an attack on a British army base in Northern Ireland...killed two soldiers...Gunmen fired on an army base in Country Antrim, 16 miles north of Belfast Saturday night. The victims were the first British soldiers to be killed in Northern Ireland since 1997.
No one has claimed responsibility, although suspicion immediately fell on dissident Irish republicans.
Refresh your memory.
Does this portend a possible failure for him here in Israel?
I'm guessing yes.
Posts
9 comments:
Since you suggested it yourself: let's compare the situation in Northern Ireland to that in your part of the world.
A deadly attack on an official army by a revolutionary/terrorist/... (fill in your own interpretation) movement.
How does the attacked government react?
Option 1: Releasing a statement 'this will not undermine the peace process' and actually holding on to that statement. Because that's how a moral democratic society is supposed to react to an insurgent group, no?
Option 2: Launching a large-scale military offensive, killing hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Imposing a murderous blockade on the whole of the population, constructing hundreds of military checkpoints, building civil settlements,...
Something to think about.
Martijn, why don't you think? Isn't that what exactly happened for a whole week before the last operation in Gaza?
Medad, why don't you think? Here you go with your excuses again.
November 4 at exactly same time when Obama was announced to be elected president (coincidence?!?!?!), Israel brakes the truce by killing 4 Hamas gunmen.
"Isn't that what exactly happened for a whole week before the last operation in Gaza"
Exactly WHAT happened?
Martjin,
Mr. Medad hopes that Mitchell fails, that's why he is so eager to bring in this news. Because think about it, what may happen to Mr. Medad, if Mitchell actually succeeds.
What happened was:
On the night of Nov. 4, Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip near the town of Deir al-Balah in order to destroy a tunnel that Hamas was digging, preparing to capture Israeli soldiers positioned on the border fence 250m away. Four Israeli soldiers were injured in the operation, two moderately and two lightly.
One Hamas gunman was killed and Palestinians launched a volley of mortars at the Israeli military.
An Israeli air strike then killed five more Hamas fighters. In response, Hamas launched 35 rockets into southern Israel, one reaching the city of Ashkelon. No military base or unit was the target, rather random civilian targets as befits a terror group, not a resistance one.
The IDf spokesman said: "This was a pinpoint operation intended to prevent an immediate threat. There is no intention to disrupt the ceasefire, rather the purpose of the operation was to remove an immediate and dangerous threat posted by the Hamas terror organisation."
In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said the group had fired rockets out of Gaza as a "response to Israel's massive breach of the truce".
i. So you admit that Israel broke the ceasefire. I am guessing you are citing this souce
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians
which beginns with
"A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory"
and finishes with
"The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid, it said."
Are you saying that the purpose of this raid was not intentional provocation?
And i (like many) suspect that the time for this raid was strategically chosen, was not incidental.
Galia, we have been through before. There is a claim, statistically supportable, that Hamas significantly reduced the number of rocket attacks on Israel in the few months prior to Nov. 4. Nevertheless, the fact that Hamas was using the "lull" period to both stockpile weapons and prepare for future terror attacks, including that tunnel (and others), is also true.
Moreover, if Hamas was so intent upon proving it could control the terror, so to speak, there was no need to increase the rocket fire. It was Hamas that not only broke the ceasefire but acted provocatively by firing missiles further and further into Israel aimed at civilian targets.
As for your conspiracy theory (US election day), that's probably wrong although I wasn't in the operations planning room at the time.
Here. Israel confirmed no Hamas rockets during ceasefire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfFMZ7Y-s_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOK7h1IDgPo&feature=related
" Hamas was using the "lull" period to both stockpile weapons and prepare for future terror attacks, including that tunnel and others"
That's irrelevant, during that time you were buying weaponry and training to prepare your attack on Gaza. You do it, but you don't accept them to do it?
"It was Hamas that not only broke the ceasefire but acted provocatively by firing missiles further and further into Israel aimed at civilian targets"
Based on my sources, you are either telling lies or are misinformed.
you're wrong, Galia but that's your perception so I can't change that
You could do it with facts, which apparently you don't have
Post a Comment