Gaza demonstrates the pointlessness of
giving the Palestinians their own state.
Israel left Gaza in 2005.
All Jews were expelled.
At last the Palestinians could demonstrate clearly that they
deserved a state.
Did the Palestinians in Gaza seize the chance of building a free and prosperous state?
Did they encourage industry, trade and tourism,
and peace with their neighbours?
Did they set up a liberal parliamentary democracy,
with freedom of speech,
freedom of sexuality
and freedom of religion?
Until the Palestinians change their entire political and religious culture,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will never end.
There is nothing Israel (or the West) can do.
All they can do is
wait for the Palestinians to change.
Giving them land, and a state,
simply escalates the conflict.
Like Hitler, the Hamas Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments, February 28, 2010, describes the Jews as sub-human bacteria.
See
transcript.
"They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria - a microbe unparalleled in the world. ...
May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people."
"Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!"
- Popular chant in pro-Hamas demos.
See many examples.
Gaza pull-out,
2005.
I find it hard to put a positive spin on this.
Yes, maybe Gaza was untenable, and pull-out was inevitable.
But it looks like a victory for Islamism.
And, I believe, it has created
an Islamist terror state,
increasing the threat to Israel.
"The world wants a Palestinian state? Very well
- let them have it. And the result, as we are seeing, is something close
to panic ...
The Egyptians do not want a Hamas state on their borders.
They had expected Ariel Sharon to place a cordon between Egypt and Gaza. He has said he will not do so
- that he is leaving the job up to the Egyptians. ...
Is this Egyptian role on the border a precursor to a larger Egyptian role within Gaza? Egypt after all remains far more vulnerable to Islamic extremist ideology than Israel. The Egyptian authorities have crushed the extremist movement within their borders. Do they wish to see a jihadist state emerge on their borders? It seems unlikely.
Could it be that Sharon is calling the bluff of Western governments and the Arab states?
By creating the very Palestinian state that those governments and those states pretend to want but actually dread ..."
The truth is that
"The Palestinian leadership is incapable of creating a state that can live at peace with anyone ...
Somebody else must govern the restless and violent Arab-majority territories west of the Jordan River.
Israel has suffered four decades of condemnation for doing the job. Sharon is now resigning the task to anybody else
who would like to step in and take over the job. Nobody wants to.
But Egypt and Jordan may soon realize that they have no choice.
If there is a secret behind Sharon's plan - that is it."
Why Gaza? Why now?,
Mark Steyn, The Irish Times,
22 August 2005:
"This then is the audacious gamble of the Gaza withdrawal:
the best way to demonstrate that the Palestinians are undeserving of a state is to force one upon them.
It's a dangerous move, but in a tough neighborhood there aren't any other kinds."
I'm not sure I buy it.
I still think the Gaza pull-out will increase violence and terror.
Palestinian terrorists in Gaza were setting up yet another
rocket attack against Israeli civilians
when
the
Gaza Beach Incident
occurred, June 2006,
in which a Palestinian family was killed.
Gaza pullout gained Israel more criticism, not less, 3 Jan 2008.
Doing what the Israel-hating world demanded led to more international criticism, not less.
"Hebrew University researchers found that Israel was represented in a more negative light in both the United States and Britain media after the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, compared to the period that preceded it".
Appeasement of tyranny tends to lead to more demands, not less:
"We also found that the demands from Israel for territorial concessions in the territories not only were not lessened following the disengagement, but actually became stronger."
Who Is to Blame for Grief on a Beach?
by Charles Krauthammer,
asks some brutally hard questions of those who think the Gaza Beach Incident is just another
unjustified Israeli massacre:
"The sensational coverage and sensational charges raise the obvious question:
Why would Israel deliberately shell a peaceful family on a beach?"
No answer. The answer is:
If Israel did it, it was an error -
a stray shell in response to
a rocket attack. And so:
"the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers
to attack Israel
- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families?"
And in fact it looks like
the Palestinians killed the family, not Israel.
And:
"there is an even larger question not asked.
... why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place
- about 1,000 in the past year?
To get Israel to remove its settlers, end the occupation
and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and independence?
But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year.
It completely evacuated Gaza, dismantled all its military installations,
removed its soldiers, destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli settlers.
...
Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory ever.
And what have the Palestinians done with this independence,
this judenrein territory
under the Palestinians' control?
They have used their freedom to launch rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns."
Human Rights Watch, after initially blaming Israel,
are impressed by the IDF inquiry:
"Garlasco" [HRW]
"told Klifi" [IDF]
".. that he was impressed with the IDF's
system of checks and balances concerning its artillery fire in the Gaza Strip
and unlike Hamas which specifically targeted civilians in its rocket attacks,
the Israelis, he said, invested a great amount of resources and efforts not to harm innocent civilians.
"We do not believe the Israelis were targeting civilians." Garlasco said.
"We just want to know if it was an Israeli shell that killed the Palestinians."
Lucy Mair" [HRW]
".. said Klifi's team had conducted a thorough and professional investigation
of the incident and made "a good assessment" when ruling out the possibility
that an errant IDF shell had killed the seven Palestinians on the Gaza beach."
Rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, 2000-08.
Note how rocket attacks escalate after Israel leaves Gaza in 2005.
See full size.
From
"Summary of rocket fire and mortar shelling in 2008",
Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center, 1 Jan 2009.
I'm not sure this makes much difference.
The previous crowd supported terror too.
They funded it, carried it out, praised it,
and supported it in the schools and the media.
They taught the entire population to support terror
from infancy.
And they carried it out themselves.
Fatah,
through for example the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades,
are Islamist terrorists who attack civilians through suicide bombings,
no different to Hamas.
It was merely a fiction,
by Israelis desperate to have some partner for peace,
that
the PA
were any different
to Hamas.
Many people have pointed out that if Hamas attacks Israel now,
now that they are the government,
it would be an "Act Of War" between two states, and Israel could respond as such.
But this is no different to the past. The PA, through the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and others,
repeatedly attacked Israel, and Israel chose to fight only a partial war.
Israel always had the option of waging all-out war on the PA.
It chose not to use it.
I'm not sure much has really changed.
The situation has just been clarified.
(*) Was this a real election?
Not really.
Democracy works not because it is a majority vote
but rather because having regular free elections demands a free society -
free press, free speech,
freedom to question the government and religious authorities.
It's not clear at all that Palestine has any of these.
If you take a society with no habits of democracy or freedom,
and just give them a free vote, the result may be:
Regime change needs to start in the latter societies, where the people have already tried and hate
Islamism and pan-Arab dictatorship and communism,
and are disillusioned with non-democratic utopias.
All China or Iran need, for example, to be free is a single free election.
Palestine needs a new mindset in the population, and that will take decades.
What Democracy Is
- Majority-rule alone is not democracy.
Democracy means a free society.
Until the Palestinians change,
and reject Hamas and Fatah
and embrace liberal democracy and human rights,
there is no future for them.
Hamas carry on the war against Israel, 2007.
This is what the moron Palestinian voters voted for.
This is their decision, to do this.
Hamas missile alert, kindergarten, Sderot, 2007.
Every day the children have to run and hide from the incoming Hamas missiles.
The children have never known anything else.
From here.
From sderotmedia.com.
See more Sderot videos:
The Palestinians loot their own infrastructure,
and attack their own fuel and electricity supplies.
Israel supplies fuel, water and electricity to Gaza:
Incredibly, even after pullout,
as rockets are fired at Israel
from a Gaza cleansed of Jews,
Israel continues to supply both the water and electricity in Gaza.
How tolerant, how civilized, Israel is.
What a contrast to its enemies.
As Robert Spencer says:
"By the way, during World War II, did Great Britain allow Germans to enter the country for medical treatment? Of course not. The very idea is absurd."
Yet Israel lets sick Palestinians in,
despite some of them trying to kill the doctors and nurses
once they are in.
How tolerant, how civilized, Israel is. What a contrast to its enemies.
Palestinian suicide strategy
by Barry Rubin, July 9, 2006
- The Western left fail to understand the irrationality of the Palestinians.
Some hard truths:
"There are hardly any moderate Palestinians in public life"
Palestinian strategy "rests on the belief that defeat is staved off as long as you keep fighting. Their only true victory is to continue the struggle.
...
This is why the "cycle of violence" concept is useless. Palestinians don't attack Israel because Israel attacks them, but because that is their sole program."
"Democracy, living standards, women's rights and so on have no value outside contributing to the battle against Israel."
"The movement's social policy is remarkably reactionary.
...
Fatah has no economic or social policy; Hamas seeks to turn Palestine into Iran or Afghanistan.
They have more in common with the world view of the Middle Ages
than with Chinese or Cuban visions of guerrilla war."
"Not only is infrastructure unimportant, it interferes with waging all-out struggle. If Palestinians become obsessed with job creation, educational or health systems or a successful economy this makes them satisfied with their lot and less willing to fight and die for the cause."
Gaza economy, never very strong, collapses after Hamas takes over.
"The World Bank estimates that 75 percent of Gaza's factories have closed and more than 68,000 Palestinian workers have been laid off".
As Charles Johnson says, the moron Palestinian voters voted for this:
"The Palestinians in Gaza voted overwhelmingly for Hamas, and got exactly what they wanted
- a radical Islamic government that could not care less about their welfare."
Before:
Jewish children at greenhouses in Gaza
the week before the Israeli pull-out in 2005.
Within hours of the pull-out the greenhouses were looted,
destroying a major source of Gaza employment.
Image from here.
After:
The greenhouses now looted and in ruins, 2006, and being used only for
weapons smuggling tunnels.
Image from IDF.
The greenhouses are a symbol of what Palestinian rule has done to Gaza.
As predicted, the Gaza pull-out
led to the setting up of a terrorist state,
with lawless Islamist gangs fighting each other for control
- instead of the setting up, say, of a parliamentary democracy with
respect for the law and human rights.
Gaza illustrates better than anything could
that the Palestinians do not deserve their own state.
It would be absurd
to expect the terrorist gangs of
Fatah and Hamas to compete peacefully for power
in a Palestinian state.
Terrorists will always war against each other - it is their nature.
See
the Sunni and Shia Islamist death squads in Iraq,
killing each other even though they have identical fascist beliefs.
Or the Soviets and Hitler.
Or Iran and Saddam.
Non-democracies will always war against other non-democracies.
And terrorists will always war against other terrorists.
It is their nature.
As terror gangs shoot each other in hospital, lynch each other in the street,
kill each other's families, and throw each other off rooftops,
Melanie Phillips on the savage killings, June 13, 2007:
"The fact is that what is happening in Gaza is the savage retort to all those who believe that a Palestinian state is the answer. When handed the reins of self-government, this is how the Palestinians behave. Hundreds of rockets fired upon Israel, and their own people thrown off the top of tall buildings and murdered in hospital."
As Gaza becomes a terrorist state,
with Hamas and Fatah shooting each other for control,
even killing each others' families
(also here),
there are many ironies:
"The irony here is vicious. Fatah, which has long waged war against Israeli children, suddenly finds the killing of children abhorent. An old Palestinian game has been to throw stones at Israeli soldiers and whine that they are exempt from retaliation. Now they are discovering the joys of having that argument turned on themselves."
News report,
May 2007, of the suffering Palestinians
as the rival terrorist scum of Fatah and Hamas fight each other for control of Gaza
after Israel's withdrawal.
One man says:
"We pray that Israel will come back and rule us again."
This is your future, Palestine.
If you raise your people to hate and kill from birth,
you shouldn't be surprised if this
civil war and Taliban hell is your future.
OK I've been trying not to laugh at some of the incidents of this civil war
(those where the terrorists attack each other
with no innocents involved).
Sure it is blackly amusing
when Hamas attack Fatah terrorists,
execute them without trial,
and then Fatah complain about such savagery.
Such hypocrites.
I nearly laughed watching Hamas blow up the Fatah police station.
But this
- this is brilliant. It made me finally laugh out loud.
"They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal. Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it. They stole many of Arafat's documents and files, gifts he had received from world leaders and even his military outfits.""Eyewitnesses told The Jerusalem Post that dozens of Palestinians participated in the raid, which took place late Friday.
"Most of the looters were just ordinary citizens," they said. "They stole almost everything, including furniture, tiles, water pipes, closets and beds.""
Many other Fatah terror leaders' houses were also looted by the crazed mobs.
Quote Of The Day:
"What's this you say? Hamas and Fatah senselessly murdering each other willy nilly? Why, I haven't been this upset since the last time I got a blow job."
It's sad when terrorists fight:
Hamas portray Fatah as rats in a cartoon.
The Benny Hillifier
- Speed up and add Benny Hill music to any YouTube video.
People in Gaza Long for the Return of the Israeli Occupation.
Some Israeli-Arab journalists say:
"People in Gaza are hoping that Israel will reenter the Gaza Strip, wipe out both Hamas and Fatah, and then withdraw again."
A Gaza poet says:
"If a there was a referendum in the Gaza Strip [on the question of] 'would you like the Israeli occupation to return?' half the population would vote 'yes'
...
If the occupation returns, at least there will be no civil war, and the occupier will have a moral and legal obligation to provide the occupied people with employment and food, which they now lack."
Be careful what you wish for.
They wanted Taliban hell.
Now they've got it.
List of Arab quotes that show a preference for Israeli rule to Palestinian rule.
"That almost all Arabs would rather live in Israel than in a Palestinian state is well-known. But the fact that most Palestinians actually prefer Israeli occupation to Palestinian self-rule is a show-stopper. That sentiment turns the dominant Western attitude toward a solution for the Palestinians on its head."
From here:
"The men, who were brought late Saturday to the Soroka and Barzilai hospitals, accused Hamas of waging a "war of genocide" against Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip."
Hypocritical scum.
Why doesn't Israel intern them until the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Hamas kills the rival
Gaza Islamofascist
Abdul-Latif Moussa, Aug 2009,
and burns his mosque. Result!
There is an incredible idea that we should support the
supposedly "moderate"
terrorist killers of Fatah
in this civil war against Hamas.
The US, EU, and even Israel have sent aid, money, and even arms to Fatah.
Have they forgotten
the long list of
terror attacks and suicide bombings by Fatah?
I am sure Fatah have killed more innocent Israelis than Hamas.
I fail to see how Fatah are any better than Hamas.
This is like supporting Saddam against Iran.
Cartoon from Cox and Forkum
(see here).
See Cartoon Use Policy.
Welcome to Palestine, Jan. 29, 2007
- Caroline Glick on the hellhole of Gaza without Israel.
What did we expect?
The Palestinians to set up a parliamentary democracy?
"For the past 13 years, since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994,
the contours of the State of Palestine have taken form in front of our eyes.
...
Palestine exists already.
...
Palestine is a terror state
and an economic basket case fully funded by the international community.
...
official Western aid to the Palestinians .. increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion.
The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation. So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel.
The multitude of protesters worldwide who demand an end to the so-called "occupation" and the establishment of Palestine should be made aware of the fact that Palestine already exists.
...
This is Palestine. Enter at your own risk."
Taliban hell:
After Israeli pullout,
Islamists stamp their boot on Gaza.
They
bomb Internet cafes, music shops, and even
barber shops.
Welcome to Taliban hell. You asked for it.
Ging is head of the anti-Israeli
UNRWA in Gaza.
But that doesn't mean much to the local jihadis.
They only care about religion.
And he and other aid workers are still infidels.
Already cleansed of Jews, the Islamists are now cleansing Gaza of Christians:
"Christians must accept Islamic rule" in Gaza:
"Christians can only continue living safely in the Gaza Strip if they accept Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol and on women roaming publicly without proper head coverings"
Hamas Destroys Christian School and Church in Gaza, June 2007
(and here):
"masked gunmen torched and looted the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church.
"The masked gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church," he said. "Then they destroyed almost everything inside, including the Cross, the Holy Book, computers and other equipment."
Musalam expressed outrage over the burning of copies of the Bible, noting that the gunmen destroyed all the Crosses inside the church and school."
Jihadists (probably Hamas) attack U.N. summer camp for children in Gaza, June 2010.
"about two dozen armed and masked men targeted a seaside camp in central Gaza, ...
The assailants tied up an unarmed guard, then tried to set fire to two tents and a perimeter fence made from tarp-like material. Wielding knives, they slashed a plastic swimming pool, blow-up slide and toys."
Aren't they the big brave men?
Consider this:
If Hamas stopped all violence, Israel would leave Gaza alone.
Checkpoints would be dismantled.
Trade would be free.
Investment would pour in.
Everything would be fine.
But this does not hold the other way round.
If Israel stopped all violence, Hamas would move in and exterminate the Israelis.
Eamonn McDonagh
points out that Israel could destroy Hamas,
but won't (because Israel is civilized), and so the conflict will continue:
"Inflicting a defeat on Hamas of sufficient proportions to make Gaza as docile as Chechnya is well within Israel's military capabilities. It's not going to happen though. The Israeli public doesn't have the stomach for either the casualties on its own side or the mass slaughter of Palestinians that would be necessary to achieve it. Oh, and if you think that mass slaughter is exactly what Israel has been inflicting on Gaza in recent days, then you haven't been paying much attention to world history over recent decades.
Hamas exudes the will to destroy Israel and all who live in it from every last pore of its collective body. Israel has the means to crush Hamas but only the will to deliver hard jabs and the occasional uppercut. There's no chance of a knee in the groin followed by a few hard kicks to the head. Regardless of the forthcoming ceasefire, the conflict is thus certain to go on. This is to be both deplored and welcomed."
Daniel Finkelstein, January 7, 2009, on the only way this will ever end:
"there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.
Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. ... Again and again .. the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. ...
There cannot be peace until this changes."
Hamas admits using human shields
(also here):
"the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine."
More copies and video.
Charles Krauthammer, 2 January 2009:
" 'Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.'
...
Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis .. deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.
...
At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible - also on both sides."
Hamas leaders hiding in basement of Israel-built hospital in Gaza, 12 Jan 2009.
"senior Hamas officials found refuge in the hospital basement because they know Israel would not target it, due to the patients in the upper floors."
Try doing that with the Nazis!
Or the Soviets, or the Chinese,
or Axis Japan.
Or indeed any Islamic army ever.
What Israel is up against:
Gaza Regime Prepares Children For Death.
"the Gaza regime has been training teenagers as young as 14 in military camps throughout Gaza.
...
"In the war against Israel, there were more than 100 children trained to attack Israeli forces in Gaza"
...
Meanwhile, the Gaza regime now employs thousands of children to construct and operate the tunnel network between the Gaza Strip and Egypt."
The world screamed that Israel slaughtered 40 women and children at a Gaza school.
Probably most people still believe this.
IDF report
says 12 Palestinians were killed - 9 Hamas fighters and 3 noncombatants.
It also says the IDF was returning fire after coming under attack
from Hamas beside the school,
and its shells did not hit the school compound.
IDF report
says there are 900 identified dead so far - 600 enemy fighters, 300 civilians.
These are probably the kind of numbers you would expect if
Israel was trying hard to kill Hamas and avoid civilians,
and Hamas was trying hard to get civilians killed.
The Malam report (Israel's response to the Goldstone Report)
Gaza report (The Goldstone report), Sept 2009,
by the discredited
UN "Human Rights" Council,
whose membership includes
Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Nigeria, China, Cuba and Russia.
The report
claims that Israel targeted not Hamas but the entire Gaza population:
"the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole
... as a whole they were premised on a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed not at the enemy but at the 'supporting infrastructure.' In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population."
Islamic Jihad loves it:
"The Goldstone report must be fully supported and every opportunity to realize its recommendations seized".
Richard Kemp,
June 2009,
points out some of the things Israel did to protect Palestinian civilian lives:
"When possible the IDF gave at least four hours' notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack."
"Attack helicopter pilots, tasked with destroying Hamas mobile weapons platforms, had total discretion to abort a strike if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were cancelled because of this."
"During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. This sort of task is regarded by military tacticians as risky and dangerous at the best of times. To mount such operations, to deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands, is to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable."
"In the latter stages of Cast Lead the IDF unilaterally announced a daily three-hour cease fire."
"The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. A complete air squadron was dedicated to this task alone."
"The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight."
He argues that, in an imperfect world,
"the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare."
The Challenge: Find any war or conflict ever when
any Arab or Muslim army or group
has taken any steps at all
to protect enemy civilian lives.
Tell me about it here.
Hamas fire at Israel from a school during the Jan 2009 conflict.
From IDF YouTube channel.
Hamas jihadi in the Jan 2009 conflict
calls for local children to come and help him escape from a building
without being fired on from the air.
He leaves
using the children as human shields.
Again, Hamas themselves know how decent the Israelis are.
Hamas know the Israelis are morally superior to Hamas themselves.
And again, the children's parents don't give a toss about their safety,
but allow them wander round a war zone helping jihadis.
Hamas uses children as human shields.
Le Monde
cartoon of 2002 compares
the Israeli attack on the Jew-killing Islamist terrorists of
Jenin, 2002
(53 dead, almost all Islamist enemy fighters)
with
the Nazi attack on the innocent Jews of
Warsaw, 1943
(70,000 dead, almost all civilian men, women and children).
Search for more copies.
Consider also the following:
The Nazis had already killed 300,000 innocent Jews in Warsaw
(and more elsewhere in Poland)
even before 1943.
The Nazis killed 90 percent of all Jews in Warsaw.
The Nazis killed 90 percent of all Jews in Poland.
They killed 3,000,000 innocent Jews in Poland
(and more elsewhere in Europe).
Aftermath
Was the offensive a success?
Hamas were taken by surprise by the Israeli reaction.
Captured Hamas fighter:
"Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air - something superficial. They'll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in '48. What got into you all of a sudden?"
Victor Davis Hanson, January 6, 2009, points out that deterrence does work:
"Note not just the relative silence of Fatah ...
but the quiet from Hezbollah in Lebanon. One would think Hezbollah would now pile on by launching missiles in solidarity with their brothers in Hamas."
Some missiles have been launched from Lebanon, though Hezbollah denies it was them.
Hanson's point stands that no one (Fatah, Hezbollah, or any of the Islamic countries)
is formally coming to the aid of Hamas militarily.
Rather (as in the 2006 Hezbollah war)
they are just demanding a "ceasefire".
Hamas has wanted war for years, and now they have one,
their only strategy is to whine and complain and demand a ceasefire.
Victor Davis Hanson, January 14, 2009:
"For all the talk of Israeli failure, they are doing to Hamas what they did to Hezbollah in 2006 and Fatah in 2002. And in each of these respective cases there was a cessation in offensive attacks following an incredible degree of material damage.
...
[Israel] are gambling that they can establish another quid-pro-quid protocol in which a Hamas or Hezbollah understands that every time they wish to start another round of killing and fighting, they will kill only a few Israelis at a cost of hundreds of their own and billions in material losses".
Rocket attacks in 2009: 566 (of which 406 were during the Jan 2009 conflict, and 160 later in the year).
Yearly breakdown of all projectile fire towards Israeli territory, 2002 to 2009.
Israel leaves Gaza: 2005. Jews cleansed from Gaza. Rocket fire does not stop.
Gaza war: Dec 2008 to Jan 2009.
See full size.
From IDF.
Synagogues Used as Bases To Fire on Israel, Aaron Klein, February 27, 2007,
illustrates better than anything that the Palestinians do not deserve a state,
and trying to give them one in Gaza and the West Bank is pointless:
"The ruins of two large synagogues in evacuated Jewish communities of the Gaza Strip
have been transformed into military bases used by Palestinian Arab groups
to fire rockets at Israeli cities
...
When Israel withdrew from the Gaza in August, 2005,
it left intact 20 synagogues of the Gush Katif Jewish communities
...
Immediately after the Israeli evacuation was completed,
Palestinian Arabs destroyed most of the Gaza synagogues.
...
a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, Abu Abir,
said the area in which the synagogues once stood is now used to fire rockets at Israel.
"We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice,
like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity," Mr. Abir said.
Mr. Abir blamed the Jewish state for the desecration of the Gaza synagogues
by Palestinian Arabs,
claiming the decision to leave the structures intact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.
Israel "left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them," Mr. Abir said."
Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center, 1 Jan 2009.
The Malam report (Israel's response to the Goldstone Report)
Since 1995.
