Situation in Israel - we can help.

It's funny how many Palestinian women and children are inadvertently killed by Israeli surgical attacks on militants. I bet they're laughing their socks off about that in Gaza.

Israel should have learnt that there is no possibility of military success - unless they are considering 'The Final Solution' - as long as many Palestinians support Hamas every civilian death will act as recruitment. The situation is almost the same as in Afghanistan.
Whatever the stated aims of the leaders, they are going to have to get round the table and hammer out a compromise.

PS
I did sign the petition for a Palestinian State. This is the only solution but it is impossible at this stage to agree on borders.

The people of Gaza elected Hamas and this is what Hamas stands for:

Hamas's 1988 charter calls for the replacement of Israel and the Palestinian Territories with an Islamic Palestinian state. After the elections in 2006, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Al-Zahar did not rule out the possibility of accepting a "temporary two-state solution", and stated that he dreamed "of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it."[53] Xinhua reports that Al-Zahar "did not rule out the possibility of having Jews, Muslims and Christians living under the sovereignty of an Islamic state."[53] In late 2006, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, said that if a Palestinian state was formed within the 1967 lines, Hamas was willing to declare a truce that could last as long as 20 years, and stated that Hamas will never recognize the "usurper Zionist government" and will continue "jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem.

This is why the Israelis are so bloody minded and determined not to give an inch to Hamas. The Jews learned the hard way that you cannot live under a regime that hates you, and the Palestinian Arabs hate them intensely, and teach their children from birth to do the same.

This does not mean that Israeli actions are correct, it just means that they are trapped in an impossible situation. They are an intelligent, determined people who simply will never ever concede sovereignty, and when Hamas targets and kills Israeli civilians by rocket fire, in response to Israelis killing Hamas militants, I have to wonder why the Palestinians think they have the moral high ground. As Netenyahu pointed out the other day: "We target their militants and try to avoid civilian casualties: they target our civilians and use their own civilians as human shields."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21MdXe3BOQ

Here is another one!

Fondasharing you make more sense than I do! Same sentiments tho'
Absent and greatnan, you're right, I shouldn't tar all Israelies with the same brush.
nanej thanks for the link.

I find all this so hard. We are all totally appalled by the bloodshed; but we cannot get inside the heads of those involved. Presumably both sides are mainly made up of decent folks trying to raise their families without violence being done to them; and both feel that they have right (and probably god) on their side.

We have to take some responsibiliuty for the mess as (once again) western interference in the lives of people in other countries created a large part of the situation in the fist place.

What a mess.

or even 'interesting'!

www.nkusa.org/activities/demonstrations/20110922.cfm

Is an intersting site.

My favourite political thinker. And just as clear-headed as ever. I treasure a photo I have of me shaking her hand at a SDP rally we had in the early, optimistic days.

anno Shirley Williams makes good sense on most things! I missed her on the Israel situation but I heard her very sensible comments about the police commissioner elections debacle at the beginning of the program.

Shirley Williams on Any Questions made very good sense on the Arab-Israeli question and David Willetts wasn't bad either. Can be found on BBC radio i-Player, I think.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2012

Greatnan One of the sources of American support for Israel is extreme Evangelical Christianity. Its adherents don't give a fig for Jews per se but they believe that the Rapture – when they will all be immediately transported (minus their clothes) to heaven – will not take place until the Holy Land is fully restored to the Jews.

Many thanks to all of you who have already signed the petition regarding Palestine joining the UN.

Certainly I have no wish for the people outside Gaza city to be harmed. Quite the opposite.

I have also copied below my comment on the Jonathan Sack's remarks on Today programme yesterday,

My daughter's in-laws are Quakers and they lived and worked in Ramallah for 5 years at the Quaker School. They witnessed the lives of many Palestinian people. They also worked with Israeli people who wish to end the conflict and are ashamed of how the Palestinians are being treated with regard to border controls, sanctions and total disregard for their own identity. They witnessed many tragedies and heard some terrible stories.

If the Israeli government would return the lands they took illegally and opened up communications, yes, even with Hamas, then the conflict would, at least, be arrested for the present, and common sense could be restored.

Israel has become the aggressor........I understand the history of the Holocaust and the resolve of the Jewish people never to be so isolated and vulnerable ever again.....but sometimes I feel as though they are treating the Palestinian people in the way they were treated by the Germans, i.e. estranging them from mainstream, forcing them to live in "ghettos" and making them into the enemy, instead of neighbours, who whilst they do not share the same religion, are people who have lived in the Holy Land just as long as the Jews.

By the way I have Jewish blood in my family.

Let us hope that common sense is restored and that President Obama does not give his support and arms to Israel so that they can pursue their agenda.

Also, many people in Iran do not want a war, so let us hope they can have a voice one day and help their dictatorial leaders see sense as well.

Dorset - I am quite sure that nobody wants the innocent Israeli civilians to suffer - but they could vote to change the situation. The Palestinians can't.

Quite right, Oldgreymare. Netanyahu has been around a long time and a lot of Israelis hate him but sadly not the majority, Greatnan.

While you are all worried about the residents in Gaza, I have a friend in Tel Aviv who is 4 months pregnant, has a 2 year old too, she and family have had to move into their bomb shelter. There is wrong on both sides.

Zionists appear to exert great influence in the USA, which has been very reluctant to criticise the Israeli government.
If the majority of Israeli citizens do not support the policy towards Palestine, they will have to show it by their votes.

While Israel views Gaza as a security issue rather than a humanitarian one, nothing will improve for anyone.

Oldgreymare Not all Israelis, by any meansm are so aggressive towards Palestinians as Mr Netanyahu.

Signed..... seems the Israelies did learn something from the Nazis after all:
'You kill one of our soldiers, and we will retaliate by wiping out dozens of innocent families and their children'
On 'Thought for the Day' (Radio4) on 'Children in Need Day' a Rabbi talked about the need to protect children.... a few moments before the programme presenters had talked about a picture (front page of a newspaper) showing a Palestinian father craddling his dead child in his arms.
I think that made the point far more eloquently than I could. What a juxtaposition!

While there is an extreme right-wing government in Israel with ambitions for a greater Israel, there is no hope for Palestinians and serious cause for southern Lebanon to worry.

Done

A little girl in a Gaza hospital shown on bbc news. Bandage on her forehead. So wrong.

I am fully aware of the appalling historical aspects of what has happened to Jews in the last century.

I would like to know when the Zionists in the Israeli government are going to realise just how much they keep alienating their neighbours by their continued development of fortified Jewish settlements on the West Bank and their continued flouting of United Nations Security Council resolution 446.

In the mid 20th century, us British finally realised that their attempts to repress and oppress independence by the subjects of the British Empire were failing and that this policy would never bring peace.

The violence perpetrated by British forces trying in to keep the Empire was very brutal. Please note Israel. It only made things worse.

The militant Israelis need to understand that their continued oppression will never bring them peace. Perhaps if they looked at the mistakes we made they could learn from them and save a lot more blood being shed.

I know they consider that the land of Israel was promised to them by God but there were always others living there.

I cannot help thinking that there is a parallel between Israel's line of keeping Israel just for the Jews and Hitler's desire for a pure Aryan race to occupy German lands.
Hitler called it "lebensraum" what do the Zionist Israel's call their policy of easing out the Palestinians from Israel?

Both sides in the current conflict behave with unwarranted aggression but one side is all-powerful. The others are fighting a Guerrilla war not to be forced out of the land at all. Israel has the power they could do more to end this.

I am now off to don my flak jacket.