[noir_lord]

This is pretty close to my summation to my gf the other evening

"Every few years Hamas launches rockets at Israel, Israel then uses the opportunity to smash the crap out of Hamas for a few days while "international concern" grows, at a certain point Israel stops the attacks, the international community claims a victory and Hamas gets a bloody nose, nothing changes and it all happens again in 2-3 years"

I suspect sometimes I'm too cynical..then I read the news.

[BuildTheRobots]

>Every few years Hamas launches rockets at Israel

It's not every few years, it's every few weeks. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_atta...

[adamors]

> Hamas gets a bloody nose

Is Hamas even a target anymore? In 4 days Operation Protective Edge took the life of 114 people, 88 of which were non combatant civilians [1]. They even managed to destroy a centre for disabled people. [2] That's a quite a big margin of error for one of the most advanced armies on the planet.

[1] http://www.sunherald.com/2014/07/11/5693711/gaza-death-toll-...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/12/disabled-palest...

[philwelch]

What people never mention is that they only target the sites that rockets get launched from. It's a cheap propaganda win for Hamas to launch rockets from football stadiums and hospitals.

[noir_lord]

There is an issue of impartiality on your sources (at least the Guardian), it's one of the better newspapers but is still pretty biased towards Palestinians.

[hn_politics145]

Hamas weapons are and have always been the target.

They store these weapons in houses, in mosques, in hospitals in the hopes that civilians die and then useful people like you come and post these comments.

[Someone]

You are not mentioning why Hamas starts the cycle time and time again: a young population (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Gaza_Stri...), continuously harassed by Israeli actions that Israel deems necessary for the security of its population. Those rockets are lethal, but also just signs of frustration. To me, this conflict looks like a twelve year old having an argument with a four year old. The twelve year old can harass the four year old with words until the four year old starts kicking/screaming/biting. When you force them apart, both will claim the other started it, and both will, in a sense, be right.

This area of the world has found a local optimum that isn't very optimal and that nobody wants, but that nobody sees a way out of, either.