The Israel-Gaza Conflict has existed for almost a decade and while there are many sides to this tumulus relationship, one young man took a stand when he posted a message on his Facebook page.

Waheed Elsamra is an Egyptian supporter of the Palestinian city of Gaza, wanting to do his part in informing people of the truth behind Israel’s plight with Gaza and dared them to respond to the Massacre.

“The destruction of Gaza is not about stopping Hamas, it’s not about stopping rocket fire in Israel, it’s not about achieving peace, the Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza by the use of lethal weapons of the modern battle field on a large defenseless civilian population is the final phase of the decades long campaign to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians,” Elsamra said.

The battle between Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian militants is not a level playing field. “Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums. They attack a population who has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no army, no ground defense, no artillery units, no command, and they call it a war,” Elsamra said.

There is an ethic to war; this ethic states that one army is battling another army. “These people (Palestinians) have no army, so you target busy neighborhood streets and kill innocent civilians and pedestrians,” Elsamra said.

The reason that Israel has so much military power at its hands is because they are using American weapons. Elsamra noted that America gave Israel 300 billion dollars for the Gaza Massacre a few years back.

According to Congressman Paul Ryan, in an interview from 2009, he clarified the level of support the Bush administration has given Israel. “Certainly, the president has said nothing to diminish it. As a matter of fact, he justifies it on moral grounds, saying, oh, they have a right to do this, without ever mentioning the tragedy of Gaza.”

As far as the monetary support, Cong. Ryan had no issue speaking on that, “ you know, if Israel has a problem, they have to deal with it. I don’t think it should be any of our business. It’s just that it’s our business and we will be blamed because we support Israel blindly, so. And we give them the money and we give them the weapons. That should be the contention that we approach here and Congress should know about it and the American people should know about.”

The same battle that Israel and Gaza were facing three years ago are no different than what is going on today. Elsamra has been trying to do the Palestinian people justice by spreading the truth via social media and recently speaking out at a “Free Palestine” protest rally that took place in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“My duty right now is to educate the people that lack these facts and try to let them understand that I am an American and I’m not against them but I’m not for, what they are for, and what they are for is proven in these facts that I have stated,” Elsmra said.

The efforts to achieve a truce, as the attacks have ceased between Israel and Gaza,  have been somewhat successful but this is only the end of one battle, the war is still going on and it seems as if there is no end in sight.

Image Courtesy : Derivative work: Adambro (talk):Brocken Inaglory [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

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On Tuesday October 18th Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been released after more than five years of captivity.

In return of his release Hamas demanded the liberation of 1,027 Palestinians prisoners held in Israeli jails, 477 were released simultaneously to Shalit, another 550 are planned to be set free in the next two months.

The 25-years-old soldier was abducted in June 2006 – when he was only 19 – by Hamas militants in Gaza. Israel had to admit there was no way to rescue him in a military operation, and it had to surrender and agree to the prisoner exchange put forward by Hamas.

Egypt worked as mediator for the exchange negotiation given that Israel and Hamas have no relations and do not talk directly to each other. Right after the very first group of Palestinian prisoners were released, Shalit was brought through Rafah border terminal into Egypt, where the Israeli medical personnel examinated him and checked his health conditions.

Later, he was brought to an Israeli military base along the Egypt border, boarded on a helicopter and flown to Israel while the rest of the Palestinian prisoners were being freed in Gaza and West Bank finalizing in this way the exchange.

Shalit appeared to be in good health, thin, pale and tired, just suffering from small shrapnel injuries that had been treated not properly.

Only few minutes after Hamas militants released him, he was interviewed by Egyptian TV journalist Shahira Amin and he told: “I missed my family. I missed going out and meeting people. I hope this deal will move the peace process forward.” This interview was strongly criticized by Israeli officials who say the questioning was inappropriate and insensitive.

Hundreds of chanting people on the streets greeted the young soldier, waving Israeli flags, laying out white roses, and hanging banners. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed Shalit and vowed:  “We will continue to fight terror. Every terrorist who returns to terror will have a price on his head.” “Gilad has returned home and is back with his family, his people and his country”,  he added.

After re-embracing his son after five years of absence, Noam Shalit, Gilad’s father, told to Israeli television reporters: “It’s the happiest day of my life”.

“We can say that we have experienced the rebirth of a son”, he added. “Gilad has come home after an exhausting and long struggle. As I have said quite often, we were told that we were tilting at windmills. It was exhausting, but ultimately we managed to bring him home. As you have seen today he came home and walked up the steps that he left, and has come home, went through the door that he left so many days ago, 1,942 days ago.”

“He basically came out of a dark hole, in a dark basement, and came out of that to a great crowd. I’m sure that this was an amazing experience for him when he arrived here at our village to see all of this going on.”

While Israel is celebrating for Shalit, also in Gaza people are celebrating for Palestinian prisoner’s release. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya welcomed the freed detainees and Palestinian leaders have declared Wednesday a holiday for all government institutions, Hamas-run Al-Aqsa television reported.

It sounds weird and almost unreal that these two countries historically enemies could celebrate and rejoice simultaneously. Trying to understand why Israel accepted to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange of only one Israeli soldier, it will be interesting to see what will be the future of the relationships between the two countries.

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The Islamist Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip in the torn Palestinian territory has executed two men on Tuesday in defiance of President Mahmoud Abbas government from the West Bank.

According to Reuters, Hamas officials said that the Palestinian father and his son confessed to providing Israel with intelligence that assisted in the capturing and killing of Palestinians, including Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, the co-founder of Hamas who was killed by the Israeli Air Force in 2004.

Human rights groups have been vocal against the execution of the two men, who had made an appeal to the court but lost. In accordance with Palestinian law, executions are permitted but they require the approval of Abbas. Since the 2007 civil was, Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip after driving out Abbas’ secular Fatah party.

Despite signing a reconciliation agreement in May, Fatah and Hamas are still disputing the implementation of a power-sharing government. In this case, the US-backed Abbas has declined to implement his provision on executions to impose an effective ban on death penalty in the West Bank, which is currently being occupied by Israel.

Since 2010, eight Gazans have faced the firing squad for espionage at the hand of the Hamas government.

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