Dec 31 2008
Israel Rejects Truce.. No Surprises Here
Today Israel rejected a truce offer from Hamas, in which I can say I am not totally surprised. This situation looks exactly like what happened during the summer of 2006, when Israel fought a short lived war with Hezbollah. Air strikes, massive destruction and mounting civilian casualties. Even with the heavy bombardment, Hezbollah was still able to fire rockets into Israel with ease. Hamas has been able to fire rockets into Israel even though they have been bombed for the last 72 hours. You would think that they would have learned something with their war with Hezbollah.
Its readily apparent that they have not learned because they are repeating the same misguided policies they pursued two years ago. It makes you think why are they really bombing Gaza back into the stone age? Hamas is entrenched in the Gaza strip and would prove very difficult to eliminate them completely. In addition to that they also have the backing of the people because they are perceived as the legitimate resistance against Israel. It is obvious that Israel is not serious about taking out Hamas because they have not committed the necesarry amount of troops for this operation.
They don’t want to re-occupy Gaza for any length of time because it will be bloody and very costly in terms of life and treasure. I believe that this is only a show of force by the Israelis and nothing more. Nothing good will come of this. Hamas will still be standing at the end of the day and Israel is going to look like the villain for killing hundreds of innocent civilians and making life for Palestinians even more harsh. Israel is going to have to bite the bullet, sit down at the table with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Mahmoud Abbas and all other interested parties to solve this problem. Talking to your enemies might just work, or at least it wouldn’t hurt to try to reach out to them. There is one thing that the Palestinians and the Israelis have in common and that is that they are both human. Work something out it shouldn’t be this hard to come to a viable solution.
