Israeli soldier thought captured is declared dead

[JDPriestly]

50. Here you go.

2000s

List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2001
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2002–2006
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2007
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2008
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2009

2010s

List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2010
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2011
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2012
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2013
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2014

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

and for 2014

This is a detailed list of Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks on Israel in 2014. All of the attacks originated in the Gaza Strip, unless stated otherwise. For information pertaining to the wider conflict, see Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This list does not include reports of deaths and injuries caused by Hamas rocket and mortar attacks that fell within Gaza.

On 5 March, the Israeli Navy intercepted a ship containing dozens of long-range rockets being smuggled from Iran to the Gaza Strip.[1]

On 10 March, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, unveiled a monument to its rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns, a life-sized model of an M-75 rocket in Gaza City. The group declared that the attacks "managed to take the battle to the heart of the Zionist entity (Israel)".[2]

On 23 April, Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation deal.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2014

3,055 rocket attacks in 2014 alone.

Israel built a wall and refused entry to Palestinians (one of the reasons they are accused of Apartheid) to protect against suicide bombers.

Here is the Al-Jazeera story on the wall:

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/12/visual-activism-activestillsphotographsthebarrierwall.html

That tells it from the Palestinian point of view.

Here is the Israeli view on the wall:



Before the construction of the fence, and in many places where it has not yet been completed, a terrorist need only walk across an invisible line to cross from the West Bank into Israel. No barriers of any kind exist, so it is easy to see how a barrier, no matter how imperfect, won't at least make the terrorists' job more difficult. Approximately 75 percent ofthe suicide bombers who attacked targets inside Israel came from across the border where the first phase of the fence was built.

This diagram shows why a wall is being built in a few specific places where Palestinian snipers have terrorized motorists.

During the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September 2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the 11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful, and all three occurred in the first half of 2003.

Since construction of the fence began, the number of attacks has declined by more than 90%. The number of Israelis murdered and wounded has decreased by more than 70% and 85%, respectively, after erection of the fence.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/fence.html

But then the Palestinians shot rockets into Israel over the wall, so Israel built a shield to protect its citizens from the rockets.

Here is the story on the shield.

As soon as US President Barack Obama disembarked from Air Force One on his first visit to Israel last month, an Iron Dome battery was ready for his inspection at Ben Gurion airport.

There could have been few clearer signs of the importance attached to the missile batteries that are the pride of the nation’s defences. If one product has come to define the high-tech military apparatus of Israel Inc, it is the Iron Dome.

The anti-missile defence system shielded the country from a barrage of Qassam and Grad rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas during the eight-day Operation Pillar of Defence in November. Israel’s defence ministry says Iron Dome had a success rate of more than 80 per cent during the operation, in which about 170 Gazan Palestinians and six Israelis died.

Designed to intercept short-range rockets, Iron Dome is the smallest and best-known component of a multilayer anti-missile defence system Israel is building to shoot down ordnance fired from as far away as Iran.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b120a1e-9883-11e2-867f-00144feabdc0.html

The article is about Obama's 2013 visit to Israel and is dated March 2013.

Here is what set off Israel's current attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. You don't read about this on DU because it doesn't confirm the DU party line on Palestine and Israel. I probably would not be permitted to post this as an OP because people would read it as pro-Israel when in fact I am trying to be fair.

SUFA, Israel — Israel’s decision to invade Gaza has its roots just outside of this small kibbutz in southern Israel where open fields and citrus orchards offer a pastoral scene that residents say has long been deceptive.

At dawn on Thursday, 13 Hamas gunmen from Gaza emerged from the mouth of an underground tunnel about a mile away, inside Israel territory. The air force thwarted the attack, but the government said that the attempted incursion was the final straw and that the ground invasion would commence.

By Friday, the Israeli military said it had already uncovered 10 tunnels with 22 exit points and that there were dozens more “terror tunnels” spread around Gaza. In a statement, it described tunnels crossing the border from Gaza to Israel as “complex and advanced,” and said they were “intended to carry out attacks such as abductions of Israeli civilians and soldiers alike; infiltrations into Israeli communities, mass murders and hostage-taking scenarios.”
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Gadi Shamni, a former commander of the Israeli Army’s Gaza division and of its central command, said that destroying the tunnels posed a technological and operational challenge and that each of them had offshoots going in different directions, making it difficult to track and disable the whole route.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/middleeast/hamas-gaza-strip-tunnels-led-to-israels-invasion.html?_r=0

That New York Times article on the tunnel invasion was dated July 28, 2014 and was the last straw I guess for Israel. That is why they started bombing and invaded Gaza.

You'd never guess that from DU.

I am rather ashamed at the group-think on DU on this issue. The fact is that the Israelis invested millions of dollars, enormous effort and thought to try to avoid killing innocent Palestinians, and Hamas or the Palestinian terrorists managed to find a way to destroy the fragile peace anyway.

They need to negotiate for peace. Wise people on both sides have tried to do it over and over, and every time, extremists on the Palestinian side, extremists that Palestinians cannot control, destroy the peace.

The Palestinian extremists are the worst enemies not just of Israel but of the Palestinians themselves. Do Palestinians need aid and a good settlement? Yes. But the Israelis need to be free from the constant harassment and criminal activity of the Palestinian extremists -- the terrorists.

That's the only fair view in my opinion.

I think that half of DU has me on ignore by now because I have tried to research this issue and find out what happened and then decided my point of view based on my research. But that's the way the cookie crumbles. I am trying to be fair to both sides when I express my opinion. The Palestinians have to control their extremists if they are to form a prosperous, safe nation.