1. It begun in 1979, the three-way-treaty among Egypt, Israel and USA.
2. USA motivation for the treaty, and Aid to Israel are as followes:
a) compansation for Israel for losing the stratigic depth.
b) Golden shekles on Israel’s limbs. Any threats on Israel’s wish list has stratigic significans on Israel.
c) Giving Sinai to the Egyption, along with 1BN $US allowed Egypt to break away from it’s former USSR backing into American hagamony.
d) Contorl over Israel’s technology transfare deals. Somtimes used as persue unethical trade compatition.

3. Terms of the Foreign Aid:
IIsrael must only use American made products.
a) Outcome of this: Israel often trasfare indigenous defese technology to America, so high cost parts or weapons can be bought using the American foreign aid money.
b) Israeli technology all of the sudden become controlled American technology
c) Israel loses jobs in favour of American, unless we can aqueeze recipatory contracts for procuts we’ve ordered.
d) Sometimes we are forced by the foreign aid terms, to shop for infrerior american technology
e) result of c), Israeli technology is sold to America’s allies who are our enemies: Saudia Arabia, UAE, Pakistan ect…

Bottom line: 1) The foreign aid is not an act of American kindness, but a result of a signed treaty which enabled severing Egypt from Soviet sphare of influance and a elaborated truth between Israel and Egypt.

2) The foreign aid has hidden stratigic costs for Israel.

3) Israel agreed for the three way treety, because many believe it had more advantages for us then disadvantages.

The Bible speaks of 4 cities in gaza that are supposed to be in ruins
maybe God has a plan ,keeping Israel out?

This is a war of religion Countries have been trying to wipe out Jews for thousands of years not just Arabs Wonder why?

It will get only worse for Israel all nations will be agaisnt her soon..

That said, Gaza is and has been a miserable place. It has been run bythe same clans for hundreds of years. Hamas has in some ways added stability to the society. It has an end game of Sha’aria in it’s Sunni form.

Israel started it’s blockade because of the increased range of the missiles. Grat rockets are now going 25 miles into Israeli cities. Where are they supplied from?Keep in mind the lone Israeli reactor plant is not much farther. The original rockets had a range of 2 miles. These are supplied by Iran, a Shia country. Politics makes strange bedfellows

The Israeli borders were sealed when Hamas took the area over. Egypt after it’s withdrawal in1967 has not wanted to have anything to do with Gaza. They are sworn enemies of Hamas and it’s parent the Moslem Brotherhood.

The Egyptians will not open their border except under extreme circumstances. The smuggling goes on unabated from the Egyptian side. Why? it is highly profitable.

The Hamas leaders can, if they wish call a “Hudna” but they will not “become policemen for Israel”. Meaning they will not stop the other factions(PFLP, JIHAD etc. ) from firing. Is Hamas the legal authority in Gaza? If they are they must abide by the obligations of the legal power. Elected by the people(I was in Gaza at the time) and I would have voted for them given the other choice. However they did not get elected to continue the armed resistance but on a promise of eliminating corruption, which to some degree theyhave AND to improve living conditions. They have not. They have also completely taken over by force all forms of power. There is no possible election now in Gaza. It is a totalitarian state. Religiously based but still totalitarian.

I was first in Gaza in 1981. It is worse now. I maintain that given the Israeli withdrawal and that the power in Gaza is now in the hands of Hamas that the current situation is primarily the fault of Hamas. They have done nothing to help their own people.Their agenda is not to help the people, in my opinion.

The borders would be open, the blockade lifted, Commerce begun and aid sent IF they simply stop pushing the”armed struggle”. No sovereign nation can abide the constant threat of rocket attacks. At this stage Israel is being reactive.

If Hamas is legitimate let it stand by past agreements. Stop all firing and attempted kidnappings. Control the other factions too and I’m sure the Israelis will bend a lot towards a lasting peace.

Many people refer to Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel. I went and read their charter where this is supposed to be stated
(see for example http://middleeast.about.com/od/palestinepalestinians/a/me080106b.htm)

While, as noted by others in this post, it is clearly very religious in nature, with constant references to god and islam, regarding Israel I could only find this

“Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors. The Islamic World is burning. It is incumbent upon each one of us to pour some water, little as it may be, with a view of extinguishing as much of the fire as he can, without awaiting action by the others.”

If the translation is correct then I dont see that this sets the destruction of Israel as the goal of Hamas. It probably can be interpreted in that way but it seems that many other interpretations are possible including for example the non violent end of Israel through conversion of its inhabitants to Islam (not a likely outcome I would say).

Of course, this is open to many interpretations and one could argue for hours what is and what is not meant.. but I was expecting to find something more direct -in most of the charter there is clear and direct language- and bluntly stated such as “our goal is the destruction of Israel”

On the border issue: another poster stated that Israel has no obligations to open its borders.. That is true. Also I find it strange that the reasons behind Egyp’s closing of their border with Gaza are not often mentionned. Does anyone have information as to why and how this happened ? Presumbaly Gaza could get all it needs through Egypt.
What is disturbing though is the naval blockade to which the territory is submitted. And I do not understand the israeli argument about “we will close our borders until the weapons smuggling stops”… Was there any weapons smuggling from Israel to Gaza ? how does closing the israeli border address the issue of weapons smuggling ?

This basically would tend to suggest that the recent operation in Gaza was not what the author states -taking out Hamas (since the Israeli leadership probably realizes this is not a realistic goal) but rather a show of force to show the palestinians the region and the world at large “who is boss”. The message seems to be “we do what we want, when we want and where we want. Don’t mess with us”

Israel can have peace and normalized relations with Syria at any time – all they have to do is return the Golan Heights in full. The closest thing to that ever offered was by Ehud Barack and he wanted to maintain a 100 ft strip of land around the Sea of Galilee – thus betraying that the Golan Heights (whose military significance has dimished with the SSM) is not about security but water. That is why Israel will never return the Golan in full which at present is the Syrian demand for peace (and would fulfill the Syrian portion of UN Resolution 242 calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory).

Water is also largely why Israel builds settlements where they do and why Israel will demand they retain some settlements.

This is not a war about religion or culture. For Israel, this is a war for resources. For Palestinians, this is a war for self-determination. Even without the historical context it is easy to understand which side is in the wrong.

The cease-fire was not totally followed by either side. Israel was supposed to lift the blockade (which it never did) and Hamas was supposed to stop smuggling (which it never did). But as far as overt violendce goes there is little doubt what triggered the mass of rockets that ended a shaky cease-fire – it was the Israeli November 4th raid.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/12/rocket-calendars.html

That links to a decidedly pro-Israeli source that someone has come up with based on news reports (both in Arab, Israeli and Western m edia) of rocket/mortar attacks placed into an easy to read calendar format. Notice the calm prior to November 4th.

Also note that Hamas moved against militants firing rockets and mortars prior to Nov 4th. They have accused Fatah of trying to sabotage the cease-fire by firing mortars/rockets at Israel. It is impossible to know whether that is true but it is clear that Hamas largely kept the peace prior to the Israeli November 4 raid. More importantly, Israel, even with excessively harsh curfews and restrictions, has repeatedly failed to fully prevent violence originating from areas under their direct military control. Therefore what chance does Hamas or Fatah have when their security apparatus is constantly attacked by Israel?

My take on this is that the Israeli leadership needed to achieve a few things:

1) Redeem the prestige of the IDF from the Lebanon fiasco.
2) In following #1, re-establish a credible ground-force deterrent in the region.
3) Prove that the Kadima-led coalition can be tough – important in their upcoming domestic elections as they stand to bleed votes to the further right parties who are “tough on terror”.

To achieve this, Israel needed a conflict and they needed to wrap it up before Bush left office. Hamas, thoughtfully sought to block this by acutally abiding by the cease-fire (largely). It works to their advantage as well to have a long cease-fire just prior to the induction of a new US president.

So Israel launched the November 4 raid on the pretense of blowing up a tunnel used for smuggling which they knew would trigger a Palestinian response. Israel would go on a PR blitz (whicih they did) and the mainstream media largely reports it as Hamas breaking the cease-fire.

This is not new. Many cease-fires have been broken by both sides in the past, but the Israeli side always breaks cease-fires in that fashion. Whenever Palestinians abide by cease-fires, Israel breaks the cease-fire and blames it on the Palestinians and it works thanks to Ralph Peters and co who propagate thoroughly biased “analysis”.

Has anyone writing been under rocket fire? The rockets have been used, since the Chinese started using them first, as weapons of terror. Casualties are a much sought after side effect but not the primary one-terror is. Try to imagine the effectiveness of this when done to a civilian population fired on a random basis.

Israel exited Gaza approximately 7 years ago. From that time on rockets have been fired frequently if intermittently. Israel is under no obligation to open the borders, except for humanitarian purposes, to a regime which espouse it’s destruction of not only the state of Israel but Jews in general. The numbers of rockets fired seem to approach 6,000. Most are low tech. You can see them flying.

Hamas as a religious terrorist organisation has bluntly stated what it wishes to do. Simply read it’s charter.

The Occupation is NOT why Hamas attacks Israel. it is not in essence a Palestinian organisation. It is a religious one. It’s final goal is not so much an independent state as one based on Sharia.Please notice it’s actions against the few Christians remaining in Gaza.

It is a highly organised and intelligent enemy. It uses propagana brilliantly and plays the media like a viloin.

If after the Israeli pullout Hamas had put all it’s efforts in to making life better for Gazans there would have been no sealed borders and no current conflict. They have made a choice, as it is their raison d’etre to continue the military struggle.

Do not underestimate their use of civilians as shields . This is a standard tactic by non-uniformed insurgents and terrorists. In this case any civilian killed is immediately a martyr.

His analogies with world war 2 are ludicrous.

What sort of humanity has Ralph Peter’s got.

When he talks of ‘the superb performance of the IDF’ I can only see the dead pictures of little children.

Shame on you.

First of as noted by others the author is on very shaky ground when he speaks about the bombing of Dresden and other german cities as well as the atomic bombing of Japan of being morally justified.
Cynically, of course, “all is fair in Love and War” but morally there is no justification for incenerating hundreds of thousands of civilians. If anyone doubts that, just let them think about how they would feel if anyone would nuke a city in their country.

Seoncdly the author is clearly and fully backing Israel. That is his right, but he should be clear about it. He attempts to state as facts things which are merely hiw own opinions

For example the expressions “the superb performance of the IDF”.. What is superb about this performance ? It is not explained and we are expected to take this at face value.

“HAMAS one-sided abrogation of an extended-truce proposal”, again no real facts here…. I have read elsewhere that during this truce Hamas launched several hundred rockets at Israel, however the Israelis killed over 100 palestinians in what they call “targeted killings”, the morality of which is questionable at best. Moreover the israelis (but also the egyptians and they should not be taken out of the equation altogether) blockaded Gaza turning it in effect into a ghetto. The facts seem to indicate that there is nothing one sided about the breaking of the truce

“Hamas employed non-combatants not only as human shields, but as propaganda sacrifices”. this is again an opinion not a fact. In fact, reports from the red cross, amnesty international, Human rights watch (and I dont believe all of them are bias) as well as the UN raise serious doubts about the conduct of israeli forces including the use by them of humand shields and violations of the geneva convention. This is not to say that Hamas are boy scouts… they are most certainly not… but neither is the israeli military as the author would have us believe
Israel had barred the media from Gaza while it was conducting its campaing and has recently put together a legal team to defend against possible war crime proceedings. These are signs that the conduct of the israeli military is not beyond reproach and certainly not superb.

We’d like to see some deeper and more balanced analysis than the old “israeli good guys can do no wrong vs Hamas bad guys can do no right” ….

And finally the author is under the illusion that this particular issue can be resolved by force… It cannot.. Until the palestinians have real rights and a real state , violence will continue… Even if Israel somehow gets rid of Hamas, someone else , mroe radical will take its place…. In fact Israel encouraged the emrgence of Hamas thinking it was a smart move to counterbalance the Fatah (who were then considered terrorists).. Now Fatah are the good guys (not terrorists any longer?) and Hamas is a pain for its creator… It seems Israel has either not learned the lesson, or in fact, considers that a violent Hamas serves its overall political purpose.

I suggest the author go back and study this subject in more detail