Palestine

[Tapatio]

Meanwhile, the US is fairly alone on this issue.

We must be smarter than everyone else. We understand better, I think.

[fred41]

Guess the world isn't giving them a free pass after all eh?

[broncofan]

Guess the world isn't giving them a free pass after all eh?

No. When they are condemned, it's proof that the condemnation is justified. When they are not, it's proof that they should be condemned but people are refusing to do it.

[Prospero]

I have just re-read Stavros's post and find it a wise summary of a desperate situation. Hamas are playing the politics of desperation and inviting the death of Palestinian civilians in a bid to achieve a propaganda success globally. It seems to be doing the trick with demonstrations across Europe, including violently anti--semitic attacks on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in France and the world's media publishing constant images of dead children.

The blood of these innocents is on the hands of Israel directly but even more so on the cynical politicians of Hamas.

[Odelay]

At some point, one can only hope that Israel will produce a politician with the courage to make courageous decisions, and a Palestinian with the brain to respond.

I have no such hope. I am prepared for the worst, which would be extreme violence beyond anything we've ever seen in this conflict, to date.

[Prospero]

Odeley. Sadly i agree.

[Stavros]

I have no such hope. I am prepared for the worst, which would be extreme violence beyond anything we've ever seen in this conflict, to date.

Desperate acts, perhaps, but I don't think there will be a return to the violence that plagued Israel and the Occupued Territories some years ago; it isn't on the agenda of either Fateh or HAMAS. The HAMAS leadership is currently safe in underground bunkers while its 'supporters' watch their businesses and homes destroyed -and let's not forget that the location of the tunnels so far destroyed has, in some cases been revealed to the IDF by the Palestinian informers who have been passing information to Israel for years (apart from those discovered and treated to gruesome executions).

The one errant factor is the maverick 'Caliphate' that was declared last month. In case anyone thinks this is a sideshow, I offer this assessment from a trade paper from July 9th. It remains to be seen if ISIS or IS decides it is in a position to 'Liberate' Jerusalem, they are certainly building up the funds, though one wonders if they have thought it through strategically, given that they are losing the war in Syria. It may just be time before they lose their resources in the North-East but one never can tell with these people. They might just be mad enough to try.

This is from the OIL & GAS IQ of July 9th 2014.:

According to the mayor of Tuz Khurmatu, an ethnic Turkmen settlement located some 90 kilometres south of Kirkuk, operatives of the Islamic State (IS) began independently selling oil late last week. IS militants raised approximately $1.3 million from the sale of 100 tanker loads of refined petroleum from the captured Ajeel oil fields, overrun at the end of June. In addition to Ajeel, IS forces control Syria’s largest oil fields in the eastern Deir-az-Zor province, giving the Caliphate an output of some 35,000 barrels per day (bpd).

At today’s prices, that is $3.9 million rolling into the IS kitty every 24 hours - roughly $2700 every minute. By the end of 2014, the Islamic State could have raked in $686 million from oil profits – and that isn’t accounting for further inroads into the Iraqi oil sector. That’s a lot of guns and ammo for the jihadist cause.

Of course, every sale depends on a buyer. Allegedly, the Islamic State’s pay-day passed in convoy through Kurdish territory and disappeared across the Iranian border into the night. In a region where gasoline prices, as well as the fundamentals of daily life have skyrocketed due to years of sanction and strife, Sunni Salafists, apparently, have no qualms about selling their wares to Shi’ites.

As of 2011, the global black market was estimated at $10 trillion a year. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has projected that more than 2/3 of the world’s workers will be engaged in the “shadow economy” by 2020.

To be sure, this clandestine bazaar is indeed an enabler, but often for the wrong ends.In the general scheme of things, war is war, business is business and the black market trades in the dark for a reason…

[Odelay]

I was only using Syria as an example to rebut the claim that Israel got an unusual amount of diplomatic immunity. You have to look at why I brought Syria up...it wasn't to say Israel's attacks are not heinous, only that the international response to it was not as muted as I thought the original post indicated.

Point taken and conceded. Just received a tweet from someone pointing out the violence in Egypt being far greater than what is happening currently in Gaza, and just like the violence in Syria, it is under-reported on an international scale.

I would hazard a guess that intra-tribal conflict in the Middle East just doesn't sell very well as news, to the broader world.

[Ben]

Gaza: Why a ‘Cease-Fire’ Is Not Enough:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/20...ire-not-enough

[yosi]

Gaza: Why a ‘Cease-Fire’ Is Not Enough:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/20...ire-not-enough

Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.
And there was no blockade. On the contrary. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce. The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. Simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank, too.
And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.
Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders who can be found in a 5 star hotel in Doha. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Why? Any rocket that seems on course to hit anything of value is almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”
It makes no sense. Unless you understand that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire. This produces dead Palestinians for international television, which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.
To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the UN’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fuelled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defence.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the UN ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

In syria , the death toll is over 170,000 poeple , many of them killed by chemical weapons , but who cares?