Quote:
Originally Posted by epchick
Ok, so I said that Israel shouldn't have so many checkpoints in the land occupied by the Palestinians. I also said that instead of bombing places, they should raid the suspected hideouts/storage areas to see if they are in fact hideouts/storage. I don't see those two comments as "talking [out] of both sides of my mouth."
If Israel thinks that epchick's house in Gaza City is housing weapons, instead of bombing epchick's house (and killing her family, and any civilians in the area cause bombs aren't just nice little things that stay contained in that one little area) why don't they send in troops to snoop around and see if there are actually weapons. If no weapons are found, don't bomb the house, and allow epchick's family to continue to stay there safely.
I can understand that.
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But the problem, I think, is that the weapons are typically placed in this type locations deliberately.
Here's an old story from 2007 about outcry over a Palestinian mortar launcher being placed on a UN school.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/....N.-School.php
So basically there's a pattern of choosing to put weapons in the very places that Israel will look terrible for striking.
ETA: Here's a link to the recent UN school controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Fakhura_school_strike
I wanted to post it so as not to be seeming to misrepresent what happened most recently since there's debate about whether there were mortar fired from the school recently.
On the other hand, Israel could choose to use ground forces and carefully monitor from within Gaza, but that's going to equal occupation in a lot of people's minds, or they could try to keep weapons from entering from the outside of the area, but then it's a blockade.
Other than relocating the Jewish homeland to Wyoming, I'm not sure there's much that Israel is ever going to be able to do to promote peace and be able to protect themselves at the same time.