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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Haniyeh: Hamas won Gaza war, but was wise to declare truce

2009-01-19

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Sunday that Israel's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip was a failure and had not cowed the Palestinians, but praised his movement for deciding to declare a cease-fire. "The enemy has failed to achieve its goals," Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas leader in the territory, said in a speech broadcast on Hamas television.
Wanna do it again, asshole?
Though he called the war, in which more than 1,300 Gazans and 13 Israelis died, a "popular victory" for Palestinians, Haniyeh said Hamas's decision to declare a truce on Sunday was "wise and responsible".

Hamas announced an immediate cease-fire by its militants and allied groups in Gaza on Sunday, giving Israel a week to pull out its troops from the coastal territory. "We the Palestinian resistance factions declare a cease-fire from our side in Gaza and we confirm our stance that the enemy's troops must withdraw from Gaza within a week," said Damascus-based Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk.

Ayman Taha, a Hamas official in Cairo for talks with Egypt on a truce deal, demanded that Israel open all of Gaza'sw border crossings to allow in food and other goods to meet the "basic needs for our people."

Israel said earlier on Sunday that it will not consider a timetable for withdrawing all of its forces from the Gaza Strip until Hamas and other militants cease their fire.

A leader of the militant Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip on Sunday said his group had also agreed to stop attacks on Israelis for a period of one week, following Israel's declaration of the unilateral cease-fire. Daoud Shihab, the Islamic Jihad official, said other smaller militant groups have also agreed to join the truce. There has been no immediate response from Israel.

Shihab told The Associated Press that the factions will jointly make a formal announcement later on Sunday. Shihab also said a longer cease-fire would be conditional on Israel withdrawing from Gaza the troops it sent into the Strip two weeks ago.

The Hamas announcement came after Gaza militants on Sunday fired at least 17 rockets into Israel, lightly wounding one man. One of Israel's stated goals in the campaign, code-named Operation Cast Lead, was the cessation of cross-border rocket fire.

Posted by:Fred

#14

Posted by: DMFD 2009-01-19 19:35

#13 The magic number is 3. Arab populations it's likely likely less, in Japan more, Russia much more, but usually 3%.

Posted by: .5MT 2009-01-19 11:53

#12 But the Baghdad International Exhibition for Mil Production back in 1989 went swimingly! My Project Babylon Sugergun was a huge hit. Saddam loved it and we were moving on to multi-stage rocket designs as well! But then 1990 was a very bad year. I blame Bush and the juice.

Posted by: Gerald Bull 2009-01-19 10:53

#11 That's the way I've always looked at the Iraq insurgency. As a thing of beauty.
It drew out an enemy that could not be engaged and got them to travel half way around the world, abandoning their own squalid little terror cells, to be killed by American Marines in an appropriate setting and a convenient place. We lost a lot of soldiers doing it, but all those lunatics could have killed 20 times that many Americans if they attacked on their own terms, in their own countries, at the time and place of their choosing.

Posted by: bigjim-ky 2009-01-19 10:42

#10 I wish sometimes that the US would have tried and succeeded to prolong the Iran-Iraq war. That conflict probably resulted in at least 500,000 dead. If it had continued another five years, the mullahs might have been overthrown and Saddam might never have invaded Kuwait.

Posted by: mhw 2009-01-19 10:32

#9 Israel:1300-Hamas:13
Maybe he thinks he beat the spread?

Posted by: tu3031 2009-01-19 10:16

#8 They lost something like 1/10 of 1% of their population to the 'war', a number which was likely replaced by births during the same time period. And in the 'eyes of the world' all they had to do was survive to be declared the winner. I guess that makes them the winner. 0.1% is something like 1/3 of the US losses in WW II, and they achieved it much more quickly - they are really proving their ability to achieve their goal (of dying for Allan.)
Faster, please.

Posted by: Glenmore 2009-01-19 09:22

#7 Well... islam as a whole has wiped entire areas clean of any native civilization and culture, replacing them with dysfunctional entities that never could qualify as actual Nation, and in passing has killed tens of millions upon tens of millions of men and wimmen, enslaved as many, and reduced the actual owners of those lands into oppressed minorities (see egypt, where the school children are taught the ACTUAL egyptians, the copts, are traitors converted by furriners, whereas egypt is an "arab country").

So, yeah, it has been a terrifying force of entropy and decay, BUT, it had been contained and outpaced; colonization was a first step at reversing the forward drive of imperialism it imposed on its neighbors, too bad the free-mason 19th century would not have anything to do with any effort to evangelize the "natives" of north africa, for example.

Current problem is not that "islam" is strong, it has some real assets, all byproducts of the West's success story, but it's just a force of entropy, nothing more. all its "power" comes from our own weakness (including Israel's). For example, the "non-muslim world" has been swallowed in a mental trap... instead of seeing the normal state of life as peace and wars being exceptions to be concluded before resuming peace, it has entered a dhimmi mindset where the islamic worldview of constant war (of aggression) broken up by "convenient pauses" is the norm.
Should the West, and I include the Zionist Entity in it, ever come out of this (commie) mental trap, it could revert to the western way of war...
One funny thing about the arabs I think is they've never been "beaten"; reminds me of those bombastic muslim boasts of the "Conquest of London" after the july bombings... I mean, in the country that faced down the Blitz? They have no reference point, and I only hope FOR THEIR SAKE, that they will ultimately endure say a WWII level of collective asskicking, to make them understand what the pecking order is... before they push the LIVING WORLD into doing something we'll be apologizing over for the next 50 years+ (hopefully, something in the way of genetically-targeted racial groups-wiping plague, one can dream...).

Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-01-19 08:48

#6 It works, look that they've achieved in the last 1400 years.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-01-19 08:32

#5 No, it doesn't.
It's just the "international community" (IE their accomplices/proppers & the intoxicated West) pretend to take them seriously.
In a rational world, without the compleasing fellow travellers that the msm, the transational ngos, the transnational bodies,... are, then, the emperor would appear naked, such as he stands in reality.
They're not strong, they're not smart, they just get a free ride and a free pass.

Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-01-19 08:31

#4 They ARE undomitable!...

It works.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-01-19 08:13

#3 They ARE undomitable!... In that sense that when any real pressure is applied to them, they crimple and shrink down and wane away, whining and complaining in an actually very feminized fashion... but as soon as pressure stops, they refill with hot air and get all bloated and boasty again, with their over-the-top affectation of virility and manhood. Real funny cross-national behavioral meme, from the muddle east Hard Boyz to the euro-Youths...

Frankly, I thought they were the human equivalent of teeth cavities, but I was wrong, they're sponges.

Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-01-19 04:42

#2 All Hail the Hindmost.

Posted by: mojo 2009-01-19 02:59

#1 Hamas won Gaza war, but was wise to declare truce

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2009-01-19 02:08

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