[Times-UK] Martin Fletcher - A group of foreign journalists were taken to the edge of al-Atatra, a town from whose environs Hamas regularly fired rockets into southern Israel a few miles north. It has paid a terrible price. The houses and apartment blocks have been abandoned and mostly reduced to shells, their walls pockmarked by shrapnel. The Palestinian civilians have fled. Colonel Herzi, the commander, and his fellow paratroops are not afflicted by doubts about the justice of their mission, or about their overwhelming use of force. Hamas brought this death and destruction on itself, they argue. By continuing to rain rockets on Israel, it left them with no alternative. "They didn't give us any choice except to fight and show them that they should stop and find another way to live with us," Herzi said.
2009-01-16 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive