Issue date: 2/13/09 Section: News and Opinion

Hopefully you have already read my colleague's report on the basic history of Israel, and if you haven't I am going to assume you already know everything, thus allowing me to proceed with the basic future outlook for the Israelis and the Palestinians. First I will start off with a short review of what we already know from history and the previous article. Palestinians and Israelis have not always gotten along like one thinks neighbors should. After all, what happens in one backyard happens in the front yard of the other.

Israel was allotted its land, and also bought land from the Bedouins. The next day of there was war from all sides and after the next few decades, Israel became larger than the United Nations first expected it to be. If I were to point fingers at their growth up to the 1970s, all of my fingers would be pointing at Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and a few others. Israel doesn't recognize Hamas as the head of a government nor does most any other western state. Nor does Hamas recognize Israel. They seem to both have taken a page of Immanuel Kant's book and do not recognize that which is reality. This brings us to the current dilemma today in the Great Holy Land.

The recent war in Gaza was known as Operation Cast Lead. Its conception was approximately six months ago when Israel and Hamas were negotiating a cease fire. Defense Minister Ehud Barak began a massive intelligence campaign into the infrastructure of Hamas in Gaza. The cease fire hiatus was intended to allow Israel time to build up and plan an unprecedented strike against Hamas. There were two main objectives to this operation. The first was to put an end to the rockets and mortars being fired into Southern Israel. And the second was to restore the Israeli deterrent, or, in other words, project the idea that shooting anything into Israeli territory would be met with certain death.

According to Israel they accomplished the goals they set out to achieve, but according to Hamas the Israeli's failed to deal a heavy blow. The truth of the matter is that unless Hamas doesn't have its infrastructure in Gaza, it was dealt a heavy blow. The unfortunate and tragic result of Israel's firepower and Hamas using civilian areas to fire their mortars and rockets was the massive amount of casualties on the Palestinian side. Over 1,300 civilians were killed and of those 412 were children. Twenty-one thousand homes were destroyed or badly damaged.

This is very much a disproportionate response to mortars and rockets being fired into Israel. But it is a response saying, we will not tolerate attacks on our state that generates not only death but a severe psychological impact on the population. Olmert has promised an even more devastating retaliation if rockets were fired after the unilateral cease fires. During the three weeks of fighting thirteen Israelis died.

Continued...

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