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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is another great piece. Why havent the Palestinians been able to succeed? http://www.meforum.org/4758/stop-the-jew-hatred-and-build-palestine[/quote]
Er, isn't this a bit simplistic, along the lines of "forgive and forget"?  [b]You're telling the oppressed people to forget about stolen land and property and just get on with things?[/b]  That's not to defend Hamas at all, but actually, yes, Hamas is not just one thing. Hamas has a government wing that runs municipal services, collects taxes, runs schools and daycares and does the sort of mundane things that governments do.   And there is, as a matter of fact, a theory that says Israel had serious concerns that a Palestinian unity government where Hamas has all but ceded power to Fatah may actually accomplish things, so it decided to start another spiral of a terrible, but familiar status quo.[/quote]
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Isnt this what we tell everyone? The blacks after slavery - "you are free now, get over it"? And yes, I totally understand that Gazans did not have complete freedom and Israel still controlled some aspects of their lives and land, but there was no blockade and there was opportunity and they threw it away when they elected Hamas. [/quote]

This is from Henry Siegman of Politico:

"The notion that it was Israel, not Hamas, that violated a cease-fire agreement will undoubtedly offend a wide swath of Israel supporters. To point out that it is not the first time Israel has done so will offend them even more deeply. But it was Shmuel Zakai, a retired brigadier general and former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, and not “leftist” critics, who said about the Israel Gaza war of 2009 that during the six-month period of a truce then in place, Israel made a central error “by failing to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians in the [Gaza] Strip. … You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they are in and expect Hamas just to sit around and do nothing.”

This is true of the latest cease-fire as well. According to Thrall(analyst Nathan Thrall of the New York Times), Hamas is now seeking through violence what it should have obtained through a peaceful handover of responsibilities. “Israel is pursuing a return to the status quo ante, when Gaza had electricity for barely eight hours a day, water was undrinkable, sewage was dumped in the sea, fuel shortages caused sanitation plants to shut down and waste sometimes floated in the streets.” It is not only Hamas supporters, but many Gazans, perhaps a majority, who believe it is worth paying a heavy price to change a disastrous status quo."

Here is the whole article if you'd like to read it:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/israel-provoked-this-war-109229.html

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