Gaza tunnel network threat leaves Israelis shaken

[King_David]

Beneath the wheat and watermelon fields surrounding this farm community just outside the Gaza Strip lies a threat that helps explain the overwhelming public support in Israel for the war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

A little over a week ago, assailants dressed in Israeli military uniforms clambered out of an underground passageway about halfway between this hamlet of 400 or so people and a neighboring kibbutz, Nir Am. Israeli troops killed nine of them, but not before the attackers killed four soldiers.

The specter of such assaults via a large and sophisticated network of subterranean passageways has profoundly shaken Israelis long accustomed to a different threat from the coastal strip, that of rocket and mortar fire. Four such infiltrations have taken place since the start of the Gaza offensive, killing at least 11 Israeli soldiers and haunting the collective psyche.

"From this, you can't protect yourself," said Ruti Sheves, 64, who has lived in Kibbutz Erez for 40 years. "You don't have a shelter where you can run and be safe. You can't be safe from this."


http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-tunnels-20140731-story.html#page=1

[ladjf]

1. The Israelis would do well to remember that "Karma is a bitch".

On second thought I should have written "The human race would do well to remember that "Karma is a bitch".

[King_David]

2. What was the reason for this Gaza campaign ?

[catnhatnh]

3. The world is left to wonder....

...after all the first claim was the kidnapping of three teens. Reminds me of "ties to 911....er, I meant WMDs...etc., etc.

[King_David]

4. Rockets Rockets Rockets

Were 1st three reasons ,
And if they knew it would of been:
Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels

Look what Haaretz says about these tunnels :

http://www.democraticunderground.com/113474655

[catnhatnh]

5. Better still, here's a timeline-read June 12th...

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/07/gaza_timeline.html

[King_David]

6. Didn't read the timeline but fact today is Tunnels need be destroyed

And so do Rockets.

[catnhatnh]

7. Oh-you mean you didn't read the timeline...

...that clearly shows this slaughter was started on a false pretext. I'm shocked.

[FBaggins]

8. Aparently you didn't read it either.

It shows nothing of the sort.

June 12: Three Israeli teenagers are kidnapped and killed in the West Bank. The PA aides the Israeli Defense Forces in clamping down on Hamas in the West Bank. Tension between Hamas and Fatah escalate.

Palestinian street protests erupt, as much in opposition to Israeli action as solidarity with Hamas and protest against the PA.

Hamas unleashes hundreds of rockets into Israel.

[catnhatnh]

9. Yes I did...N/T

[FBaggins]

10. So what's your excuse for misrepresenting it?

It clearly shows that King_David's description of the reason for the current Gaza campaign was accurate.

[catnhatnh]

11. It clearly shows

that Israel used the "three dead teenagers" excuse to initiate a conflict.

[FBaggins]

12. Why put "three dead teenagers" in quotes?

They clearly were teenagers... and there clearly were three of them... and they clearly were kidnapped and killed by Hamas terrorists.

None of which was used as an excuse to move ground forces into Gaza... that occured after "rockets rockets rockets" - as you were told (correctly).

The only debate at this point is whether or not the Hamas heirarchy explicitly ordered the kidnapping - which doesn't bear on whether or not this began on false pretenses - since Hamas didn't say "Hey! That's not us... we'll help you catch the criminals!" - they launchd hundreds of rockets. Forever removing any ability to claim that what followed was based on false pretenses.

[catnhatnh]

13. Wrong

"Repeated inconsistencies in Israeli descriptions of the situation have sparked debate over whether Israel wanted to provoke Hamas into a confrontation. Israeli intelligence is also said to have known that the boys were dead shortly after they disappeared, but to have maintained public optimism about their safe return to beef up support from the Jewish diaspora. Writing for Al Jazeera, Musa al-Gharbi argued that Israel was deliberately provoking Hamas:

All the illegal and immoral actions related to Operation Brother’s Keeper were justified under the premise of finding and saving the missing teens whom the Israeli government knew to be dead — cynically exploiting the tragedy to whip up public outcry in order to provoke and then confront Hamas. This pattern of deception continues under the ongoing military offensive in Gaza."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-israeli-teens-after-all.html

[FBaggins]

15. Sorry... did you mis-title your post?

You started with the word "wrong"... but then pasted content that doesn't demonstrate that what you replied to was "wrong".

[Bodhi BloodWave]

14. according to israeli police its unlikely Hamas ordered it

On Friday, Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, foreign press spokesman for the Israel Police, reportedly told BBC journalist Jon Donnisonhe that the men responsible for murders were not acting on orders of Hamas leadership. Instead, he said, they are part of a “lone cell.” Further, Inspector Rosenfeld told Donnison that if Hamas’ leadership had ordered the kidnapping, “they'd have known about it in advance.”


As for the rockets, Hamas only started that *after* Israel started killing their members in this conflict if we believe ITIC aka the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center which is a independent research group with close ties to the IDF.

The July 8 ITIC report also divulged why Hamas launched its first rocket fire at Israel in more than 19 months on July 7: On that night Israeli forces had bombed and killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza. The ITIC report includes a picture of the six Hamas members. Thus, a report from an authoritative Israeli source described the provocation for the resumption of rocket fire: Hamas rocket fire began only after Israeli forces had engaged in nearly a month of military operations in violation of the ceasefire agreement and had killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza.


Personally i doubt Hamas would have restarted firing rockets if Netanyahu hadn't rushed to start this conflict with Hamas.

[FBaggins]

16. Sorry... no.

According to a reporter who tweeted that a spokesman said that...

... except that the spokesman says it isn't true - and therefore you can't stretch it into a claim that it's "according to israeli police".

But when reached by The Daily Beast on Sunday, Rosenfeld said that he had told Donnison what the Israeli government had been saying all along. “The kidnapping and murder of the teens was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the Hebron area,” he told The Daily Beast. “The security organizations are continuing to search for the murderers.” - See more at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/27/israeli-official-at-heart-of-twit-fit-still-blames-hamas-for-june-kidnappings.html#sthash.4CNJeP2z.dpuf

[catnhatnh]

17. From your own link:

“Hamas is fractured and it is even more so in the West Bank where they have been given no quarter by the Palestinian security forces,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president for research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “So they have been operating underground in cells that may not even communicate with one another. The idea that you might have an independent cell carry out an attack without communicating with the Gaza leadership is within the realm of the possibility.”

[FBaggins]

18. Is that it?

It's within the realm of possibility?

We've gone from a claim that it's been established that the whole thing was cooked up under false pretenses... to "it isn't entirely impossible" ?