Palestinian Conflict Quotes
The Arab World is made up of many small states who usually vote as a bloc. In addition, most of the other Islamic nations vote with their Arab co-religionists. Since its founding Israel has developed rapidly while the Arab nations have not and some have regressed. Their governments are embarrassed by their lack of progress and blame Israel to mollify their citizens.
Hamas had, in a bloody armed coup, seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, and refusing to negotiate with the Israelis undermined the Palestinian hopes of peace talks with Israel. The PA could no longer speak for the Palestinians. Hamas a particularly aggressive terrorist organization whose charter called for the death of all Jews in the world, wanted to force the Palestinian Authority to join them in terrorist attacks on Israel. The Palestinians had renounced terrorism and violence. The Hamas fighters were planning to fire rockets at Israel from the West Bank and launching other terrorist attacks against Israel, hoping that Israel would retaliate against the Palestinian Authority by attacking the West Bank which had not been destroyed at all while Gaza had lost much of its infrastructure and 2,000 lives. The Palestinian Authority was not about to let themselves get sucked into a war that they could not possible win and was contrary to the policies of Prime Minister Abbas and his elected government.
The Hamas leadership of the Gaza strip had fired thousands of rockets into Israel which their charter states should be eliminated. The Israelis after many being hit by more than a thousand rockets, used their military to attack (via the air) the Hamas leadership. However, Hamas had stored their rockets and their armaments in or very near civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, mosques and even UN humanitarian facilities. The Hamas leaders thereby made civilian facilities legitimate military targets under the Rules of War of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. So the Gaza leadership, instead of their military protecting their own civilians, used the civilians to protect the military and their weapons in the midst of war. The Secretary General also was referring to the Hamas leadership who had rejected at that point 5 different cease fires that had been proposed by the Egyptians, Americans, The Arab League and others. Israeli accepted them all.
One myth is that Islamic violence is caused by the dispute over Israel in the Middle East and American and Christian encroachments into Islam. Violence by Muslims against fellow Muslims is responsible for many more deaths than Muslims perpetrate against the West. In this example it shows that Muslim on Muslim violence in Egypt alone is far grater than the violence against the Israelis. In the Iraq war, Muslim insurgents killed many more fellow Muslims than they killed Americans. Many Muslims will kill and intimidate anyone of any religion who simply disagrees with them. Governments fighting the terrorists often, out of desperation, resort to Emergency Laws, suspensing rights or other extra judicial means. Democratic Israel, which has had to cope with terrorism for its entire existence still has a constitutional democracy and has not resorted to undemocratic extra judicial means of counter terrorism.
