{"id":9541,"date":"2012-11-19T08:31:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T16:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9541"},"modified":"2012-11-19T08:31:39","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T16:31:39","slug":"the-middle-east-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/19\/the-middle-east-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"The Middle East Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have waited to write on the latest Middle East conflict, until I had a better understanding of what actually happened.  Ahmed Jabari, a Hamas leader and former terrorist, was working to stop the occasional rocket attacks against Israel.  Israel targeted him for assassination, and killed him in an air attack.  Palestine reacted with increased rocket attacks against Israel, and the conflict escalated from there.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"19Jabari\"Jabari was killed in a surgical airstrike on Wednesday as part of a larger Israeli offensive in Gaza<\/a>. "This is an operation against terror targets of different organisations in Gaza," an Israeli spokeswoman said at the time. <\/p>\n

Called Operation "Pillar of Defence,"<\/a> the offensive dashed hopes of progress toward a truce between Israel and Hamas that might have ended months of roiling tensions and violence in the region. <\/p>\n

Since Wednesday, conflicts has escalated. Palestinian militants reportedly "barraged Israel with nearly 150 rockets<\/a> on Thursday," and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated plans for "significant widening" of military strikes\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

The best coverage I have seen on this story came from Chris Hayes.  He covered the story in four segments with Noura Erahat, Noam Sheizaf, Yousef Munayyir and David Frum. His panel was balanced and provided all points of view, some of which differ from my own conclusions.  In the first, he outlined how the most recent conflict came about.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Note that previous Israeli attacks on Palestine, this year, have killed 314, compared to 25 from Palestinian attacks on Israel.<\/font><\/p>\n

In the second, they discussed Israel\u2019s tactics of targeted killings.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Targeted killings and military assault by Israel is not a long term solution, and cannot lead to peace.<\/font><\/p>\n

In the third, they discussed the context of the most recent conflict.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It certainly appears that Israel prefers maintaining the status quo of occupation and attrition through illegal settlements rather than implementing a two state solution, to which they committed themselves in Oslo.<\/font><\/p>\n

In the fourth, they explored incentives for peace.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The prospects for a long term solution look grim.  For there to be peace, Israel must abide by the terms to which they agreed in Oslo and stop trying to pummel Palestine into submission.<\/font><\/p>\n

As much I tend to place the bulk of the blame on Israel, doing do will not help the prospects for peace either.  Therefore, in the meantime, we need to support those people on both sides who are working for a nonviolent resolution of the conflict instead of taking Israel\u2019s side as a knee-jerk reaction.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have waited to write on the latest Middle East conflict, until I had a better understanding of what actually happened.  Ahmed Jabari, a Hamas leader and former terrorist, was working to stop the occasional rocket attacks against Israel.  Israel targeted him for assassination, and killed him in an air attack.  Palestine reacted with increased […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}