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Why Are We Fighting with Gaza, Again?

(Times of Israel) David Horovitz - We finished Day One of what the Israeli army has dubbed Operation Protective Edge, and the contours of international thinking are already predictably clear: Since people are dying in Gaza and, as of this writing, nobody has been killed in Israel, plainly Israel's response is an aggressive overreaction. It becomes wearying, conflict after conflict, but it is necessary, nonetheless, to urge policy-makers and opinion-shapers overseas to make just a modicum of effort, to look just a little closer. And to recognize the bottom line: If there was no rocket fire from this non-disputed enclave, there would be no Israeli response, and nobody would be dying. That Israelis do not die in greater numbers has nothing to do with Hamas and the other terror groups. They're doing their absolute best to kill us. Gaza could have flourished after Israel wrenched its 8,000 civilians from the 20-plus settlements there in 2005. Gazans could have built an island of democracy. But hostility to Israel was so profound that Gazans couldn't even restrain themselves for long enough to fool us into trusting them. Recent days have seen the Israeli leadership clearly seeking not to get embroiled in another major offensive with Hamas - but its offer, its plea, of "quiet for quiet," was ignored. Why the need to "resist" an Israel that has no presence in Gaza, and that has long since internalized the imperative to seek an accommodation with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank if this can only be achieved without imperiling Israel's own existence? Why? Because, for Hamas, hostility to the very fact of Israel's existence still far outweighs any and all other interests.
2014-07-09 00:00:00
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