There Will Be No Peace
"We are sending a short and simple message: There is no security for any Zionist on any single inch of Palestine and we plan more surprises." Abu Obeida, Hamas' militant wing' spokesmanThe antagonists: in one corner there is the State of Israel, a democratic, internationally recognized sovereign state. A Jewish state. Whose citizenry include Christians, Kurds and Muslims, along with Jews. All of whom have due legal representation in the Knesset, for they have the freedom as citizens to elect their Members of Knesset.
The second corner is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas. Hamas's founding principle is the elimination of the State of Israel. That distinct principle is enshrined in its constitution. Hamas is considered by Canada, by the United States and by most of Europe as a terrorist group. It has no formal recognition otherwise by them.
But it has set itself up as the legal, duly elected government of the Gaza Strip. This is the same Gaza that Israel evacuated of its Jewish settlers and military personnel in a unilateral experiment to free itself of the responsibility of that geography and its people. With the hope that the abandoned Strip, once Judenrein, would be turned into a peaceful, responsible, independent part of a Palestinian State.
Even before Hamas garrote-handled its way into possession of Gaza, rival tribal and sectarian groups made of Gaza a crime-ridden hovel. After Hamas's ascension, a level of internal peace prevailed once Fatah was violently expelled, and the only violence permitted was that directed over the border into Israel. Mostly crude, home-made Kassam explosives.
That was then. Now, there are underground depots of far more sophisticated, Iranian-made rockets and bombs with which to bombard Israel - what's more, deeply within the heartland of Israel, both an expected and unexpected calamity. Israeli citizens became very sensitive to the misery of having to run to bomb shelters, particularly of late when there was a substantial increase of rocket attacks.
In stepped the State of Israel, informing Hamas that they risked retaliation, and Hamas smirked and continued lobbing rockets. So how hard is it to understand that no nation will tolerate its citizens being threatened, violently assaulted and its sovereignty imperilled through the impervious-to-reason auspices of terrorists? Evidently Palestinian Gazans find this reasoning too inscrutable to understand.
Oddly enough, that is a condition shared by most of the neighbourhood - for Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Tunisia and others of their persuasion are all condemning Israeli aggression. They cannot seem to understand the obvious; that those who are continually under attack are obligated by reason and intelligence and justice to defend themselves.
To Israel's indefatigable attackers this message, a simple enough one: "We will defend ourselves".
Israel's enemies attack men, women and children alike. While they wail and hold out to the world to see their grief and loss, photographs of children injured, maimed and killed during air strikes, those who attack Israel without regard to whom they kill, maim or injure because if they are Jews they are deserving, they feel differently about their own.
Israel makes a deliberate and strenuous effort, as would any responsible people and their government and their military, to avoid harming civilians and the elderly and children - if at all possible. In the heat and the fog of war, it is not always possible.
Until such time as Palestinians find it in themselves to realize that they are condemning their children to constant war and possible death and teach them to regard their neighbours as simply neighbours and not formidable enemies who must be destroyed by them, and until such time as groups like Hamas understand that Israel exists on Jewish land, learning to accept for their own Palestinian land, there will be no peace.
Labels: Conflict, Culture, Gaza, Hamas, Heritage, Human Relations, Human Rights, Israel
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 17, 2012
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