To my way of thinking, and this is a harsh thing to say: if that’s what Hamas wants, why on earth is Israel giving it to them?
Personally, in Israel’s shoes, I’d be trying a combination of wet covert tactics using the Mossad or special forces to surgically eliminate rocket launch sites without civilian casualties, combined with more aggressive deployment of Iron Dome which by all accounts is performing exceptionally well in the border communities under threat.
[QUOTE=Zeriel]
To my way of thinking, and this is a harsh thing to say: if that’s what Hamas wants, why on earth is Israel giving it to them?
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Same reason us Americans got our collective cranks stuck in the golf shoes wrt Iraq and Afghanistan…because we have an elected government that is expect to Do Something™ when we are attacked.
Israel is doing all of that…in fact, that’s what sparked the recent dust up. Israel whacked a bunch of Hamas big wigs with a surgical strike (which was in retaliation to an earlier rocket attack that Israel didn’t invade over, which was sparked by…etc…etc…), which prompted the current attacks.
I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I were in Israels shoes, even assuming I was a God Emperor of Israel and my will was law and all that. It doesn’t seem to matter what Israel does, to be honest. If they do surgical strikes they get retaliation. If they do nothing then they are attacked. If they retaliate then they get more retaliation. Hamas is pretty obviously (well, to everyone but Red and a few other posters in this thread) doing all this deliberately, to prompt Israel into attacking and causing causalities to their own population to keep the cycle of violence going. When things get hot, look for Hamas to start making noises about a cease fire (which they will get), and then things will calm down…until the next time. Rinse and repeat until…well, gods know. I guess until there isn’t an Israel there anymore. I can’t see any other outcome.
You are conflating multiple things here. Israel isn’t colonizing Gaza…they forcibly moved their citizens OUT of Gaza and unilaterally turned it over to the PA…who then elected Hamas for the PA in Gaza. THAT is what caused the blockade. Funny that Israel would feel nervous about Hamas being in control of this territory, isn’t it?
And yeah…if another body was elected in Gaza (fat chance of that happening) and Hamas tossed out the blockade would end. And if the rocket attacks stopped, Israel would simply ignore Gaza, a territory they voluntarily abandoned to the Palestinians.
The ‘colonization’ you are talking about is in the Occupied Territories, and is certainly controversial. As with everything, there are two sides to this, but the pro-Palestinians would, perhaps, get more traction on that subject than this one, which except to the fervent faithful is pretty cut and dried…toss rockets at civilian cities and you get retaliatory strikes. Q.E.D.
I think it’s hilarious how Hamas lobs rockets at Israel for years and as soon as Israel retaliates Hamas demands an “end to the violence.” Then they have the gall to set conditions on it, too.
The moment Hamas gets what they want, the rockets start flying into Israel again. Who’s paying for all the rockets, BTW?
It’s been their standard modus operandi for years. An attack, a retaliation that causes a lot of highly publicized civilian Palestinian deaths, then noises about a cease fire (on their terms), then a quiet period (with possibly some Israeli surgical strikes or assassinations of Hamas big wigs) followed by fresh attacks. Rinse and repeat, especially when you’ve been out of the news for a while…just to remind everyone you are still there.
As for who pays, I’d say that Hamas is paying for them…and getting the money from Iran, considering Hamas is their baby. I don’t think that these rockets are all that expensive since they aren’t very sophisticated (a lot of them are manufactured right there in Gaza, though the Israelis have found some in the West Bank too)…IIRC, a lot of the rockets fired are an old WWII Russian design, though lately they have been getting more range.
I think Hamas gets them from Iran.
Regards,
Shodan
Here is an article on Hamas rockets:
Of course, but it won’t require magic. It will simply require the IDF high command to issue an order to that effect.
Lol, Israel unilaterally pulled all of its settlements out of Gaza many years ago. ETA: Were you unaware of this?
Either the funding or the weapons themselves, yeah. Some of the newer, longer range rockets are probably manufactured in Iran…or, at the very least, are Iranian in design. My own guess is that the materials and designs are smuggled into Gaza and then manufactured there, but that’s because it’s got to be difficult getting large numbers of rockets past the blockade, while getting the materials past would be a bit easier.
I know that the smaller rockets are mostly home built, but the parts and expertise for the longer range rockets come from Iran, hauled in trucks across Egypt.
I’m just wondering who is paying, and who is profiting? Does Iran just donate all the weapons and weapon-making supplies, or do they get paid?
My WAG is that, yes, Iran just donates the money and weapons and tech. The profit, such as it is, is to foment trouble for Israel and take the worlds eyes off of Iran and fix them onto the perennial conflict between Palestinians and Israel. Hamas profits by having weapons to asymmetrically strike at Israel (showing that they can do that, and gaining cred with a lot of anti-Israeli groups in the region, as well as their own people), with the added benefit that some non-zero number of their own civilian population is going to get killed or injured…and every man, woman and child killed will just be that much more fuel on the fire, and add that many more angry and hurting people willing to strap bombs to themselves or fire the next round of rockets at Israel. To Hamas it’s all about keeping that hatred on the burner and chugging along nicely. It’s all they have left, since they have to realize that Israel isn’t going to go away…and that they will never, ever get the opportunities they had in the past for a real, viable Palestine. That train is gone, so this is all they have left.
Iran’s “profit” is that they are a brutal dictatorship that only continues to exist because they are able to 1) claim legitimacy as a Muslim theocracy and 2) demonstrate (1) by violently opposing the Western boogeyman in the form of the US and Israel. They can’t survive without an enemy.
Yes. Of course, unlike what is currently happening it would all be very humane. They’d be allowed to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and even take the odd coffee break or two.
Unless of course, you either think the current cycle on endless retaliations by either side is ‘good enough’ or would go further as the late Ariel Sharon’s son, the apparently even more deranged, Gilad, proposes in his latest “article” in the J. Post:
A decisive conclusion is necessary
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The Final Solution indeed.
RedFury, would you mind if your neighbor regularly tossed rocks at your house if a judge ruled in your favor on a property line dispute? Might occasionally hit you or a family member.
But you would have no problem with that at all, if you are to be consistent.
Also, still waiting to hear you deplore the fact that Palestinians are kept as outsiders within their host nations, including those that were born there, and have never lived anywhere else. Palestinian ghetto’s in Lebanon and other host nations are not the fault of Israel.
That’s fuckin’ awesome! I’ve never lived in a Muslim country but I find those constant chants to prayer annoying as hell. They can get a compass and put their blankies down facing West all they want, but they don’t need to bother the shit out of all the other people that aren’t interested in talking to sky pixies. As for the kosher slaughter, I don’t care on way or another, but I am sure no one is going to starve in The Land Of Cheese And Chocolate® even if they have to alter their diets somewhat.
So, good on them. And yes, I had a hunch they’d be a solid pick.
[QUOTE=RedFury]
Unless of course, you either think the current cycle on endless retaliations by either side is ‘good enough’ or would go further as the late Ariel Sharon’s son, the apparently even more deranged, Gilad, proposes in his latest “article” in the J. Post:
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Well yeah, 'cause it’s not like there are any folks in Palestine or from Hamas who use over the top rhetoric, right? 
Well, if I’d stolen my neighbor’s house I might, just might, have a minor clue as to why he is pissed off – and if I launched an RPG* at him in retaliation I might even understand why he’d try to hit me back with a Molotov Cocktail*.
A thief shooting at its victims can never call it self-defense.
*Because, you see, I am rich and he is not.
Kinda why I’m really pleased with how well the Iron Dome system is working, and the progress being made on the directed-energy anti-missile systems that Raytheon is working on. It’s not going to be too long now before preventing rocket attacks with 99%+ efficiency is going to be a matter of paying less than it costs to actually fire back, and at that point it becomes a lot more feasible to ignore the rockets and try to build some rapport with the next generation.
Which is really the way to win. The Palestinians would win in a heartbeat if they could get all the rocket-firers and bomb-wearers to sit down and start singing “We Shall Overcome” instead, and the Israelis would win in a generation if they’d stop firing back and start expanding a humanitarian program aimed at constructing a viable Palestinian state. I know that’s been tried by the UN before, and failed, but my thought is that it takes a long time to get past institutionalized hatred and into “Those guys feed and house us, why are we shooting at them again? Who benefits?”
And if you’d raped his sheep and tossed his grandmother down a well, that probably would piss him off as well.
But, getting back to the Israeli/Palestine situation which doesn’t even vaguely resemble your ridiculous analogy…
Anyone attempting to portray this conflict (at least in the long term) with Palestinians as victims of Israel is either misinformed or selling something.