More reasons, more responsible parties.

Submitted by Ephraim Lior (United States), Jul 11, 2014 at 13:39

As a preamble to my comment I should note that considering Hamas as a separate entity and hold them solely responsible for the provocation is not just incorrect and misleading. It is exactly what they want us to do – to judge the good cop separately from weighing the bad cop's deeds. Since they formed the unity government, we must view and assess their actions as decided by the Union, not by one party.

While agreeing with Geoffrey Blainey's assessment on one of the possible motivations to start a war, I would humbly argue his conclusion that "otherwise, they would avoid fighting."

At least two more reasons for wanting or launching the war are:

- to distract the constituency from failing domestic policies. In the case of Hamas, this reason is obviously admissible.
- In the case of all palestinian Arabs one more reason can be offered. They invariably provoke/start intifadas when so-called peace negotiations force them to accept Israel's concessions and make next move.

David Horovitz' failure to find a "remotely credible reason" roots in his hesitance to entertain and connect these two reasons I just added to the spectrum. The political gamble thoroughly described by Dr. Pipes is definitely among if not the leading reason for the provocation.

And still, it is useful for the analytical purposes to distinguish between different factions inside the Unity government, but it is harmful to assign blame for such actions as military operations – which rocket fire is nothing less of – to any one or more factions without holding the whole Union responsible.

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