Unfortunately, I have to talk about politics and war again since Israel is going to begin a major offensive against the Hamas in the Gaza strips in the next 2 days.
For years, the Hamas and other even more extreme groups, which does not recognize the existence of Israel, are shooting missiles at Israeli cities (I wrote about that) near the Gaza strip and is thereby endangering 125.000 people. Thanks to strict isolation of the Gaza strip and the “wall” protecting Israel, they did at least not succeed to conduct a major terror attack inside the country for a long time.
Furthermore, Hamas still helds hostage the Israeli soldier Gilat Schalit, kidnapped 916 days ago.
On December 19, a 6-months cease fire ended, a cease fire the Hamas mainly used to refill its ammunition stocks, allegedly with weapons mainly from Syria. Which does not mean,that Hamas didnt fire at all. For a week now, Hamas strongly terrorizes the inhabitants of Sderot and even of the major city Ashkelon. On the 24th alone, there were 80 rockets. Fortunately, there were no casualties till yesterday. Ironically, the first humans hit by a Hamas rocket were two little Palestinian girls, which live in the Gaza strip. The rocket went too short…Hamas announced to “investigate” the event, nobody doubts that they will finally blame Israel. This is a symbol for how the Hamas holds the 1.4 millions living in the Gaza strip as hostages. Its true that they got democratically elected in 2006, mainly because of social services and anti-corruptability. But the event shows maybe THE major difference between both sides: The Hamas wants to kill civilians, kids, innocent people. Israel tries to act hard against terrorists.
The Hamas “legitimizes” their attacks not only with the usual hate of Israel and retaliation for the “cruelty of the Jewish occupation”, but also by casual air strikes of Israel. For example a few days ago an Israeli drone killed 3 terrorists preparing to fire missiles.
People often say that this is a circle of violence. Nevertheless, the Israeli government tried to get out of that circle by seeking a new cease fire, appealing at the Gaza population and showing good will by letting in Humanitarian Aid. At a last measure after ongoing rocket attacks, they set an 48hours ultimatum to stop the attacks. The Ultimatum ends soon and afterwards, and when the weather gets better again (short look out of the window: its good this morning), Israel will definitely strike if the Hamas doesnt stop. And they wont, since it is in their interest that Israel attacks. They will hide behind school, etc so as many kids as possible get killed. Which is wonderful for them to use ideologically against Israel.
The public pressure in Israel is enormous, like what every population on the world would do, Israelis demand security. If the country will not act, the terrorists will do the next step to test out the country. They already threaten with suicide attacks. Hopefully the wall keeps them out.
I know that many will disagree (if yes, comment on this and lets discuss), and the media will again mainly talk about the suffering in Gaza (which happens, but in my eyes is Hamas’ fault), but I think its easy to talk about that living somewhere in Europe. Germany wouldnt sit still and fold their hands if the Czechs would fire thousands of missiles on Nürnberg.
Lets see what happens the next days.
Spiegel Online covering these events:
