What is Bibi Netanyahu up to?
- By Zhao Jinglun
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 17, 2014
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A young Filipino Muslim looks on as demonstrators display placards during a pro-Palestinian rally in front of the Israeli embassy in Manila on July 15, 2014. Israel's Operation Protective Edge, intended to stamp out militant rocket fire, had killed 186 people in Gaza by late July 14 -- exceeding the toll in the last similar flare-up of violence in 2012. [Xinhua photo] |
Western media are raising a hue and cry about Hamas lobbing missiles at Israel, without mentioning that there are no casualties, only property damage. Many of the crude and unguided missiles fell on the desert or were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system.
On the other hand, Israeli air raids killed at least 185 Gazans, wounding over 1,000 and counting. According to the UN, 80 percent of the dead are civilians, many of them women and children.
The imbalance of killing is so glaring that the international community is calling for an immediate end to the violence. Egypt has proposed a ceasefire, which Israel accepted, to gain the moral high ground; but Hamas rejected it, claiming it had not been consulted and the terms were unacceptable. Hamas probably wanted to break Israel's blockade of Gaza in which Egypt is complicit by sealing the tunnels that supply weapons, food and goods to Gaza.
So the violence continues, with Gazan casualties increasing to 194 dead and 1,400 wounded. Hamas finally succeeded in killing one innocent civilian in Israel.
Now, some background.
The U.S.-mediated peace talk between Israel and Palestine collapsed because Netanyahu never accepted the two-state solution. Last Friday (July 11) at his press conference, the Israeli PM ruled out full Palestinian sovereignty, and called the U.S. approach "na?ve".
Reporting in The Times of Israel, David Horovitz said Netanyahu made it explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestine state in the West Bank as he sees Israel standing alone on the frontlines against vicious Islamic radicalism, especially Hamas which, he said, is bent on destroying the Jewish state.
