Folks, peace will not come until the palestinians, and their supporters, acknowledge the right of Israel to exist free of terror. To posture about palestinian statehood rights as the core of the problem is to misrepresent history and current facts.
Once again, palestinian warmongerers holding an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, gave Israel less than 24 hours Monday to start releasing 1,500 palestinian prisoners and implied he would be killed if it did not comply, but Israel said it would not negotiate.
So how did this tragedy start in the first place? You think the Jews started this incursion into Gaza for no reason? Wrong. The following describes what happened:
In the attack in which Shalit was kidnapped, palestinian terrorists used a half-mile tunnel they dug to infiltrate behind the Kerem Shalom military station, which is on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.
Soldiers at the border usually monitor the Gaza Strip and not the Israeli side, where the tunnel exit was located.
Upon exiting the tunnel, the palestinian terrorists split into three cells, one lobbing more than 20 anti-tank missiles at an army tank; another attacking the tank with grenades, killing the two Israeli soldiers and kidnapping Shalit. The third cell attacked an army lookout post.
Two terrorists were killed during the raid, while the others escaped into Gaza with the kidnapped soldier. The army was not aware one of its troops had been kidnapped until several minutes after the operation.
Unfortunately, this operation that the palestinians pulled off went well beyond the scope of sophistication evidenced in recent palestinian terror attacks. It was the first kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian terrorists since 1994.
Folks, democracy is a wonderful thing but Israel has no obligation to foster a terrorist state directed at her destruction. May Israel hold steadfast to her pledge to not negotiate with terrorist scum.