Can someone please explain to me what the Gazans and Hamas were thinking?

Very simple. Hamas is a terrorist group.

As far as justification. I don't always agree with Obama, in fact I disagree with a lot of his now-changed platforms. But one thing he said did make sense. When he was in Jerusalem a few months back, he said something like, "If someone was shooting rockets into my house, hurting my kids, I'd have to fire back at them."

The fact of the matter is, Hamas is stirring up trouble with Israel because they're professional terrorists, manipulating the ignorant masses of the Gaza Strip, and doing this for profit. They use the civilian population as human shields, and the civilian population lets them do that.

How? My theory is simple. They've been supported by the other Arab states and Iran. Those oil producing countries need the price of oil to shoot up. If it does, Hamas will continue to get the "donations" it needs to make more rockets and buy and smuggle more guns into Gaza.

Therefore, by attacking Israel for a week and instigating a retaliation to make them stop, they have artificially generated a crisis, which they had hoped would spike the price of oil up.

Instead, oil went flat for the most part.

Hence, it did not work. Now, Israel is threatening to level the Gaza Strip.

Personally, I think they'd be justified in razing the whole area, house by house, building by building, detonating and caving in tunnels, bunkers, etc. and obliterating Hamas as a military force.

Once they do that, then the Gazans can rebuild, this time terrorist-free.

If they remain quiet and peaceful, and demilitarize, then Israel has no reason to do anything with them except conduct commerce and trade.

But if they want a technical state of war, progress, improvement, and trade are impossible.

Not to "defend" Palestine, but I think there was something about a blockade, and Israel coming over the borders, and looking for a tunnel into Israel? Something like that. But, yeah, how does indiscriminately firing into Israel accomplish ANYTHING? it doesn't. It would have been better if they were to have been protesting the blockades and posting them on YouTube, and getting the world media's attention before firing rockets into Israel, don't you think?

What Hamas has accomplished is even EGYPT is cutting them off now....one of their supporters..

edit: frank is wrong. Israel is trying to get civilians out of teh way by dropping leaflets and calling civilians on cell phones, also, Hamas was VOTED in by Palestinians.

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The hatred needs to stop, I don't care who stops it first, but someone needs to be the bigger man, and the other side needs to respect it.

Please, no nonsense about how Israel controls Gaza (they left years ago) or how they shouldn't retaliate with such force (that would be like saying the man that you tried to kill with a baseball bat was too brutal because he shot you after you took a few swings at him).

Intelligent thought please.

when you dont use intelligent thought how can you expect anyone else to?

well first of all blockading the place is hardly leaving. and do you really think bombing the **** out of everything knowing theres civilians there is justified to a rocket that killed 4 people. hamas shouldnt be firing rockets but what choice do they have. israel refuses (against international law) to stop the blockade, cuts off electricity and water supply, broke the ceasefire on november 4th by killing 6 people (google it and theres an atricle on the guardians website about it).if israel just treated people in gaza more humanely maybe the attacks would stop. if they didnt stop then they have a right to kill these terrorists but the fact they wont even attempt peace makes their actions completely inexcuseable

This is the basic problem with religious ideology. If you read any of the religious books, the bible, the talmud or the koran, they all they the believers that they must kill the apostates and nonbelievers.

There is really no way to convince these people to stop because they "believe" that their particular book is the literal word of "god" and that if they do what the book tells them, they will go to heaven.

All of which is really ridiculous nonsense to anyone with a reasonable grip on reality. I don't know if there is any way to get religion out of this crisis, but I really don't think it will ever be solved until that happens.

A thought.Now there's a concept.

I feel sorry for the everyday people.The trouble here is they "elected" Hamas,and Hamas doesn't care,and got them into a war.Then again we had to put up with 8 years of Bush,and he doesn't care, and he got us into a war.So what country am I in(Damn rum.)?

They are trying to gain the sympathy of other arabs and hand-wringing Americans like the answerer above, who claims Israel is indiscriminately killing palestinians. 84% of the palestinians killed so far have not been civilians, according to the AP.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_re_mi_ea...

probably because the missile attacks were carried out by a small number of individuals, yet Israel is indiscriminately bomb all Palestinians

edit - please, this argument is so ridiculous. It's like Mexico saying it will attack the US until there are no more murders being committed in the US. They would perpetually attack the US because there will ALWAYS be murders. It's a blanket excuse, because as long as there is just ONE person who is able to shoot a missile or two into Israel, they can bomb Gaza perpetually under that excuse.

They don't think.They only hate,and will not be happy until Israel and every jew is wiped from the face of this earth.

My guess is that they are trying to get their muslim cousins from other nations to join them in attacking Israel.

I urge Israel to bomb until no one bombs back. If its tit for tat, this crap will never end.