I am glad that there are countries speaking up!!! However, with Turkey being an islamic country it might not do much good. There needs to be more 'christian' countries to speak up about isreal's injust actions.

I agree the west is supposed to be the "good guys" look how far we have sunk when a country like Turky is showeing moral leadership

I have a friend that is an internation student from Turkey. I will be sure to ask him his thoughts about the conflict next time I see him.

I will be interested to know them

If I see him soon and remember to ask him... then I will try to remember to send you an email

I am glad to hear some speak up against this bullying but honestly would it matter as long as the U.S. keeps being Israel's *****?

Shocking language I know but....

Funny to hear talk of a settlement being considered by the Israelis...umm not...

This wasn't about the poor Israelis being subjected to incoming rockets..it was a well timed offensive at the end of the Bush administrations watch...it was a deliberate effort to kill and maim without consequence.

Why? Because assuredly Bush wouldn't do jack.

This action is obscene on so many levels.

Israel is not the friend of the United States. Why do we continue to support and defend a nation that engages in terrorism, spies on the United States and costs us huge amounts of money?

Funny to hear talk of a settlement being considered by the Israelis...umm not...

This wasn't about the poor Israelis being subjected to incoming rockets..it was a well timed offensive at the end of the Bush administrations watch...it was a deliberate effort to kill and maim without consequence.

Looks like the Israelis are preparing to stop their end of it unilaterally. If Hamas also stops then it will be all over. It will be up to Hamas just as it always was.

If there had not been rocket attacks (to the tune of a couple of hundred a day) following Hamas' refusal to maintain the cease fire last fall, then there would never have been any Israeli operation to shut it down. Arguing a conspiracy theory is just weak.

There is a difference between having a religious fanatic neighbor (Hamas) who shoots at your home because they believe that due to your different religion that you defile the neighborhood and the SWAT team (IDF) that comes to arrest them.

How many times are y ou going to repeat this propaganda? the rockets were a feeble responce to an economic blockade of food and medicens and fuel. Jeeze does your google even work?

Rome, 30th May 2008 "The Israeli siege on Gaza continue to punish collectively and illegally civil population, killing them together with their hopes of a dignified life and of a better future: of course rocket launched from Gaza to Sderot are illegal and criminal and must be immediately stopped because they hit Israeli civilians, but the fault of some Palestinian extremists groups cannot be paid as reprisal by one million and a half of non-culpable people.

Today, more examples of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians took place.

Special Israeli Forces raided Khaza'a area, east of Khan Younis, and killed Yosra Qzeih Abu Roq, a 70 years-old woman. Amnesty International in its latest report announced that since the beginning of 2008, "frequent air strikes and other attacks by Israeli forces killed more than 370 Palestinians, including some 50 children, and injured thousands more."
http://www.freegaza.org/pages/media/080530.html

The Israelis did not collectively punish the Gazans, the borders had to be tightly controlled to prevent arms smuggling and thwart Hamas attacks. The suffering of the Gazan civilian population was a result of Hamas policies but humanitarian supplies were always let through eventually.

There are endless exaggerated and biased reports against purported abuse of Gazans due to checkpoints, border controls and surveillance. But Israel has never randomly shot rockets into Gaza to target civilians unlike Hamas whose principle military tactic is to try to purposefully harm as many civilians as possible.

Israeli Border controls - inconvenience
Hamas Killing civilians on purpose - war crime

Slowhand...on this board...you're wasting your time...they look at the overwhelming response...as not fair...not balanced...lol...Liberals you see...not realizing that in war...the object is to win...

That's Israel's tale!

This time read it Slow!


MIDEAST: Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.

The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza".

Pastor said he passed Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.

"There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets," said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective ceasefire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on whether there had been any discussion of a ceasefire proposal from Hamas in mid-December that would have stopped the rocket firing.

Abu Omar, a spokesman for Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Syria, told CBS news Wednesday that Hamas could only accept the ceasefire plan now being proposed by France and Egypt, which guarantees an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza as soon as hostilities on both sides were halted. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would only support the proposal if it also included measures to prevent Hamas from re-arming.

The interest of Hamas in a ceasefire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting -- five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive -- by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by Y-net News agency as saying.

Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza -- its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy -- even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

The ceasefire agreement that went into effect Jun. 19, 2008 required that Israel lift the virtual siege of Gaza which Israel had imposed after the June 2007 Hamas takeover. Although the terms of the agreement were not made public at the time, they were included in a report published this week by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which obtained a copy of the understanding last June.

In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the ceasefire.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.

The Israelis opened the access points only partially, and in late July Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared that the border crossings should remain closed until Hamas agreed to the release of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier abducted by Hamas in June 2006. The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usam Hamdan, told the ICG in late December that the flow of goods and fuel into Gaza had been only 15 percent of its basic needs.

Despite Israel's refusal to end the siege, Hamas brought rocket and mortar fire from Gaza to a virtual halt last summer and fall, as revealed by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) in Tel Aviv last month. ITIC is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Centre (IICC), an NGO which is close to the Israeli intelligence community.

In the first days after the ceasefire took effect, Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets and a few mortar rounds in retaliation for Israeli assassinations of their members in the West Bank. In August another eight rockets were fired by various groups, according to IDF data cited in the report. But it shows that only one rocket was launched from Gaza in September and one in October.

The report recalls that Hamas "tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement" on other Palestinian groups, taking "a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement," including short-term detention and confiscating their weapons. It even found that Hamas had sought support in Gazan public opinion for its policy of maintaining the ceasefire.

On Nov. 4 -- just when the ceasefire was most effective -- the IDF carried out an attack against a house in Gaza in which six members of Hamas's military wing were killed, including two commanders, and several more were wounded. The IDF explanation for the operation was that it had received intelligence that a tunnel was being dug near the Israeli security fence for the purpose of abducing Israeli soldiers.

Hamas officials asserted, however, that the tunnel was being dug for defensive purposes, not to capture IDF personnel, according to Pastor, and one IDF official confirmed that fact to him.

After that Israeli attack, the ceasefire completely fell apart, as Hamas began openly firing rockets into Israel, the IDF continued to carry out military operations inside Gaza, and the border crossings were "closed most of the time", according to the ITIC account.

Israel cited the firing of 190 rockets over six weeks as the justification for its massive attack on Gaza.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45350

Slowhand...on this board...you're wasting your time...they look at the overwhelming response...as not fair...not balanced...lol...Liberals you see...not realizing that in war...the object is to win...