Israel has been blockading Gaza from land and sea for a long time now. Israel never removed the blockade during the ceasefire with Hamas. Israel's conditions for removing the blockade that has virtually starved 1.4 million people were essentially that Hamas remove itself from power. For those who don't remember, Hams had risen to power in Gaza as a result of fair democratic elections that would put many US states to shame, Minnesota for example. You cannot demand democracy and then reject its outcome when you don't like the winner. Last I heard, a blockade is considered an act of war. Since the Gazans don't have an air force, armored divisions, sophisticated artillery, etc, they use whatever primitive weapons they have. Why should they not lob their primitive rockets, who kill less Israelis in a year that Israelis are killed in traffic accidents in a a five day period, when they are being starved by Israel?

does one nation have the right to determine for another what kind of government it should have. Israel and the neocons believe so. Remember, Hamas was willing to extend the cease fire more or less indefinitely in exchange of the removal of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, but Israel refused. The Israeli condition has basically been that Hamas must remove itself from power and replaced by an Israeli puppet government, similar to the one that's in power in the west bank. Facing a blockade that's literally starving 1.4 million civilians and constitutes a de jure declaration of war, why is lobbing rockets at Israel an act of terrorism while Israel's actions are not?

Israel has pulled its military forces from Gaza and dismantled the illegal Jewish settlement there for one reason only:keeping its military within the Gaza strip and using it to guard the settlements became far too costly in blood and treasure. Hamas fighters are fierce and suicidal and Israeli soldiers were literally terrified of serving in Gaza. Despite pulling the IDF out of the strip, Israel never ended its occupation of Gaza. Israel has maintained a full blockade of the strip, from land, air and sea. Blockading an area that is not a country's sovereign territory is an act of war, not different from lobbing rockets from one country into another. The Israeli mindset is that those rejecting the legitimacy of Israel's occupation are terrorists, therefore any military action against them is justified and any criticism of it is anti-semitic and anti-Israeli, end of discussion.

Hams is a bad organization, no one argues that point. However, it is the government the Palestinians chose in perfectly democratic elections the US could only envy, seeing how inefficient, messy and prone to fraud our own process is. The Israelis, even after removing their military and settlements from the strip, have remained occupiers, and occupation has consequences. The Gazans don't want to be absorbed into Egypt, they want to be part of the new Palestinian state. The Israelis refused to end their blockade of Gaza even when Hamas was observing the cease-fire. The Israeli ambassador to the US, speaking only yesterday, refused to commit to ending the blockade if Hamas agrees to a cease-fire. The Israeli blockade has prevented any financial development of Gaza, since Israel is blocking the importation of esential raw materials like ore and various chemicals, claiming they could be used to build weapons. Israel allows in the barely minimum amount of food and medicine to keep the Gazans from total starvation and rampant disease that would create an international uproar, but is otherwise starving and killing the Gazans slowly. If you can accept that, it's an indication of your morality, or rather total lack of.

The problem with you is that you keep repeating Likud propaganda and seem to have as the basis for your knowledge what the US MSM is reporting, which is hardly distinguished from Likud propaganda. Israel and Hamas are in a state of war. Israel holds many Hamas prisoners, why should Shalit not be a bargaining chip? Again, Israel has deliberately prevented, through the blockade, any economical development of the strip, and then has the chutzpah of blaming Hamas for failing to bring economic development to Gaza. Israel's goal has always been to make life in Gaza completely intolerable and therefore have Gazans blame Hamas for their misery and then blam Hamas for their misery and turn against it-it hasn't worked and probably never will. Israel has never ended the Gaza occupation, she has continued it using different means since pulling its military a few km back. Occupation has consequences. Israel is addicted to the occupation, yet keeps whining when the occupied resist, often by brutal means. As a rule I always resist getting personal on boards like this and say anything about myself, but I'll make an exception in this case:I'm a former IDF officer who knows intimately and from personal experience how things are done in the occupied territories and I can assure you that you have no idea what you're talking about beyond regurgitating Likud rubbish.

What you're posting is purely Likud propaganda and entirely facts free, therefore contesting it would be as much a waste of time as debating a Creationist who is absolutely certain that the Universe is 5000 years old and humans took pony rides on dinosaurs.