Topic: Israel: Operation Protective Edge - page 17. (Read 14700 times)

Gaza Tunnels: Used in War, But Built for Economy
Israel's Blockade Was the Birth of Gaza Tunnel System

Israeli officials are making much of the “terror tunnels” coming out of the Gaza Strip into neighboring Israel and Egypt, and presenting the countless number as proof of Hamas’ aggressive intentions toward the two nations.

Yet a casual look at the history of the Gaza tunnel system reveals they were built not for use in war, but for use in peacetime, as a reaction to Israel’s economic blockade, which at times got so intense that simple products like chocolate and noodles were banned as “processed” foods.

The tunnels overwhelmingly go to Egypt, not Israel, and the strip’s entire economy for almost a decade has been built around bringing everything from iPods to entire automobiles into the strip underground, and away from prying eyes.

When the US supported long term blitzing of Vietnam, eventually the wee viet-com fellas in tunnels routed the US outta Vietnam with heavy US losses.

When the US occupied Afghanistan for too long it was time to go, allowing the taliban easy access back in.

When the US bombed Iraq senseless and installed a police /troops operation and then left, the insurgents were soon to come back in.

Whatever crazy level of funding the US has given the jews in Israel, eventually from the way the crazy jew is acting in Israel, completely disproportionate in their killing of palestinians, they too are going to fail and will either get nuked or ensconced in too many battles they can't win, upsetting too many arabs.

The North Caucasus was perfectly stable after Stalin deported all the Chechens to Siberia. Letting them back was a mistake. Compared to the US, Russia did much better in Afghanistan as well.
It only took a US invasion to do it, but hey, clear failure, right?
It's under control. Yes. There are terror threats which emerge from it to impact Russia, but beyond that, it's pretty much been crushed. As long as the US supports Israel, I don't really see them failing. They have survived this long.

That worked out well for him didn't it? Considering he's dead and all and a Shia government is now in power in Iraq. And yet it is still unstable and isolated to this day. Good work

Once again, this policy has been tried by the Assad Administration in Syria, the Bashir Administration in the Sudan and the Maliki Administration in Iraq (all have used indiscriminate bombing, particularly the use of barrel bombs) and it has done little but backfire on all of them.

And then you'd end up generating massive amounts of sympathy for your enemy allowing them to leverage that political capital into obtaining their objectives over your desires and you'd end up either marginalized (having failed your country) or even possibly at the ICC. Your tactics are especially poor because they completely ignore international response. In your make believe world you seem to have the ability to do whatever you want without having to worry about any sort of domestic or international political consequences. A nice fiction, but the world doesn't really work that way.

Sure they did, especially when Libya was in Sudan as well. What really held them up though was international interference by other countries, which is what tends to happen when you act like a ruthless dictator.

We saw the kind of collective punishment that you are advocating take place in the Congo, and all it did was intensify the fighting and cause the creation of more militant groups through the establishment of self-defense Mai-Mai militias. What you're advocating is nothing new in conflict, indeed it is well understood and it has been found to be both ineffective as a general practice and highly immoral.


Salafists are arrested and killed in Gaza all of the time.

They were and from specific countries as well (Rwanda) and they did target said civilians and guess what? it made the fighting worse and saw a blooming of new militia groups increasing the instability in the Kivus. Your policy failed.

Tunnels with sewage systems to enable them to stay in them for months.

All that concrete that the international community pressured Israel into giving the 'palestinians' to build homes, has gone into lining their tunnels.

Imagine what they could have done with all the money and energy wasted on digging dozens of tunnels and burying thousands of rocket launchers.

There's a whole city under Gaza of tunnels.

Of course they could have also built bomb shelters for their people - but that would mean they wouldn't have those dead children for propaganda which resonates with the already anti-Israel European mainstream.

1.) You're still contradicting yourself when it comes to then notion of dual Palestinian support for both Hamas and Salafi organizations. The two are diametrically opposed to and hate one another. Suggesting that everyone in Gaza supports both is silly because that's not the kind of relationship that the Brotherhood has with Salafis. They don't even have the same goals; Salafis are against the idea of a Palestinian state and don't support working through government mechanisms in Gaza, so claiming that they support Hamas: a political governmental organization aiming to establish a Palestinian state, is more than a bit off.

2.) The notion of collective responsibility is the same exact justification that the Al Qassam brigade uses to justify launching rockets at Israeli civilians. Congratulations, you're a supporter of terrorism.

3.) The concept of collective responsibility in Gaza doesn't even make any sense seeing as how it ignores the fact that Hamas doesn't rule there with the direct consent of the people. They weren't elected overlords of Gaza and there was no referendum on rocket attacks. They seized Gaza by force after the civil conflict with Fatah. Even outside of this, the notion of collective responsibility and thus the oking of collective punishment is not recognized as valid or legal under either international law, or Israeli law.

If they want help Palestinian they can take back Gaza and fight Hamas, but they won't.

@hologram you dont know what you are talking about.

^^ Egypt sees Palestinians in Gaza as Hamas supporters. And they don't like Hamas. In fact they are accusing Hamas, which is an ally of Muslim Brotherhood, for terrorist operations on their territory and are actively searching and destroying tunnels connected to Sinai, thus strenghtening economic blockade of Gaza. Egypt is probably one of the last countries who would want to help Palestinians while Hamas is representing them.

Have you any idea of what about you are talking ? Find a ME map and you will see a checkpoint between Egypt and Gaza.

You think Egypt make decisions on their own? they are same like UN (useless).

that's what i said, many stuff come to Gaza from Israeli checkpoint... What come from Egypt ?