Friday, January 9, 2009

Defiant Israel Presses Gaza Offensive As Toll Passes 800

Big guns : Israeli mobile artillery fires shells towards the Gaza Strip
from the Israel-Gaza border. (AFP/Jack Guez)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

GAZA CITY (AFP) – Tanks and warplanes pounded Gaza on Friday after Israel defied a truce order from the UN Security Council as the death toll from the two-week-old conflict against Hamas passed 800.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not bow to "outside influence" as its aircraft carried out scores of bombings and the army's tanks shelled several locations despite an announced three-hour "humanitarian" lull.

Hamas meanwhile said it would not accept any ceasefire with Israel that did not see the lifting of a crippling blockade of the impoverished territory enacted when the Islamist movement seized power in Gaza in June 2007.

Read more ....

3 comments:

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Anonymous said...

I will admit that the complex history of U.S. and Israeli policies have been a mystery to me. Since Israel's inception there has been a tangled web of controversy and boat loads of money provided to ensure the survival of that state.

I'm concerned now more than ever that the U.S. is over-spending on Israel. The question need not be whether Israel has a right to exist, instead whether it has a duty to do so under its own volition. Whether the existence of a state is more or less about rights of the state to exist or rather more about its duties in how it manages its interrelations and affairs.

Israel's behavior has often been the target of great controversy. The fact that Israel is a strong U.S. ally in the middle-east region is a compelling reason to support them. For the pleasure of this relationship the U.S. sends Israel great sums of money every year. With U.S. help Israel has developed one of the world's most advanced military and are quite capable of protecting their territory. With additional assurances by way of standing backup support from the U.S. in case of an invasion, Israel faces no overwhelming threat. If Israel were to take a more aggressive posture in the region, say settling in areas outside their territory, taking new territory or simply controlling the territory of others, we might ask ourselves what it is that we are helping to protect.

At a minimum, the U.S. should not support a military regime bent on controlling the region. If the U.S. provides support and assurances to support such a regime under all circumstances, then we may well be the cause of their overzealous ambitions. In fact, those ambitions might be far less aggressive in nature had they to think more and act more on their own volition.

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