Things aren’t looking good for Middle East peace. Forget the sputtering peace talks, it turns out that half of the Palestinian leadership still won’t stop fighting until they have it all. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip, reiterated on Tuesday that they will never give up “resistance” until they take all the territory they claim.
He later clarified what that meant, with the Hamas military website reporting Haniyeh said that negotiations with Israel would never cause the Palestinians to relinquish their claim to the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That, by the way, is all of Israel. So much for peaceful coexistence.
The comments from Haniyeh are disturbing enough, but the bluster has real threats behind it right now. Israel recently intercepted a ship loaded with weapons—including missiles—from Iran that was heading to Gaza. Looks like Hamas isn’t content to just talk violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in comments released by his office after the captured Iranian arms ship reached Israel, said, “The weapons on this ship were destined for terrorists in Gaza who are committed to Israel’s destruction. The goal was to have these weapons rain down on the heads of Israel’s citizens.”
And Netanyahu noted that while Iran is arming Palestinians targeting Israel today, that may not always be the case. Remember, the Islamic republic still chants, “Death to America.”
Said Netanyahu, “The missiles that we uncovered today were intended to strike at the citizens of Israel. The intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs] that Iran is developing are intended to strike at the citizens of the West.
“Come to think of it, Iran might not need ICBMs. Just as they concealed these weapons in containers on this ship, they could tomorrow conceal in other containers the ultimate weapon, nuclear weapons, which they could ship to any port in the world.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, March 11, 2014)