The kidnappers holding 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit have moved the goalposts significantly. The demands have now changed from releasing women and those under 18 from Israeli prisons, to releasing 1,000 Arab prisoners and ending its offensive in Gaza as ransom for Shalit's safe return to Israel. This radical change underscores how inappropriate it would be for Israel to negotiate with terrorists.
The document titled "Military Statement Number Two", which was faxed to news agencies, did not specify whether the demands were for the release of Shalit. But a spokesman for Hamas said they were conditions for freeing Shalit.
As we said within the last hour, Hamas is emboldened. They perceive themselves to be very powerful, and are receiveing significant encouragement and support from Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon.
Prior to the new ransom, the IAF fired a missile at a training camp of the Abu Rish Brigades, an armed group affiliated with Fatah. According to reports, the camp is located next to the former settlement of Morag in central Gaza. Additionally, Palestinian sources in Gaza reported that the IAF fired two missiles at a camp belonging to Hamas in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zaitun. There were no reports of injuries during either air strike. To date, there has not been a single Palestinian civilian killed as a result of Operation Summer Rain. If that's not a humanitarian operation, we don't know what is.
Hamas knows Israel won't accept this, they are trying to provoke a reaction from Israel that they hope the rest of the world, (which let's face it isn't too fussed at the way Israel is handling this situation right now), will categorically condemn Israel. They rely on people's ignorance of the history of this conflict, people's tendency to look just at what's happening now and react to that, and the very loud, but increasingly irrelevant, anti-west western media.
I think they're going to find out the west has had it with them. The fact that they're associated with Syria is not helping them (and vice versa).
What is it with the Muslim's that they have to take other people's experiences/history for themselves. They've re-written Jesus Christ's place over the Christian interpretation, they've claimed Jewish religious sites as they're own. And now they want to claim the haulocaust (despite they're own involvement with the nazi war crimes). Pity they didn't have social workers in Mohammed's time, he needed one.
Posted by: chrisse | Jun 30, 2006 at 21:49