar as soon as trouble started.

So the buffer zone means that Israel did not remove its soldiers and citizens from Gaza? Of course not. Israel withdrew from Gaza and did not want to go back in again. That is an undeniable fact. You don't withdraw all your soldiers from an area of land you want to keep your soldiers in.

No, there aren't inside but they've built the wall and unnecessary checkpoints and they have control over their resources (e.g. this recent conflict led to them messing with the sewerage/water filtration meaning the sewerage is now in the sea and they've lost their only recreation). Yes, they do illegally bulldoze existing homes, more for the control aspect of things but also for settlements which not only leaves families out in the cold but also puts the Israelis who move in, in danger (e.g. http://www.icahd.org/).

Publicity, exactly, they're desperate because Western media is pretty biased in the subject. Cause enough noise and people see through it eventually, this recent conflict being evidence of that. No, it's not okay that any humans are being killed in the process but Israel is fighting back and it's leading to more deaths which is what is keeping this in the news. Sure, a lot of the Palestinian 'leaders' are unreasonable and extreme but can you blame them for fighting back? Thousands if not millions of children are left with Post-Traumatic symptoms, they then grow up with that so it's no surprise they hate and fight against what caused it: Israel.

Yes, Gaza is where most trouble occurs but probably because of the ridiculous control Israel keeps over them. Tiny stretch of land. Traumatised, fed up young people. Unfair situations. They're bound to cause problems. Yes, Hamas also needs to be stopped but along with Israel's actions, both set off one another so stopping one won't get you anywhere. Leaders are usually out of the actual situation all over the globe, leaving the uninvolved civilians to deal with the consequences; one of the main reasons I'm a pacifist.

Hamas were running low on funds...

If it's one thing they hate, it's being ...broke.

Couldn't they ask for some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Arafat siphoned out of Palestine?

How did HAMAS "start a war with one of the most powerful military in the world"?

By firing their ****ty rockets into Israel or allowing their brainwashed Islamist jihadists to do so, for instance.

The below sources are from 2013, since you keep insisting that Israel initiated this conflict for no good reason.All of the sources are from Reuters or the New York Times, before you accuse me of bias.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/middleeast/rocket-fire-from-gaza-shakes-cease-fire-with-israel.html?_r=0

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the military, said in a statement that the rocket attacks were “an intolerable act of aggression against Israel and its civilians,” and that “Hamas is held accountable for all acts of terrorism deriving from the Gaza Strip.”

I know that you struggle with understanding implications in written text, and rather just see the obvious meaning without really thinking about the implicit meaning of a statement. For this reason, I'd like to explain that this person is not blaming Hamas for carrying out the attacks but rather for the fact that the attacks were carried out while it was in power and not enough was done to stop it. You're welcome.

2. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/21/us-israel-palestinians-obama-gaza-idUSBRE92K05A20130321

The president was in Jerusalem, some 80 km (50 miles) from Sderot, when the rockets struck several hours before his visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Hamas's rival, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"We condemn violence against civilians regardless of its source, including rocket firing," Abbas was quoted as saying by the official Palestinian Wafa news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, the second time rockets launched from Gaza have hit Israel since a truce ended an eight-day cross-border war in November.

3. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/24/us-israel-palestinians-violence-idUSBRE95N06G20130624


Six rockets were fired into Israel overnight, causing no damage, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Two of them were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, the military said.
Israeli aircraft later struck targets in the Gaza Strip, including two weapons storage facilities, the military said, and Israel closed one of its the crossings with the coastal territory, which is controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.
No group claimed responsibility for the Palestinian rocket fire. Officials in Gaza said two of six Israeli air strikes struck training camps for the militant group Islamic Jihad.

4. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/12/us-palestinians-islamicjihad-idUSBRE9AB08720131112



Hours after Israeli special forces killed Mohammed Assi in a shootout last month in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both tried to cloak themselves in his legacy.
Underscoring their shared Islamist credentials, the two groups quickly claimed the dead man as one of their own, proud to take responsibility for a Tel Aviv bus bombing in 2012 that he helped carry out and that wounded several Israelis.
The rivalry to monopolize Assi's memory mirrors a much broader competition between the two groups, both of which are deemed terrorist organizations in the West, to attract supporters and kudos in the Palestinian territories.

END OF SOURCES

Rockets and other acts of terrorism have originated from Gaza since after the ceasefire. Israel has patiently put up with these, expecting Hamas to crack down on them. Not only has Hamas not done so, but as article number 4 shows, they have actually supported terrorists.

Israel was much too patient with Hamas, in my opinion. They gave them many chances to get their act together, to stop terrorizing a legitimate state since they withdrew in 2007. Hamas failed to do so, and since 2007, 11,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza.

Below is a source from the IDF blog, which, obviously being from the IDF is one sided. You may read it and decide for yourself how reliable it is, however it does outline the terror that Israel has experienced from the side of Gaza since 2007 before Operation Protective Edge. The number of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza before Operation Protective Edge in 2014 alone are numbered at 450.

http://www.idfblog.com/facts-figures/rocket-attacks-toward-israel/




So that's a no on the propaganda front? Can't say I'm surprised...





Why do you make foolish statements which you know you cannot support?



I did.


I have a "trademark"? That's a new one so full credit on you using your brain for once...