well....then why Israel is targeting innocents and civilians?? don’t tell me they didn’t mean to or they’re not careful....they mean to hit civilians...yesterday...they hit a UN school...does the UN work for Hamas or what?????? the Israeli army did hit hundreds of houses which are away from the battle field and there were no fighters of Hamas around...tell me why is that???most of their targets are civilians...can’t you see or you’re blind people??

Should we belive this???????is it a legal testify??I doubt that. However, lets assume that this statement is correct, some palestinian fighters did through rockets from that place and killed no Israelis or may be they hit some of them so this is a good reason to hit and shell a school where there are hundreds of civilians and kill 40 of them and wounded 130....does it look ok to you as human??? do you follow the news? palestinian rockets have killed less than 10 Israelis while Israeli attacks killed nearly 700 (215 are children and 65 are women) and wounded 3000 palestinians..so for each Israeli there is 100 or more palestinians. Finally, can you tell me why the UN representitive would lie? does he work for Hamas or for the UN?? and here we have to mention something from the history..in 1996 Israel did attack a UN shelter in Lebanon and killed about 100 whom were civilians children and women..during that time Israel claimed that they were mistaken...so are they this time??

it is not emotional at all. I’ve been hearing human rights watch, ICRC, and UN..and again I work for the UN and I know how is the situation clearly away from emtions...now all these agencies which I mentioned said that what Israel is doing is a war crime...so do you consider them as pro Hamas or what. Back to your point of using children and women as shield...this is just silly joke that Israel uses always..I’ve witnessed many incursions and invasions of the Israeli army for the past 9 years..I’ve seen them myself putting children and women on their tanks during that...another thing, does Hamas through rockets for joy??why don’t you get into reasons??PA and arabs have been negotaiting Israel for tens of year and Palestinians recived hundreds of promises to get their state and it never come true..finally lets assume that Hamas is just a bad thing according to Israel in Gaza..fine..what about West Bank...Israeli forces are there, PA forces are doing their best to help Israelis..no rockets, no Hamas in there. However, situation is as bad as Gaza..nearly 700 roadblockes, 12,000 prisoners 20% of them are women and children, the wall, tens of Israeli incursion every week...so with or without rockets situation is the same...if you want them to stop throughing rockets then ask Israel t end up its illegel occupation of Gaza and West Bank and then I will kill anyone who would even think of throughing rockets or even bollets

I don’t know why are you ignoring some parts of my article and replies...this is not helping at all..ending such conflict is very simple..just end up Israeli occupation and that’s it...you’re attacking Hamas as some group of terrirsts..you’re forgeting that we, the palestinians elected them freely and since that time..everyone is punishing us and trying to convince us that what we did was wrong..and here I’ve to mention that no one has the right to question our choice because then we will question for example the american choice of choosing an idiot like Bush and the choice of Israelis of choosing a butcher like Sharon..any way, I can’t see any comment from your side on the facts which I mentioned about West Bank..you also ignored the other agencies statements and stick to UN..Today I watch on the TV how did Israeli soldiers shot ICRC members with uniform and ambulance with flag (is it clear enough?)..I’ve heard the ICRC spokesman saying that what Israel did was a war crime..moreover, Israeli army has a very dirty record..I mentioned the 1996 incidence (and you didn’t comment), another incidence, Israeli army did kill Egyptian prisoners during 1967 war and 1973 war..finally, I mentioned to you that there are hundreds of victims and houses whom were very far away from battle field and rockets throwing zones as well and yet they were hit...one final thing, we’ve tried negotiating for years and we found that Israel is just negotiating for negotiation and not for getting a solution...we fight for our freedom and Israel is fighting to stay as an occupation force..

Azzam, you have a lot of anger and a great desire to be heard, but apparently little desire to hear the other side. This is not the way to reach understanding. I will try to respond to each point, although maybe not in the order you give them here. If you wish to talk about democratically electing Hamas, let me remind you that Germans democratically elected Adolf Hitler, too, and look at the mess HE made. The single fact of democratic elections does not justify a government; has that democratically-elected government acted democratically since its election? This is not for me to decide, but for the Palestinian voters. Under democracy, if the government elected does not satisfy the electorate, they wind up out of power at the next election. Will this happen if Palestinians decide that Hamas has not acted in their best interests? You will find I hold no brief for the departing US president and I never even considered voting for Sharon in my lifetime. The issues between him and me stem from 1973 and are personal and private. The ICRC has a rich history of anti-Semitism dating from far before the establishment of Israel. Many of their official reports belittle the Holocaust in toto (not just Jewish deaths, but those of most of the European populations conquered by the Nazis), often reducing the numbers to only a few per cent of the historical figures generally accepted. A quick example of this bias would be the ICRC report on Deir Yassin, made by an ICRC official who was never in Deir Yassin and spoke only with Arab newspaper people. As far as I am concerned, if there is any relation to Jews or Israel, the ICRC is not a reliable source for anything. The ”1996 incident” (I assume you’re referring to Kafr Qana in Lebanon) is still shrouded with question marks and conflicting testimonies. There is nothing to be gained by a renewed ”You claim/We claim” debate, since it has been hashed over so many times that nothing new can be added. The tendency of Hizballah to use civilian homes and populations as cover has been documented well enough to leave this question hanging for the next 100 years. The claims of Israel killing prisoners of war has never been proven one way or another, either. From my own personal experience as a veteran of both the wars you mention, I can state with certainty, under oath, that I have never witnessed or heard of any instance of deliberately murdering any Arab PoW from any source within the IDF. Such an act would be contrary to the training and indoctrination we received in the IDF, as well as contravening the laws of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention. I won’t say it could not have happened, because I was not ”everywhere” and crimes do happen in wartime, but I have never heard any Israeli soldier who claimed to have seen such an act. I have much the same opinion of the Palestinian side of negotiations, both when they were handled by Mr. Arafat and by Mr. Abbas. Why did Yasser Arafat walk out of Camp David in 2000 without even making a counter-offer to Ehud Barak? Is this your opinion of how negotiations should be handled? Arafat walked out without a backward glance to initiate the second intifada (and please don’t try to tell me it was the ”spontaneous result” of Sharon visiting the Temple Mount. Even Arafat himself admitted that was only the trigger, and that everything was in place for the intifada before he even left for Camp David. He also admitted thast if it hadn’t bee Sharon on the Temple Mount, it would have been some other incident.). What freedom are you fighting for? The only one we can see on this side of the line is ”the fight to have the freedom to continue the fight”. Both Hamas and the PLO have written charters dedicated to that fact. Has this changed?