Israelis assassinate Hamas leader

I have heard [from a non-religous Israelite] Hamas also runs the Palestinian education system... This is why there is a production line of suicide bombers. If the UN wanted to do anything useful, it could step in and run the education of the Palestinians. Course, who would advise on how to run an arab education sytem? The neighbouring Arabs don't want to see the place stabilise..

 

Characterising Yassin as a 'religious leader' is spin of the highest order.

It would be interesting to hear more from the more outspoken anti-Israel writers on what they believe appropriate action from Israel should be.

Paul

 

If that is aimed at me I should clarify that I am not anti-Israel in theory, just totally opposed to any far right-wing war mongering thugs like Ariel Sharon.

IMHO Israel needs to release the land they have illegally occupied and remove the stupid illegal wall. After doing this they will occupy a higher moral ground than the suicide bombers etc (they don't IMHO at the moment) and both sides will be in a more credible position to negotiate for peace.

Tony.

 

new news! apparently the whole leadership of hamas is now fair game according to the Israelis, they have said so in the past, but I get the impression there will be more action, Arafat has not been ruled out, too.

 

My thoughts exactly.
Michael.

 

three questions to answer

(1) How many synonyms are their for the phrase “extra-judicial killings�
(2) Analyse these synonyms by users.
(3) When are extra-judicial killings justified?

Auric

 

But that will increase the rate of suicide bombing and other forms of attack on Israel, and Hamas is not interested in negotiating for a peace that doesn't involve the erasure of Israel.

Raising the death toll and giving succour to genocidal paranoid fascists doesn't seem very productive to me.

Paul

 

That maybe what they say publicly and it goes down well with the rabble but I'm quite sure they'd be open to any reasonable settlement.

Anything less than a retreat to pre 1967 borders by Israel, dismantlement of all occupied settlements and the illegal wall and at least dual sovereignty over Jerusalem is not a reasonable settlement IMO.

10 years ago you might have said that "The IRA is not interested in negotiating for a peace that doesn't involve the re-unification of Ireland". Many in the IRA and Sinn Fein probably still feel that way but it doesn't stop the from having negotiated a peace which is only being prevented from being fully implemented by Unionist intransigence.

Michael.

 

I think you're completely wrong about Hamas. And completely wrong about Ireland too...

It's interesting how it's 'Unionist intransigence' relating to democratically elected politicians and 'goes down well with the rabble' when it comes to an organisation whose constitution requires the erasure of Israel and which is responsible for whipping up the 'rabble'. And more to the point that has never endorsed any peace initiative of the many. Their documents are freely available from a number of web sites. I suggest reading them.

So why did the Oslo Accords not succeed?

Paul

 

Many reasons, one of them, for example, being the lack of support for them from Condaleeza Rice, the US national security advisor. Obviously, the US aren't solely to blame. But neither are the Palestinians or, for that matter, the Israelis. The political leaderships of all sides have no serious desire for peace.

If the Bush administration was serious about the Accords they were more than capable of applying pressure to Sharon. They didn't even try.

There's no simple answer here. Demagogues on all sides want to turn it into a simple Muslim v. Jew or Muslim v. Christian issue. At heart it's a political dispute, about land rights for both sides, that has been used by extremists on both sides to stoke religious and ethnic hatreds, to suggest it's an issue of faith rather than politics. It's a failure of Western democratic politics that that has been allowed to happen, in fact, the West has positively encouraged this for short-term political expediency since the creation of the state of Israel.

A politics that sees the issue simply as Israel defending itself against hostile action, or, for that matter, freedom-fighting Palestinians who are on the side of the angels, doesn't even begin to get to grips with the reality.

-- Ian