Senior Islamic Jihad leader killed

[Christians4LessGvt]

Senior Islamic Jihad leader killed in Gaza blast
Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:08am IST

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Eight people were killed, including a commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, and some 40 were wounded when an explosion destroyed a house in the Gaza Strip late on Friday, a group spokesman and local medics said.

The Israeli army denied any involvement. Islamic Jihad said an air strike caused the blast, which also killed three other militants as well as the wife and two young children of the commander, Ayman Fayed, better known as Abu Abdallah.

"We will respond to this Zionist massacre painfully," Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad's armed wing said.

"We will strike the enemy everywhere."

A senior figure in the movement linked the incident to Israeli threats to kill senior militants it holds responsible for rockets fired into Israel -- and to this week's killing in Damascus of a top commander of Lebanon's Hezbollah group.

An Israeli military spokeswoman denied any role in the Gaza blast, saying: "The Israeli army spokesman announces that the military has no connection to this matter."

Relatives said a son and daughter of the 41-year-old Fayed, aged 6 and 5, were killed. Three of his other children were wounded.

Rescuers combing the rubble in the dark found one body three hours after the blast, which also damaged surrounding homes.

Some residents of the al-Bureij refugee camp said they believed there had been an air strike. Others said they heard no aircraft noise or other indications before the explosion.

Witnesses at the scene said they saw debris among the rubble of what looked like the locally manufactured rockets the Islamic Jihad and other groups fire at Israeli towns.

Israel has used air strikes on cars in Gaza to kill a number of militants lately but has not bombed a house there since 2006. Militants have also been killed in accidental explosions and faction fighting, while some Palestinians also accuse Israel of using undercover methods to set off explosions in the enclave.

A rocket strike on the Israeli town of Sderot a week ago wounded an 8-year-old boy, increasing popular pressure on the Israeli government to respond to the daily attacks. Ministers have said they may step up attacks on senior leaders in Gaza, where Hamas Islamists, allied to Islamic Jihad, seized control in June from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

A senior Islamic Jihad political leader, Khaled al-Batsh, said Israel was behind the bombing that killed Fayed and linked it to the car bomb in Damascus that killed Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyah -- for which Israel also denied responsibility.

"It seems that Israel has decided to escalate its aggression against the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon," he said.

"We will stand fast."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is pursuing a new, U.S.-sponsored peace process with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, based in the occupied West Bank. Both Israel and Abbas have refused to talk to Gaza's Hamas leaders, and Israel has all but sealed the enclave's 1.5 million people inside its borders.

Three weeks after Hamas breached the territory's southern border with Egypt, creating a brief opportunity for people to stock up on supplies, Hamas officials said they told Egyptian counterparts at a meeting on Thursday they were ready for a truce with Israel if the Jewish state ended its blockade of Gaza and all military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Alastair Macdonald in Gaza)


http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-31976620080215?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

[Michael Tee]

Looks like the Resistance is at an impasse.  Its rockets aren't really having much of an effect on the Israelis, but the Israelis are striking some pretty heavy blows on them.  They can escalate the type of rocket fired to do more damage, but this would just provoke a more devastating counter-strike.

Really what they need is a new weapon, comparable to the suicide bomber.  They had a phenomenal success with suicide bombings in the beginning, but the Israelis learned how to counter them and now it's yesterday's weapon.

They also need international support at a level they can't get - - diplomatic support, truly effective international boycott, weapons and military support.

Unfortunately, what they need, they don't have and they ain't gonna get.  Not in the foreseeable future. 
So what do they do?  Lie low and suck it up?  Or go on the offensive, knowing the counter-strike will be devastating and most of the current leadership will lose their lives? 

IMHO, they have no choice but to go forward, take the offense, USE their big rockets and hit the Israelis with everything they have.  The possible benefits: further weakening unpopular U.S. puppet rulers in the region, demoralize the Israelis after their recent successes, inflaming anti-Israel public opinion in the world, recruiting more Resistance fighters into the struggle and opening new possibilities not even visualized at this point in time.  Not a great option, but the ONLY option.  When the known situation is intolerable, sometimes all you have left to gamble on is the unknown.

These are dark days for the Resistance, but that only emphasizes the need to persevere.

[Plane]

Havent they got the choice of investing in their children instead of their war?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Havent they got the choice of investing in their children instead of their war?

======================================
How would they do this? The people of Gaza have nothing, barely enough to eat. Unemployment is over 50%. If it were not for a small amount of aid, they would starve.

There is no hope in Gaza under the present regime, and there was none under the PLO or under the Israeli occupation, or the Egyptian administration before that. Progress seems impossible to these people. They are oppressed by everyone and everything.

[Michael Tee]

<<Havent they got the choice of investing in their children instead of their war?>>

Invest what?  All they have left is their own bodies and their courage.  You can't invest bodies and courage in education and even for those who can, when the children are educated, they want their land back anyway.  Can you imagine Churchill telling the British people in the darkest days of WWII, "Let's not invest any more time and effort in this cruel war, let's invest in our children instead?"  The investment in war is unfortunately the best investment they can make in their children's future.  Those children will want to live free in their own land.  Live free or die.

[Plane]

<<Havent they got the choice of investing in their children instead of their war?>>

Invest what?  All they have left is their own bodies and their courage.  You can't invest bodies and courage in education and even for those who can, when the children are educated, they want their land back anyway.  Can you imagine Churchill telling the British people in the darkest days of WWII, "Let's not invest any more time and effort in this cruel war, let's invest in our children instead?"  The investment in war is unfortunately the best investment they can make in their children's future.  Those children will want to live free in their own land.  Live free or die.

They don't have enough to eat either  really, they are subsisting on charity.

If I were one of them I would not be trapped by that land , I would leave .

I would take as much family with me as I could , where could I go and find conditions worse?

Fighting to the last man is no solution , not for the looser anyway.

The whole concept of Indefadah is flawed , it has no positives , in the unlikely event of victory they will have to found a nation with the poorest people and the worst leadership they could pssibly have gotten. In the much more likely event of continued conflict , there will be no buillding anything .

[Michael Tee]

<<Fighting to the last man is no solution , not for the looser anyway.>>

You are too much in love with life, plane.  You should walk a mile in their shoes, you wouldn't be all that enamoured with life for the sake of life.  Living the way they live is no life.  Better for them to die on their feet than to live on their knees.

<< . . . in the unlikely event of victory they will have to found a nation with the poorest people and the worst leadership they could pssibly have gotten.>>

Spoken like a man with no concept whatsoever of pride or self-respect.  And an undeviating focus on the material world as the source of all value.  If they win, they will have the pride of a hard-won victory - - worth more than all of the SUVs and i-Pods and split-level bungalows in the U.S.A.  To someone like you, "poor" means having no money and no toys.  Because you are living in the heart of a spiritual poverty, you have no idea how someone like the Vietnamese, or the Palestinians, after their victory, will be poor in material goods for sure, but rich beyond all comparison in the things that really count: the pride of victory, a victory won against the greatest forces for evil since the end of Nazi Germany, and won moreover against enormous disparities of wealth, weaponry and equipment.

[Plane]

<<Fighting to the last man is no solution , not for the looser anyway.>>

You are too much in love with life, plane.  You should walk a mile in their shoes, you wouldn't be all that enamoured with life for the sake of life.  Living the way they live is no life.  Better for them to die on their feet than to live on their knees.

<< . . . in the unlikely event of victory they will have to found a nation with the poorest people and the worst leadership they could pssibly have gotten.>>

Spoken like a man with no concept whatsoever of pride or self-respect.  And an undeviating focus on the material world as the source of all value.  If they win, they will have the pride of a hard-won victory - - worth more than all of the SUVs and i-Pods and split-level bungalows in the U.S.A.  To someone like you, "poor" means having no money and no toys.  Because you are living in the heart of a spiritual poverty, you have no idea how someone like the Vietnamese, or the Palestinians, after their victory, will be poor in material goods for sure, but rich beyond all comparison in the things that really count: the pride of victory, a victory won against the greatest forces for evil since the end of Nazi Germany, and won moreover against enormous disparities of wealth, weaponry and equipment.

Don't assume that your steriotypes are real for anyone , I know what pride can do to a person , it is not entirely positive.

Their prize is dirt , not the best dirt just the rather small and unimportant bit of land.

If they win it their pride will be used to perpetuate their slavery to leaders that look like themselves, not a great improvement. And the land itself will ruined by the fight that won it.

Imagine that the subject were White surprimacy and possession of our ancestral lands in Georgia , would you support the Klan in thir struggle for pride in the same terms?

[Xavier_Onassis]

They don't have enough to eat either  really, they are subsisting on charity.

If I were one of them I would not be trapped by that land , I would leave .
============================================================
It is unlikely that you would leave. Where would you go? Israel won't let you in, Egypt won't let you in, the seacoast is patrolled by the Israeli Navy. Getting out of Gaza is not like getting out of Mexico, there are soldiers with guns who will shoot and kill you if you try to flee.There are no flights to anywhere else without a passport and a visa, and you don't belong to any country, and no one recognizes whatever documents the Gaza government might issue you.

No one wants you. No one will let you in. Every country where you might find a real job considers you a terrorist. There is a class thing between the West Bank and Gaza, too. West Bankers consider the Gazans to be lower class, and you can't get to the WB anyway.

You could stay and build rockets, or just sit there and contemplate your navel. Gaza is closer to a prison than any political division on Earth. Moldova is Heaven compared to Gaza.

[Plane]

They don't have enough to eat either  really, they are subsisting on charity.

If I were one of them I would not be trapped by that land , I would leave .
============================================================
It is unlikely that you would leave. Where would you go? Israel won't let you in, Egypt won't let you in, the seacoast is patrolled by the Israeli Navy. Getting out of Gaza is not like getting out of Mexico, there are soldiers with guns who will shoot and kill you if you try to flee.There are no flights to anywhere else without a passport and a visa, and you don't belong to any country, and no one recognizes whatever documents the Gaza government might issue you.

No one wants you. No one will let you in. Every country where you might find a real job considers you a terrorist. There is a class thing between the West Bank and Gaza, too. West Bankers consider the Gazans to be lower class, and you can't get to the WB anyway.

You could stay and build rockets, or just sit there and contemplate your navel. Gaza is closer to a prison than any political division on Earth. Moldova is Heaven compared to Gaza.

The Israeli's are preventing the Palestinians from leaving too?

A lot of the bad conditions are the result of the Indefadath ,these rockets are not improveing any condition.

[Michael Tee]

<<The Israeli's are preventing the Palestinians from leaving too?>>

Don't you get it?  They can't leave if they have nowhere to go.

<<A lot of the bad conditions are the result of the Indefadath ,these rockets are not improveing any condition.>>

No a lot of the bad conditions are the direct result of the Israeli blockade.  They were blockaded before they started to rocket the Israelis, they would be blockaded after they stop.  As long as they live, the Palestinians in Gaza will be a threat to the Israelis, who can't kill them and can't let them live.  Their only hope is the rockets - - but bigger and better than what they have now.  And more.

[Amianthus]

Don't you get it?  They can't leave if they have nowhere to go.

The UN has declared and registered most of them as "refugees" - any country that is a UN member and accepts refugees should accept them, including the US. As far as I know, UN refugees are given automatic visas in the US.

[The_Professor]

Don't you get it?  They can't leave if they have nowhere to go.

The UN has declared and registered most of them as "refugees" - any country that is a UN member and accepts refugees should accept them, including the US. As far as I know, UN refugees are given automatic visas in the US.

I just called a friend of mine at State and he says this is True and we accept hundreds frrom all over the world each year. They are expedited through the process into the States. They are given free immediate passage and they come back later to do the paperwork.

[Michael Tee]

What country doesn't have Palestinian refugees?  The number that every country accepts is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem.  There are approximately 15 million people today claiming refugee status or asylum.  In 2001, a fairly typical year, Canada took in about 12,000 of them.    Since "Palestine" is not a country recognized by Canada, the Palestinians among our refugees probably come from a variety of countries, but wouldn't constitute any majority - - our refugees come from all over.  If the U.S. takes in ten times the number of refugees as we do, they are taking in about 120,000 a year.  If the cheap bastards had hearts as big as ours, which I sincerely doubt - - at ten times our population, they probably take in less than half the refugees per capita that we do.  What percent Palestinians is probably small, but irrelevant - - for the purposes of this argument, it doesn't matter.  However many Palestinians they take in as refugees, it's not gonna make a dent in the problem.