Hamas is to blame for the violence

Oscar

Well said James. How refreshing to see this spelt out loud and clear. There can be no diplomatic/political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians while Hamas is in power in Gaza. The sooner Western world leaders recognise this, the better.

David Lindsay

Israel is preparing to invade the Gaza Strip, and nobody seems to mind. But then, why would they? Who is there to mind?

The Arab governments, including Fatah in the West Bank, regard Hamas as riffraff (the view of many in the Arabian Peninsula where all Levantine Arabs are concerned), and will welcome not only the putting down of Hamas, but also any sympathetic uprising on their own streets, an excuse to do at home what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.

Behind the scenes, relations with Israel have long been more than cordial. Indeed, Israel and the Gulf monarchies have a history of running joint candidates for President of the United States. The latest has been made Secretary of State as her prize for coming third out of two.

The real bother would come if Israel ever felt the need to go into the West Bank against Fatah, although there is not much chance of that.

And the real bother will come when Israel feels the need to go in against the Judean People’s Front or the People’s Front of Judea, her financial dependants who nevertheless despise her to the extent of raising against their hands against the teenage conscripts of her Defence Force, which they themselves refuse to join.

The Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea have noticed that, if it makes enough of a fuss, any sufficiently, even if not terribly, large and distinctive group gets its own statelet, carved out of what has been one of the most multiethnic places on earth since everlasting (if you don’t believe me, then read the Bible). Well, they want some of that.

And who can blame them for expecting it? After all, Fatah has been given the West Bank, regardless of who else lives or used to live there. Hamas has, at least at the time of writing, been given Gaza, regardless of who else lives or used to live there.

And the secular Ashkenazi nationalists and their allies were given the land inside the pre-1967 borders.

Regardless of who else lived or used to live there.

What goes around, comes around.

Anthony

So... how do you get rid of Hamas then? If negotiations are a bad idea and the current Israeli offensive doesn't work (and the clever money is probably on it not working), what then?

Augustus

What purpose will the Israeli action serve? To confirm once and for all Israel's ability to restore its deterrence power, and uphold the principle (which the UN Security Council has repeatedly abstained from doing) that its citizens cannot continue to be targetted by Hamas with impunity. Why should Israeli homes and families be any different from anyone else's
homes and families?

Forlornehope

Hamas has been firing small rockets into Israel knowing that they are having little effect. Their probable motive is therefore to provoke exactly the kind of response that Israel has provided. Ignoring the moral arguments and the which side started it, is it really very smart to do what Hamas clearly wanted all along?

Tiberius

Two snippets from my visits to church over Christmas: with sarcasm, the vicar talking in sad tones about how Bethlehem is now surrounded by a concrete wall, and the churchwarden hooraying the bombing of Gaza by Israel; both intelligent Christian men.

I surmise it is not so much siding with the forces of nihilism as the rejection of the idea of the right of Jewry to its homeland.

Herbert Thornton

All this heaping of blame on Hamas sounds, to me, rather like blaming the individual German bomber pilots for the Blitz.

True, they took part in it, but only as an arm of Naziism as a whole. True, Hamas has been been constantly launching rockets into Israel, but just as the German pilots were enthusiastic instruments of the Nazis' hate and ambitions, so Hamas are enthusiastic instruments of extremist Islam's hate and ambitions.

In short, Hamas is only a small part of the world's main enemy.

Nicholas

" . . . the German pilots were enthusiastic instruments of the Nazis' hate and ambitions . . ."

They were certainly instruments but to stereotype them all as "enthusiastic" might be more difficult to evidence. Some were no doubt but I expect there was a full range of human emotions.

Otherwise agree your point. The news from Pakistan is bad but overshadowed by this.