Israel Continues Pursuit of Terrorists In Gaza

Israeli forces have continued operations inside Gaza, but haven't confined their military operations to Gaza. They have also gone after terror cells in the West Bank, including the hotbed of Nablus.

Abbas sees the writing on the wall and knows that Israel's crackdown on Hamas only improves his own survival, though there are those who will call him a collaborator:

The militants have said there could be no truce if Israel keeps up its attacks and refuses to extend any Gaza cease-fire to the West Bank, site of frequent Israeli swoops on militants. In an interview Monday with Associated Press Television News, Abbas said Palestinians should take the first step.

“The truce project means all acts by all parties stop, the Palestinians first and the Israelis, so we can move after to the West Bank,” Abbas said. “Israel ... can do what it wants, whenever it wants, but we say we should do our duties and put the ball in the Israeli court.”

The Palestinians have been losing the media and leftist support around the world because they've been busy fighting among each other. Hamas has been killing Fatah and Fatah has been killing Hamas. Abbas would like to get back to a time when the Palestinians were too busy to kill Israelis to be concerned with killing each other.

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert refuses to make any deals with Hamas, though I wonder about his resolve. The UN remains as clueless as ever; they want the Quartet (US, EU, Russia, and the UN) to recognize Hamas as though that will improve matters.

The fact is that Hamas recognizes Israel - it seeks its destruction. The terrorist group's very existence is predicated upon the destruction of Israel. Israel recognizes Hamas as well. It sees it as an existential threat. Peace between Hamas and Israel is impossible unless one side or the other is willing to concede on those basic points. Hamas will not do so because its goal is tied not only to a political belief, but to religious beliefs and you're not going to get Hamas to change their religious beliefs.

Recognizing Hamas as a part of the PA will not increase the likelyhood of peace; it only bolster's Hamas' position and will result in more money siphoned from civil administrative projects for the fight with Israel.

John Dugard, the UN Human Rights Council's investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the Mideast Quartet has to treat both sides equally if it wants to broker a successful peace agreement.

Israel has consistently rejected Dugard's reports and statements as one-sided. In March he compared the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians to apartheid - comments that drew strong criticism from Israeli officials, who called them "inflammatory and inciteful."

"In order to prevent another season of violence and to protect human rights in the region, the Quartet must intervene immediately in a fair and evenhanded manner," said Dugard, a South African lawyer. "This means the recognition of both Hamas and non-Hamas members of the Palestinian Government of National Unity."

They want to have the world treat both sides equally as though that is the key stumbling block to peace? Hamas seeks to annihilate a sovereign state and wipe it from the map. Fatah also seeks that goal, and yet Dugard and the UN organization thinks increased recognition is the solution?

The situation in Gaza is of the Palestinians own choosing. They are the ones who have taken the 2005 Israeli withdrawal in 2005 and turned the area into a rocket launching bazaar. Sderot and border areas were being hit with Palestinian rockets for years and that situation hasn't changed. The Palestinians could have chosen to build Gaza peacefully, but instead chose the radical Islamists in Hamas to conduct a war against Israel.

Israel's own leadership has failed them in dealing with the Palestinian conflict and ongoing rocket war:

Firstly, the rocket fire on Sderot began long before withdrawal from Gaza. Secondly, anyone with any sense knew even then, prior to withdrawal, that Palestinian fire would continue - with the pullout possibly granting legitimacy and freedom for effective response against the acts of terror originating from the Strip.

As each of us understands, and also according to the position taken by legal advisors at the time, our exit from Gaza has freed us of responsibility for the lives of Gaza residents and enables us to better protect ourselves.

Unfortunately, our leadership doesn't understand this - it is flaccid. Instead of using our freedom to operate we are behaving as though we are responsible for the residents of the Gaza Strip. Please wake up. We are no longer responsible for them and don't owe them a thing. This is one of the achievements of exiting Gaza - and it's a shame it is being wasted.

If you want to fire at us - we don't want to sell you electricity. Go find work in Egypt, in the Gulf States or Europe, and in addition we'll also fire back.

And now let's imagine what it would be like if we were still in the Gaza Strip. Besides the rocket fire on Sderot and the outlaying communities, the bloodbath of soldiers and civilians in Gush Katif, Kfar Darom and Nitzanim would also have continued.

Without going into the subject, it is our right to settle anywhere we like; the Israeli public is simply not prepared to pay the casualty toll of remaining in the Strip. Whether this is justified or not, the majority amongst us is prepared to fight for Sderot at any cost, but it is unwilling to pay the cost of settling in Gaza.

Of course, any attempt to cut off electricity or water to the PA would result in immediate calls from the usual suspects in the media and NGOs that Israel was engaging in collective punishment.

However, since when has any nation at war with another nation continued to provide basic services to the people they're at war with? The Palestinians seek to destroy Israel and regularly seek to kill Israelis with rocket attacks, and yet if Israel cuts off the electricity (some of which goes to producing those rockets), they'd be cast as the bad guys?