How do we get out of these dynamics that lead to the current situation in which a small number of Israelis and a huge number of Palestinians are killed or maimed?
Israel is still using a strategy of domination in its struggle with Hamas, trying to use force to gain security. But this is a recipe for endless war.
Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but dumb. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighboring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialist South Americans bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for the U.S. to mobilize a counter-attack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters.
Massive bombings of the sort that have thus far killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded 1,000 other civilians is a classic example of a disproportionate response.
Hamas has no airplanes, no tanks, nothing more than the weapons of the powerless- mortars that fire to limited range and with limited accuracy.
Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas' indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so is Israel's massive attack against civilians (at least 250 killed so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands killed by Israel in the years of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated cease fire except when Israel used the cease fire as cover to make assassination raids against Hamas and other Palestinian leaders.
Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition bordering on starvation, Hamas insists that the borders be opened so that food can arrive to Gaza unimpeded by Israeli attempts to starve the Gazans into submission.
The outrage produced by the occupation and now destruction of the Palestinian society, combined with the continued savagery of the Israeli government, make the Middle East an especially combustible area.
Source: SCOOP INDEPENDENT NEWS AND GLOBAL REASERCH