Israel 'ready for escalation' of Gaza conflict

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Egypt suggested a limited ceasefire could be in place for this weekend. However, Hamas is refusing a ceasefire without a prior agreement to lift economic sanctions on Gaza. The Israeli army says it still needs 4-5 days to root out the Hamas tunnels, so even a unilateral ceasefire isn’t likely before Monday.

Israel’s security cabinet released no decision after meeting late into the night on a proposed humanitarian truce under which fighting would cease immediately but negotiations for terms for an extended deal would begin only in several days’ time.

An Israeli official briefed on the deliberations said the army required four of five days to destroy cross-border tunnels and rocket arsenals, but acknowledged Palestinians were unlikely to hold fire while those missions continued on the ground.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said his fighters had made gains against Israel and voiced support for a humanitarian truce, but only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, who are also under an embargo by next-door Egypt.

"Let’s agree first on the demands and on implementing them and then we can agree on the zero hour for a ceasefire … We will not accept any proposal that does not lift the blockade … We do not desire war and we do not want it to continue but we will not be broken by it,” Meshaal said on Wednesday in Qatar.
reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-mideast-gaza-idUSKBN0FT06I20140724
 
josie_L said:
“Satanic levels of slaughter”?? Do you realize that close to 2000 people were murdered/slaughtered by ISIS within a period of 48 hours just last week, and that they continue to kill, torture and ethnically cleanse the regions they conquer of all Christians? Yet where are the mass protestations/rallies around the world against the outrageous evils perpetrated by this lslamic group? Where is the outrage??? Where is the E.U, U.S. and /or the rest of the world? Where is the media condemning these acts of violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorists?? Where are the Muslims voicing their outrage for the innocent deaths committed by their co-religionists?? All I hear is silence.

The fact of the matter is that there are more Muslims being killed by Muslims throughout the world than there are Jews killing Palestinians. Moreover, Israel did not initiate this crisis, Hamas brought it upon themselves because they are only capable of hate, death and destruction, it’s imbued in their charter, and it’s imbued in each and every member of Hamas.
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ISIS who in Syria have received tacit and practical support from both Israel and the USA, as did their predecessor Bin Laden.
 
Coatimundi said:
Egypt suggested a limited ceasefire could be in place for this weekend. However, Hamas is refusing a ceasefire without a prior agreement to lift economic sanctions on Gaza. The Israeli army says it still needs 4-5 days to root out the Hamas tunnels, so even a unilateral ceasefire isn’t likely before Monday.

Israel’s security cabinet released no decision after meeting late into the night on a proposed humanitarian truce under which fighting would cease immediately but negotiations for terms for an extended deal would begin only in several days’ time.

An Israeli official briefed on the deliberations said the army required four of five days to destroy cross-border tunnels and rocket arsenals, but acknowledged Palestinians were unlikely to hold fire while those missions continued on the ground.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said his fighters had made gains against Israel and voiced support for a humanitarian truce, but only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, who are also under an embargo by next-door Egypt.

"Let’s agree first on the demands and on implementing them and then we can agree on the zero hour for a ceasefire … We will not accept any proposal that does not lift the blockade … We do not desire war and we do not want it to continue but we will not be broken by it,” Meshaal said on Wednesday in Qatar.
reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-mideast-gaza-idUSKBN0FT06I20140724
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Israel cannot possibly accept lifting of the sanctions and searches. In a previous relaxation of them, Hamas imported a great deal of cement, presumably to build and rebuild in Gaza. But they didn’t do that, they used it to create those tunnels into Israel (undoubtedly into Egypt as well).

Israel’s sanctions and inspections are there to prevent war materials coming into Hamas’ hands. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to know exactly what Hamas will use next in its terrorist enterprises.
 
Gaeilgeoir said:
ISIS who in Syria have received tacit and practical support from both Israel and the USA, as did their predecessor Bin Laden.
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Yes, at a time when they weren’t aware of who ISIS was, i.e., the rebels fighting Assad were unfortunately a mishmash of moderates and radicals (although the U.S. should have known better than to support the rebels being that there would be radicals within their ranks). Having said that, what does it change, i.e., ISIS would have existed with or without the support of both the U.S. or Israel!! Moreover, not everything that happens in the Middle East is predicated upon some evil, real or imagined, by the West, i.e., the peoples in this volatile region need to start looking inward to explain the violence and mayhem plaguing their homelands.

P.S. The fact is that more Muslims kill Muslims (civilians and children are targeted) than Jews have killed Palestinians, so where is the outrage, where is the condemnation, where are the mass demonstrations around the world???
 
josie_L said:
Yes, at a time when they weren’t aware of who ISIS was, i.e., the rebels fighting Assad were unfortunately a mishmash of moderates and radicals (although the U.S. should have known better than to support the rebels being that there would be radicals within their ranks). Having said that, what does it change, i.e., ISIS would have existed with or without the support of both the U.S. or Israel!! Moreover, not everything that happens in the Middle East is predicated upon some evil, real or imagined, by the West, i.e., the peoples in this volatile region need to start looking inward to explain the violence and mayhem plaguing their homelands.

P.S. The fact is that more Muslims kill Muslims (civilians and children are targeted) than Jews have killed Palestinians, so where is the outrage, where is the condemnation, where are the mass demonstrations around the world???
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Israel is in a virtually “no-win” situation in the Middle East. No matter what it does or declines to do, its destruction will be pursued by Islamists of one kind or another. It has one Iranian client to the south and two to its north. If, indeed, Israel helped ISIS or related groups to fight Iran and its proxies, it might have thought it better that Iran be engaged in another fight than its incessant one against Israel.

As Henry Kissinger is said to have remarked during the Iran/Iraq war (paraphrasing here) “It’s too bad they can’t both lose.”
 
7, you mentioned a big change in Israel before their 100th birthday. Israel was declared a state in May of 1948 and you are correct with “big changes” but I feel a major change this year. Try googling the “Blood Moons” 2014 2015 Israel and you will see the past changes in Israel during the blood moons and how these lunar events relate to Israel.
 
“only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians,”

Isn’t this code for we want to be able to bring in more and better arms from Iran?
 
Ed_Silvia said:
“only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians,”

Isn’t this code for we want to be able to bring in more and better arms from Iran?
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Exactly, along with more and better tunnel-building equipment; perhaps eventually some nuclear waste or something from Iran that we can send over to Israel in an Iranian rocket.
 
josie_L said:
So we are to blame Israel for the state of affairs that it is currently in
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I would have to say yes to this. The country’s political climate has become increasingly insulated, anti-democratic, and ethnocentric. It seems incapable of dealing with its Palestinian citizens and subjects in Gaza and the West Bank in any way other than with brute force. The ascendency of Likud and the Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman has brought about an Israel which more and more resembles the Jim Crow south.
josie L:
, i.e., Hamas bears no responsibility for the violence it’s been committing
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I never said that. Why does everyhting have to be either-or? Of course, Hamas is responsible for its share of the violence. It’s just that the tendency here is to view the situation there as “Israel=good/Palestinians=terrorist”. I am only pointing out that the reality is much more complicated than that.
josie L:
even though Israeli troops/civilians have left the Gaza strip for nigh a decade??
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Israel is still the occupying power there. It controls the land border, sea, and air space over Gaza. It has a stranglehold over the economy. It is largely due to Israel’s inhumane economic blockade of Gaza that the Palestinians, in their despair and desperation, are turning to Hamas, the only force there capable of standing up to the IDF. Your comment (no Israeli troops/civilains there) makes it seem as if Gaza is a free place when in fact it is an open air prison pen.
josie L:
Are we also to assume that if Israeli policies were less stringent, terrorist groups like Hamas would not exist, i.e., groups that simply do not believe Israel has a right to exist
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I wouldn’t say such groups would not exist; I would say they would not get any traction among the populace. This is a tragedy. Israel seems incapable of forging peaceful relations with its Arab population.

josie L said:
(remember the real issue here is the fact that Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by Jews with the help of the West)?
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That is THE issue!👍
 
estesbob said:
You are aware that rockets were being stored in that School and that Israel announced in advance they would be attacking it?
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That isn’t clear. Israel has denied targeting the school.

The local director of the United Nations agency operating the shelter, in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, initially said the cause appeared to be an Israeli strike, and many Gazans presumed Israel’s military was responsible.

But United Nations officials said later that they could not be sure, and Israeli military officials said errant Palestinian munitions might have been the source. The Israelis denied having intentionally targeted the school and said they had warned the United Nations three days earlier that the school should be evacuated because the surrounding area was a combat zone.
…
A senior Israeli military official, Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, the commander of the Gaza division, told reporters in a telephone briefing that he did not yet know what had happened at the school. “If we made a mistake, we will say it,” he said.

He said Israel was not acting intentionally against any United Nations infrastructure in Gaza. “We would never bomb such a place,” he said.
nytimes.com/2014/07/25/world/middleeast/despite-talk-of-a-cease-fire-no-lull-in-gaza-fighting.html?_r=0

Being that the UN was warned to evacuate the school, doing so might have been prudent. However, if the surrounding area is a combat zone, trying to evacuate while under fire might have seemed even more risky.
 
gnjsdad said:
I would have to say yes to this. The country’s political climate has become increasingly insulated, anti-democratic, and ethnocentric. It seems incapable of dealing with its Palestinian citizens and subjects in Gaza and the West Bank in any way other than with brute force. The ascendency of Likud and the Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman has brought about an Israel which more and more resembles the Jim Crow south.
**How can you possibly say this? Has Israel outlawed the right to vote, including by Arabs in Israel? No. Has it barred Arabs from the government? No. Are there Arabs in the Israeli government? Yes. Are there Arab army officers? Yes. Are there Arab doctors, lawyers, engineers in Israel who can practice their professions freely? Yes.

Are Jews allowed to do any of those things in Arab controled lands? No.

Israel does not rule Gaza; otherwise 100% of Hamas would be in jail for attempted murder. EGYPT and Israel control what goes into Gaza because (as we can obviously see) Hamas imports Iranian weapons to kill Israeli and Egyptian civilians with. The West Bank is 1/3 Jewish. What do you want to do with them? Tell me.
**
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You are certainly correct, though not entirely, in saying Israelis’ ownership of Israel itself is the problem from the Arab point of view. Jews have been eliminated from virtually all Arab lands, and Christians are in the process of being eliminated. From the Hamas point of view, as their charter says, Jews should not be allowed to live at all, and certainly not in Israel.
 
gnjsdad said:
Quote: Originally Posted by josie L
(remember the real issue here is the fact that Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by Jews with the help of the West)?
That is THE issue!
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I mean to be delicate and sensitive to the human suffering on both sides but IMHO it was with the help the Almighty that the nation of Israel came into existence.

Psalm 2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
 
This is a sad, but predictable result of the current conflict. Since the outset, speculation has been that Hamas wanted this war in order to boost its popularity, even if it was unable to get economic sanctions lifted.

Just three months ago, Hamas, financially strapped and diplomatically isolated, agreed to a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his secularist Fatah faction after a bitter, seven-year division, on minimal terms that analysts said reflected the Islamic group’s weakness.

Now Hamas — which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and is considered a terrorist organization by much of the West — is being hailed in the West Bank as the champion of armed resistance, while Mr. Abbas, who leads the alternative camp advocating a negotiated peace deal with Israel, is being excoriated for having failed to achieve a Palestinian state after 20 years of intermittent and fruitless Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Israel has long supported Mr. Abbas as a peace partner, but it suspended the troubled American-brokered negotiations with the Palestinians in April after Mr. Abbas reached the reconciliation deal with Hamas. Hamas’s rise in popularity in the West Bank, however temporary, further undermines Mr. Abbas and makes Israel’s demand for a cancellation of the unity deal less likely
nytimes.com/2014/07/25/world/middleeast/in-west-bank-hamas-hailed-for-israel-in-gaza.html
 
Ed_Silvia said:
I mean to be delicate and sensitive to the human suffering on both sides but IMHO it was with the help the Almighty that the nation of Israel came into existence.

Psalm 2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
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And it was taken away from them when they turned their back on Him. Does it look like Israel is being kind to the strangers among them?
 
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