Israeli army tanks, armoured cars and bulldozers have moved more than 2km into the Gaza Strip, the largest incursion into the territory since the Hamas movement took full control in June. It already killed 7 Palestinians.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during a visit to a Navy base in Haifa that "IDF forces will continue to operate in Gaza during the night to thwart the firing and manufacturing Qassam rockets and mortar shells." Operate? What a surgical, medical sounding word.
Why? Because it's the religious holiday of course!
"The public should know that as we are lighting the Hanukkah candles – IDF fighters are working in Gaza day and night so we can light them in peace," he added. Happy Hanukkah to you too.
And happy holiday blessings to relief workers in Gaza. According to Fadi: "Apparently there's an AP video of today's Israeli Occupation Army invasion into Gaza, in which the Israelis launch two rockets into a building that was already hit and was being evacuated by relief workers." If we find the video, we will post it.
Israel wages war on destitute refugee camps. Go democracy!
[tarboush tip: Ryah]
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Happy Hanukkah: More Destruction for Peace
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Have you got a picture without the Photoshopped-in smoke?
Israel wages war on destitute refugee camps. Go democracy!
Maybe the destitute refugee camps should stop waging war on Israel.
As we know, those tanks weren't even there. They were photoshopped. Israeli soldiers and settlements... don't exist, photoshop! It's incredible really, this global anti-Semitic conspiracy involving Adobe Photoshop.
And those damn refugees, they need to just accept the theft of all their land and a lifetime in a refugee camp. Come on, JEEZ!
Destitute refugee camps?
Dated Dec. 6th, so a few days old...
During the past week, Palestinians fired over 50 mortar shells and over 15 Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip at the Israeli home front. Over 2,000 Kassam rockets and mortar shells have been launched at southern Israel since the beginning of 2007.
Their leaders seem to have enough money to launch rockets at Israeli cities.
Judging from the reports I've been following, this incursion by IDF is coming on the heels of an increased tempo of Gazan terrorist operations. At this time, both sides have an interest in an engagement.
Post Annapolis, Hamas has a need to demonstrate that only it has the balls to fight Israel, and represents the only legitimate Palestinian political and military faction. It is counting on a bloody IDF assault to break Fatah's negotiating posture, energize a support base that has grown weary of political and fiscal mismanagement, while drawing attention and money from abroad.
In fact, the more bloody the assault, the more attention Hamas receives from the US and EU, the greater the chance for international outrage and demands to "engage with" and "open lines of dialogue" the terrorist group, ending its relative isolation.
While Fatah earned its international legitimacy through the negotiating table, Hamas is prepared to earn it on the corpses of its people.
Israel, too, is itching for a fight. Ehud Barak, the current head of the IDF, is fast positioning himself as a center left national security hawk, and alternative to Bibi Netanyahu, who is center right.
For much of the past decade, Israelis did not trust the left on national security, and with good reason. The left in Israel disgraced itself with the failure of Oslo, the concessions to the PA and withdrawal from Lebanon.
The right, too, has burned its bridges with the withdrawal from Gaza and the defection of center right ministers from Likud to Sharon's centrist Kadima.
Now that Kadima has overseen the first failed Israeli war effort (in Lebanon), the center has given way. The right and left are reclaiming their traditional poles of influence and restructuring around two party leaders - Barak on the left and Netanyahu on the right.
Bibi is the default. Barak needs to make up lost ground on national security, and Hamas is ready to oblige with more than an excuse for an IDF operation.
It appears that the IDF has already withdrawn from positions it held overnight after killing 8 terrorists and capturing 60 for questioning.
From a strategic perspective, the key for Israel is to manage the level of kinetic engagement in order to achieve its primary objectives. These are...
1) Wear down Hamas's fighting ability (i.e. keep it off balance and unable to launch spectacular attacks against Israel or conduct a campaign against Fatah)
2) Reinforce and help solidify and institutionalize the existing geographic, political and ideological divisions between Fatah and Hamas.
An overreaction on the part of the IDF may enable Hamas to torpedo Fatah's ongoing engagement with Israel and force Abbas to break bread with the Islamists in solidarity.
However, the Fatah-Hamas divisions within Palestinian society are not artificial or manufactured by Israel or the West - they are real and substantive, and go to the very nature of Palestinian identity. Furthermore, these divisions are bolstered by fluid regional power struggles between the Saudis, Iranians, Syrians and Egyptians.
For these reason, any cessations of hostilities between Fatah and Hamas are inherently temporary, more a product of political maneuvering than true rapprochement.
Seriously, those refugee camps are not destitute. When I retire, I'm considering moving to Florida or a refugee camp in Gaza. Haven't decided just yet. Victor, my friend, any other ideas? Perhaps I should move to Baghdad? Surely there's a fabulous retirement community in Compton!
Sorry Victor, I didn't get through that first part of your comment, it's too long, but I'm sure the rest of it is just as brilliant as your irrefutable argument on why the refugee camps are not destitute!
I think more Palestinians were killed on this day than all Israelis killed in Qassam rocket attacks combined in the last 6 years.
Comparing body counts is a disingenuous, propagandist approach to the conflict. As I've written extensively in the past, how many people are dead is not important. Proportionality tells us nothing except that one side is more efficient at employing organized violence than another. What is important are the reasons why people are killed.
If the preservation of one innocent human life requires the extermination of a thousand aggressors, then doing so is not only completely justified, it is obligated.
If the preservation of one innocent human life requires the extermination of a thousand aggressors. HEIL HITLER!
Yes we all know that the life of an israeli (unless they are christian or muslim) is worth a thousand arab lives.
Yes we all know that the life of an israeli is worth a thousand would-be murderers' lives.
FTFY
Re: Edmund - not in G-d's eyes. But in the eyes of Arabs themselves. That is why Israel trades 400 prisoners for the remains of 2 soldiers. Maybe it's time Palestinians valued their own lives.
Yes, we annonymous posters are "rable-rousers". How dare we disagree with the party line of the blog.
So if the Qassams don't do anything, then why fire them? They know that Israel will respond! It's totally obvious that those who fire them WANT Palestinians to be killed , because if not, the struggle will die down. What other goal could their be? You yourselves say that "the Qassams don't kill anybody" and such!
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