generalspeaking

"When there is no alternative, and live ammunition must be used to stop those who storm the fence, the soldiers make heroic and sometimes dangerous efforts not to kill and to only injure those on the other side. The IDF stations senior commanders at every confrontation point to ensure that every shot is approved and backed up by a responsible figure with proper authority. Every staging area has an especially large number of troops in order to make sure that soldiers are not put into life-threatening situations where they will have no choice but to fire indiscriminately."

"A situation where thousands of people rush you is frightening, even terrifying. It is extremely difficult to show restraint, and it requires calm, mature professionalism. Sixty-two dead is an enormous number. But I can testify from my first-hand experience, that every bullet and every hit is carefully reported, documented and investigated, in Excel spreadsheets. Literally. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes."

"This isn’t the time or place to discuss the situation in general and the desperate plight of the residents of Gaza. I’m not interested in starting a political discussion here, although I do have a clear position. What I’m trying to do is present, for everyone who really wants to listen, the extent of the IDF’s enormous effort to protect Israel’s borders while minimizing injuries and loss of life on the other side."

Kinley (Moshe) Tur-Paz, founder and CEO, Kibbutz HaDati Educational Network

A Palestinian protester slings rocks near the fence between Gaza and Israel on Tuesday.   Mohammed Saber / EPA

Palestinians living in Gaza have been exploited by Hamas convincing the people who live a deprived existence under the iron rule of the terrorist group which administers the Gaza Strip that their plight of misery could be solved if they simply 'returned' to Israel where their forbears had lived before 1947. Convinced they should congregate and 'demonstrate' at the border between Gaza and Israel and break down the separation fence to express their rage and frustration with their straitened lives, Gazans responded in their thousands.

With and among them have been members of the terrorist group conspiring to use the distraction value of teeming Palestinians flooding the border to elude the notice of the Israeli Defence Forces stationed there to prevent a large-scale invasion of Palestinians into Israel for fear of violence. Using fence-cutters, Hamas operatives have attempted to enter Israel. Warning of various types, from leaflets to cellphone messages have informed Palestinians that the IDF has been instructed to use all means to prevent incursions over the fence.

The response has been that while some of the Palestinians gathered to protest have done so in a non-threatening manner, many among them have flown kites over the border with incendiary material to set fire to vast hectares of farmfields, while others use slingshots to hurl rocks at IDF soldiers, some throwing Molotov cocktails, others brandishing meat cleavers, shouting their intention to slaughter Jews. There are Jewish communities established in close distance from the border, under threat should Hamas terrorists all of whom are pledged to Israel's destruction, advance.

Israel, and the IDF have done everything they possibly can to prevent harm to civilian Palestinians. Tear gas, stink bombs, warning shots and rubber bullets, and live fire when all else fails. What other country threatened with a large-scale invasion of enemies intent on mayhem and murder would not do the same? Yet because this is Israel defending itself against hordes incited by those who abuse them as a way of distracting from their corrupt totalitarian rule, and of using vulnerable people among whom they know there will be injuries, Hamas sees purpose.

So far, 63 Palestinians have lost their lives in such provocations as to concern the IDF that their proximity will result in ingress and danger. Of that total no fewer than 50 have been identified and corroborated by Hamas and other terrorist Palestinian groups as part of their militias. None of which serves to defend Israel against accusations of disproportionate reaction resulting in loss of life of 'peaceful' protestors burning thousands of tires to produce a smokescreen to enable Hamas extremists to infiltrate undetected.

Two things have converged to enrage the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank; the relocation of the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and their worsening situation, viewing themselves abandoned by their Arab neighbours. Locating in a part of Jerusalem that has been without question with the sovereign state of Israel since its inception. The U.S. declaration in moving its embassy was careful to explain that this was a move reflecting reality; Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which didn't preclude the U.S. agreeing with the Palestinian Authority's bid for East Jerusalem as its capital.

But just as Palestinians refused the United Nation's Partition Plan and chose to exit the area of the fledgling Jewish State in 1948 while combined Arab armies prepared to descend on Israel to destroy it after which they assured the Palestinians, they could return, their leadership now too decries any perceived entitlements to sovereignty of the Jewish State which they continue to refuse to recognize as a Jewish State. Sneeringly referring to Israel as an apartheid state, yet Arabs, Druze, Kurds, Christians as well as Jews live with equal rights in Israel while the West Bank and Gaza are Judenfrei; any Jews that stumble into those territories as good as forfeit their lives.

The Arab states that in 1948 supported Palestinian demands for the extermination of Israel, no longer do. For one thing, though Arab states with the exception of Jordan have never offered permanent residence and citizenship to Palestinians, view them as unassimilable and undesirable. For another ongoing unreasonable demands by Palestinian leaders that Israel sacrifice everything and they themselves need make no concessions to achieve peace has not quite impressed their Arab neighbouring leaders as it once did.

Iran and Turkey, non-Arab and each weighing their opportunities to exert power and influence over the Arab states have presented themselves as major irritants to the equilibrium of the Middle East. Those ambitions have resurrected the latent but always-simmering sectarian Muslim antipathies into violent conflict, destroying first Iraq and then Syria. Iran's interference in Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni affairs and its Lebanese-based Hezbollah militia, in the greater goal of Shiite hegemony and Iranian power structure has served to divide the Middle East.

The Arab states of influence, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, now view Israel as a permanent influence and part of the Middle East. Its powerful military's reputation and its intelligence services are seen as a counter to the ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran to command the entire region as satrapies to Iranian command. Iran not only threatens its Sunni Arab neighbours as well as promising to destroy Israel, it funds and helps to arm Hamas. When Hamas threatens Israel's stability, it is Iran that celebrates.

When Israel's critics in the West censure it for defending its sovereignty and the life and security of its people they indicate the low standards they hold both the Palestinians to, and themselves as well. Since in doing so they defend terrorist groups prepared to send marauding and inflamed people pushed to the brink of desperation through corruption and maladministration of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Ismail Haniya, the head of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, gestures to demonstrators at a protest along the border with the Gaza Strip on May 18, 2018 (AFP Photo/MAHMUD HAMS)

Labels: Conflict, Defence, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Protests, Security, Threats, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 19, 2018