Six months ago a cease fire agreement was agreed to by both the Palestinians and Israel with the aim of ending the seemingly infinite cycle of violence that has plagued both parties since 1948. Hamas and the Palestinians fired 126 rockets into Israel during November and another 98 during the first 3 weeks of December effectively ending the ceasefire. The Palestinian people and Hamas ripped up the peace documents and threw them in the garbage. Hamas leaders, living safely in Syria, have decided to stash bomb materials, rockets and other weapons in warehouses located in residential areas. This was a very deliberate decision. The thinking among Hamas leaders is that an Israeli strike against their waepons caches will undoubtedly cause civilian casualties and outtrage the international community. This leaves Israel in an unenviable position; either live with hundreds of rocket attacks and the daily murder of your citizens OR launch a counter-attack resulting in civilian casualties. Of course, as we have seen over the last few days, Israel has decided on the latter. Personally, I don't blame them one bit. The Israelis have been extraordinarily patient in this situation and have given the peace process ample time to work. Enough is enough. It should be understood by everyone in the West that peace will never exist between Hamas and Israel. For that matter, peace will never exist between and Islamic state and a non-Islamic state, ever. These people have hate in their very bones. They will never be satisfied until everyone in the world is converted "under the penalty of death" (according to the Koran). The credo of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's largest Islamic organization, says it all “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam, natch] is made victorious over all other religions”.
Some experts believed that when Israel gave the Gaza back to the Palestinians in 2005 that it was a watershed moment upon which the Middle East could build a lasting and concrete peace agreement. The Palestinian spokesman, Mr Arakat, was on CNN tonight stating his concerns and his wish for a lasting peace. Of course this was all just posturing. The Palestinians had their "peace". They had a cease fire agreement in place which they broke. The Hamas charter specifically states that it is Mohammed's will that Muslims "fight the Jews and kill them". How can a lasting peace exist when Hamas' stated purpose is to kill Jews? Israel has made concessions, agreed to peace agreements and ceasefires. In every instance, Hamas and the Palestinians have broken their end of the bargain.
