1/5/09: TWD's Late Agenda For The Start of 2009: Highlight The Critical Reason Of How The Israel Invasion Is Wrong

Photo from Al Jazeera

And the key reason why this whole thing shouldn't even be happening:

Israel has painted itself into a strategic corner – with the enthusiastic support of the Bush administration – by continuing its quest to reverse the choice of the Palestinian electorate in 2006. Even some in the Israeli security establishment recognize that the fundamental flaw in Israel’s policy over Gaza is its refusal to recognize political reality. “The state of Israel must understand that Hamas rule in Gaza is a fact, and it is with that government that we must reach a situation of calm,” Shmuel Zakai, former chief of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, told Israel Army Radio last week. Israel’s error, he said, was in failing to improve the economic situation in Gaza once the truce took hold, and instead maintaining a chokehold that worsened the situation.

Piqued by the audacity of the Palestinian voters, the US and Israel sought to reverse the result. First, they imposed crippling sanctions, and when that failed, they attempted a military putsch that prompted Hamas to drive Fatah-linked security forces out of Gaza in a bloody counter-coup. Instead of using Gaza’s economically dependent situation as leverage to restrain Hamas from launching attacks, the US immediately cut aid and enforced sanctions on Gaza with the warning that these would only be lifted when Hamas adopted positions that it would have deemed ideological surrender. And they have been trying in vain to topple it ever since.

This is not an excuse of Hamas actions on the Fatah led group, but can you blame them? They had to defend themselves from the group that the Israelis and neoconservatives of America wanted in power in Palestine in the first place.

And the Cheney Administration, need I really say more?