Israel has killed a major political and spiritual leader. His organization’s non-millitary wing has built schools for Palestinians, given money to the poor, and is well loved. He’s also one of the founders of Hamas.
This seems like a “holy shit” moment. Should anyone consider flying into the area now? I’m really not interested in the morality of the Israeli action or Palestinian response, but rather what will come of it, and at what intensity. What happens now?
Much rejoicing and happiness?
Forgot…
:D:
What, they’re going to launch a Have-Lite air-to-surface missile at an old Israeli man in a wheelchair?
I have a feeling a whole lotta eyes are going to be put out over this one. On both sides.
Ugly.
Oh geesh, its the eye for an eye thing again.
Oh well, look on the bright side, it opens up an enormous market for seeing eye dogs, those white walking canes, armored wheelchairs, dark sunglasses, etc, etc.
I wonder if Halliburton has the market cornered already?
Now what? Stay the heck off the buses for awhile, that’s what!
What a rotten situation…
MeanJoe
What does it really mean? It don’t mean shit, is what it means. Hamas has already dedicated itself to the destruction of Israel and killing as many Israelis as they can.
I mean, how can they make it worse? “Oh, we’re gonna get revenge on you now!” they’re all yelling. Yea, and this is different from your current tactics … how?
Of course, the flip side is just as true. OK, Israel, you’ve just killed the big senior Hamas guy. And you think this is going to change things … how?
Round and round it goes how it stops nobody knows.
Wll there’s most likely going to be more support for Hamas because of this
I have to hand it to those Israelies. When they decide to kill someone they don’t mess around.
Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that they shot missiles into another Hamas leader’s car form a helicopter while the guy was sitting at a red light?
I don’t keep track of the politics in that area beyond a weak understanding that they really hate each other, but it seems to me that Israel is doing better with helicopters than Hamas is doing with suicide bombings.
Moving this to Great Debates.
So what do you think? Should Bush lay off trying to kill OBL?
I read today in some article that the recent assassination of Yacine and another guy I forgot the name of could mean that more extremist Hamas leaders could take control of the organization. Apparently, he was a “moderate” by Hamas standarts (supporting civilian bombings only in retaliation of Israeli attacks as long as the military occupation of the territories would last).
Maybe he isn’t dead. Maybe he’ll grow 3x as big, start glowing red, shooting fire out of his eyes and jump around a lot, and Israel will have to run around throwing mushrooms at a button on his forehead.
This won’t end.
I think we can safely say that many more will be supporting/joining Hamas.
In the grand scheme of things, who knows? Regardless of what happens, the man deserved his death. Whether or not Israel should have let this slide is a better question.
I really don’t think Israel and Palestine can get along, no matter what compromises are made.
He already did, from 3/2002-12/2003.
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
– George W. Bush, 3/13/2002
Sure, George is concerned now, but that’s only because it’s an election year…
There’s already an ongoing debate about this very topic here - I think you’ll find many of your questions have been looked at from several angles there
Dani
In terms of an immediate successor, the leader-elect Abdel Aziz al Rantissi is even more militant. He has similarly been given an extrajudiciary sentence of death by assassination.
If you kill the ones who appear on TV, there is no link to the ones who could order the actual bombers to cease.
Israel’s goal right now is to decapitate the various Palestinian thugocracies. Probably, in a few months they’ll start fighting each other openly and it will turn into a bloodbath. A few years thereafter, it will have all died down and Israel won’t have a problem anymore.
To be honest, when I saw this image on AOL’s front page the other day, the first thing that came to mind was, “apparently, Israel has had enough of Saruman’s evil ways.”
… then I laughed at the headline for this Yahoo! News article featured on Fark.com, which read:
If that’s not funny, you have to realize that…
… those are all titles of (fairly bad) Steven Seagal movies.
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