Gaza

Three Palestinian children have just been killed by an Israeli missile attack. Others will wake up the next morning to see they have no school to go to.
Indeed they may not eat tonight as food has long run out. Getting hold of medicines is like looking for life on the moon.
Palestinians living in Gaza have been enduring a blockade by the Israeli authorities for months on end. The blockade reduced food supplies, medicines, destroyed trade and turned Gaza into a humanitarian crisis. It is no wonder that Hamas turned back to its habit of launching rockets into Israeli territory.
I cannot condone the killing of innocent Israeli civilians. But things need to be put into perspective. After decades of being promised a State, Palestinians do not yet have a place to call home. They live in occupied territory. They are the oppressed.
Oppression leads to desperation and I find it cheeky, to put it mildly, that Israel and the US justify the current war being waged against the residents of Gaza on the basis of self defence.
What do you expect when people are driven up a wall? What do the Palestinian authorities have to show their people? Is it any wonder that they resort back to the only thing that can hurt their oppressor?
The war on Gaza is nothing more than a blood thirsty drive to annihilate innocent civilians. Hamas is just a comfortable excuse and nothing else.
Before the internal Palestinian split which saw the more moderate Fatah maintain control of the West Bank and Hamas take over Gaza, Hamas had won a free and fair election.
Unfortunately they were written-off immediately by Israel and the Western world. While Hamas had to assume responsibility for its actions in Government, I felt and still feel that they should have been engaged in dialogue.
Israel's actions will simply strengthen the more hardline elements among the Palestinians.