Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumHamas said to suffer fresh tunnel collapse in Gaza Strip
Couldn't have happened to nicer guys.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-suffer-fresh-tunnel-collapse-in-gaza-strip/
Hmm, that's 3 or 4 just in the last week. Something's up.
Isreal would be wise to listen to what the UN Secretary General said instead of just hurling insults at him.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)Gideon Levy Feb 04, 2016
The latest news from the ghetto comes, as usual, from the outside. The addiction to fear and the eternal wallowing in terror in Israel suddenly reminded one of the existence of the neighboring ghetto. Only thus are we here reminded of Gaza. When it shoots, or at least digs.
Residents of the communities surrounding Gaza hear sounds, perhaps the sounds of digging, and the ghetto is no longer abandoned. We recall its existence. Iran dropped off the agenda. Sweden isnt scary enough. Hezbollah is busy. So we return to Gaza.
If the Ayelet Zurer affair loses steam heaven forbid, or the Moshe Ivgy affair doesnt take off the things that are really interesting because then some bored commentators and editors and politicians and bloodthirsty generals are liable to drag Israel into another war in Gaza.
And war in Gaza is always another controlled massacre, whose achievements are measured in the number of corpses and amount of destroyed buildings that it leaves behind. Isaac Herzog has already promised as much.
But the real news from Gaza doesnt reach Israelis. Who here heard that jets of the most moral air force in the world poisoned in recent weeks the fields of a buffer zone, which Israel declared unilaterally, at a distance of 300 meters from the fence? Farmers in Gaza report that the dusters spread the poison up to 500 meters, and that 1,187 dunams (293 acres) were damaged in the last poisoning in December. The pilots, convinced that they are doing a good thing, reported hitting their targets accurately.
Pay attention to the sterile wording of the IDF spokesman: Aerial spraying of herbicidal germination preventing material next to the security fence was carried out in order to allow optimal implementation of ongoing security missions in the area, he stated.
Fishermen are forbidden from venturing more than six nautical miles out from shore. Sometimes they catch a fisherman or shoot him. Farmers are forbidden from going within 300 meters. Everything is done to serve Israels security, and its security alone and the occupation of the Gaza Strip ended a long time ago.
Just an hours drive from Tel Aviv, there is a ghetto. Even without supplying germination preventing materials, almost nothing grows in it. Up-to-date data from Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement indicate 43 percent unemployment, 70 percent in need of humanitarian assistance and 57 percent suffering from nutrition insecurity.
And then there is the spine-chilling report that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency issued in August under the headline Gaza 2020: A livable place? By then the damage to the water infrastructure will be irreversible. The water today is already not potable. The GDP per capita, $1,273, is less than it was 25 years ago, perhaps the only one that declined. Another 1,000 doctors and 2,000 nurses will be needed in the besieged, collapsing health system.
From where will they come, out the faculty of medicine in Nuseirat or from the students who left to study medicine at Harvard? Egypt tightened its grasp, the world shirked its commitments and Israel exploits this to continue the blockade.
They get three hours of electricity, sometimes six, in the cold and rain. After that, there is no electricity for 12 hours, and then again for three or six hours, day in, day out. There are about two million people, a million of them refugees and their families, made refugees directly or indirectly by Israel. About a million of them are children. No Israeli can imagine it. Few Israelis feel guilty about it. There are few Israelis who care at all. Hamas, you know.
When the next catastrophe in the world hits, be it an earthquake or flood, well be there with a delegation from the Israel Defense Forces, the same IDF in the same fatigues in which they spray the fields in Gaza. We are always the first.
And meanwhile in the ghetto, two million human beings, some of whom worked here for years, some of them even have friends here, live in abject poverty and petrifying despair, mainly because of Israels blockade.
The We left Gaza operation is complete. Now we only need to wait for the tunnels to start bombing again.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.701213
Response to shira (Original post)
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razorman
(1,644 posts)demolish the tunnels (if indeed they are doing so). They do not tell us everything that is going on with them. Nor should they. But, even if they have nothing to do with the tunnel collapses, they are smart enough to keep everyone guessing about them.
grossproffit
(5,591 posts)razorman
(1,644 posts)up with the politics in that region. Hard to know who is allied with whom on any given day. Except they all hate Israel.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)We already know Egypt floods the tunnels:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-egypt-tunnels-idUSKCN0ST1N620151104
If Israel had done it, the howls of outrage would have been deafening. Not surprised you didn't know about it.
razorman
(1,644 posts)branford
(4,462 posts)until it is fully operational and can be fueled without the blood of gentile children...
razorman
(1,644 posts)Katrina toward New Orleans?
I hope a bunch of hamas terrorist scum were down there when it happened.
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)There's no real justification for digging a tunnel there. Such a tunnel could only be used for an offensive into Israel.