They achieved their short term objective at the expense of the long-term objective, which is to have lasting peace. They have made Hamas more popular among the Palestinean population.

They could have stopped the rocket fire on their civilians if they had simply agreed to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza, as that was the original terms of the 6 month cease-fire, and was the reason that Hamas did not renew the cease-fire. Now it looks like they are going to be pressured into doing that anyway, so the war and all those killed ends up being for nothing.

The reason Hamas did not renew the cease-fire is because they finally finished re-arming and re-stockpiling their weapons. That was the only reason they agreed to the initial cease-fire, not because they suddenly felt a wave of goodwill and peace towards Israel. Once they finished re-arming, the rocket fire began, which in turn forced the IDF to put a stop to it. Which they did.

Why do you repeatedly, and un-ashamedly insist on giving a self-proclaimed murder organization the benefit of the doubt in their every move and every gesture?? Who are you trying to convince of Hamas' peaceful intentions (besides your one forum groupie Dannyell)??
Hamas' charter and purpose of being is the destruction of the state of Israel, NOT peaceful co-existence. They make no secret of this, and they are shunned by every Western government as a non-cooperative, uneducated, repressive outfit which commits atrocities against not only Israelis, but against their own people. Whether its hiding behind schools and hospitals when they shoot their rockets (using Palestinian civilians as human shields), or shooting their own Palestinian males in the head (on-sight summary executions for "suspected collaborators". No trial, just a bullet in the head). Yet you insist on excusing their actions and blaming the Israelis for doing the most basic task of government: protecting their citizenry from murder. You insist on fabricating peaceful motives for Hamas' every move, which they themselves openly reject.

The "lasting peace" of which you speak cannot be accomplished as long as Hamas has the reins of power in Gaza. Their "polularity" among the Palestinian population is a fabricated image that they are thrusting onto the media outlets. In reality, their "popularity" is highly questionable, since they have brutally repressed the multitude of moderate voices among the Palestinians. The moderates who understand that firing rockets at their neighbor will only bring back more misery, but are afraid to speak up for fear of a Hamas death squad showing up at their door.

If you believe that, then not only have you read absoutely nothing about the cease-fire, but there is no point in discussing this any further.

BTW, I'll just add that this was their purpose for being created in the first place. So they have indeed achieved that goal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsLw7AiFsK8


Hamas was created by the Mossad to surpress the moderate Palestinean voices and thus make the Palestineans appear to all be extremists. Mossad agents recruited the most extreme individuals and helped to organize them against the more moderate PLO.

Fox News aired a nice program about this last month.

Those Mossad boys should be happy as not only did they discredit the PLO, but Hamas is much more popular today among Palestineans than is the PLO. Great job! :thumbup:

I'm sure the Inteligence chief who thought this one up is considered an Israeli hero! He belongs right up there with William Casey, the CIA chief who helped Osama bin Laden recruit and train the Mujahadeen terrorists in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

Kind of reminds you of how the FBI used to provoke riots at Civil Rights marches in order to make King and the SCLC look violent.

Our leaders are not able to see more than 2 days into the future. The word "blowback" is an understatement.

Hey, I thought you said "there is no point in discussing this any further"???:rolleyes: But I guess you just have to have the last word on everything!

You are obviously loathsome of Israel and everything it stands for. My job here was not convince YOU otherwise, but to help the other Forum members dissect through your pro-Hamas BS.

Mossad, like any other intelligence agency in the world, have had their stellar moments, and their not-so-stellar moments. But overall, they are an elite outfit without whom Israel would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Many of their operations have been nothing short of brilliant, epitomized by the capture of Eichmann in Buenos Aires.

As for the CIA and William Casey, I think supporting the Mujahadeen against the Soviets WAS a fantastic move. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War, and forced the Soviets to admit defeat and pull out of Afghanistan. Two years later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Hindsight is ALWAYS 20-20, and you can now play Mr. Prophet and say "I told you so", with regard to Bin Laden. But I do not view the arming of the Mujahadeen during the early 80s Cold War as a failure. It accomplished the goal.

moshe cohen , soldier in the paratroopers unit of the IDF.(here becouse i have the e70).
i read alot of what you said here and the only thing i have to say to you is that you CANT see from there
the things we understand from here.
the hate of the arab people to jews from the age of time is something that you cant understand.

shortly, the deffrence between us and them is simply that they dont want the jewish people to exist at all.

i have alot to say but its too much for the forum.
thank you

moshe, toda ach sheli! Para's did a great job man, I have a cousin in givati 2 in Golani and a good friend just finished his gibbush for sayeret. Many of the people on forums do not understand that we HAVE to protect ourselves or we would get driven to the sea.

It could have been done in ways in which would not attracted so much protest around the world and with less casualties...

it really couldnt of been done any other way, and I do not think a cease fire should have been initiated until hamas was extinct.

Not certain this is the thread for this, but an interesting snippet from
a recent Friedman column. Edited by yours truly, though the paragraphs
pasted are not fiddled with...link below has entire column.
BR,mD

...
Where to begin?

Palestinians are now divided between the West Bank and Gaza, with a secular Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank and a fundamentalist Hamas government based in Gaza. But Hamas is further divided between a military and political wing, and the political wing is further divided between a Gaza-based leadership and a Damascus-based leadership, with the latter taking orders from both Syria and Iran.

Are you still with me?

Best I can tell, the Palestinians from Gaza are simultaneously negotiating a cease-fire with Israel in Cairo, pursuing war-crimes charges against Israel in Europe, digging new tunnels in the Sinai to smuggle more rockets into Gaza to hit Tel Aviv and trying to raise money for reconstruction from Iran. Meanwhile, the West Bank Palestinian leaders are busy publicly collecting food and blankets to help all those Palestinian civilians brutalized by the Israeli incursion into Gaza, while privately demanding to know from senior Israeli officials why they wimped out and didn’t wipe Hamas in Gaza off the face of earth — casualties be damned.

Israel, meanwhile, has a government in which the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister each has a different peace plan, war strategy and cease-fire conditions for Gaza, and the foreign minister and defense minster are running against each other in Israel’s election on Tuesday. Speaking of that election, a whole new party, Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, which has been accused of having “fascist,” viciously anti-Arab leanings, appears headed to make the biggest gains and possibly become the kingmaker of Israel’s next government. The other day, the Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, was quoted in the newspaper Haaretz as criticizing Lieberman as a lamb in hawk’s clothing, asking: “When has he ever shot anyone?”

How did this conflict get so fragmented? For starters, it’s gone on way too long. The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel’s crazy settlements from Palestinian villages that a Palestinian could fly from Jerusalem to Paris quicker than he or she could drive from Jenin, here in the northern West Bank, to Hebron in the south.

Another reason is that every idea has been tried and has failed. For the Palestinians, Pan-Arabism, Communism, Islamism have all come and gone, with none having delivered statehood or prosperity. As a result, more and more Palestinians have fallen back on family, clan, town and tribal loyalties. In Israel, Peace Now’s two-state solution was blown up with the crash of the Oslo peace accords, the rising Palestinian birthrate made any plans to annex the West Bank a mortal threat to Israel’s Jewish character, and the rockets that followed Israel’s withdrawals from both Lebanon and Gaza made a mockery of those who said unilateral pullouts were the solution.

All of this has led to a resurgence of religiosity. According to Haaretz, the following questions were posed by a well-known rabbi in one of the pamphlets distributed by the Israeli Army’s Office of Chief Rabbi before the latest Gaza fighting: “Is it possible to compare today’s Palestinians to the Philistines of the past? And if so, is it possible to apply lessons today from the military tactics of Samson and David? A comparison is possible because the Philistines of the past were not natives and had invaded from a foreign land.” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/op...4friedman.html