generalspeaking

Reason Cannot Prevail

"The United Nations representative in Jerusalem, Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry, has received assurances that all parties have agreed to an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza."
"During this time the forces on the ground will remain in place. We urge all parties to act with restraint until this humanitarian cease-fire begins, and to fully abide by their commitments during the ceasefire."
"This ceasefire is critical to giving innocent civilians a much-needed reprieve from violence. During this period, civilians in Gaza will receive urgently needed humanitarian relief, and the opportunity to carry out vital functions, including burying the dead, taking care of the injured, and restocking food supplies. Overdue repairs on essential water and energy infrastructure could also continue during this period."
Joint statement: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"We have neutralized dozens of terror tunnels and we are committed to complete this mission, with or without a cease-fire."
"Therefore, I will not agree to any offer that does not allow the military to complete this important mission for the security of the people of Israel."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 


Israel is committed, as any other nation would logically be, to defending itself and protecting its population from attacks mounted continually across its border from Gaza, by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the governing terrorist group Hamas. That Hamas is a terrorist group is indisputable; it was created for the very distinct purpose of destroying the State of Israel and restoring, it insists, the land to the people of Palestine. The original people of Palestine now sit on the land Hamas covets.

Israel began its latest defensive operation against Hamas rockets and incursions into Israel with the intention of destroying as much of the ten thousand estimated rockets that Hamas has stored in caches for the time it deemed adequate to once again attack the Jewish state. During the process hoping that opportunities would present to decommission the leaders of Hamas, but that's a fond hope since the leaders have accustomed their supporters to view martyrdom as their dearest wish, while they plan themselves to evade that honoured state.

It seems obvious that at that point Israel had no real idea how pervasive was the maze of tunnels that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had laboriously built under the land upon which Gaza sits, some of which were designed to lead out to Egypt and some into Israel. That game-changer required a ground invasion along with the aerial bombardment and marine artillery attacks on identified assault sites and weapons caches. Having demolished 32 tunnels, the IDF is searching out the remainder.

One of which, just minutes into the much-fanfared 72-hour ceasefire, led to Hamas terrorists entering a tunnel the IDF was in the process of destroying, to kill five Israeli soldiers and abduct another. So much for Hamas's dedication to easing the plight of the long-suffering Palestinian Gazans long used as human shields but never quite resigned to their fate when confronted with the deaths of children at the brutal hands of their Jewish oppressors.

The 72-hour humanitarian truce in Gaza was broken after less than three hours on Friday /AFP

Labels: Conflict, Defence, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Security, United Nations, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 02, 2014