KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint Thursday and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza, where Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, and Israel intensified its aerial assaults and sent tanks rumbling toward the Gaza border for a possible invasion.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, expressing outrage over a pair of long-range Palestinian rockets that whizzed toward Tel Aviv and triggered the first air raid warning in the Israeli metropolis since it was threatened by Iraqi Scuds in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, said, ‘‘There will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.’’
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Even though Egypt has plenty of it's own home-grown problems, they seem poised to enter the fray. When the Muslims were voted in to power, I knew that it couldn't end well for the region. Since we are sending our tax dollars to both sides, we must shoulder some of the responsibility. Have we ever considered keeping our nose out of others business and spending our money to upgrade our infrastucture here at home?
Do you mean "the Muslims" who are 99% of Egypt's population and cover an extremely wide range of views about what Islam is? Or do you mean the Muslim Brotherhood, which won largely because they were the only non-sanctioned political organization that managed to survive three decades of Mubarek, and which itself is very far from united on either doctrine or policy? You're right about keeping our noses out of other people's business, but the habit of doing the opposite is too deeply ingrained.
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Who started this recent conflict?
That is what I am wondering. The article says that the Hamas military leader was killed in a bombing by Israel on Wednesday and that the Hamas rockets were fired on Thursday. So did Israel provoke this recent escalation?
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The only way that the government of Israel can remove Hamas as a threat is to make it unattractive to the people whose support is its lifeblood, but there is no evidence that the Netanyahu government either acknowledges this or know how to do so. Low precision bombing runs in Gaza are certainly not going to make the problem of Hamas shrink.
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I wonder if Hamas by taking this aggressive posture is not also losing the support of its constituency. Israel has made it clear that it will retaliate. And the Palastinians suffer more because of Israel's superior weaponry and destructive power.
This year we sent 450 million to Egypt and the EU sent 5 billion. We give weapons and sell weapons on credit to the Egyptians. Any mention of stopping or reducing foreign aid sends Congress into a high speed wobble. We have no control on how that money is spent or who the weapons are used on. When will we learn?
Hamas is a bunch of fools. They must know that Israel could wipe them out easily; yet they persist in this insane and ultimately futile agression.
Globe, follow the yellow brick road that the London Times has made. They allow commentators to edit their posted comments. I keep making typos but have no way of correcting them after I post.