Palestinian Normal

"We have no information about this issue However, we stress that leaders of the Occupation [Israel] who are responsible for the killing of children and women and for defiling the sacred sites are legitimate targets for the resistance."
Sami Abu Zubri, Hamas spokesman

Palestinian protesters gesture at Israeli police during clashes with Israeli security officers in the 

Issawiya district of Arab east Jerusalem. Photo: Mahmoud Ilian

Bland indifference to the facts on the ground, that Israel responds to the violence and threat of  Hamas offensives; it does not initiate attacks but seeks to bring them to a halt. The sacred sites are not only those of Islam but of Judaism as well; Jewish appearances at the sites are considered to be blasphemies in nature by Muslims, but Jews must witness the desecration of their most holy site by Muslims without dissent.

When Hamas launches missiles from Gaza into Israel and the Israel Defence Forces respond in self-defence the children and other civilians among whom Hamas launches their missiles die as a result of deliberate Hamas actions, conspiring to produce such events with which Israel can later be accused. The idea is to punish Jews for killing Arabs, the result of their leaders placing them deliberately in danger of response.

This bespeaks the logic of the Islamist mindset. The legitimate self-protection response represents to them the quite deliberately ingenuous interpretative act of humanitarian injustice, not their deliberate plan to destroy children's lives as a propaganda tool that can be extremely useful in persuading European critics of Israel that it has defaulted from its mission as a democratic, peaceful state.

The target was the outspoken Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman who brooks no nonsense from Hamas, and speaks the truth as any rational being would. Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet, tasked with protecting Israel's security, had detected the plot and moved to ensure it would not take place as scheduled. A rocket-propelled grenade attack on the ministerial motorcade; simple enough.

Surveillance had been conducted on the minister travelling from his home in a West Bank settlement to Jerusalem. The four arrested men were residents of a Palestinian village located nearby the settlement. A senior Hamas member with time spent in Israeli prisons was the ringleader, aided by a younger brother and another village resident, all in their mid-30s. They recruited a fourth man to procure a RPG launcher.

Admitting the plot under interrogation, the men stated their purpose for the assassination: that it
"would relay a message to the state of Israel that would bring about an end to the Gaza war". And that, in a nutshell, explains the contortions of the jihadist mind. The 'Gaza war' is undeniably a construct of Hamas whose charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and the restoration of the land to the Palestinians

It is not Israel who wages war on Gaza, but Hamas terrorists who goad Israel into responding to the thousands of rockets fired daily into Israel. When they number into the hundreds then rise to the thousands, and border communities are sufficiently traumatized, calling for an end to their daily assaults, the IDF has little option but to perform the actions representing their purpose; the protection of the state and its people.

When Israel vacated the Gaza Strip, hauling out all its military presence, the settlements of Israeli citizens, leaving the territory to the Palestinians, what ensued was not an orderly response of Palestinians prepared to self-regulate and begin the journey to governing and administrating the affairs of a civilized people, but a rampage of destruction, looting and brutalization as warlords marked out territory for themselves.

Order was restored when Hamas took the leadership of Gaza from Fatah through a civil war, leaving Hamas in control. With UNRWA, the United Nations refugee body specifically formed to benefit Palestinian refugees, Hamas has been enabled to administer Gaza, even while it continues to threaten Israel and to attack it. The UN refugee administration employs local Gazans in all civil capacities, some who are Hamas members.


Palestinian protesters carry tire to throw on the fire during clashes with Israeli security forces (unseen) following a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kafr Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on November 21, 2014. AFP Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh
The incitement by Hamas for violence aimed at Israelis by their members or by other Palestinians in reflection of their duty to Islam and to Palestinian victory over the Israeli occupation which exists as a defence against that violence represents a never-ending, circuitous and purposeless -- other than to commit ongoing numbers of Palestinians to an early death as victims or 'martyrs' -- cycle of hatred and violence, of no benefit to anyone.

Hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian youths grapple daily with Israeli police, burning tires and creating a stability threat in their zeal to demonstrate how dedicated they are to the mission to destroy Israel and return the ground upon which it rests to the Palestinians who will share nothing willingly with Jewish interlopers to the geography of historical Jewish heritage.