The Right of Conquest

"The secretary-general firmly calls on the parties not to resort to further military action that can only exacerbate the already appalling humanitarian situation in Gaza."
"He condemns the renewed rocket fire towards Israel. More suffering and death of civilians caught up in this conflict is intolerable."
Farhan Haq, UN deputy spokesman

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, 11 August 2014   Photo Kahlil Hamra

Hamas rocket attacks bring down corresponding IDF air strikes. Enabling Hamas to jack up public sympathy for the Palestinians, a sure-fire, tried-and-true method of continuing defamation of Israel, whose critics have no interest whatever in looking beyond cause to the root of the cause. Hamas insisted that Israel must open Gaza's borders. Israel responds it can do so only when Hamas demilitarizes and recants its determination to destroy Israel.

A reasonable counter-demand to an unreasonable-under-obvious-circumstances demand that would result in self-delusion on Israel's part that it might have anything to gain by opening a border for its sworn enemy to further arm itself and get on with its mission of destruction of the Jewish state. It's a peculiar psychosis that many in the Arab world suffer when it comes to Israel; that though they invariably bargain from a position of weakness, they demand entitlements they feel due them.

So, though Israel feels confident after close to imposing five thousand strikes on Gaza in response to Hamas's rocket and missile attacks, that hundreds of its fighters have been killed, two-thirds of its caches of rockets demolished and all its secret tunnels burrowed deep under the border with Israel have been destroyed, Hamas insists it has the right to demand that Israel self-destruct, with its kind assistance.

Yet another 72-hour cease-fire has been agreed-upon, and thus far it has held, but if past experience is any guide, not for too much longer. From his safe perch in Doha, Qatar, Hamas's chief, Khaled Meshaal has warned: "In the case of Israeli procrastination or continued aggression, Hamas is ready with other Palestinian factions to resist on the ground and politically."


In refusing the insistence that it must open its borders, Israel 'procrastinates' against what Hamas believes to be the inevitable. What is inevitable is the Islamist jihadis whom most civilized nations recognize as a terrorist group will continue its 'resistance' against the continued existence of a Jewish state among hostile Arab states. Resistance conflating with violent aggression and mass murder is the
Arab vernacular.

Hamas has its champions; Iran, Qatar and Turkey, all fulminating against Israel's 'aggression' related to its existential plight defending itself from the wretched killing sprees they all indulge upon fomenting against Israeli citizens, with Iran warning it is poised to sic Hezbollah on Israel shortly to create a double-bordered free-for-all.