[Ace Pace]

Both sides do s***, but only one side get's the blessing from a official government.

Palestinian terrorists = loose group of fanatics over which you DON'T have control, so you can't blame the Palestinian state for whatever they do

Isreali Army = something controled by the government and so every fu** up it does is the governments and the states fault.

I promised myself I'd stay out of threads like these, but this smacks of someone who has ignored the news the past few months.

Terror into Israel comes from three main groups.
Hamas, Fatah and the Islamic Jihad.
Fatah untill recently were the controlling branch of the Palestinian goverment. They were voted out of power in the Palestinians first election. Hamas came into power. Hamas, the same body that repetedly took pride in bombing Israel. The same group that says one thing to English newspapers and another to arabic ones. You can argue wether each side is better or worse then the other untill your fingers are raw on the keyboard. But I suggest you read up on the current situation before about the palestinians being so disorganised when the goverment is an organisation that bombed Israel pretty much routinely.

[TrashMan]

You jsut don't get it do you?

No matter who comes to power in Palestinia they can't control the suicide bombers! They can yell "STOP!" all they want, 90% won't listen - tehy cannot be punished as tehy are loose cells.

Israel has a army that must follow orders, and breach of orders must and can be punished. See the difference?

[aldo_14]

You jsut don't get it do you?

No matter who comes to power in Palestinia they can't control the suicide bombers! They can yell "STOP!" all they want, 90% won't listen - tehy cannot be punished as tehy are loose cells.

Israel has a army that must follow orders, and breach of orders must and can be punished. See the difference?

Actually, the Palestinians do have security forces (police), who can be ordered to take on the likes of Hamas, and the high visibility nature of activists means it is possible for said police to take action should they wish to.

[TrashMan]

Actually, the Palestinians do have security forces (police), who can be ordered to take on the likes of Hamas, and the high visibility nature of activists means it is possible for said police to take action should they wish to.

DUH!

Tehre is a small matter of there being many, many cells that don't know of eachoter...hunderds of them are nameless - you don't even know where to begin to search. It's like saying "The US can totaly stop all thieves on the street. Tehy got the police!".

the Isreali army is different - tehy are all registered and accounted for.

[NGTM-1R]

You jsut don't get it do you?

No matter who comes to power in Palestinia they can't control the suicide bombers! They can yell "STOP!" all they want, 90% won't listen - tehy cannot be punished as tehy are loose cells.

Israel has a army that must follow orders, and breach of orders must and can be punished. See the difference?

You're changing the issue. That's not the question; the question was government support, not government control.

[karajorma]

Plus - and more importantly - 'restraint' is being characterised here as a response to terrorist actions which are either implictly or explcitly (now) supported by the Palestinian government.  The intimation is that the Israelis have the capacity to out-and-out obliterate the Palestinian population in response, but do not.

Not much of an argument though is it? "We're not committing genocide so we're the good guys!"

Yet I've heard it many times as a defence from Israelis. Quite frankly I rank this one up there with the west having the position that they are good to Iran cause they haven't nuked them yet.

[Sandwich]

That's certainly how it feels to me; it seems that protecting Palestinian civillian lives are very, very, very low down on the scale of concerns for the IDF.

The IDF has a very short scale of concerns, and - like in Asimov's Laws of Robotics, no lower-ranked concern will ever take precendence over a higher-ranked concern.

The first concern is the safety of Israeli civillians. Number two, safety of Israeli soldiers. Third and last, safety of other non-combatants.

So yes, in a way, your statement is correct. The concern for the well-being of Palestinian non-combatants is last on the list of concerns, but please take note (and this is more unusual than you might think) that their safety IS on the IDF's list of concerns. Had it not been, I would not have been ordered - at no small risk to myself - to set foot in Jenin in early 2002. The IDF went after terrorist cells hiding among the civilian population of Jenin in that operation; the best way to strike at the terrorists with the least damage to civilians was to go in on the ground. Had the welfare of the Palestinian civilians not been on the list of the IDF's concerns at all, what would have prevented us from indiscriminately bombing the whole city? That would have more effectively eliminated the terrorist cells operating out of Jenin, as well as prevented an deaths on the IDF's side.

But we didn't do that because we do care. Sometimes, we wonder if we care about the Palestinians more than they care about themselves. Somebody once said that this will only ever end once the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us. I have to agree.

I find this comment the most telling.

"As long as calm does not prevail on the Israeli side, neither will it do so on the Palestinian side," Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said this week. "Our operations are going to intensify."

In other words as long as the rocket attacks keep coming we're going to keep indicriminately shelling Gaza in the hope of causing them to stop.

 See the problem is that there is a word for indiscriminate attacks on civilians in order to cause political change....

You just blatantly put words into someone's mouth. Where did this "indiscriminate" thing come from? Do you have any clue whatsoever how many dead Palestinians there would be if Israel started shelling Gaza indiscriminately? Try hundreds, if not thousands. We certainly have plenty of firepower to do so. But instead, we've "stuck to our guns" (ironic saying, that) with the targeted strikes on Kassam launch sites and cells.

Where's the cry out to the Palestinians to stop indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli towns, eh? Did you hear about the rocket that fell directly on top of a teenager's bed? He had left for school just a few minutes beforehand.

What would you have Israel do? Make every effort to eliminate civilian casualties on the Palestinian side, even at the expense of the lives of Israeli soldiers? Sounds like Jenin all over again, just more so.

Anyway, regarding the shell that landed on the beach in Gaza, I honestly don't know what the real story is. All I can say is that the IDF does not deliberately target Palestinian non-combatants - that is not only utterly pointless, but stupid, and the IDF knows that.

[karajorma]

Had the welfare of the Palestinian civilians not been on the list of the IDF's concerns at all, what would have prevented us from indiscriminately bombing the whole city? That would have more effectively eliminated the terrorist cells operating out of Jenin, as well as prevented an deaths on the IDF's side.

International condemnation. I already explained this one several times. Even the US who currently veto any attempt to pass resolutions against Israel would be unable to continue to do so in the face of such an attrocity.

Sure committing genocide would mean that there were no terrorist attacks from Jenin but there would be repercussions even though the IDF don't care about civilians.

But we didn't do that because we do care. Sometimes, we wonder if we care about the Palestinians more than they care about themselves. Somebody once said that this will only ever end once the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us. I have to agree.

It will end when both sides stop acting like ****ing babies.

You just blatantly put words into someone's mouth. Where did this "indiscriminate" thing come from? Do you have any clue whatsoever how many dead Palestinians there would be if Israel started shelling Gaza indiscriminately?

It's indiscriminate because the IDF have no idea who is in the area where their shells will fall. It's indiscriminate because shelling is not a particularly surgical attack. The IDF may choose their target with some precision but can you honestly tell me that the shells hit those targets with the same precision?

Where's the cry out to the Palestinians to stop indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli towns, eh?

Of course the palestinians need to stop the rocket attacks. No one ever said that they shouldn't. But if you respond in kind how are you any better than they are?
 And that's what my problem is with this tactic. How many rocket attacks were there before they started shelling? How many after? Has shelling Gaza had any effect on the number of attacks? Nope. There were more attacks in May than in any month proceeding it and the total for June is even higher. So shelling is not achieving it's goal and I'd put it to you that it was never meant to either.
 Shelling is nothing more than a tit for tat attack designed to say that if Gaza launches a rocket at Israel then Israel will shell them right back. That's all that it is. Artillery shelling of wide open areas is never going to have a military effect in that way.

Anyway, regarding the shell that landed on the beach in Gaza, I honestly don't know what the real story is. All I can say is that the IDF does not deliberately target Palestinian non-combatants - that is not only utterly pointless, but stupid, and the IDF knows that.

No one says they deliberately targetted civilians. As has been said several times already the point is that the IDF didn't care who was on the beach.

[Ace Pace]

You jsut don't get it do you?

No matter who comes to power in Palestinia they can't control the suicide bombers! They can yell "STOP!" all they want, 90% won't listen - tehy cannot be punished as tehy are loose cells.

Israel has a army that must follow orders, and breach of orders must and can be punished. See the difference?

Did you read anything I said?  Hamas, one of the largest(if not the largest) of the organised groups in the Palestinian country, is the goverment. It can control itself very well. It has the largest militerised force out of the 3 terror groups. IF it wanted to, it could control itself and others, the same way it was done when the Palestinian goverment made a show of arresting terrorists.

[aldo_14]

Had the welfare of the Palestinian civilians not been on the list of the IDF's concerns at all, what would have prevented us from indiscriminately bombing the whole city?

International humanitarian war, alongside the Geneva convention, would seem to prevent the IDF indiscriminately bombing Jenin.  Also, such an act would be more or less morally indefensible - akin to the tactics of totalitarian dictators who kill entire communities in revenge for a single act of dissent or rebellion - and make it very (politicall and diplmoatically) difficult for even the strongest allies to support Israel.

[aceofspades]

Had the welfare of the Palestinian civilians not been on the list of the IDF's concerns at all, what would have prevented us from indiscriminately bombing the whole city?

International humanitarian war, alongside the Geneva convention, would seem to prevent the IDF indiscriminately bombing Jenin.  Also, such an act would be more or less morally indefensible - akin to the tactics of totalitarian dictators who kill entire communities in revenge for a single act of dissent or rebellion - and make it very (politicall and diplmoatically) difficult for even the strongest allies to support Israel.

It would also never be supported by the Israeli people.

[karajorma]

I think you're right there. Too many easy comparisons with the Nazis for the Jewish population to ever support genocide.

[aceofspades]

I think you're right there. Too many easy comparisons with the Nazis for the Jewish population to ever support genocide.

Nice to see that you do give Israelis some minimal amount of credit 

But I think Sandwich is exaggerating the IDF's concern for Palestinians. Israel isn't the only victim in this conflict. That said, I'm pretty sure a lot of other nations would be doing the same thing if they were in the same situation, and then they'd be the ones continually criticised in the global arena.
There may also be a David vs. Goliath aspect. Perhaps if the situation in terms of geography, ethnic distribution, demographics, history, etc. was the same but the Palestinians were the ones with military might on their side, the global criticism would also be directed more towards them.

[karajorma]

Nice to see that you do give Israelis some minimal amount of credit 

I don't doubt that the average man on the street in Israel is as sick of the state of affairs as anyone else in the world. More sick probably as it's going to be the biggest news story over there and affect them personally in many cases.

Problem is that they don't seem to be any smarter than the average voter in the rest of the west and do stupid things like voting for hardliners who claim that they'll punish the Palestinians for terrorism until they stop. Personally I think that's a very naive point of view. You don't stop terrorism by military means. Pretty much every victory over terrorism has been by removing their grass roots support by making sure that everyone sees exactly how empty and hateful their rhetoric actually is.

I don't really single out Israelis any more for this attitude any more than I single out any other nation for it. People in the UK and US have been just as guilty of the opinion that you can stamp out terrorism with guns and bombings. 

[aceofspades]

And the attitude that voters appear to have in so many countries around the world is one of the big global-political problems right now. It's sort of related to the problem that jingoism in foreign policy used to be, maybe...

[Sandwich]

You don't stop terrorism by military means. Pretty much every victory over terrorism has been by removing their grass roots support by making sure that everyone sees exactly how empty and hateful their rhetoric actually is.

News to me.

[NGTM-1R]

Kara, I'm really going to have to call BS, because that's never happened. That's not how the major terrorist groups of the '60s and '70s got done in. The IRA defanged itself; the rest were forcibly dismantled by having their members locked up, killed, or too scared to resurface. Either you can get rid of them by force or wait for them to run out of steam.

[Turambar]

or you could just get rid of their motivation.

[NGTM-1R]

They're already motivated. It's too late for that.

[Turambar]

and that's why my foreign policy would be better than your foreign policy