Getting tiresome, isn’t it? There will be more funerals on both sides, more maimed and crippled noncombatants, grief-stricken mothers and widows.
Harry’s Place says that while Hamas goaded Israel into responding, what they got in return was way more violent than expected. Israel, as usual, has gone bat-shit crazy, never realizing that 4GW is fought on propaganda as well as military battlefields.
Hamas is not going to be bombed out of power and it certainly won’t be shot out by street to street fighting. Even supposing that Hamas were removed it is highly unlikely, in the short term at least, that Fatah can stage a return. That being true then Israel needs to accept that there currently exists no immediate alternative to the Islamic group in Gaza.
There have to be talks and there has to be a resumption of normality for those living in the Gaza strip.
The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram among others hints that Hamas and its rocket attacks are partly to blame for what has unfolded: “If you can’t kill the wolf, don’t pull its tail,” the paper said.
Palestinians were driven from their land by force and have been treated vilely ever since. But any country will respond with force if someone is firing missiles at it. But Israel as always, has no clue what moderation is.
From a Times Online OpEd
The friends of the Palestinians would be best advised to put pressure on Hamas never to launch another of its bloody rockets and to stop its death-laden rhetoric, and the friends of Israel well placed to cajole it into making a settlement seem worthwhile. All else is verbiage.
As DJ, who posts and comments here has said about his experiences working to end the civil war in Sri Lanka, if everyone says they want peace but war continues, then some of the players on all sides have a vested interest in war continuing.
I’m reminded of what the Velvet Underground once said in a different context.
And all the politicians makin’ crazy sounds
And everybody puttin’ everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds
…
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess I just don’t know