Gaza's Factions Take Their Fight into the School Playgrounds

Dear Sphne,

The settlements are mostly provocative, in my opinion, although I can see their attraction to those fervently religious individuals who form the bulk of their inhabitants, since the landscape they inhabit features prominently in the stories of the Bible.

Since I have no particular religious axe to grind, their presence is a matter of indifference to me on a personal level, but I can see that others might have more invested.

I know this at least by analogy. The orchard and farm my grandparents owned when I was young is now the site of a Greek Orthodox church, which is somewhat disconcerting every time I go by, but it doesn't cause me to gnash my teeth in rage. My grandparents are dead now, the orchards sold and cut down for housing developments, the buildings mostly razed for the new church, and life goes on. The whole area was pastoral at the time and my recollections are of profound silence and darkness in the evenings, the sweet scent of blossoms in the starry night, and the long rows of trees, limbs heavy with ripening fruit, to play among during the day. Now, it's all ugly sameness, suburban traffic and noise. Drat.

If that farm had been the locus of violent conflict, murder, or extortion, my feelings about it would probably be less nostalgic and more hostile. We're all human, after all, and resentment and envy can run very deep indeed.

But the fact is that people do build houses, and growth in population inevitably results in those nostalgic orchards and farms being ploughed under for shopping centres and semi-detached housing and estates. Where else are they going to go? Should my pastoral nostalgia justify reconstructing my memories of the past by force of arms? Should the children of today sleep under culverts and rags because I have a fond memory carried forward from half a century past?

If anything good might come from moving settlements, fine, let them go. If not, the general rule that people have a right to live where they want to live applies and why bother? The hostility and anger won't go away if any settlement, or even all of them, disappeared tomorrow, because there are an endless litany of complaints. Ticking one item off that long list doesn't seem likely to change things. The settlements in Gaza are long gone, and some in the West Bank, but this doesn't seem to be a source of general satisfaction. Why should anyone expect that the razing of others would engender benign good will?

I'm not a big fan of nation states and borders, as they seem only to lend an air of mostly false legitimacy to the fossilised pirate kingdoms of former thugs and assassins now beatified as "founding fathers" and heroes. It's foolish to think, however, that they will wither away and disappear, as some seem to think. The rulers of these petty empires and satrapies dance a slow pavane around each other whose primary purpose appears to be maintaining the most important aspects of the status quo, whilst affording the illusion of morality and justice (or at least unfair advantage to a select few) to the world at large, the mobile vulgis, and slyly keep them in their place.

That being the case, it seems fairly unlikely that the settlements will disappear, and moderately unlikely that they'll ever be given back to anyone. One never knows, though. The settlements of Gaza are, after all, gone.

They're probably strategic as well, whether legitimately so or not I'm not really qualified to judge, in that they form semi-armed outposts on a hostile frontier, control of which is probably necessary for survival, given the general hostility of the surrounding territory. It's mostly about water, I expect, since the 1967 water war was preceded by hostile posturings and selfish actions in regard to control of the local water, whatever the deceptive spin given out by ministries of propaganda might say.

And even if they weren't necessary, military authorities are not known for their willingness to innovate, and militaries form an important (if often covert) of every modern nation. Can't tell the players without a uniform, eh?

And then again, if one wants to look at the number and scope of hostile occupations of strategic resources around the world, those of Israel and Palestine are piddling affairs, and the troubles there piddling troubles.

Look at the Hawaiian Islands, stolen and occupied in recent history from the Hawaiian people by US interests with the dishonest connivance and miltary assistance of a corrupt US government.

Look at Diego Garcia, stolen in a joint operation by the UK and the USA and its inhabitants deported to make way for a Cold War military air base.

Look at Chechnya, essentially annexed by the Russian Empire shortly after the American Revolt in 1776 and held ever since through armed occupation.

Look at Tibet, stolen from the Tibetan people in an invasion by a newly imperial China.

Look then at Iraq, where somewhere around a million Iraqis have died in an invasion which had many State accomplices and co-conspirators.

Translated from the secret language of power, there's no way in Hell any of these places are going to be relinquished by their present landlords but, as a concerned citizen of the world, one might want to at least *say* something, after all. "Tch, tch," perhaps, or more boldly, "For shame!"

Look at the genocides of Africa, in which millions have died, and then look at Israel and Palestine, where the death toll from road accidents far outweighs that from military, quasi-military, or "terrorist" actions.*

You want peace in the Middle East? An end to death and suffering? First try taking away their damned car keys.

Strangely enough, few criticise the UK, the USA, Russia, or China with the same free and reckless vehemence and venom I seem to see directed towards Israel. Perhaps this is merely cowardice on the part of her angry critics, since Israel is, after all, a pipsqueak in world affairs, and relatively isolated. Badmouthing the Israelis is almost always safe, where badmouthing the UK, the USA, Russia, or China can have very serious economic and other repercussions, some say even extending to kidnap, murder, vile imprisonment, and torture. It's not nearly as much fun, and one might worry about one's family, one's job, and one's friends and neighbours. I suspect that Western racism and covert hatreds play a role as well, on both sides, but this is too commonplace to dwell upon.

I do think also that the players are often misidentified. A lot, possibly the majority, of the money and effort going to support the settlements comes from the coffers of the Christian right-wing, who seem to feel that their existence, and the ultimate rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, are necessary preconditions for the appearance of their messiah. These Christian religious groups are much more powerful than *any* Jewish lobby and probably much more dangerous to the safety of the world. When an organised movement looks forward to global warfare, famine, and terror as "signs of the coming end times," they seem somewhat unlikely to be trustworthy partners in building peace and amity.

Cheers,

Puddintane
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* This is generally true of almost every "threat" touted by national governments and media sources. In reality, one's overall likelihood of being the victim of a "terrorist" is roughly similar to that of being struck by lightning, yet the governments of the world don't issue little pointy metal hats with trailing ground wires to protect us. In terms of relative risk, let's say that in the USA (for example only, and because it's a fairly violent place) there have been roughly five thousand victims of foreign terrorism over the last few decades. Now compare this to the roughly ten thousand victims of murderous assault in the USA every year over the same time period, the hundred thousand or more forcible rapes every year over the same time period, the deaths of more than four hundred thousand tobacco users per year over the same time period, and on and on.

Flying planes into skyscrapers is old hat; if "the terrorists" really wanted to kill Americans in wholesale lots, buying up the cigarette companies and offering cut-price cigarettes to all and sudry all is a much better bargain, and the perpetrators could join the most exclusive country clubs rather than being hunted felons.

Murder is as murder does.

Arguing for any such right undermines the foundations of the nation state...

Which is something I wholly support.

I don't agree with the racist and oppressive ways Israel treats its Arab citizens, but modern anthropology and genetics indicate the Jews are the descendents of the original human inhabitants of the land now called Israel.

Yeah ... Right Of Return after a questionable 2000 years !! What about the Palestinians who have been there for 100000 years?!! Like I said in another blog ... my family owns Paris based on this stupid logic.
Collective Punishment is what israel is meting out to Gaza right now, wether its a catch phrase or not is not the question. Also do not hide behind the 'english language' and vomit all over the board ... wish i had the time to dissect your ass but i gotta go !

Therzal,

"You really do not know anything about what happened in Palestine before"

Disregarding your vulgar invective, I see that you appear not to be a native speaker of English, so complex sentences in English may be difficult for you to decipher. I apologise for my failure to put my comments into language that you might be able to understand. Although it's not taught much in school these days, I recommend studying the art of diagramming sentences, which will help to understand complex sentences with subordinate clauses. As an aside, I think you meant "Zionist shill", since shrill refers to a high tone of voice, typically used by men to trivialize the spoken words of women.

As for the above comment, stripped of rude language, unless you are several hundreed years of age, neither do you.

You appear to be labouring under several misapprehensions.

Recent research has shown that the Jews, along with what are now known as the Palestinian Arabs, have been living in Cannaan since the Stone Age. The wanderings in the wilderness, whilst picturesque, are a legend, not fact, although the Bible and the Quran do correctly establish in metaphor that the Jews and the Arabs are cousins. Same people, different tribes these days.

Demystified, this bloody argument is a family squabble over things intangible, historical, and/or emotional. None of the current participants were around when the quarrel started, and when one listens only to the arguments of one's own faction, clarity is hard to come by.

Simply put:

1. The Palestinian Arabs, the Druse, the Jews, and other peoples of the region have a perfect right to be there, if they were born there.

2. The normal relations of nations labour under certain rules, among which is the fact that, one's parents having left any country, the children born in other countries have no automatic right to return.

3. Arguing for any such right undermines the foundations of the nation state, since humanity is comprised of wanderers, and we've all wandered far from Africa, where all our first ancestors were born. If we all have the right to reside wherever any of our ancestors lived, any of us could pick and choose amongst many nations, few of which would agree with our choice without elaborate safeguards and procedures.

4. If any "right of return" exists, then the Jews are covered as much as anyone, and their actions in returning to their ancestral home were perfectly proper. You can't have it both ways, that Arabs have a right of return whilst Jews don't.

5. If such rights don't exist, then we must fall back on the rules of nations. Aside from the native Jews of Palestine, those whose ancestors never left, the early returnees entered in a perfectly legal manner, purchased property, got passports, or whatever. Those arriving later were mostly refugees in peril of their lives, and every human being has an obligation to welcome travelers in distress. The modern laws of nations specify this obligation quite clearly, although most nations give this duty only grudging lip service, and balk at actual generosity and welcome. Oddly enough, both the Bible and the Quran, being the products of desert peoples, enjoin the same courtesy toward the stranger, but of course this is all so terribly inconvenient that modern humanity usually calls the police and has the beggars sent to jail.

6. After the establishment of Israel as a nation, normal rules apply as well, so Israel has both the right an obligation to control their borders, as do the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. And we notice that they do.

7. The "right of return" always seems to apply to somewhere else, and involve someone else's property. We don't notice the governments (and I use the plurral advisedly) of Gaza and the West Bank welcoming "Palestinian refugees" back to those portions of ancient Palestine under their nominal control -- that would be too awkward, since they don't want refugees moving into their living rooms and back yards -- but only onto land owned by someone else. This is understandable, but profoundly selfish on the one hand, and profoundly hostile on the other. If you really want to "support the refugees," give them your house and job and go find others. Refugees are owed hospitality where they are, and are not "someone else's problem." The Arab states around Palestine have been profoundly inhospitable, which is why the children and grandchildren of refugees are still stateless, still living in poverty and dependent on handouts from the world community, all glad that those so-called refugees aren't in *their* back yards.

8. "Collective punishment" is a popular catch phrase nowadays, but its meaning appears to be flexible and creative. Attacks across borders are acts of war, and war is *always* "collective punishment." So if one group of Palestinians, in boyish rage, fire rockets intended to collectively "punish" Jews, it's perfectly proper under the laws of nation for Israel to collectively punish the people making war upon it. One can't pick and choose. If an army attacks one, one doesn't have to identify each and every individual who fired a shot and punish them in a court of law; one is quite free to fire at will into the mass of them, wherever they might be. This is why it's a violation of the rules of warfare for soldiers to mingle with populations of civilians, because "innocents" are sure to be injured or killed.

10. This rule has been replaced to some extent in modern warfare, on the vicious and contemptible theory that the population who support the troops are, in some sense, at least in democracies, the real "leaders" of the armies, since their contributions and labour make the army possible. In which case, they are fair game. Life in this view is not a football game, in which the people in the stands are mere spectators, cheering this side or the other, but a contest in deadly earnest, in which to take sides is to make one's own person a target. But having abandoned civilisation, one can hardly complain if the other side takes the same posture. Having taken up the occupation of murder, one ought to be, if honest and courageous, willing to be a victim as well as a perpetrator, but so few are truly brave, which is why there are so many cowards who prefer rockets, bombs, and sneaking ambush, or the relative impunity of attacks from high in the air, to personal confrontation. Caitiffs all, mean-spirited and unmanly, attacking women, children, and the elderly, anyone without a gun or any ability to defend themselves, through pathetic blustering and murder.

11. You may have noticed -- well, probably not -- that I was fairly even-handed in my criticism. Both sides in this family quarrel distort history to suit their purpose, and demand behaviour from the other side sadly lacking in their own. This is posturing, not debate. My own view is that families and children have a right to live in peace, wherever they are. This means that cowards dropping bombs and rockets on unarmed civilians from the air, or bullets from ambush, are murderers, and those who support them accomplices in murder. I wash my hands of them, regardless of which side of any border they live on. Among the nations, I don't notice any particular example of peace and loving kindness.

12. Anyone who wants to live in a state of war probably deserves to reap the harvest of war: death, destruction, and tragedy. Why are they perpetually surprised when these misfortunes are visited upon them?

Perhaps they are the idiots.

Cheers...

Puddintane, please address the continuation of the building of the settlements. This has been the issue that has turned the moderates into radicals.

puddintane..
"Israel is not the only remnant of a Western Colonialism that has gone on for more than a thousand years...."
What are you trying to say?? 1000+ years?? Idiot.
Israel is built on the bones of a people who were settled on the land for more than 2000 years before they came and destroyed a truly integrated society.
Pretty much all the problems between Arab and Jew in Palestine since 1897 were because of the presence of selfish and greedy Zionists.
Why deny the absolute moral and spiritual corruption of these people?.. We can SEE IT all the time in the actions of the government, the IOF and particularly the so called settlers.. New Age Barbarians using a corruption of a belief as a shield for their evil ways.

"..so incompetent that they can't even manage a decent genocide..etc.." and then you managed to invoke Nazi crimes in the usual inverted "Jew as a victim:sad reluctant oppressor" sort of way..
You are absolutely right of course, the Zionist should have learned from their Nazi cousins..
It was Ben Gurion himself who realised that the ethnic cleansing had failed because there were some Palestinians left, despite their best efforts. Some Palestinians villages were left (after 500+ were destroyed or seized).. How does that have anything to do with the facts of al Nakba??
You really do not know anything about what happened in Palestine before you were even a pain in your daddies nuts..
Either you have been sucking up your parents propaganda (what did they do during al Nakba??)
Or you are some Zionist shrill at a disinformation desk in Jerusalem or the good ol' US of A..

You are too obvious.

"there are few bits of land upon which anyone can say that for the last five thousand years or so, their ancestors were living where they now live, and that they have any right to live there *other* than by right of conquest?"

Essentially this is a defense of israeli occupation of Palestine ... very well articulated. So what you are saying is 'right of conquest' is reason enough for the existance of israel. With this twisted f!@#g logic we can justify nazism as well and all other imperial conquests.

Victims become victimizers while both blaming the previous generation of former victims and likening their own victims to them.

Ethically-cleansed?

Get real.

The most effective ethnic cleansing has been done by the Arab states around Israel, which are all essentially Judenrein these days, and Israel itself has an Arab and Druse population of some one in five Israelis, with another five percent Christians or "decline to state".

Golly, it's a lucky thing those "evil" Jews are so incompetent that they can't even manage a decent genocide, even after having genocide perpetrated upon them to furnish an excellent example of how it works.

If this sort of blithely uninformed assertion of ethnic "cleansing" weren't so common, it would be laughable.

There is no such thing as a single ancestral home, since the snapshot in time is arbitrary, and most people are the product of multiple ethnicities/ancestral tribes/races/social groups. At least you hope so -- a little genetic diversity is a good thing.

There is no going back to some Eden. The issue is how we interact today. Whether we erect ethnically-cleansed state -- and ghettos/under-classes/untouchables/etc. -- or whether we believe in democracy.

It still amazes me that any article about the problems of the Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza instantly degenerates into the most virulent antisemitic drivel seen since Joseph Goebbels.

So the Elders of Zion are responsible for four adult men in official uniform beating up a child? Doubtless they are also responsible for global warming, the election of George W. Bush, and the general stupidity of the American public as well, not to mention the extinction of the dinosaurs, whose noble civilization was corrupted and destroyed by the Jew bankers and their evil minions. Mwahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Feh!

The Palestinians are alive and well in Jordan, which is most of historic Palestine and whose population comprises the large majority of Palestinian Arabs. Last I heard, they don't particularly want any more Palestinians, at least those now living in the West Bank and Gaza. Neither do the Egyptians, nor any of the Arab states around the region. This is probably because they too are secretly controlled by the Jews.

From 1949 to 1967, the Est Bank and Gaza were controlled by Jordan and Egypt respectively, but these Arab nations never proposed or established a Palestinian state on the lands they held, so the Israelis seem like just the last in a long line of people who haven't acquiesced to the demands of the most fractious inhabitants of the region.

To be sure, the Palestinian Arabs have been shoved around the global chessboard by many people, and it's entirely fair to say that they've been taken advantage of and despised for many, many years, most recently by the French and British, who thoughtfully divvied up the Middle East into French and English portions of a rich pie under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

It was the British who decided to give the rest of Palestine, that part not already split off into Trans-Jordan and then Jordan, to the Jews, mostly so they wouldn't clutter up Christian nations. It was first the Soviet Union, followed immediately by the United States of America, who recognized the modern State of Israel, it was Imperial Russia who instituted the Pogroms and persecution that prompted the growth of Zionism and began the Jewish immigration to Israel in the 1890's, although a small number of Jews had been living there for millennia. It was general antisemitism throughout Europe, including France, England, Germany, and the various bits of Eastern Europe, the old Pale, that lent wings to the movement.

It was the USA (amongst many other nations with similar motivations) that devised ways to prevent Jews and other "undesirable" refugees from escaping the genocidal policies of the Nazi state and their minions into the USA, leaving Palestine as a last resort for many.

It's the USA which was behind the use of Israel as surrogates against the Soviet Union, which in turned used the Arabs against the USA, testing their weapons against one another to further Cold War politics, exacerbating tense relations throughout the Middle East.

The history of the world is violent and complex, and there are no single actors. Israel is not the only remnant of a Western Colonialism that has gone on for more than a thousand years. Are the angry US commentators also advocating for the European invaders of the Americas to go back home and give the various nations of the two American continents back to their former owners? Are French commentators rallying for the return of "French" Polynesia to the Polynesians? Gascony to the Gascons? Are the Spanish now willing to give back Catalonia, the Basque Country, and the various bits of modern Spain to their rightful owners? How about Northern Ireland? How about Scotland and Wales?

Look around the world, Tibet, Australia, China, Hawai'i, Russia (even the modern "devolved" Russia), Turkey, Syria, Iraq (anyone in favour of restoring the deliberately divided Kurdish state?), there are few bits of land upon which anyone can say that for the last five thousand years or so, their ancestors were living where they now live, and that they have any right to live there *other* than by right of conquest?

The modern Israeli Jews inherited a small portion of conquered Palestine, but the original conquest was made by others, a long time ago.

Many now say that Israel should retreat to the 1947 boundaries of the "proposed" State of Israel, which the local Arab players refused to accept at the time, as if the UN were magically other than an ineffectual club comprised of mostly vile dictatorships, autocracies, and murderous tyrants. One presumes that this would instantly be followed by the restoration of those Jewish properties, wealth, and other rights once held by Jews in the Middle East outside Israel. Yeah, right.

Let's all of us do just that, return to our ancestral homes, wherever we are now; got your ticket?

Child abuse (the most common form of torture) is the basis for most "civilizations," as "civilization" cannot exist without violence to enforce itself upon individuals. There is a direct correlation between serial killers who were sexually abused as children and how the Nazis made the Jews become Nazis to the Palestinians, who are now becoming Jews to each other. I believe it is Stockholm Syndrome. Victims become victimizers while both blaming the previous generation of former victims and likening their own victims to them.

The Palestinians are starting to resemble the US and Israel, politically. Not the greatest examples by any means.

Here's a little zionism wall building going on in Texas.

http://www.cyjtexas.org/

I don't get the photo accompanying the article. A little barbed-wire fence like that isn't going to stop deer, let alone people.

I just saw a portion of a civil rights documentary that's been aired over and over in the U.S.

At one point it shows the racist bigotry of whites lined up on both sides of the front walk to a high school in 1957. They are throwing rocks and chanting hate at a lone 15 year old black girl being led in by guards to get her education in a southern U.S. state.

Today, and tomorrow, Israeli Jewish parents teach their children this exact same racist hate. Their Jewish children throw rocks and chant hate at Palestinian children who are trying to get to school through circuitous routes and checkpoints with Israeli soldiers pointing guns at them. They are preparing their Jewish children to become these soldiers and help erradicate "Israel" of the "cockroach" Palestinians. The guards are on the side of the racist haters.

Check out the dvd called "The Spider's Web" about Hebron, Palestine, available streaming from google at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2504261124830323836

For another comparison, there's a recent expose about how the KKK drove blacks out of certain towns in the south years ago as if it was such a horrendous crime. Well, people, this is the whole purpose of Israeli and occupation and it results in every crime you can think of including completely unremorseful murder, over and over and over.

"Unfortunately, CommonDreams.org is less than impartial as a journalistic resource when it comes to U.S. financed Israeli violence "

Aint that the truth !! CD willingly ignores posters who have vociferously advocated dropping nukes on Muslim nations so as to eradicate its population, but when it comes to comments on israel and the zionists or the dreaded J word ... oh my god ... its the holocaust and breast-beating all over again ... which leads me to strongly believe CD has been infiltrated by AIPAC.

Of course it is divide and rule. This has been a tactic for millenia. Sun Tzu described it.

As we all know, once Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza, mainly because of Fatah's record of inept and corrupt management, the US/Israel/European axis of evil funded, trained and equipped Fatah, to try and overturn Hamas. The resulting factional fighting was as predictable as it was intended. What is remarkable is that it took 60 years of Israeli Occupation and mendacity to pit Palestinians against Palestinian.

Sun Tzu also said that one thing you never do is back your opponent, your enemy, into a corner, without a way out. The cornered enemy will fight to the death. Gazans have no way out, not even through Egypt now. All access and egress is controlled by the IOF who still insist that Gaza is not under their control..
Do they think the world is stupid or ate they, to so believe their own propaganda??

The Zionists cynically think that Egypt should take responsibility for the Gazan Palestinians and Jordan will take responsibility for what human crumbs are left of the West Bank Palestinians. (The Jordan Option) Foolish idea.
Once you have no hostages left and your enemy are external, all bets are off. Hamas and Hezbollah have shown themselves to be more than a match for the degenerate bunch of criminals and barbarians that the IOF has become.
Even worse for the Zionists is that there are now a combined total of approx 6 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, under varying degrees of occupation and duress. I'm sure that number has a degree of resonance. As do the images of the Gaza ghetto and the imprisoned Palestinians, the New Untermensch..

The only long term solution is one person, one vote and for the Zionists Jews to share the wealth and benefits of Palestine/Israel with their Arab cousins.

GET TO THE POINT !!!

This is OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY, classic "DIVIDE AND RULE" tactics performed by the Israelis and Bush gang, who wish Hamas and Fatah to fight each other.

BUSH and ISRAEL ARM, FUND AND TRAIN FATAH, so that the duly-elected majority government of HAMAS cannot function.

If FATAH were to be duly elected, instead of HAMAS...why, then, BUSH and ISRAEL would then switch sides to arm, fund and train HAMAS.

The entire map of the Middle East was drawn after World War One by the Western Powers for that single overwhelming purpose of "DIVIDE AND RULE." Peoples divided are kept purposely in conflict, therefore weak forever.

Then, the power needed for the colonizer to change the balance is only very slight.

Exporting civil war to a country is the worst thing that can be done to a country. The hatreds are utterly personal, neighbor against neighbor. A century does not begin to erase the psychological, spiritual and social damage done by a civil war.

The Clinton/Bushie/Zionist gang fanning civil wars in Latin America, the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, are not doing anything new, creative or surprising.

Posters: Congratulations for not falling for this propagandistic article. The aim is to portray Palestinians as savages. An oppressed people will always divide into those who think they can work with the oppressor and those who see no choice but armed struggle. The collaborators are always proven wrong and the fighters right. In addition, the rebels, while right, are not always nice people, being fighters, and tend to totalitarianism. It is best to not occupy other people's lands, period. US support for Israel is a crime.

The only thing I have to add to what others have said so eloquently about Israel being an "innocent" bystander is that, without the US/Israeli orchestrated coup against the legitimately elected Hamas government, the incentive for extremism wouldn't be so great in either Palestinian party. The present Fatah leaders are traitors to their people.

Sorry, mikep and kelmer. You are wrong and the other posters have it right.

Any human population would dissolve into dysfunction and violence under the sorts of ongoing pressures the West continues to endorse against the Hamas-led Palestinians. Israel is mainly responsible, because this is the policy they want, but it wouldn't continue without the support of the Christian West.

And it's also true that it wouldn't continue without the endless reprisals from Hamas. But that brings me back to my original point-- that the collective punishment and persecution of any people, not just Palestinians, and the systematic dismantling of their society, can only dissolve into violence, both outward and inward in direction.
all human beings, not just our enemies, are inclined to respond to violence with violence; hence, it often takes decades, even centuries, for conflicts like this to end.

The website in the previous post should be www.al-awda.org without the period at the end.

Unfortunately, CommonDreams.org is less than impartial as a journalistic resource when it comes to U.S. financed Israeli violence against the peoples from whom they took, and are continuously taking to this very split second, land, water, food, energy, representation in governing, home, emergency services, the list could go on forever.

If you go to Commondreams "Middle East In Crisis" page (linking green button on the bottom right of the home page) you will see they have links to the Israeli Government, but not to perfectly legitimate organizations like "Al Awda" www.al-awda.org the organization reminding the world of the right of return, and working for what may eventually have to happen for peace - Palestinian refugees exercising the right of return.

I have asked the editor of CommonDreams repeatedly to explain this bias, but he has remained totally silent.

mikep and kelmer,
I sit amazed at your myopia and stupidity. The whole Hamas, Fatah divide is brought to you with the compliments of, and sponsored by none other than Israel, the Zionist sponsor of state terror, along with their US collaberators and co-sponsors they have managed the meticulous and painstaking development of the economic and social conditions under occupation or in the case of Gaza, where children are literally in a no-man's land open-plan prison. The Israeli government and certain of its administrators in particular will hopefully one day be charged with crimes against humanity, for the hell that they have deliberately created. But the worst thing of all is that ordinary Israelis and Americans are brainwashed, like mikep and kelmer, to think that it is the Palestinians who are the ones prone to violence, not them. I would not like to see them under that pressure for 60 years.

Where you orchestrate conditions for long enough with fear, poverty, and violence, you will get the same result, in Favelas in Rio, or black ghettoes in LA, but in Palestine the Zionists did it with the deliberate intention that eventually kids would kill each other. It is what happens when you can see people as less human than you are.

I don't know what Hezbollah or Iran want but I for one would like to see some serious regime change in the racist and bigoted Jewish state of Israel, a state that has been nothing but a cause of war since its establishment.

Ancestral homeland or whatever, if you cannot get on with the neighbours except by shooting them you don't belong, so adapt, finding a real compromise or take a hike. It is the Palestinians who's rights are being trodden on or didn't you notice. Unfortunately without the unjustifiable support of the US for so long, their Jewish lobby, their UNSC veto, and their war-machine aid, these Zionist gangsters would have had to find mutual accommodation with their Arab neighbours years ago. But, it has behoved some small but powerful interests to maintain this thorn in the side of the world with the use of "terrorism", that is Israeli state terror, and the excuse of sponsored militia factional retaliatory terror on the other side and even the odd false flag terror.

I cannot speak for Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran or any of the other bad-guys on their list but I for one would like to see some serious regime change to this racist and bigoted Jewish state of Israel that has been nothing but a cause of war since its establishment. Israel has been like a Petri dish experiment which now is being let out on the world in general. Neocons and Zionists have intentionally, divided and caused the kids of the world to kill each other and they thought that they could control the game. They are trying it in Iraq arming Sunni against Shiite. They also try to convince the world now that we have an existential threat from the terror of Muslim extremists. What a load of… More people die from road accidents in Portugal than from terror attacks world wide, while the US has killed a million innocents in Iraq and made 4 million homeless on lies. So guess who worries me more?

But, perhaps, for not much longer, and the change is near. Let us hope that rationality prevails. This experiment will fail as in parables. Even I, a Buddhist can understand: "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword" and "What was sown among the thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful".

The daily life in Gaza imitates life in any large American prison. There is no law in Gaza and the inmates rule.
Funny thing - before 1947, the Palestinians didn't fight eachother and it was the Zionists who were labelled "terrorists". Mr. Begin had a price on his head and Mr. ben Gurion was connected to a market bombing in Haifa in 1936 which killed scores of innocent shoppers. Israel was not set up for Jews who lived in the area, but rather for European immigrants fleeing an anti semetic Europe. Neither Britain nor America wanted the Polish, Russian and Czek Jewish population on their doorsteps, so they caved in to the Zionist cause and voted to partition Palestine. This was a foreign policy blunder of monumental proportion that has caused death and destruction for sixty years. May we not see the same result in Iraq sixty years hence.

When you inject violence into a society this is exactly how it will pan out. The blame squarely rests on the shoulders of israel and the zionists. Israel has created this problem and will bear responsibility for this till the very end ... which i suppose is the extermination of all Palestinians from Palestinian lands.

Most people who have read my posts, will think that I am "pro-Palestinian", no matter what happens. This event, just highlights, how complex the situation really is. This is very like the Northern Ireland problem of a few decades ago, where Protestant was fighting Catholic, and the British army was seen as the common enemy. The dark side of this crisis, is that Israel will wait for a winner, and then target them, rather than try to move towards a peaceful outcome.

I blame Israel for everything re Palestinian dysfunction.

Remember the book in the 50's novel Exodus and they left out of the movie where it is explained that to survive and continue to gain more land they must keep dividing the Arabs and each attack or counter attack on Israel can be the reason and opportunity to take more land for Israel... well something like that ...now if you google this stuff you will find that Israel helped form Hamas in the first place as a front against Arafat who they should have dealt with when his folks were mostly just kids throwin rocks....

Sounds like another version of gangs, just different colors.

What is it about the human beast that we need this psychological association with a group . . . "clan", as Sarraj refers to it . . . or gang?

Help us all, indeed.

Peace.

mikep and kelmer sound just like two 'good Americans' who watch a lot of TV.
Hoa binh

Have to admit--cant blame Israel for this. Same with Sunni-Shia violence.
Western intervention does not help, but its not the only problem there.

I dont understand why they just dont plow through more of the Egypt border.

Doesn't have anything to do with the Israelis, since1492. Nothing whatsoever. If Israel disappeared off the face of the earth the Palestinians would just keep on fighting each other, as this article plainly and indisputably shows. It's about the Palestinian addiction to violence and hatred. But I guess blaming other people for your own problems is easier than accepting responsibility for your actions.

If these thugs start killing children instead of beating them, and direct their attacks against far greater numbers of victims, then they'll start to approach the cruelty of Israelis.

These adults are certainly setting good examples for the children. A pox on both houses, but particularly Hamas.

All this because Israel wants its own country!
Hoa binh