"The firing of these rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counter-productive: it damages their image as an oppressed people, enrages the Israelis, and gives their right wing extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace." is actually the theme of this article as owing to shear desperation the Muslims of the world just succumb to the temptations, which most of the time prove counter productive. It is due to this insanity which is the hallmark of the nation of Islam for the so-many centuries. They are just becoming robots of the whims of those whio are actually the harbinger of infliction.
The real remedy of all this malaise lies in the capacitations to show the foe that the provocateur may result in the reciprocation. And this will only be possible when the nation of Islam surge for the knowledge sans short cut by the Allah to cause them in a rescue by being a chosen nation/Ummah. To prove this point there are alot of examples in the name of Chechnya, Afghanistan, Palestine, internecine wars of the past between Iran-Iraq etc.

Israel and the U.S. have spent billions of dollars fighting the Palestinians and Arabs over the past decades. Wouldn't it be easier just to close down Gaza and move these people around the middle east (Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc). Give each family a million dollars US and have them move. Surely, that would be far cheaper in the long run. And these families would be happier if they were out of Gaza. And financially better off. That may be the only solution.

I could agree that Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza. However, the legal entity of the Palestinians should be the Palestinian Authority. Gaza is a detached piece of territory. It does not mean that its people have the right elect a separate legislative body from the Palestinians living in the West Bank. If I can give an American example, the majority of the people in Alaska voted for the Republicans while the majority of Americans voted for the Democrats. Alaska is still a part of the US. Its people will be ruled by a Democratic president and Congress.

When I see the problems with Gaza and Israel, it reminds me of the Israelis behaving the the Robert Bourassa Liberals of Quebec during the Meech Lake discussions in Canada. Sorry for non-Canadians reading this. Bourassa would not agree to discuss anything else until his matters were settled. The Israelis will not discuss an overall solution to the Israel-Palestine problem until the Israelis are satisfied that each little problem solved is accepted by Israel. Right now, there is fighting in Gaza and bombings in Israel around Gaza. The Israelis won't agree to discuss anything else until the bombing stops. Once the bombing stops, the Israelis won't agree to anything else until Hamas lays down its arms. That won't happen. Therefore the Israelis won't feel the need to make a peace agreement with Fatah in the West Bank, the Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, or other Arab countries.

I could be mistaken, but Israel's future acceptance of the 1967 borders with complete peace could be seen as an Israeli loss compared to the conflicting status quo.

CanadaOne, we in the West are extraordinary hypocrites but our self delusion does not extend to the point where we can bribe Palestinians to leave their homes and still claim to oppose ethnic clensing. I do understand that your idea is more humane than these people being slowly murdered or driven out by Israeli brutality.

Of course it would be more logical to view the flip side of your idea. Why is the West, in particular the US, paying Israelis to settle in the West Bank? Most Israelis' history in Palestine only dates back to 1946 but a significant number of Israelis just immigrated to Palestine in the last ten years. Money is being used to bribe Jews to move to the area. The Zionists have already taken your idea and used it to make the problem bigger.

Another article that sets the story straight.

It is ironic that those who use every chance they can to remind society of their suffering and torment at the hands of would be xenophobes are employing the vary same tactics themselves with the same xenophobic and genocidal result. This is the paradox of when the shoe is on the other foot, and leadership by example is replaced by might is right.


Of course one could argue that the failure in Lebanon in 2006 is why the IDF is resulting to this Gaza show of strength. There is validity to this and another reason as to why the IDF will never attack Iran. Better get used to the idea of having Iran process a nuke or 100 in the future.

The U.S./Israeli position is the Jewish equivalent of ¨Final Solution¨ fast-forwarded to our time. With all the Memorial/Remembrance Days since WWII,
the World did forget.

Gaza is an Israeli controlled Warsaw Ghetto/Gulag prison with no escape. The West buys the moral placebo that Israeli is good because they drop leaflets telling civilians to get out of the way before an attack. With all exits blocked, the only way out is to run into the sea.

Stripped down to the fundamental reality, the U.S./Israeli policy is:

1. No negotiations during the truce or during the War to resolve the differences.

2. Bomb Gaza into submission.

True Democracies do not behave like that, and it is un-American, violating all principles of decency and fairness.

In the final analysis, this is like a Spiritual Warfare over Jerusalem where Christ was crucified.

I honestly hope that this Gaza action is the final straw for the Muslim world to start to take action on the murder of the Palestinians by the Israelis with the complicity of the US. Say what you like but It would make my heart sing if Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela stood up and said that they're stopping all production of oil as long as the Israelis refuse make peace with the Palestinians. We'd have a peace treaty within hours. Not one shot would be fired nor one life lost. A completely bloodless solution to the problem. Or, alternatively, the Arab League unilaterally decides to invest in rebuilding the infrastructure (utility and manufacturing) of the Gaza Strip and dares the Israelis to stop them. If Israel moves to block them, oil production stops. Regardless of what those small minded Republicans and their r-dn-ck followers believe, the world would come to a screeching halt, except for the countries that have a significant oil producing capacity which are predominately Arab.

aren't there any moderate intelligent Arabs that can try to mobilize like minded people to influence Hamaz and put an end to these murders?
Using school and mosques and hospitals is typical of Hamas who don't care how many innocent cilvilians get kille. PLEASE DO WJHATEVER YOU CAN TO END THIS BLOODSHED NOW. The time for bllodshed is over. A lasting peace treaty must be agreed to as soon as possible.

Bush never fails to surprise me with his amazing stupidity and lack of compassion:
Sher Alam
This is verified most recently by his comments on Gaza-situation. I found the essay below quite useful-It makes sense since just as in nature for Harmony we need a Balance of Forces-
Until the Middle East manages to contain Israel’s rogue regime by a regional balance of power, peace will remain out of reach, says Patrick Seale.

A striking feature of the War in Gaza is the extraordinary immunity Israel has enjoyed to strike and kill at will. Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, leading members of the Israeli government, have not hesitated to resort to mass murder. Yet, no one has been able to stop them. To all appearances, Israel is a rogue regime, spinning out of control.
Unrestrained by the rules of international legality, and indifferent to the most elementary considerations of morality, Israel is bombing into the stone age a besieged, battered and largely defenseless Arab society of 1.5 million people. At the time of writing, it had killed at least 437 people, wounded more than 2,300, and flattened every building in sight. The final casualties will undoubtedly be higher.

How has Israel managed to get away with such behaviour? The short answer is that there is no serious countervailing pressure on the Jewish state, neither from a weak and divided Arab world, nor from the European Union, still struggling to become a coherent political entity, nor from emerging powers such as China and Russia. The total absence of any balance of power means that Israel has been able to do as it pleases.

The world is a jungle, largely because the U.S. administration of out-going President George W. Bush has made it so. Bush’s illegal war in Iraq, his unbridled ‘Global War on Terror’, his cross-border air strikes, his subversion of the rule of law and of the Geneva Conventions, his license for the use of torture and for detention without trial, all these have given Israel the freedom to do likewise.

Israel’s main asset has undoubtedly been the blind support it has enjoyed from U.S. President George W. Bush — a support which is continuing to the very last days of Bush’s abysmal administration. Just as he backed Israel’s Lebanon war of 2006, which was designed to destroy Hizbullah, so Bush has backed Israel’s war in Gaza, designed to destroy Hamas. He has now given Barak and Livni a green light to follow up their air blitz with a ground offensive.

Instead of seeking to resolve long-running conflicts and promote peace, the Bush administration has instead fanned the flames of war. The world is praying that President-elect Barack Obama will — immediately on taking office on 20 January — bring about a sharp and decisive change of direction in American foreign policy.

Israel’s freedom of action is not only due to American tolerance and support. It is also a tribute to the success of Israel’s own propaganda. A huge effort and very considerable resources are devoted to putting Israel’s case to the world. Israel has managed to brain-wash a large part of the world into believing that it is a victim of Palestinian terrorism, whereas the truth is that Israel’s own state terrorism — its targeted assassinations, armed incursions, land theft, massacres and cruel siege of the Palestinians — has been far more lethal than anything the Palestinians have ever managed to do themselves.

The record of the last eight years shows that between 200 and 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israel for every Israeli victim of Palestinian violence.

On a visit to President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris last week, Tzipi Livni did not hesitate to declare that Israel was being attacked by Hamas’s rockets because it was “defending the values of the free world.” No, Ms Livni, George W. Bush may approve your murderous policies, but they have no place in the values which Western societies aspire to live by.

The total identification of the United States with Israel’s policies in recent years has destroyed America’s standing in the Arab and Muslim world. It has radicalizing opinion in the Greater Middle East — and as far afield as Pakistan, Mauritania, Indonesia and elsewhere — and is likely to expose the U.S. and its interests to attack.

There are several other casualties of the Gaza War. The most important of these is peace. The whole so-called ‘peace process’ of recent years has now been thrown into reverse. Such is the popular anger aroused by Israel’s actions that there is no hope that meaningful peace talks will be revived in the foreseeable future. Israel will be free to continue its expansion into Palestinian territory, which is what it has sought all along. The dream of a “Greater Israel” is by no means dead. But Israel and Jews everywhere will very probably have to face a wave of revenge attacks. Violence breeds violence.

A prominent victim of the war is Mahmud Abbas, the hapless president of the Palestinian Authority, who believed that concessions and surrender to Israel would win him an independent state. He has been proved wrong, and is much enfeebled.

Another victim is President Husni Mubarak of Egypt, who has attempted to walk a tightrope between support for Arab causes and peaceful relations with Israel. The crisis has pushed him unceremoniously off the tightrope. His refusal to open the Rafah crossing point, and his belated condemnation of Israel’s war, have aroused great anger in Egypt and across the region and have caused him to be widely accused of complicity in Israel’s crimes.

It is a truth of international relations that a balance of power keeps the peace, whereas an imbalance causes war, since the stronger side will always seek to impose its will by force. Until the Middle East manages to contain Israel’s rogue regime by a regional balance of power, peace will remain out of reach.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

The Gaza Situation has once again highlighted that for the Sake of Justice and Democracy: United Nations should be made truly Democratic and Fair. It is very simple:
Rule 1: Every Country Should Have One Vote per issue-period.
Rule 2: No Country should have a right of veto, or any other special status.
Rule 3: Every country should vote independently, according to rules any country found guilty of influencing voting will be heavily penalized.
Every country can be a memeber of UN.
This is a good start-It is time for action. I am sure by abolishing UNSC we would have gone a along way to ensure fairness than all this mindless mayhem. US govtt. which effectively use its massive propaganda campaign [using words such as Democracy, JUSTICE, Freedom, Fairness etc..] to further its own interests. US govtt. by its voting record in UN clearly has demonstrated
its total disregard for the very principles that it CLAIMS to be a Great Defender of!

Negotiation to resolve differences is always a good starting point for Democracies. That´s why we bear the great expense of Diplomats and Diplomatic receptions.

I am not against Israel or the people of Gaza. I am against war when it is the 1st option rather than the last resort. Israel has been planning for it since before the truce with Hamas.

Israel is not interested in negotiating, but wants peace on it´s terms without negotiating. The current campaign is to bomb Gaza into submission without talking. These actions Today will ensure a more dangerous, terrorized World in the future.

There is no doubt Hamas peashooter/rockets terrorize the people of southern Israel, and are more like pin pricks and thorns. I suspect it is Hamas best military shot to tell the World, ´We´re here. Look at us. Talk to us.¨ They rarely kill or do major destruction compared to Israeli/American 2000 lb. bombs we see on TV being dropped on Gaza.

ISRAEL IS A CREATION OF THE BIBLE so to say the Bible is irrelevant is willful blindness.

Again I remind everyone, now that CNN and other mainline media are using words like Armageddon, Doomsday and the abyss to describe current World realities, stock food and get prepared!

Armageddon the word (the event hasn´t happened - yet) is derived from Har Mediggo located in the occupied territories.

Why can we not expect even one 'main stream journalist'to put the events in Gaza into some historical perspective? Why does no one seem to ask the obvious; why are rockets being lobbed into Israel? Does everypne really believe that this is the fault of inherently evil Muslims while Israelis are peace loving, innocent people under unjustifiable siege? This is all so sickening. We in the west should hang our heads in shame for our refusal to halt this senseless massacre. The Harpers and the Bushes of this world who are so called 'pro life' , seem content to stand by and watch as hundreds and perhaps thousands of children who had the misfortune to be born Palestinian, die.

The casualty rates of each side of this conflict cut through the BS we read in the media, this is mass murder there are no other words for it. The increasingly powerful influence of Zionism in the US, in the global media and all around the world has led to a reluctance by world leaders to speak out against Israeli atrocities, despite mass protests against Israeli aggression in cities around the world, blind eyes are turned at the highest levels. In fact in some countries it is deemed political suicide to criticize Israel in any way, hence Obamas deafening silence.

Here is a link to Jonathon Cook's take on the recent events in Gaza:

http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0360.htm#Top

I think Eric summed it up pretty well: "Unless Israel can make 5-7 million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to co-exist with them. Israeli leaders on the center and right continue to avoid facing this fact. The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and set back hopes of any Mideast peace by years. "

We've been here before, and done that. Seems like people in that region of the world can't learn from their past mistakes. Must be a climate thing! Anyway, the subject is getting in my opinion dull for both sides, they either sit down and provide concessions on both sides or eliminate one another.

The problem, many Jews & Muslims share the same futurestic religious belief: their people will be the victor, they'll rebuild whatever it is "temple/mosque" and a Messaiah will come down to wipe the other team to submission. Technically, both Muslims & Jews already believe they're secured future victory, so why give concessions?

If these beliefs are embedded in their brains & books, how will there be ever peace in that land?

Could gas and Oil fields off coast of Gaza be a factor behind Israel's ...Attack Hamaz in GAZA or GAS. Ok here we go again I smell GAS yes GAS of the coast of GAZA. Hmmmm BG Brit company with Palestinian authorities wants to make a GAS deal, but Israel wants it all , but not for Hamaz not surprise. Oh yes Egypts wants Billions of Pounds slice of the GAS pie as well. Sorry Egypt is cheaper just pumping it out from GAZA coast at a very cheap price from Hamaz. Or BG Brits company can just keep it all and sell it to Israel for a good cheap price. Media you are full of GAS! tell the real story behind the Israel military murdering incursion of the poor Palestinian people is not Hamaz, Israel your elections is coming up, also you trying to redeem your coward self from Hezbollah kicking your A?? in 2006. You been Starving and blocking goods into Palenstian people for years now. Then you went in for the kill with F-16 and Tanks. If they had the food and materials to defend themself they would easy spank you like Hezbollah did in 2006. Now you also want to steal poor Palestian Oil and Gas off the Gaza coast. Palestinian people dont depend in the UN or EU or the next select Fraud President BHO, read my comments the real Obama stand up.

It is hard to separate the prosecution of this war with the Israeli election. The Kadima Party must show Israelis they can be just as hard line toward Gaza as the Lukid Party. It is so cynically self-serving.

Youtube:- Brave Annie Lennox leads latest mass protest of 100,000 in London on Saturday, no political representation for this movement however, the best prime minister Gordon Brown has come up with is a few spineless halfhearted mumblings about a ceasefire, and where is middle east envoy Tony Blair, the spineless sycophant is a joke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r28sHKE1Ws

The term "Islamic Terrorism" or "Islamic Terror" or "Islamic Terrorists" are invalid and incorrect, for there is nothing "Islamic" about harming the innocent non-combatant civilians.

Thank you,