It would be great to hear a well-reasoned perspective, one way or the other. My stance is that bombing Gaza won't stop the rockets and it will kill civilians, so it is not justified (see above tweet).

The area has a very complex history as shown here. (hands down the best educational video that I have seen in my life) blog.ninapaley.com

Israel itself was complicit in the rise of the Hamas (= extremists). It is notoriously difficult eliminating extremists once they set up a power base and this is coming back to haunt Israel today. online.wsj.com

Now Israel wants Palestine (= moderates) to remove the extremist Hamas while Israel is attacking Palestine, both, militarily and in policy, the very things that feed Hamas?

To me, Israel is quite simply in the wrong. The international community needs to put pressure on them to stop the attacks and work with Palestine to defeat Hamas and offer a much better solution than the one at Camp David.

At first let be clear, people are more important than rockets and I keep hoping for a cease-fire.

I think that Israel is absolutly justified on the matter of the attacks at Gaza. Every Govermnent has the duty to protect its citizens. And so has Israel. Furthermore, don't forget that Israel actually offered Hamas a cease-fire and a lesser strict economic embargo, but Hamas declined it.

I think that Israel should start a ground offensive instead of this rocket attacks. Rocket attacks can't be precise and therefor there are even more innocent people killed than with a ground offensive where you can precisely target Hamas fighters.

Something that is underexposed imo is that Hamas fighters are killed and not brought to justice (for a judge).

Hi Raimond, the trouble is that while the western media overplays ( link 1) the offers by Israel and Palestine rejecting them, in fact the offers are very lopsided in Israel's favor as they keep applying the idea that possession is 9/10 ths of the law.

This was the main reason for the failure of Camp David, a very poor offer by Barak, not unreasonable demands by Arafat, although Arafat was painted as the villain in the media. The last man ready to meet Palestine in a fair manner was (link2) Rabin and he unfortunately was killed by a nationalist Jew who thought he offered too much.

Asking for a ceasefire is dealing with the symptoms, we need to cut much deeper to the disease, which is Israel's unreasonable stand on the issue.

Ceasefire! Now let's hope it'll least.

@Hardik I never trust media, and especially not about the middle-east. You're right that normally the media chooses the side of Israel but some reason Dutch media is pro-Hamas lately.

I can understand Israel's stand on the Palestine-Israel issue though, I guess there's no country that want's to give up land and I think that Camp David was a great step on the path to the solution. But of course the understanding of side of Israel leads me to understanding the side of the Palestinian people, as we actually took their land and give it to the Israelis.

I think that the only thing that we can do is help them find a working solution like with a new Camp David plan. What we absolutely shouldn't do is (1)

upgrading the Palestinian Authority in the UN from non-member organization to non-member State as that would mean making the same mistake as when we created Israel and it would only be destructive for the path to a solution.

To conclude my 'statement', I hope for a peaceful solution soon. (the sooner the better) (2/2)

@ Raimond I was going to pen a response to you arguing why the Palestinians must be given a status of a state. But Prof. Cole makes a much more cogent argument here juancole.com . The key point is "Stateless people have no real rights, since rights are enforced by a state."

thoughts?

@Hardik I'm not against a Palestine State, only against the UN creating one. When Israel doesn't recognize Palestine it would create one more problems. Therefor I do agree to everything said in the post you linked to except for the last point.

"Stateless people have no real rights, since rights are enforced by a state." -> this is indeed a major problem, I think for the time being everybody should get a passport from Israel and that everybody who wants can swap it for a passport for Palestine when Palestine becomes a country.

The difficulty with giving everyone an Israeli citizenship is that it will dilute the idea of a Jewish state, which is a deeply cherished idea for the far right . At the end of the day, politics is the art of the possible.

This is an interesting development though. thehindu.com

Lets see what happens in the next few weeks.