[YZF]

Gaza has chosen a confrontational attitude with their neighbors Egypt and Israel. When Israel withdrew from Gaza they proceeded to promptly demolish the greenhouses that Israel left (and I believed donors actually purchased for them). Next was lynching their fellow Palestinians who happened to support Fatah rather than Hamas. Tunneling under the borders. Rocket attacks ...

For sure there are two sides to the story and many Palestinians who think differently but Hamas in Gaza does not wish to lead a peaceful life side by side with its neighbors and that has consequences.

[Cyph0n]

And the solution is to indiscriminately bomb Gaza and then prevent it from rebuilding once the bombing is over? What did the children ever do to deserve watching their parents or friends or teachers die before their very eyes?

Do you even realize how difficult it would be for a child to live life normally after their school is destroyed? How do you think such actions will affect young children? If you were one of the children who witnessed the horrors during aerial bombardment, would you ever forget?

[YZF]

I don't have a solution. There's plenty of trauma on both sides. I don't want to start dredging up all the horrible acts of violence experienced by Israelis. This sort of thinking is not productive. It's more useful to think given where we are right now what can be done...

Part of the issue with rebuilding is that the raw materials get confiscated to support the war effort.

The bombing is at least partly related to the reduction of other options. Israel used to have the option of driving tanks in to get at some particular problem but now Gaza is so heavily mined and full of anti-tank weapons that this can't be done. It also has a significant tunnel network which makes infantry less of an option. So if someone fires a rocket at you from Gaza you have fewer options. This is just a pure strategic calculation, not really political. Part of that calculation is also the moral side, the impact on the population and the public opinion side of bombing, hence the "knock on roof" protocols and various pre-warning to allow people to evict buildings that are targets to a bomb. But surely a lot of innocent people still do get hurt, this tends to happen in war...

At any rate, this is very much not black and white. I think these days in Israel there is a lot less interest in peace mostly because getting burned with previous attempts has left deep scars in the general population. Anything that can be done to try and normalize things is welcome...

[Cyph0n]

It is indeed not black and white. But when you are surrounded on all sides by a wall, when living conditions never improve, when hospitals lack even the most basic equipment, and when there is no improvement in sight, doesn't armed resistance make sense?

Hamas sometimes takes it a bit too far, I'll definitely admit that, but I think resistance is a valid approach to their conundrum. When you are outgunned and outnumbered, does that mean you just give up?

[YZF]

Don't take it personally but it sounds you're not really familiar with the details and the history of the conflict.

Gaza is not surrounded on all sides by a wall. They have a long border with Egypt that's been relatively porous until fairly recently when Egypt has begun to construct obstacles, they have the sea (under naval blockade but they're allowed to fish) and even the border with Israel is not 100% walled. You might be confusing Gaza with the wall that was erected between Israel and parts of the West Bank. It's true they are isolated which again is what happens when you piss off your neighbors. There are border crossings and people and goods do cross.

Their living conditions do improve, but slowly, and tend to regress when a conflict flares out. Again, partly by their choice of what to invest in.

Resistance is the cause of their (well Hamas or a portion thereof) conundrum and it's going to get them nowhere. What are they resisting? They're resisting the existence of the state of Israel.

As long as they continue "resisting" in the form of tunneling under the border, investing all their resources in arming themselves to the teeth, building and using an arsenal of rockets, supporting the ISIS contingency in Sinai, indiscriminately attacking civilians, inciting hate and racism, etc. they are going to find themselves in a bad spot. The answer to your question for most people is yes, if you're outgunned and outnumbered by many of orders of magnitude you "give up" or at least try and avoid outright war. They could get an agreement tomorrow if all they cared about was living peacefully in Gaza and improving their condition but they want to get territorial ownership of the entirety of Israel which they claim to be the rightful owners of from before 1948 when Israel was created. That's is closer to (but still not the complete, it's more complicated) root of the conflict.

If they stuck to peaceful forms of protest they'd have some chance of having their voice heard while at the same time improving their conditions vastly. If they seek a peaceful solution they must convince Israelis that peace is possible in some form. It seems they are thinking about taking Israel by force eventually and are willing to wait it out as long as it takes (at least the leaders, not necessarily the man on the street who has no say).

[serge2k]

> doesn't armed resistance make sense

Not when stopping likely means your enemy is willing to help.

[berntb]

As far as I know, the walls came up as security measures because of the second Intifada. Before that, people lived in Gaza and worked in Israel and people travelled between for shopping, etc. (This isolation gave serious economic problems in Israel too.)

So the isolation and security came up because of violence, the terror against civilian Israelis is not an original reaction to the wall.

But I suspect you know this.

[Cyph0n]

So when a population misbehaves, you setup a ghetto to isolate it? We're talking about upwards of a million people here by the way. Is that really the right way to handle things?

Looking at the whole picture, I maintain that resistance is justified.

[serge2k]

When they are actively trying to murder people, yes. It's not right, but neither is sending in suicide bombers.

[berntb]

You don't contradict that you were aware of my points..?

If e.g. Finland or Estonia started to shoot rocket artilleri towards St Petersburg, the reaction would certainly be much worse than Israel's at Gaza...

(And because of Karelia etc for Finland and generations of slavery for Estonians, they have as good reasons as the Gazans.)

The situation is:

Side A attack side B's civilians. You only complain about side B's quite moderate defense against A's attacks. (Again, installed to stop the attacks.) Then you motivate that further attacks from A are understandable, because of B's defense.

It is such a sad case of hypocritical and hateful circular logic I get vertigo. :-(

[shmulkey18]

Tell this to the children of Sderot in Israel, who have been repeatedly under attack by the Islamist Hamas regime in Gaza.

The murder of Jews is regularly lauded by official Hamas spokesmen, and such murders are routinely celebrated by the Palestinian masses (http://www.dailywire.com/news/6451/palestinians-murder-israe...).

The solution is for Hamas to give up its dream of the liquidation of Israel and its replacement with an Islamist regime in which Jews are second-class citizens, in accord with the Islamist interpretation of Koranic verses which call for the subjugation of Jews by means such as the jizyah tax and so on.

[RockyMcNuts]

picture I have of greenhouses (if wrong please correct and provide links)

- at time of withdrawal settlers were required to depart

- settlers wanted more money to leave greenhouses behind

- didn't get it from Israeli government, started demolishing

- Western philanthropists purchased remaining greenhouses and donated

- When Israelis withdrew, some greenhouses were looted

- some remained in operation, until inability to export produce through checkpoint to Israeli made them unviable

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/world/middleeast/israeli-s...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9331863/ns/world_news-mideast_n_af...

[YZF]

The headline of that NBC story is: "Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses on Tuesday, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. ".

Which is not the same as "some greenhouses were looted". My image and recollection is more like everything got looted. I mean if only very little were looted it wouldn't be a "blow to efforts"?

Also see this story about the guy who paid for most it: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/nyregion/how-old-friends-o...

I'm sure those greenhouses could have been used for export or for local consumption if the Palestinians plotted a different course after Israel withdrew. There wouldn't be a blockage on Gaza either. The whole point wrt/ to Gaza is that once Israel left their next actions were looting of greenhouses (all or some, doesn't matter) followed by an endless stream of attacks against Israel (and the excuses don't really matter either, "they started" isn't a good enough reason for shelling Sderot e.g. unless you're a 3 year old).