Death tolls rise in surging Israel-Gaza fighting

Israel should return all the Palestinian territory it has confiscated to build houses for Israelis and after that, work towards making honest peace efforts.

The Israelis are masters at abusing the human rights of the Palestinians.

It’s impossible to negotiate with the Palestinians. Their stated goal is to eliminate Israel. They teach their children to hate Jews. Israel is always put in the position of reacting to an outrage by Islamic supremacists like Hamas like when they fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.

It’s impossible to negotiate with the Palestinians. Their stated goal is to eliminate Israel. They teach their children to hate Jews. Israel is always put in the position of reacting to an outrage by Islamic supremacists like Hamas like when they fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.

The Palestinians don’t want the two state solution, if the roles were reversed they would never allow Israel lease to live in the country, ever. And they want Israel to capitulate and Hamas has sworn never to give in and never to recognize the country of Israel.

Even saying that Hamas has fought "wars" with the zionists will not cause any American to think "How could people imprisoned in a Concentration Camp fight a WAR with anyone?" The thing that is never mentioned or passed over with no detail regarding the Palestinians is WHY? Remember Auschwitz? If those people had fought the NAZIs, would they have been considered TERRORISTS? Would the people who fought and died in The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising be condemned as Aggressors and TERRORISTS also? Only by those with the secret hearts of NAZIs. Can so few see through the relentless propaganda put out by zionist Corporate media using exactly the same techniques Goebbels used? With the same results. Stop the Palestinian Genocide NOW!

And, in case you've never read it: According to Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group; ethnic cleansing of a target group's historical living space.

The Hamas don’t speak for all the Palestinians, only those in Gaza.

Doesn’t look like that now at all. Sorry.

There are about 2 million Palestinians living in Israel and a further 2 million on the West Bank which wasn’t part of Israel when the boundaries were set.

We all know that, so please tell Hamas that, they apparently aren’t getting it.

Netanyahu stated Israel is only for Jews, a remark criticized by the president. The Gaza Hamas and Israel are at war.

And if the Palestinians were in control, they would never allow the Jews to live or Lin in the land.

The army have shot 18,000 unarmed border protesters some with explosive billets.

I don’t think rockets or stones is what you would call unarmed.

The racists who claim it is 'impossible to negotiate with Hamas', and the goal of Hamas is 'the destruction of Israel' echo the language of the racists who claimed it was 'impossible to negotiate with the ANC' and the goal of the ANC was 'the destruction of South Africa' for a very good reason. Despite their insistence that 'Israel is nothing like the White State in South Africa' a regime that denies residency and voting rights to enough of the majority ethnic group of the territory it claims, and maliciously controls the lives of them, to their detriment, in the territory it can, that a minority ethnic group becomes the 'majority' enjoying vastly greater standards of living than the 'foreigners' is a pretty close parallel to the regime that did that in South Africa.

@Chip Star

The Israelis are masters at abusing the human rights of the Palestinians.

Israel protects the human rights of all its citizens whether Jews, Christians, Muslims or atheists.

@CrazyJoe

Israel should return all the Palestinian territory it has confiscated to build houses for Israelis and after that, work towards making honest peace efforts.

Are you speaking of the territory allotted to Palestinians at the time of the partition? That’s what Hamas wants plus that part allotted to the soon-to-be Israelis.

For this incident one cannot blame Israel for retaliating. Of course Israel is not perfect but on the other hand it is a fact that the stated objective of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. Hamas has also stated on numerous occasions Israel has no right to exist.

I feel for the Palestinian people. Yes it may be true that Hamas does not speak for all of them but they (the Palestinians) are being used.

I am surprised this article is buried so low on this website. This is a major escalation and could have significant consequences moving forward.

Sad to see this

@William Bjornson

Can so few see through the relentless propaganda put out by zionist Corporate media using exactly the same techniques Goebbels used? With the same results. Stop the Palestinian Genocide NOW!

Speaking of relentless propaganda...

Application of the term “genocide” to Palestinians is an insult to murdered Jews and, for that matter, Armenians murdered by the Turks, and Hutus murdered by the Rwandan government.

There is NO “Palestinian genocide”.

@RichardPearce

The racists who claim it is 'impossible to negotiate with Hamas', and the goal of Hamas is 'the destruction of Israel' echo the language of the racists who claimed it was 'impossible to negotiate with the ANC'

The goal of Hamas IS the destruction of Israel. To illustrate just where Hamas is coming from I suggest you watch some “cute” kids in Palestinian garb at the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia singing the praises of martyrdom.

https://fxn.ws/2Jg2BEf

Israel has subjected Gaza’s civilian population to a protracted siege that amounts to collective punishment on a giant scale and which has rendered Gaza physically unlivable. Imagine if the Palestinians locked up two million Israeli civilians in a massive open-air prison camp and then bombed them from the air and shot them from behind a fortified fence, we'd never hear the end of it. 

That doesn't mean that Hamas indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel in response is politically smart or morally right, but even when Palestinians engage in mostly peaceful protests, Israel still kills them. Since the March of Return began IDF snipers have killed over 200 demonstrators (including children, journalists, medics and the handicapped) and wounded over 6,000, the overwhelming majority of whom posed no imminent lethal threat.

@zichi

Unless Netanyahu is willing to find a solution the situation will continue to become more dangerous for both sides. His apparent solution is apartheid.

Gaza is ruled, administered, controlled - or whatever word you wish to use - by Hamas. Saying that it’s the Hamas “military wing” that’s calling the shots, literally, in Gaza and not the “political wing” is nonsense. Did you believe the military and political wings of the IRA did not coordinate their activities?

Netanyahu’s solution is not “apartheid” because Israel is not Gaza and not the PA of the West Bank unless one believes that Israel has no right to exist. And THAT is exactly Hamas’ contention.

The military wing of the Hamas are the ones firing the rockets not the general Gaza populations.

That says it all.

The civilian border protestors are unarmed civilians demanding their rights. 18,000 have been shot.

And yet, Hamas is not helping them in that goal, they’re making it worst.

Protestors throwing stones against troops in tanks must be serious enough for them to shot back with explosive bullets. I watched a BBC World News program on the damage to a human body an explosive bullet does. If they are not internationally illegal, they should be.

Sorry, doesn’t matter. I’ve been hit with a rock before and I could care less what the media says or thinks, if the caveman could use it to kill animals, the it is a weapon and as such the IDF have every right to use reasonable force to neutralize the threat.

There was a time when the Jewish Israeli were also terrorists and blew up the St David hotel killing the British living there.

Compare that to over the last 25 years of Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Keep digging.

Unless Netanyahu is willing to find a solution the situation will continue to become more dangerous for both sides. His apparent solution is apartheid.

I also would say, unless Hamas stops attacking and firing rockets into Israel or recognizes Israel as the Jewish State, the two State solution will never come to fruition.

Israel is playing the long game and they will inevitably win. The majority of 'settlers' in the West Bank are now born there. They know no other home (unlike the 4th generation 'refugees' living in Jordan or Lebanon). Regardless of whether the state of Israel has acted illegally in the past, there is simply no way to forceably remove these people under 21st century humanitarian standards. The Palestinian fertility rate is 3.2 and dropping fast. The Jewish fertility rate in the West Bank is 5.07. Any future Palestine will not be an Arab ethno-state. It might eventually be declared once the descendants of the settlers are on track to make up 50%+ of the population. Demographics is destiny.

The only difference between Israel and IS is a couple of old books, both who use them as justification for being terrorist states.

stupid comment.

I think the opposite.

You consider a soldier or troops stationed in a tank or some distance from the border fence making it very difficult for any stone to reach him who is also protected with a military helmet should use reasonable force and fire back so you consider the use of explosive bullets to be reasonable force against stone throwers and BTW not all of the 18,000 civilians shot were throwing stones, some were just protesting and other were not even protesting but farming their land near the border and shot for that.

Dunno, I say a lot of soldiers being pelted, so yes, I think it’s justifiable force. If you can kill an animal with stones, Stone people to death, it is a weapon, even monkeys Know this.

So what is your solution for the conflict?

I don’t have really a solution, but I do think Hamas should leave and there should be a Palestinian that will acknowledge Israel as the Jewish State and take it from there and once that part is established, take the next steps and as to what those steps are, I just don’t know, but at this rate, the Palestinians are the ones on the losing end and it will always be like that until they recognize Israel as the nation of the Jews.

Netanyahu, who doubles as defense minister, convened his security cabinet, which issued a statement saying it had ordered the military "to continue its strikes and to prepare for the next stages".

A statement that has all the ominous overtones of a impending ground assault/invasion.

zichi; hate to break it to you, but there IS NO Palestinian State. That is why they are so upset, is it not?

I would have no objection if one of the large Arab/Muslim countries in the neighborhood was willing to donate land for the Palestinians, or even (God forbid) allow them to settle permanently and become citizens. After all, that's what happened to every other refugee group in the aftermath of the Second World War. But it was more politically expedient for them to leave their 'Palestinian brothers' in a constant state of discontent and turmoil than to actually help them, so here we are today.

The Israelis are being remarkably restrained. If they wanted, they could lay waste to the entire Gaza Strip within an hour. Yet they don't. I wonder, if Hamas had the same capability, if they would be so restrained? I somehow think not.

The Palestinians have been totally abandoned by the world and nothing will change until the nations of the world confront the US which is using Israel as its attack dog to maintain the US footprint in the Middle East. This has nothing to do with Palestinians but everything  to do with US global domination, US influence in the Middle East. The world is prepared to watch the genocide of the Palestinians rather than confront the US. The nations of the world have been bluffed by Washington. It is time to take a page out of US foreign policy and put sanctions on both the US and its attack dog Israel. This worked to free South Africa, the power of boycotts!

If there is a genocide of the Palestinians, it has got to be the slowest and most incompetent genocide in human history. The Pali population has grown by 400% since 1950. I guess the Israelis are just not good at killing.

As for who is the "attack dog", Israel has not attacked anyone to my knowledge. However, the surrounding nations HAVE attacked Israel repeatedly, starting from the day that Israel was recognized as an independent nation. Those nations have also spawned countless global terrorists and murderers.

Equally so, Israel has never recognised the Palestinian State. Works both ways.

The difference is, Israel is a legal and documented officially and registered and recognized worldwide and has Statehood. The Palestinian State doesn’t exist officially. So for now it doesn’t work both ways.

Netanyahu’s new 'Jewish state' mantra negates the fact that Palestinians recognized Israel more than twenty years ago.

Not Hamas, the driving force or the unrest.

How is Israel to “work towards making honest peace efforts”when its Palestinian counterpart wants nothing less than the obliteration of Israel?

And indeed Israel (as always) has been remarkably restrained in its response to this latest palestinian outrage.

And for those calling for an Israeli response comensurate to the palestinian attack, that would mean Israel firing over 600 rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas.

Palestine existed prior to the formation of Israel and was under British control. The Palestine State is recognised by the UN and 137 UN member States, just like Taiwan.

Existed and before that was the land of the Israelis.

You need to separate the majority of the Palestinian people from the Hamas whose supporters are in the Gaza Strip. Why was Hamas formed, because Israel demanded elections. The Palestinian people were not accepted by Israel even before the Hamas were formed.

And Hamas is making matters worse for them.

All of the people, not just the Jews should have the right to pursuit life and happiness. 

I agree, so Hamas should go.

The Hamas and Israel have agreed a ceasefire. The firing of the rockets was because Israel didn't honor the details of the previous ceasefire.

And who suffered more in casualties needlessly?

Existed and before that was the land of the Israelis.

The Bible is not a credible source of information.

The Bible is not a credible source of information

Nor is the Koran, but historical time facts do.

Nor is the Koran, but historical time facts do

That Arabs and Jews have been living in that area for a very long time. It was peaceful co-existence until the Zionists rose to prominence in Israel and Israel began abusing the human rights of the Palestinians.

zichi - Equally so, Israel has never recognised the Palestinian State. Works both ways.

It's difficult, no, it's impossible to negotiate when the Palestinians have always demanded the destruction of Israel.

hate to break it to you, but there IS NO Palestinian State.

Hate to break it to you, but the Palestinian State is recognized by most of humanity. And except for the Israelis, everyone recognizes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal.

I must have missed that Palestinian rally/march demanding a peaceful coexistence with Israel, and Jews, as well as an end to the Palestinian's repeated launching their death-dealing V1 rockets into Israel.

How dare those Israelis defend themselves from Palestinian rabid, repeated, attacks.