Gaza under attack yet again.

[frogwoman]

By captive market I think he means for Israeli goods since there's little opportunity to buy anything/import anything else into Gaza.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

By captive market I think he means for Israeli goods since there's little opportunity to buy anything/import anything else into Gaza.

Oh yeah because, and I dunno if this is true or not, Israel have actually calculated the level of calories Gazans 'need' to subsist on haven't they? Surely the only way you can actually ensure that is by actually providing those calories. If that's the case then yeah I can see how Gaza is a captive market.

 

[laptop]

An article originally in Ha'aretz discussing the "Captain R" murder of the 13 year old girl mentioned earlier in the thread mentioned this, somewhat obliquely (emphasis added):

Dima had a different method: "The first thing I do is to knock the water tank off the roof. If water spills out, it indicates the house is inhabited.

The Wikipedia article points to soldiers using roof tanks for target practice (and to disrupt the inhabitants' lives). That has certainly been commonplace in the West Bank.

 

[butchersapron]

Can you expand on this point please as I don't think it's been properly explored on this thread. Who are the 100 000 low wage workers? Those in the west bank or do you mean Gaza because if it's Gaza I don't see how Israeli capital uses their labour. Also, by 'captive market' do you mean Gazans or those Palestinians in the West Bank? Again, I can see how that fits with the West Bank but not Gaza, apart from the fact Israel controls Gaza's energy but the IDF bombed the power station so isn't that destroying their energy market there, for now at least? You made some good points in post #3070 about the politics of it and dividing Hamas and Fatah further but I'm not entirely clear on how capital fits into it, it obviously does though.

Also, and I know this sounds crass and I'm directing this point at anyone who cares to answer it, but why don't Israel just level Gaza? Yes they're making a pretty good job of it now of course but they're obviously not going to go all out and destroy it completely, for now anyway. Is it because there's still arable land in Gaza? Is it because the international outrage would be too strong? It's not strong enough now of course but I think that would change if Israel did decide to destroy it completely. Is it because the West Bank would descend into unrest too great to be quelled by occupying forces there? Again, I know it's well suppressed now but I should imagine it would be difficult to suppress the level of unrest that would arise there should Gaza be completely destroyed. Is it any of the above, none of the above or some other reason I'm completely missing?

Of course mate, i'll get on it tmw afternoon - key points (comically can't do it in morning as on Palestinian march)

 

[Spymaster]

Probably not, but allowing the population of Gaza to live something approaching a normal life will almost certainly reduce the chances of things kicking off every so often.

What's the difference between Gaza, WB, and Golan?

 

[Spymaster]

What pisses me off about this is the way Hamas are viewed by SOME sections of the left-that is through rose tinted glasses. They are a nasty anti semitic and homophobic organisation. Sure we can argue about scale and context blah blah blah-fact is the same murderous intent and mindset exists between the Israeli state and Hamas-they are both vile entities. When I see Mark Regev on TV and the Hamas Leadership I want to kick my TV off its stand. They make me puke-and Hamas aren't the answer...they are part of the problem. They both compliment each other well because they justify each others agenda

Top post.

Regev needs to be shat upon by every decent human being on the planet.

He's the Israeli version of that that silly Iraqi cunt, Comical Ali, who denied that the yanks were coming down the chimney whilst the whole fucking world watched the tanks behind him and went

 

[laptop]

the Israeli state and Hamas ... complement each other well because they justify each others' agenda

ISTR digging out references for the proposition that the State of Israel gave seed money for the formation of Hamas, as a way to divide the PLO and to weaken Fatah and the PFLP.

 

[belboid]

What's the difference between Gaza, WB, and Golan?

Golan is Syrian, rather than Palestinian. And the geography of it makes for a far more difficult terrain for thiskind of fighting.

Gaza & West Bank, a lot of it is straightforwardly political, Fatah are stronger in WB, partly because it was always the bigger and better connected area generally - Gaza was heavilly reliant on Israel for work, food etc, even when the Egyptian border was open, now it isn't.... And it's not as if there haven't been plenty of inciursions into the West Bank over the years.

 

[rekil]

http://maki.org.il/en/?p=2728

Palestinian Communist key figure murdered in Gaza

The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) express their deep shock, grief and rage over the coldblooded murder of Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) comrade Imad Asfour by Israeli criminal military assault in Gaza Strip. Our friend comrade Asfour served as the Deputy Chairman of the Control Committee and Head of the Youth Development Organization and was a key figure in the PPP. Just two days prior to Imad’s murder, his father was also killed by an Israeli attack. As we know, in the last three weeks such deaths have been the lot of more than one thousand Palestinians in Gaza Strip! That must be stopped!

Anyone got more info?

 

[butchersapron]

http://maki.org.il/en/?p=2728


Anyone got more info?

That's a big one. Fuck.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

72 hour humanitarian ceasefire from 0600hrs BST.

 

[weltweit]

72 hour humanitarian ceasefire from 0600hrs BST.

Lets hope no one breaks it!

 

[MrSki]

Lets hope no one breaks it!

Rocket sirens over southern Israel.

 

[TomUS]

BBC TV says four dead & a bunch wounded from Israeli helicopter fire near Rafah. I'm afraid this ceasefire isn't going to last long.

 

[Kalfindin]

Quite. And the rockets would keep coming!

Peanut allergies kill more Israelis then Hamas rockets.

 

[Kalfindin]

The rockets arent a major issue.

The rockets create a psychological fear, zionists are self obsessed, its putting them on edge, letting them know they are not living in a religious utopia, while others live and die in misery.

 

[J Ed]

As someone referenced the lack of alternatives in Gaza, it might be worth looking at some fairly recent history of Hamas and Israel.

From the unabashedly Zionist WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123275572295011847

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

...

A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.

Israel's experience echoes that of the U.S., which, during the Cold War, looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism. Anti-Soviet forces backed by America after Moscow's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda.

At stake is the future of what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, the biblical lands now comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Israelis and Palestinians have each asserted claims over the same territory.

The Palestinian cause was for decades led by the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist outfit and sought to crush until the 1990s, when the PLO dropped its vow to destroy the Jewish state. The PLO's Palestinian rival, Hamas, led by Islamist militants, refused to recognize Israel and vowed to continue "resistance." Hamas now controls Gaza, a crowded, impoverished sliver of land on the Mediterranean from which Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005.

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.

"When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake," says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. "But at the time nobody thought about the possible results."

Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas. They blame the group's recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran. This view is shared by the Israeli government. "Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons," Mr. Olmert said last Saturday. Hamas has denied receiving military assistance from Iran.

Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military's Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: "It is like saying: 'I will kill all the mosquitoes.' But then you get even worse insects that will kill you...You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda."

When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians. The group ultimately trounced secular rivals, notably Fatah, in a 2006 election supported by Israel's main ally, the U.S.

Now, one big fear in Israel and elsewhere is that while Hamas has been hammered hard, the war might have boosted the group's popular appeal. Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, came out of hiding last Sunday to declare that "God has granted us a great victory."

Most damaged from the war, say many Palestinians, is Fatah, now Israel's principal negotiating partner. "Everyone is praising the resistance and thinks that Fatah is not part of it," says Baker Abu-Baker, a longtime Fatah supporter and author of a book on Hamas.

 

[Kalfindin]

What pisses me off about this is the way Hamas are viewed by SOME sections of the left-that is through rose tinted glasses. They are a nasty anti semitic and homophobic organisation. Sure we can argue about scale and context blah blah blah-fact is the same murderous intent and mindset exists between the Israeli state and Hamas-they are both vile entities. When I see Mark Regev on TV and the Hamas Leadership I want to kick my TV off its stand. They make me puke-and Hamas aren't the answer...they are part of the problem. They both compliment each other well because they justify each others agenda

Give an example of their anti semitism ?Homophobic ? you have to understand most of the world outside Europe and the anglo-sphere is homophobic. Would you not have supported the Viet Cong because they were homophobic ?

This is the real world of what they do and why they are supported.
"social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities". Social services include running relief programs and funding schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues".

 

[D'wards]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_the_Gaza_Strip

 

[Kalfindin]

As someone referenced the lack of alternatives in Gaza, it might be worth looking at some fairly recent history of Hamas and Israel.

From the unabashedly Zionist WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123275572295011847

Lets get real, the PLOs decline was caused by their own corruption.

 

[TomUS]

Hamas & Likud are the winners in this. Fatah is the loser.

 

[Kalfindin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_the_Gaza_Strip

Anti Palestinian propaganda. Islam has taken the place of communism as the new bogeyman.

 

[J Ed]

Anti Palestinian propaganda. Islam has taken the place of communism as the new bogeyman.

god your posts are so awful. You are the first person I've put on ignore, congrats.

 

[Kalfindin]

god your posts are so awful. You are the first person I've put on ignore, congrats.

Just stick with the facts, instead of coming across like a patronising middle class twat who works in social services.

 

[likesfish]

Hamas are not the good guys slightly less corrupt than fatah but throwing people off roofs is not really "nice"
But round people up and shell them every so often its hardly likely to produce new fatah is it?

 

[belboid]

Would you not have supported the Viet Cong because they were homophobic ?

so homophobic that they never introduced criminalised gay acts? They weren't actually very homophobic at all.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_the_Gaza_Strip

Sounds positively progressive compared to some other arab states. Most of what's in that article sounds like its carried out by groups who aren't Hamas. Again, no love lost for any government who seek to govern with religious underpinnings but should try and keep things in perspective.

 

[belboid]

To get back to this; because this to my mind is the more important stuff we should be discussing: based purely on Israeli friends, it is starting to become the case that Jewish and Palestinian workers occasionally strike and march together. The Tent City in 2011 for example involved Jewish and Palestinian workers.

I'm not gonna disagree with what you're saying about SA exactly - but I am going to say this. Before the Soweto uprising, and the formation of Cosatu and the UDM, the emergence of real working class struggle against the Apartheid state (seperate to the exiled ANC by the way), there were no sanctions or whatever. Cultural, financial or otherwise, there weren't. What made companies reluctant to invest was the clear determination of the black majority to destroy Apartheid.

That is I guess why I'm so sceptical of BDS - without serious class struggle within Israel itself, I don't see how the money will dry up.

It is absolutely true that the SA boycott only grew on the back of the uprising, and a generalised black struggle against apartheid. But the thing is, they then helped to feed each other. The boycott (or the proposed boycott) helped to keep the struggle in peoples minds - if you are sat around going 'its shit but there's nothing we can do' then the story drops off the agenda, it means our government are less likely to even try to do anything. The boycott helped to force the government to make condemnatory noises, and some (very minor) acts. That's a help.

Of course it wont (and didnt) win all by itself, that will be down to more local working class forces (the wider arab w-c, especially, at the moment, in Egypt), but anything that adds pressure is of assistance.

As to the jewish and arab w-c uniting in Palestine itself, well, I still see precious little hope for it, or examples of it. Even in this weeks Socialist - which has a generally very good article on Gaza - it doesnt offer much hope, cant point to any particular examples of such unity in action. Sad, but true.

 

[ddraig]

truce already over? seen tweet saying Israel informed UN

 

[frogwoman]

Massive reports of shelling in Rafa