Is the difficulty in Arab - Israel negotiations largely a translation confusion (the Islamic Jihad rocket attack that was not an attack)?
After a bombardment of Israel on March 13 - a simultaneous attack from Southern Gaza and Norhern Gaza for a total of 60 rockets, Islamic Jihad issued a statement that they have not broken the cease fire and if Israel attacks they will retaliate.
So is this something being lost in translation?
Is the Arabic that is translated as "cease fire" different from the plain Englsih language meaning? Or does the word "agreement" mean something different?
Zvi2014-03-19T14:13:21Z
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I doubt that translation has anything to do with it.
A charitable explaination would be that it was a different group who launched the attack.
A more realistic explanation might be that they are lying through their anal sphinctors.
Palestinians were on their side of the border and fired at mortar at Israeli forces approaching Gaza, they prevented an incursion. If anyone from Gaza comes a hundred meters near the fence they will be fired upon by Israel, so it makes sense that the Palestinians also prevent approaching Israeli forces from the Gaza side of the border. They were not preparing to fire rockets at Israel, that's a lie by Alex. So Israel launched an drone strike killing three Palestinian fighters. And there have been hundreds of violations of the cease fire before that by Israel.
So the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired in retaliation 60-70 short range homemade rockets towards Israel but many were aimed at open areas and they didn't cause any damage except maybe a few holes in the ground. They were not missiles nor effective rockets it was just a small response.
What this means is that the PIJ said they weren't violating the 2012 cease fire but just taking necessary action to Israeli violations. But, that the cease fire would still be respected if Israel respected it.
Both attack and agreement mean other things in Arabic. If you are alive, then you were not really attacked and shouldn't be whining. I agreed to do something yesterday, but today my interests are different so I agree to do something else.
Israel breaked the agreement by bombing three terrorist who were planned to fire rockets to the southern district of Israel (It was a self defense) and in response Islamic Jihad attacked Israeli civilians with rockets.