This does nothing to help heal the open wound that is the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
It's rather simple. As a general rule, civilians in the Gaza Strip know if they are near a target. You don't live next to a rocket manufacturing, storage or launch site without knowing about it.
The IDF have gone to great pains to warn civilians not to go near these sites, or to mix with combatants.
They send text messages, drop leaflets, even make phone calls with recorded messages to the affected areas. They perform 'roof knocks' (using non-lethal bombs) to warn civilians they are in the vicinity of a target.
The ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the Gaza Strip is well below that of any comparable conflict as a result.
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/cast-lead-remem...
Give me a break.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/gaza-war-crimes-inves... http://www.hrw.org/publications/reports?topic=All®ion... http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsessio...
What is your solution to this conflict that doesn't include wiping the only national state for the Israeli people, created by UN, off the map? Hamas has been quite clear there will be no lasting peace until that has happened as far as I know. (Full disclosure: I don't read arabic so I'm have to trust the translations but they seem to agree.)
Edit: As for a solution, read "the General's Son" by Miko Peled. The Son of an Israeli General http://mikopeled.com/category/the-generals-son-by-miko-peled...
In what sense is it not working? According to the latest figures, more than 500 targets have been hit, with 19 combatants and 10 civilians killed.
In most comparable conflicts, the number of civilian casualties far outnumbers the number of combatant casualties.
To always blame the Gaza side as the aggressors and as terrorists is just to swallow IDF propaganda whole and uncritically.
Did you know that before this current escalation Israel had struck Gaza hundred of times this year and killed 312 people including 61 kids, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/15/bodies-for-... Who are the real terrorists?
Oh, and it just so happens that there's an Israel election coming up.
Basically your narrative is the one I see on a bunch of pro-Palestinian propaganda sites, and nowhere else. How about this article: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/08/world/meast/gaza-violence/... ?
Frankly, I'm used to Palestinians making up damning narratives of events. Watch Pierre Rehov's The Road to Jenin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9kx3UntoAE), or Richard Landes' Pallywood (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8ANySuSuk)
Ooo! How about the BBC? Are they a pro-Palestinian propaganda site too? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20367005
The basic point, which you're overlooking, is that the Palestinian rockets are pretty crappy, and Israel has overwhelming military superiority - look at the casualty list from 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War
As for the Electronic Intifada, which you previously cited. I think you can work that one out for yourself.
CAMERA have a detailed and objective timeline of recent events: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=52&#...
Problems with the EI narrative:
1) The "unarmed, mentally unfit man" is also seen in a photo posted to a Hamas forum holding an assault rifle and wearing an armored vest. He was buried wrapped in a Hamas flag;
2) According to the IDF, this man ignored calls for him to stop and warning shots from soldiers;
3) EI cite a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (go figure) claim that the boy was fatally wounded by "as a result of the indiscriminate shooting". This is unverified. He was hit during a firefight between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, while the IDF were disabling explosive devices (two days after two Israelis were seriously injured by a similar such device). The AP reported it was unclear who fired the shot(s) that fatally wounded the boy;
4) EI doesn't mention the explosive device that seriously injured two Israelis on 6th Nov. Nor do they mention the detonation of the explosive-filled tunnel that injured an Israeli soldier on 8th Nov.
It goes on and on...
Er, what? Go and look up the history of Irgun and Lehi. Israel is just as bad as anyone else in the conflict. Back in the 30s and 40s they were blowing up buses and shooting civilians every day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks
Israel and Egypt continue to blockade medicine and food into Palestine, and restrict how people can move (bear in mind that there's basically no work in Palestine). How is that not deliberately targeting civilians? http://www.ipsnews.net/2010/07/mideast-israel-chokes-gaza-de...
If you want to see what a solution looks like, just look at Northern Ireland. No aid blockades there...
What do the actions of dissidents 70 years ago have to do with classifying current Israeli government policy as rather humane?
You could spend the rest of your life investigating past wrongs on both side of this conflict, and you aren't going to get anywhere.
> No aid blockades there...
There is no aid blockade in Gaza either?
The UN and the BBC disagree with you on the blockade: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5122404.stm
An utterly preposterous generalization.
> The UN and the BBC disagree with you on the blockade
No they don't. You referred to an 'aid blockade'. Legitimate aid flows freely into the Gaza Strip.
I'll repeat the above question, what's your solution?
[1] Number of rockets fired from Gaza Strip to Israel over time; a similar operation took place in December 2008 http://sonoflaser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/%D7%A9%D7%9...
And again, read this book if you really are thinking about a solution. http://mikopeled.com/category/the-generals-son-by-miko-peled...
I've skimmed through the page linked, couldn't find anything relevant to the current situation. I might read further, thanks for sharing.
> I'll repeat the above question, what's your solution?
If I see that the current strategy is ineffective, I'm not allowed to say so until I have a fully-formed solution that is better? It's better to relentlessly pursue a course of action that is ineffective and has a significant cost in human lives, because 'we' can't think of anything better to do?
The alternatives? Two state solution needs to go ahead. But Israel seems to be in full steam to stop the current UN bid. At the same time they don't want a one state solution either(Which more or less is sort of inevitable now).
Their neighbors don't love them much. No matter who they are, the rulers of those nations might, out of force. And that more or less is only to save their seats. But Arab spring has proven nothing is permanent. Egypt only looked super pro Israel under Mubarak and now is super pro Palestine just months after.
Absolutely the worst sort of geographical location to be and form your nation. Unless you want to be in a perpetual state of war, crisis and fighting. Yes Israel seems to have an upper hand in military wise currently, but as I said what is permanent? But Israel was not formed to be in an infinite state of war, but for Jews around the world to live in peace and without fear.
A big deadlock situation, dominated by massive distrust between both parties.
My hope is that one of the locks in this situation is held by Iran, and once it's released we may see new opportunities.
[1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05...
I would be pissed. Very seriously pissed.
Do you think the people of Palestine should sit idly while some foreigners grab their lands and park them like animals in a reserve? Do you seriously think that what was done was right and justified and that the Palestinians don't have valid reasons for being pissed off against Israel?
How would you feel if what happened to Palestine happened to the country you live in?
Israel are not carpet-bombing the area, they are performing pinpoint strikes on legitimate military targets.
As a civilian, it is not difficult to avoid those targets.
Alas, it's a strange sort of conflict in which one side deliberately targets civilians, while the other does everything humanly possible to avoid them.
The land was sparsely inhabited when the Israelis formed their own nation. They spent time, money, and effort making it a better place to live. The Palestinians should call it a day and agree to a truce, before Israel gets serious and wipes them out completely.
> As a civilian, it is not difficult to avoid those
> targets.
> It's a large-scale armed conflict. Civilians are
> going to get caught in the crossfire.
The idea that Israel is somehow free of 'blood on their hands' because they try to warn people to leave the area for the bombing doesn't make sense. Both sides have plenty of blood on their hands, yet they continue to butt heads using the same tactics over and over again as if something is going to change. Unless they change tactics it's just a war of attrition at this point.
Nothing is perfect. Equipment malfunctions, mistaken intel, and human error can all lead to civilian casualties, despite the best precautions.
Israel are engaged in a legitimate military operation, exclusively targeting legitimate military targets.
If you deliberately put yourself in harm's way, then I'm sorry, but you are partially responsible for the harm that comes to you.
There are more than 1.5 million people living on the 45 km^2 stretch of land. Are you seriously asking them to run? Run to where? Sea? or towards the sky?
No wonder it has been compared to a concentration camp or an open air prison.
Classic victim blaming to say the least.
Drop leaflets and then get a free permit to bomb them. If some should die, tell them you are the good guys and people who died are evil for dying from your actions.
Where should citizens run? Around 100m away from any rocket manufacturing, storage or launch site should be sufficient.
That means most of the Gaza Strip is safe.
I get it: Hamas is a morally monstrous organization. I agree with that wholeheartedly. But there's such a thing as proportionate response. For every Israeli civilian that's killed, many more (greater than 10, at the least) Palestinian civilians are killed. The fact that Hamas is barbaric and doesn't have laser guided missiles doesn't change the fact that innocent people are being bombed to death.
What should Israel do? Well, frack if I know. But "we're trapped in a conflict with a barbaric organization, so we must be barbaric, too, to compete with them" means you can't complain when people call you barbaric.
So say, anywhere they are.
http://www.alternet.org/inside-gaza-hospital-israeli-militar...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4333982.stm
http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-to-ask-high-court-to-review-...
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/israel0502-06.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/09/israel
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5644167
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6554487.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8151336.stm
http://www.haaretz.com/news/two-idf-soldiers-charged-with-us...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/11/world/main2674604....
If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in, and if they were launching rockets at the US, I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't.
"If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in,"
To make it even more alike the situation, then, we should say if these were people living in Seattle who are illegal aliens from Central America living there because they were kicked out of their refugee camps in Mexico...
"and if they were launching rockets at the US"
Let's say from Seattle at Redmond instead, with restricted access points from Seattle because occasionally they keep trying to destroy Redmond.
"I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't."
And instead of the US as we know it, let's say the US is just the I-5 corridor from Portland, OR, to Everett, WA. And let's transplant all that area into, say, the neighborhood of Nicaragua or Panama. And let's say all the surrounding countries have declared that the people who live around Redmond must be pushed into the sea. They don't want the people in Seattle who used to live in their countries to move back into their countries; no, they want to help them destroy all the Americans.
What would happen? Redmond would launch the Surface.
You realize Hamas was voted in, right?
1. Elected government? Check.
2. Borders? Check.
They have a state. Not being formally recognized in the UN is just that ... a formality.
The answer is no to all 3.
Question: if I want to fly into Gaza, whose permission do I need? Hamas' permission is clearly insufficient: the IDF will shoot down any plane landing there. So they're not at all an independent state.
Do you know why the US did that to Cuba? They were smuggling missiles in. See a pattern there?
The whole point of a state is that it has some effective control.
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Haven't heard of any "peace talks", got a reference?
And neither will anything else.