Originally Posted by Xazy

I do expect Roachboy you to consider my comments and have thoughts on the other side rather then one report. You have to consider all that Hamas as an entity has done since coming in to power. Including suicide bombs, attempted bombs, thousands of rockets (over 450 in the past few months). Also the embezzlement of funds for terrorist use from the PA. You also can look to Fatah for similiar under Arafat, and a little under Abbas.

And as Loquitur so bluntly put, that is very accurate. A friend of mine visiting Israel from NYC, just walking down the street Rachov Shmuel hanovi (just a road in Jerusalem) was stabbed in the chest by a Palistenian. He was unarmed he was just an American tourist.

Also let us as well consider that at least a hundred American civilians that were killed / injured by Palestenians. Until tomorrow.

http://blogs.wsj.com/onlinetoday/2007/04/13/ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117641103379468184.html Gaza Grip: How Punitive Sanctions Help Strengthen Hamas; Military Islamic Group Lifted by European Aid; Gunning for Dr. Naim Cam Simpson. Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: Apr 13, 2007. GAZA CITY, Gaza -- Last March, 10 weeks after Hamas won a landmark Palestinian election, Bassem Naim reported to work as the militant Islamist group's health minister. His office and ministry were in disarray. Computers and phones were missing. Medicines for diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease were dangerously depleted at ministry-run hospitals, along with basic supplies such as sutures for surgery. Just weeks later, armed men affiliated with a rival Palestinian faction fired rounds inside his Gaza headquarters. "The shooting started in my secretary's office," said Dr. Naim. Despite those grim beginnings, Dr. Naim remains a member of the Palestinian cabinet, and the Hamas movement to which he belongs still dominates the Palestinian Authority. The group -- which still won't recognize Israel or disavow its own long history of violence -- is now sharing power. But it has largely withstood a global boycott of its government led by the U.S., which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and a furious armed challenge by Fatah, its main secular Palestinian rival. The Hamas government has survived, in part, through a military campaign. But it also benefited, paradoxically, from outside humanitarian aid designed to bypass its offices. The aid system, observers say, allowed Hamas to profit politically from relief while avoiding much of the blame for the crushing conditions among Palestinians. "They had the best of both worlds," says Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research group. At an Arab League meeting last month in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, Ismail Haniyah, the Hamas prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, beamed as he glad-handed Arab leaders who just weeks earlier had shunned his government. "The Hamas movement has been recognized as a legitimate, acceptable player in the Arab world and the Muslim world...and as a player to be reckoned with," says Efraim Halevy, a retired chief of Israel's Mossad spy service. European governments, and even the U.S., have agreed to work with some non-Hamas members of the Palestinian Authority, even though the government is controlled by Hamas. But Hamas's continuing dominance poses serious challenges. In a series of trips to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to revive Washington's traditional, but long dormant, role as diplomatic broker between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas's survival, however, clouds peace prospects, as well as parallel hopes to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states. Its staying power could also embolden Islamist groups hoping to make inroads across the region. Early SupporterDr. Naim, a 44-year-old general surgeon, is the second of 10 children fathered by an illiterate tradesman from Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. The family's main focus was educating its seven sons. Three are now doctors, three engineers, and one a computer scientist. Dr. Naim was an early supporter of Hamas, founded in 1987. His first-born son joined its military wing and was killed in May 2003 in a Gaza City battle with Israeli forces. Another son is a personal bodyguard to Prime Minister Haniyah, a vaunted post in the Islamist movement. The German-educated doctor seemed to be a natural choice for campaign strategist when Hamas decided to contest the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. He had been politically active in a physicians' syndicate, and such professional organizations had long given Islamists a chance to test their ideas and popularity, especially among Palestinian elites. The Bush administration backed the January 2006 parliamentary election -- despite a Hamas presence on the ballot -- as part of its pledge to promote democracy in the Middle East. Hamas focused its message on "Change and Reform," rather than on the section of its 19- year charter declaring that Islam will obliterate Israel. Palestinians, long tired of corruption under the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah -- the dominant political force since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 -- gave Hamas 74 of 132 parliamentary seats. Even Hamas was surprised. "We were prepared that we would have some sort of victory...but it was a new experience for us to be in the position of the majority," says Dr. Naim, who was the Gaza Strip campaign manager. Hamas expected sanctions, but Dr. Naim says its leaders were shocked by their immediacy and severity. The White House demanded the return of $50 million in unspent aid. Two days later Israeli officials halted their own monthly transfers of about $55 million in Palestinian tax revenues, collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority for goods moving through Israel. The money, used to pay salaries for about 160,000 civil servants, was vital to the economy of the West Bank and Gaza. The next day Ms. Rice flew to the Middle East to press Arab governments to join a global boycott, as Israel closed the sole commercial crossing into the Gaza Strip. Hamas was still a month away from taking office. When Dr. Naim and the rest of the cabinet were finally sworn in on March 29, those who formally belonged to Hamas resigned from the group's political branch, in an effort to insulate the Palestinian Authority from political fallout. But the international community, following Washington's lead, demanded that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce violence and respect previous peace accords. Hamas refused. After taking his oath, Dr. Naim headed across Gaza streets choked with cars and donkey carts for his first day at the office. But the Palestinian Authority was already almost bankrupt. A humanitarian crisis loomed. The situation was especially dire at the Ministry of Health, which provided nearly half of all health care in the Palestinian territories and had oversight responsibility for much of the rest. Palestinians were most dependent on ministry hospitals in the Gaza Strip, an impoverished stretch equal in size to Wichita, Kan., but with four times the population. Now it was also largely sealed off from the outside world. Amid a dire shortage of medicines and other vital supplies, Dr. Naim inherited $200 million in unpaid bills, many from foreign hospitals that had provided care for Palestinians whom the ministry's own clinics were ill-suited to treat. Palestinian patients were going to be refused such treatment until debts were cleared. He also couldn't pay the 13,000 employees under his command. Many stopped coming to work. Concerned with the spiraling health and humanitarian crises, some European nations and others pressed for a way to deliver relief without giving anything to Hamas. The Bush administration supported the principle, but did not want the world to relieve Hamas of its responsibilities. Dr. Naim set up his own triage system at the ministry, including the rationing of surgical care and the deployment of "emergency management" teams to deal with everything from critical patients to administrative crises. He also persuaded vendors to keep some supplies flowing, though he knew far more was needed, and pleaded his case at a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva to get the proposed aid system in place. His pitch resonated, as the WHO passed a resolution calling for urgent assistance. But other pressures were building from the inside, as Hamas began searching for new ways to ease the crisis. Salaries of public employees were more than three months overdue, sparking demonstrations. Some workers stormed a government building on June 14 in the West Bank. That same day, Dr. Naim met Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar in Egypt, and Mr. Zahar carted back five suitcases to Gaza, stuffed with $20 million he'd raised on a tour of the Gulf and Asia. "We are going to continue to bring money in through Rafah crossing. This is a legal process. We are not going to allow anyone to prevent us," Mr. Zahar said at the time. Cash was a necessity. Sanctions had locked Hamas out of the international banking system. While far short of what was needed, the government distributed some back pay five days later, easing pressure. Following a June 25 assault by Palestinian militants, including Hamas fighters, Israel launched a massive strike on Gaza. Two Israeli soldiers had been killed and one, Gilad Shalit, seized. As they moved into Gaza, Israeli forces also swept the West Bank, arresting 64 Hamas political officials. Far from weakening Hamas, the actions rallied Palestinians around the government. Thousands demonstrated in support of Hamas in the West Bank, where the Islamist movement was considered weakest. Money Starts FlowingBy late July, money began flowing to Palestinians through a European initiative accepted by the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, led by the U.S. Dubbed the Temporary International Mechanism, or TIM, "social allowances" -- the word "salaries" was avoided -- were deposited directly into the bank accounts of government employees, bypassing the Palestinian Authority's coffers. TIM also directly financed health-care and other services while circumventing Dr. Naim's ministry. Yet it was Dr. Naim's employees who were paid first. The European Commission said its intent was to benefit "the whole Palestinian population" by keeping health workers on duty. The $200 to $400 monthly payments did not amount to full salaries, but provided political scaffolding for Hamas. "All of a sudden," says Nathan Brown, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "the complete collapse of the political system was no longer going to happen." Prime Minister Haniyah, emboldened, went on to assert that sanctions were crumbling. Because the European mechanism funded government employees and efforts, without using formal government channels, Hamas got the relief it needed without having to take political responsibility for effective governance, says Mr. Rabbani, the ICG analyst. "Even the very simple child knew that Hamas didn't have money," says Dr. Naim. "The money has been prevented to come here....Why fight against these ministers when they don't have any money?" No RegretsMs. Rice says she has no regrets about the European effort. "I think the TIM demonstrated that you can support the Palestinian people, and particularly the people who might have no other means of support, and not support the Hamas-led government," she told reporters in Jerusalem last month. The European Commission would eventually report that it had delivered 27% more money to the Palestinian territories in 2006 than it had during the previous year. The temporary mechanism, renewed every three months, now looks semipermanent. Meanwhile, throughout the financial siege, street clashes flared between those loyal to Hamas and Fatah. Dr. Naim was among the first high-level targets. Six gunmen came to the Ministry of Health on April 23 demanding to see him. They were part of a crime group that had operated freely at the ministry for years, brokering permission slips for Palestinians to travel abroad, ostensibly for treatment, Dr. Naim says. The practice was worth thousands of dollars in kickbacks, according to Dr. Naim, who says he shut it down. After two hours of failed talks with the men, gunfire ripped through the reception area of Dr. Naim's office, where his secretary sits and where the men had been herded by Dr. Naim's personal bodyguards. About a dozen doctors were in a meeting on the other side of the door. As a full siege ensued, gunmen loyal to Fatah surrounded the ministry. The Palestinian Authority security forces, which Fatah largely controlled, did not respond quickly, according to Dr. Naim. But the Hamas military wing did. Three people were wounded in the fighting that ensued, including a janitor who is now paralyzed. But Hamas won the day. "They didn't come back," Dr. Naim says of the Fatah gunmen. Across Gaza many security officers loyal to Fatah had been staying home or refusing orders from their new Hamas bosses. To counter this, Hamas had announced the formation of a special security force only three days before the siege at the Ministry of Health. 'The Breaking Point'Publicly, Hamas officials emphasized their desire to ensure civil order. Privately, following the siege, they now understood the need to protect their own power, according to Dr. Naim and others. "This was the breaking point. This was the shock," Dr. Naim says Hamas's so-called Executive Force hit the streets of Gaza within three weeks. Unlike members of the notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority security services, the 3,000 Executive Force members were volunteers. (It's not clear how the Executive Force is equipped and funded.) Their deployment was anathema to Israel, the U.S. and Fatah. With international support, Palestinian security services had been built in the 1990s, primarily to stop Hamas and other militants who jeopardized peace with Israel. Now the militants were wielding their own, semiofficial army. Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, condemned the deployment as illegal and ordered thousands of his own men into the streets. Gaza became engulfed in something approaching civil war. The Bush administration backed Fatah. Iran backed Hamas. By the end of the year, 326 people were killed in Gaza violence alone. The bloodshed continued unabated into this year. As the Arab world gaped in horror, Saudi King Abdullah summoned Palestinian leaders from the warring sides to Mecca, where they agreed to a power-sharing agreement that had eluded negotiators for months. Although Mr. Abbas would be criticized in Washington and Israel for the deal, which served finally to legitimize Hamas, his aides, and even Israeli security officials, would cite the ferocity of the Hamas force as a key factor behind the decision. But the Islamist leaders also decided they had to share power. Bloodshed was eroding their popular support, says Dr. Naim, now the youth and sports minister in the new coalition government. "Everyone was exhausted," Dr. Naim says. "It was clear to them all that there is no possibility to delete the other side."