Palestinians In Gaza Under Siege

[mik 0]

There are two wars that have the attention of the world's media at the present time, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. And there is the shaky cease fire between Lebanon and Israel, that has plenty of media attention and reporting on the latest progress. But before the Israel Lebanese conflict there was the Israel Palestine conflict that was just getting under way, and we don't hear anymore about that.Gaza is in a bad situation. June 25th was when Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants and two other Israeli soldiers killed, and that was when Israel decided that the best action it could conceive of was to retaliate. Two and a half months later, Israel is still retalliating, and the whole of Gaza is suffering.Gideon Levy in the daily newspaper Haaretz writes that the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". Gaza has effectively been reoccupied by Israel. And Israel is remodelling the landscape to Israel's specifications, knocking down houses, reducing them to rubble, and carving up - stripping bare the land - farmers' fields and and olive groves.According to the London Independent a total of 262 people have been killed since June 25th, in Gaza. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. So one in every four casualties is a child. There were 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 are now amputees.But that is not all. Israel has imposed a total ban on all trade and cross border traffic. This is having the effect of starving the population, 1.5 million Palestinians, who are surrounded and imprisoned with no escape route, are struggling to survive in the most heavily populated area in the world. Looting and crime are taking over the society, only one third of the poulation have jobs, but those who have jobs no longer receive wages.Nearly 300 homes have been destroyed, it is a Palestinian's greatest fear to get a call on a cell phone with an order to vacate their house within the next half an hour. Electricity is in short supply, water scarce. This siege has been going on now for 75 days. But wathing television, or reading a newspaper, there is little mention of the fact.

[killerbichon 0]

It is amazing that less than 2 million people can affect the other 6 billion of us so much. There are no easy answers in the Middle East. Depending on your point of view, both sides are right, or both sides are wrong.The Israeli's have a right to defend their homeland. The Palestinians have a right to take their homeland back by whatever means necessary. It is unfortunate that these happen to be the same piece of property.

[hitmanblood 0]

I wouldn't certainly agree with you on this one. As you can see your point of view is against Israel, as far as I can see from your post. I would like to explain several points and facts which have to be understood before anyone should look into your private statistics actually it may be oficial but that is not the point.Firstly year ago Israels have left the Gaza and each and every house and Israeli house has been destroyed they have left in hope that this would satisfy Palestinians. They even build wall to prevent illegal entrance into sovereign Israelly territory. Attacks haven't stopped Palestinians and few head of surrounding Arab states in the late seventies have claimed that they will throw Israel into the see. And they are trying to do exactly that they want stop even if Isreal would give them autonomy complete they wouldn't stop because it is current Arab policy and Palestinians terrorist groups are finicied by them.Secondly, There are no two wars as you explained and it is obvious you are not familiar with the topic nor geograhpical properties of the region. Israel attack or intervention or conquer of Small south part of Lebanon was because Palestinians are using positions in south Lebanon to attack Israel and to rocket Israel towns and cities and villages of course. It was anti terror action and its main objective was safety of Israelians and every country has right to excercise protection of its own citizens.Thirdly, Israel is not retaliating and it is not shaping the landscape it is rather destrying houses and homes of those terrorists which blown themselves in school bus or on some busy square or disco. You see why no one is talking about Israelly victims every palestinian dead has been killed in oficial military action but what about 30 students in the school bus killed by maniak with bomb around his chests. As a fourth point you say every fourth casualty is child on the Palestinian side so you blame Israelians about killing child which is throwing rocks on them and on their tanks. And how would you know that next might not be Molotov's cocktail. So when your life is endangered every human being will defend naturally himself. I would blame Palestinian parents because they did nothing to stop this nor prevent. In fact they are congratualting their children for such bavery and they are sending them against Israelis forces. If their parents found their's children schelter and not send them against tanks there would not be so many casualties in fact I believe there would be very few or none.As a fifth thing or point I don't see how can army of ones country or state occupy its own country and start siege. It is just nonsense you see Gaza is still sovereign part of Israel state and Israel army has every right to exercise that and no one can say they are occupateors in their own country. It would be like US army enters Manhattan and then we in Europe read in the newspapers or watch reports on television how US army is occupying Manhattan. It is just nonsense.

[FolkRockFan 0]

Israel is not the group of people who are strapping bombs to their chests and intentionally detonating them in ice cream parlors, pizza places, hotels and other areas where civilians of all types are gathered. Women, children, fellow Palestinians...the terrorists don't care. We can look back on Israel's history (even just the recent stuff of the last few years) and see that they're trying to make peace. They vacate the Gaza strip...and the terrorists use it as a launching pad to send missiles and other ordnance into Israel's territory. Israel has every right to protect its people. The terrorists have got people stirred up, though: blaming Israel for killing when in fact Israel would not have to kill anybody if the terrorists would stop *their* killing.The terrorists are filthy dogs who cannot act like civilized human beings. They bring the violence on themselves. Until every terrorist (regardless of race, national origin, religion, whatever) is either destroyed or captured and thus made incapable of attacking others, there will still be problems. That's true for all areas of the world where terrorism has managed to dig in and sprout roots.

[hitmanblood 0]

Israel is not the group of people who are strapping bombs to their chests and intentionally detonating them in ice cream parlors, pizza places, hotels and other areas where civilians of all types are gathered. Women, children, fellow Palestinians...the terrorists don't care.
We can look back on Israel's history (even just the recent stuff of the last few years) and see that they're trying to make peace. They vacate the Gaza strip...and the terrorists use it as a launching pad to send missiles and other ordnance into Israel's territory.

Israel has every right to protect its people. The terrorists have got people stirred up, though: blaming Israel for killing when in fact Israel would not have to kill anybody if the terrorists would stop *their* killing.

The terrorists are filthy dogs who cannot act like civilized human beings. They bring the violence on themselves. Until every terrorist (regardless of race, national origin, religion, whatever) is either destroyed or captured and thus made incapable of attacking others, there will still be problems. That's true for all areas of the world where terrorism has managed to dig in and sprout roots.

I completely agree with your opinion as you can see in my previous post. However we have to stay out of generalizing to anyone.