This shows that the Palestinians do not want peace with Israel (like this is some big revalation). There was no point in kidnapping the guy to begin with, and now there is no point in continuing to hold him. Giving him back immediately shows a desire for peace. Holding him and demanding the release of thousands of prisoners in exchange shows a desire for conflict to continue. Palestine is, as per usual, trying to initiate conflict and then try to generate sympathy in the international community by pointing to how devastating the Israeli response is. Some here have already swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
BTW, I just shot the MP5 submachine gun today,...WOW!..The Germans really know how to make weapons... To explain it better, the need to consolidate and be affirmed to weaponry was non-existent to the holocaust for the Jews...There is a reasoning to the statement and how this relates to the thread...unlike your pathetic statement which is baseless of merit...but then again, so is a lot that comes from the left so I bequesth you beech...ya.
But...the left cannot fathom reason in many cases such as this,...what do you expect? and it is not coincidence the reports only focus on the "response" after series after series of provocation (which does not gather as near as much attention in the driveby media)...
That's cool. My only experience with German guns is playing Medal of Honor - Allied Assault. Not quite the same.
Actually after playing modern games on PC or whatever, shooting the MP5 for real seems very similar to the games in a weird way...
You could also say that Israel is trying to initiate conflict by continuing to build and maintain settlements in the West Bank, and continuing to impose rules based solely on ethnicity even when security isn't involved. Then they try and claim that they are innocent victims when the Palestinians use terrorism. They could also be said to be initiating conflict by holding some of the prisoners they have. It could be said that if Israel really wanted peace they could just release the prisoners in the first place. In this particular case, the Palestinians should release the hostage, and he shouldn't be a hostage. Sadly they don't really have an army to fight the Israelis and can't hold the soldier as a prisoner of war. There is rarely one side to any issue here. As long as the settlements, and oppression of the palestinians and their lands continue Israel will never be blameless. By the same token using terrorism to acheive goals is always wrong. There is never an excuse for it, and it should always be fought against.
Israeli missiles pound Gaza into new Dark Age in 'collective punishment' By Donald Macintyre in southern Gaza Published: 29 June 2006 As a textbook example of hi-tech precision bombardment it could hardly be improved. Smoke was still rising yesterday from the scorched wreckage of the six transformers at Gaza's only power station, each destroyed by a single missile fired by an Israeli warplane some 10 hours earlier. Had they hit the huge cylindrical diesel tank 100 metres away they would have set the whole power station alight. But the strike was clinically effective, cutting all the electricity to 700,000 Gaza consumers, threatening water supplies and depriving its public of light, cooking, broadcast news, and * a crucial issue in scorching summer temperatures * fans. "I'm so surprised that they did this," said Dr Derar Abu Sisi, the operations manager at the Al Nusirat power station. "We have been right through the worst of the intifada but this didn't happen." It would, Dr Abu Sisi said, take a "minimum of three to six months" to restore supplies at a cost between $5m (£2.8m) and $7m. "The Geneva Convention says it is not allowed to attack infrastructure for the civilian people," he added. "You might expect that economic infrastructure could be a target in the last stages of a war. But this is not like that." The damage to Gaza's power supply was condemned as "unacceptable and barbaric collective punishment of civilians, including women, children and old people" by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, which complained it was intensifying what it says are the difficulties he already faces in trying to secure the safe release of Gilad Shalit, the 19-year-old Israeli army corporal abducted by militants * including members of Hamas's military wing * on Sunday. The crisis escalated yesterday as Hamas called for the prisoner swap Israel has so far refused to entertain; another faction responsible for Cpl Shalit's abduction, the Popular Resistance Committees, threatened to kill Eliahu Asheri, 18, a settler it says it is holding, if Israel does not end its military campaign in Gaza, and a third, the al-Aqsa Martyrs, claimed to have seized a 62-year-old man from the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion. In retaliation, Israeli soldiers last night arrested the Labour Minister, Mohammed Barghouthi, a member of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian security officials said. The army fired a barrage of artillery rounds into northern Gaza throughout the night, including at the Islamic University in Gaza City, as it prepared to tell local residents to leave their homes before moving in force into Beit Hanoun to attack Qassam rocket launching units. Roads in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis were also targeted. The Israeli army said they were to prevent the kidnapped soldier being moved and to cut off access to militants launching rockets at Israel. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the army would not hesitate to carry out "extreme action" in the coming days to bring the abducted soldier back to his family. The aerial attack on the power station was one of four conducted early yesterday. The other three were on bridges in central Gaza, which the Israel Defence Forces said were intended to hamper attempts by Cpl Shalit's captors to move him from the south to the north. Yesterday, however, a side road alongside the most easterly of these, which fords the currently dried-up river running through the Wadi Gaza on the main north-south Salahadin road, was busy with traffic which had turned off to avoid the wrecked bridge and continue its journey unimpeded towards Gaza City from the south. Another target was an old railway bridge 200 metres to the west, which the army says can be used by vehicles but which carried a now-broken water pipeline to two refugee camps. Zakri al-Ouh, 62, a construction worker who lives near by and helped to build the two-lane road bridge under Egyptian supervision in 1965 and 1966, said: "When it rains then it will be impossible to use the road, but at the moment I can't see how this can help the soldier." He added: "At first I was in favour of handing back the soldier as quickly as possible. We have to consider the power of Israel against our own weakness. "But now they have done this I think there should be an exchange of prisoners before he is handed back." The southernmost town of Rafah * to which roads were notably less crowded than usual yesterday * still has power because it takes its electricity from Israel. But Rafah, which had most to gain from Israel's withdrawal last August because it had been the most ravaged in all of the occupied territories during four years of the intifada, now fears a return of conflict. Yesterday morning, with Israeli troops and tanks now occupying the disused airport two kilometres from the town centre, Maher Abu Ermana 21, was doing a brisk trade in sacks of flour, oil, sugar and beans provided by aid agencies, sold to him by impoverished refugee recipients trying to make a few extra shekels, and invariably labelled "not for resale". Such is Gaza's dysfunctional economic cycle that Mr Abu Ermana is now selling his wares to customers stocking up in fear of war shortages. Up until two days ago, after Cpl Gilad Shalit was abducted, he said: "I was selling two sacks a day. Now I am selling 20 to 40." "We are all worried," said Zakia Mahmoud, 40, who has 10 children. "I hope it will not return to what it was before. If it does, we will lose half of our sons." The most audible element of the "message" Israel says it is delivering to Gaza in the hope of securing the safe release of Cpl Shalit * in the event of which it says it will pull back its forces from the Strip * are the sonic booms produced by warplanes deliberately flying faster than the speed of sound over Gaza. Yesterday's booms * which produce the shattering sound of a heavy explosion in the immediate vicinity * started at 5am and were the first for several months, after two human rights groups filed a High Court petition saying that they constituted an illegal "collective punishment". But the most powerful impact of Israel's * so far * "specific and limited" military campaign is likely to be power cuts. Gaza City's main Shifa hospital said its generator was working 24 hours a day but because of fuel shortages could keep going for only two weeks. Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, insisted the attacks on power stations and bridges were justified by the need to bring out Cpl Shalit alive. The Israeli human rights agency Btselem warned that the power cuts would jeopardise water supplies and health care. It stressed that Israel had the right to enact "all legal measures" to secure the release of Cpl Shalit but not those which conflict with international humanitarian law prohibitions against "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". independent
Things are getting a little crazy now -- Hamas saying they are shooting chemicals into Israel and I heard the 19 year old prisoner/hostage is dead [i'll try to find a link].
So the Israelis are using collective punishment again as the preferred weapon of choice? I vote we just have one big 'final conflict' between the Israelis and the Arabs and settle this thing (of course, that's probably what people thought back during the Crusades, that it would settle the issue 'once and for all', only to have it come back and haunt the region once more centuries later). OK, I take it back, there is no 'final' conflict that would do anyone any good...
so israelis are now taking hostages of palestinian officials. and all this is happening under the control of peretz. im extremely disappointed. times
Gaza voices: Israeli air strikes There is tension and fear in the Gaza Strip following the Israeli bombing raids overnight. The BBC News website spoke to three Palestinians in Gaza about what happened and their worries for the hours ahead. DOAA ABU-HARB, STUDENT, RAFAH I am in Rafah, about 600 metres from the border, but not near the Israeli military, thank God. We have no electricity, so now I can't watch what is happening on television. I am listening to the radio which is on batteries, I don't know how long they will last. The situation last night was so terrible. I heard a lot of shelling. I hear more shelling and guns this morning. I think Israel is planning a huge attack, so everybody will stay inside. I have my small nephews in our home. If I am frightened in front of them I think they will die of fear. I think things will get more dangerous, I hope we have a solution before another night comes. We are living, but we feel as if we are dead. Power and force is not a good way, but we were obliged to use kidnapping, to use force against force. I think they must give the soldier back. LAMA HOURANI, NGO WORKER, GAZA CITY It is frightening, it is ugly. On all levels, it is not good. They bombed the main power station which gives power to 40-50% of Gaza. According to the Palestinian Authority, nearly half of Gaza is without electricity. They say it will take a few months to repair. All water needs to be pumped, so if we don't have power, we don't have water. We installed a private generator at work last week, so we are lucky. But because of the closures we don't have enough fuel. So we can't even fuel the generator. To be frank I don't know what should happen. I know the kidnapping is legal because we are fighting an illegal occupation. At the same I can see the consequences of it and I don't see political gain for the Palestinians. REEM EL-ZAEEM, STUDENT, GAZA CITY We couldn't sleep. One of the bridges that was hit is about two kilometres away. We heard it all. It was terrifying. I think this is the beginning, this is nothing. We do have electricity, just in our area. I haven't spoken to anyone outside the house yet. I feel like a prisoner. The kidnapping was an act of revenge for all the innocent Palestinians who have been killed. We are not going to forget the screams of Huda [a Palestinian girl who lost her family in an explosion on a Gaza beach on 9 June]. What happened to her is in our shared memory. The best outcome is that they release our prisoners, the innocents and then we release the Israeli soldier. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5124172.stm
So much for Israel not attacking civilian targets. I guess both sides target civilians now. What I mess. I am so angry at both sides.
