look at Syria i bet neither sides are directly aiming at civilians.

Any particular reason behind the constant capitalisation of Hamas?

Unsure if ignorant of situation in Syria or really committed to misinformation.

Isnt it an abbreviation?

Hamas is an Arabic word meaning enthusiasm...

Israel masses for Gaza invasion

THOUSANDS of Israeli troops have made preparations to move into Gaza within 60 minutes after Palestinian rockets reached Jerusalem and the shores of Tel Aviv.

Senior members of the military have told The Times that they expect to invade this weekend. One officer confirmed that troops had been ordered to prepare "to the highest state of readiness".

As the latest crisis escalated in the Middle East, Palestinian militants deployed longer range missiles for the first time. In Gaza City, families sheltered in cellars as Israeli air strikes rocked buildings and war planes created incursion corridors for troops.

Aircraft were reported bombing open land in pre-dawn raids along the border - apparent preparation for a movement of tanks. Nearby roads were closed as artillery units advanced towards the frontier.

"We are creating that corridor, the incursion area for our troops to begin their movement into Gaza when that order is given," said a senior Israel Defence Forces official in Israel's southern command. "We are expecting to move this weekend."

"Our current mobilisation level is such that when the order is given, we can move within the hour," said another.

The Times witnessed low-loader trucks, sometimes in groups of a dozen, moving tanks on slip roads leading to Gaza. Israeli soldiers laid out spare tank tracks as hundreds of troops were grouped in forward areas near the border. Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, has authorised an additional call-up of soldiers, adding to the 30,000 reservists mobilised earlier in the week. Sources said he had requested government approval for an additional 75,000.

As the stakes were raised by Hamas's first use of long-range Iranian-built rockets, Mr Barak gave warning that his country would not hesitate to launch a ground incursion and that Israeli troops "will need to go house-to-house".

Israeli defence officials said the objectives and targets of an expanded operation in Gaza were still unclear. Analysts said that troops would be likely to focus on weapons caches and known Hamas artillery sites. "At the end, they are trying to create deterrence," said Amir Buhbot, a senior military analyst with the Walla news service.

Hospital spokesmen in Gaza said the death toll reached 23 with at least 300 wounded since an Israeli air strike on Wednesday killed Ahmed al Jaabar, the Hamas military mastermind.

Palestinian officials said the dead in Gaza included 14 civilians, among them seven children and a pregnant woman.

Israeli officials insisted the action was a measured response to weeks of rocket launches from Gaza. "No country would tolerate its civilian population being under this kind of attack," said Nitzan Chen, spokesman at the Ministry of Public Diplomacy.

A reserve soldier, Gil Chernosky, complained that international pressure during Operation Cast Lead in 2009 prevented Israel from finishing the job in Gaza. More then 1300 Palestinians were killed during that punishing offensive into the Palestinian territory.

"We stopped before we were done and now Palestinians are again firing rockets at our houses," he said. Rockets from Gaza hit the outskirts of Jerusalem for the first time yesterday. A few hours earlier, another slammed down near Israel's commercial centre, Tel Aviv, the second day in a row that the city named "the bubble" by residents was shaken by warning sirens and impact booms.

Israeli defence officials confirmed that Hamas was firing Iranian Fajr-5 rockets with a range of more than 50miles. This was a "red line" that Israeli officials had tried to eliminate on the first day of bombing in Gaza.

"We wiped out the majority of their long-range missile ability. Clearly they still have some left but we think that is very limited," said a ministry official.

A Hamas rocket that evaded Israel's Iron Dome missile defence shield on Thursday killed three civilians. The defences had brought down 86 incoming rockets by mid-afternoon yesterday.

A visit to Gaza yesterday by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil was punctuated by explosions, despite undertakings from Israel that it would respect a ceasefire until he left.

An Israeli spokesman denied, via Twitter, that Israel had broken the ceasefire and accused Hamas of using the visit as cover for launching further rockets.

Mr Kandil toured a Gaza hospital where he held the bloodied body of a child and said: "Egypt will spare no effort ... to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce."

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the UN, is to visit Gaza within days to push for a truce as the conflict veers toward all-out war.

The US and Turkey expressed concern last night that the renewed violence would damage the Middle East peace process. "The two leaders shared their concerns about the dangers to civilian populations on both sides and expressed their common desire to see an end to the violence," the White House said, after President Obama called Recep Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey.

The White House had previously made it clear that it blames the Islamist movement Hamas for the latest round of fighting, urging it to halt the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.

[size=6]Israeli minister vows Palestinian 'holocaust'[/size]

A senior Israeli politician provoked controversy today when he warned that Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza would be punished with a "bigger holocaust" from Israeli armed forces.

The use of the Hebrew word for holocaust, "shoah", tends to be used exclusively in Israel to describe the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Palestinian activists routinely claim to be suffering a "shoah" at the hands of Israel, but the Jewish state normally denies any moral equivalence between the suffering of Palestinians today and European jewry under the Nazis.

Matan Vilnai, deputy defence minister, broke that taboo when he used the term "shoah" during interview on Army Radio.

"The more qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," he said.

His use of the term reflects the febrile atmosphere in Israel where public opinion demands the government does something decisive to stop the daily barrage of rockets fired from Gaza over the border into Israel.

The issue dominates the media, sparking angry protests from Israelis who live within rocket range of Gaza and prompting an intense national debate about whether to negotiate with the Hamas authorities in Gaza.

Israel has lost eleven of its citizens to qassam strikes since the first one was launched in 2003. Many hundreds of Palestinians, mostly militants but civilians as well, have been killed in retaliatory Israeli attacks.

The Israeli government moved quickly to try to defuse the impact of Mr Vilnai's use of the sensitive term. His office put out a statement later trying to water down the meaning of the word.

"Mr. Vilnai was meaning 'disaster'," the statement said. "He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."

The foreign ministry also got involved seeking to downplay the linguistic faux pas.

"Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust," Arye Mekel, Israel's foreign ministry spokesman, said.

This was not enough to placate Palestinians who sought to exploit the use of the word.

"We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people," Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesman, said.

The tit-for-tat exchanges between militants firing rockets from Gaza and the Israeli armed forces trying to hit them and their commanders continued, with the Palestinian death toll reaching 31 since Wednesday. One Israeli has been killed in that period.

Tens of thousands of Gazans took to the streets to protest the worsening violence on Friday.

"Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war led by the enemy against our people," Ismail Haniyeh, one of the most senior Hamas leaders, told a crowd gathered outside the mosque where he attended weekly prayers.

Israel has tried ground offensives into Gaza before to silence the rocket threat but they have failed to deal with the problem once and for all.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, has so far been wary of launching a ground offensive, which could incur heavy casualties and derail US-backed peace talks with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian national authority.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1580339/Israeli-minister-vows-Palestinian-holocaust.html

"Mr. Vilnai was meaning 'disaster'," the statement said. "He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."

If HAMAS was so bothered about civilian deaths then it should stop storing and launching rockets from civilian areas. If Israel was directly targeting civilians and firing unguided weapons with no real target except hitting a city like HAMAS is, there would be a lot more civilian death.

There is civilian deaths in all urban warefare, look at Syria i bet neither sides are directly aiming at civilians. This sounds like "oh we killed 3 of your people so if you kill anymore then 3 you're the bad guy"

He's not Jewish. He's a Gaza based BBC journalist and his son was killed by Jews.

Of course that's what happens when a small region is stripped off of all resources and has to rely on smuggling for supplies.

Where are they supposed to fucking let rip their ammunition? Not Gaza's fault that they aren't supported by the United States and therefore not their fault that they don't have advanced flying bomber jets that can base their attacks anywhere.

ROCKETS FFS :lol: . I guess Gaza have done well with their smuggled supplies though, up against the might of the American supported Israelis.

Israel aren't vying for a war. They want to wipe out Gaza completely ffs. Why, with all their advanced weaponry and foreign support, can't they seize HAMAS leaders via the ground? Instead they choose to bomb the living shit out of Gaza (killing hundreds of civilians in the process) all in the name of 'wiping out HAMAS'

Aussie4ever4, you are aware that 'Palestine' has been reduced to built up areas? Unguided rockets are launched from the small areas of Palestine that are left.

Also I am yet to see a compelling defense of the IDF singling out civilian targets for targeting. Is it just that they feel the destruction of schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, hotels and news outlets is the best way to topple Hamas, or that they really would just prefer to no longer have any of these dirty indigenous populations left inside their borders? The situation reminds me so very much of how America dealt with their indigenous problem, unfortunately without any chance of it stopping before the inevitable conclusion.

what? are you saying because Gaza has not got fighter jets that it justifys firing rockets into Israel?

Don't think for a moment, benelsmore, that the Israeli's wouldn't wipe the Palestinians right off the map if they weren't surrounded by arab nations loyal to palestine.

People hold Israel to a higher standard because 70 odd years ago they were the minority and the persecuted in Palestine (not to mention Germany) and it smacks of hypocrisy. They've spent hundreds of years crying victim and now are the bullies themselves. That's why.

I'd very mucgh like the hear a reasonable alternative to the current way they deal with agression on all sides.

Everybody stops fighting over 'holy lands', admits there is no god and gets the fuck on with their lives?

what? are you saying because Gaza has not got fighter jets that it justifys firing rockets into Israel? US arnt the only country that can supply advanced weaponry lol.

Yeah maybe they should smuggle food instead.

Ridiculous and based on nothing but a dislike to Israel. Israel is in possession of the nuclear bomb, if it wanted to wipe out Gaza it could and instead of 100s or thousands of deaths there would be hundreds of thousands and if they wanted to level Gaza they could just carpet bomb it instead of launching strikes with one bomb.

You might actually be shocked to know that Israel gives Gaza all of its liquid fuel and half of its electricity.

You quoted me out of context. I was replying to your question as to why Palestine don't fire their rockets somewhere in the middle of nowhere (which is a difficult thing to achieve in the a densely populated region like Gaza..)

They do. They smuggle a wide variety of items through the Strip smuggling tunnels.

Seriously...and why would they nuke Palestine at this point in time LOL. Just like now, with Israel bombing the Gaza Strip via air strikes to masquerade for 'taking out HAMAS', I was suggesting that they WANT to make it look like they are doing just that. If they had no threat of a backlash, they would go right ahead and nuke the whole fucking place.

Gaza is 365 square kilometres with a population of 1.5mil. To put that into context, Israel is 22,000 square kilometres with a population of 8mil. (And Israel is pretty dense). Please compare the pair.

Not really. Israel has to make sure it looks squeaky clean in the eyes of the world. I mean, if they could they would strip Gaza and the West Bank of all supplies. Unfortunately for them they can't.

People need to look past the whole 'Muslim vs Jews' when taking a perspective on this topic. This is about human rights, the fact that Israel committed genocide to a populous of people who are still suffering and growing ever smaller, (look at LRO's pic a few pages back). People need to stop looking at current politics so much and look at what has occured in the past and how it is still affecting the people now.

Declaration of a Palestinian State: A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.

Settlements: The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria [West Bank] and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

Self-Rule: The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel's existence, security and national needs.

Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem, including the plan to divide the city.

The Jordan River as a Permanent Border: The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan River will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel. The Kingdom of Jordan is a desirable partner in the permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians in matters that will be agreed upon.

Security Areas: The government should succeeded in significantly reducing the extent of territory that the Palestinians expected to receive in the interim arrangement.

People need to look past the whole 'Muslim vs Jews' when taking a perspective on this topic. This is about human rights, the fact that Israel committed genocide to a populous of people who are still suffering and growing ever smaller, (look at LRO's pic a few pages back). People need to stop looking at current politics so much and look at what has occured in the past and how it is still affecting the people now.

If I had a $ for every time i'd seen the quoted garbage posted. You're holding Israel to a higher standard.

What occurred in the past is the arab league attempted to wipe out the state of Israel numerous times and were humiliated numerous times. Israel has had to defend itself and its population who have been subject to literally 1000's of terrorist attacks from all manners of arab fanaticism.

To summarise my view in laymens terms would be to say Palestine and its people under Ottoman control were defeated and offered a portion of land during the 1922 memorandum by the league of nations following British victory in WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Following WWII they started a war and were humiliated. Cue the next 70 years of bitching and moaning about their rights.

Now the smarter arab states sit back and watch the zealous idiots throw themselves at Israel and then complain and draw sympathy from idiots world wide.