Reaching Goals

From USA Today:

"Israel: Gaza conflict ends 'when our goals are realized'"

As the Palestinian death toll rose, Hamas officials said Saturday that overnight raids targeted their homes and installations — and for the first time a pair of mosques. Hamas said it hopes the incident will galvanize support in the Muslim world. "The bombing of two mosques in Gaza overnight shows how barbaric this enemy is and how much is it hostile to Islam," said Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman in Doha, Qatar. "This terrorism gives us the right to broaden our response to deter this occupier." The Israeli military released an aerial photo of the mosque it hit, saying it concealed rockets right next to another religious site and civilian homes. It said Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Gaza militant groups systematically use this tactic of abusing religious sites to conceal weapons and establish underground tunnel networks, deliberately endangering its own civilians. "Hamas terrorists systematically exploit and choose to put Palestinians in Gaza in harm's way and continue to locate their positions among civilian areas and mosques, proving once more their disregard for human life and holy sites," said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Friday to continue to target members of Hamas with air strikes in Gaza until rockets the militant group has been firing into Israel from the southern border halt. Addressing a news conference Friday, Netanyahu brushed off a question about possible cease-fire efforts. The Palestinians and their international supporters are discussing a U.N. draft resolution that would condemn all violence against civilians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and call for "an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire," the Associated Press reported early Saturday. "I will end it when our goals are realized. And the overriding goal is to restore the peace and quiet," Netanyahu said of the five-day-old conflict At least 120 Palestinians have been killed in this latest flare up in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian crisis. the Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday. The U.N. Security Council is deeply divided and often paralyzed by the rift among the Israelis and Palestinians, with the United States defending close ally Israel and the majority of other council members firmly backing the Palestinians. Hamas' military wing said Friday it would fire rockets at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport and warned airlines to avoid it, Reuters reported. "The armed wing of the Hamas movement has decided to respond to the Israeli aggression, and we warn you against carrying out flights to Ben-Gurion airport, which will be one of our targets today because it also hosts a military air base," read a statement by the Islamist group's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades.  Israel intensified its aerial bombardment of this densely populated coastal enclave Friday, causing widespread panic among residents. Israel said its military has carried out more than 1,100 strikes against Gaza targets, bombarding the territory on average every five minutes. On Thursday, it said militants were firing a rocket toward Israel about every 10 minutes. Some residents recalled the last conflict with Israel in 2012. "I survived in the second war then and now I am wondering if I will survive this one," said Israa Yasien, 22, of Gaza City. "I say stop killing civilians, women and children in Gaza — stop destroying our homes." Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the military was doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties, calling inhabitants ahead of time to warn of imminent attacks. He said Israeli forces also fire "non-explosive munitions" at roofs as a warning, and look for people leaving before destroying the structure.  The current fighting between Israel and Hamas, which governs Gaza, followed the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank and the apparent revenge murder of a Palestinian teen by Israeli extremists. Israel blamed the Israeli murders on Hamas, branded a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, and rounded up hundreds of Palestinians in searching for the teens. Palestinians, inflamed by the searches and the Palestinian boy's murder, responded by rioting. As the conflict escalated along Israel's southern border, militants in Lebanon fired several rockets at northern Israel Friday. The identity of the militants was not revealed. Most of southern Lebanon is controlled by the Iran-backed Shiite militia, Hezbollah, but there are also Palestinians in the region. A rocket fired from Lebanon struck near Kibbutz Kfar Yuval without causing casualties or damage, Brig.-Gen. Moti Almoz, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, told Israel's Ynet News.  Lebanese security forces said five rockets were fired toward Israel, with some falling on Lebanese territory and one exploding at the launch site. An injured Lebanese suspect was arrested at a hospital, and security forces are searching for two Palestinians suspected of being involved, according to Beirut-based news site The Daily Star.

Hezbollah, which tangled with Israel in the past, is unlikely to do so now, says Tony Badran, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Hezbollah has rebuilt its arsenal of long-range missiles since 2006, when Israel dealt it a severe drubbing for thousands of rockets shot into northern Israel. Currently, however, many of Hezbollah's fighters are busy fighting to keep Syria's Bashar Assad in power in his three-year-old civil war. "They don't want to risk a major conflagration at this particular point in time," Badran said.

^ Israel should do whatever it needs to to protect the lives of its citizens. They need to make sure the terrorists (Hamas) can't regroup and attack them again in a few years (like happened in 2012.) I don't see any Muslim countries coming Hamas' aid - maybe some other Islamist terrorists though. The Arab and Muslim countries that had attacked Israel off/on since 1948 and have always lost should have learned their lesson by now - you can't attack Israel into submission. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/12/israel-palestinians-gaza-un/12563379/