Blockading Gaza and periodically massacring defenseless children and families there is an instigation of violence that is off the scale.
The Palestinian people do not have the military means to resist the violent occupation of their homeland.
Apart from primitive harmless fireworks from Gaza or token attacks by individuals, the Palestinian people are defenseless.
Um. You do realize that both the blockade of Gaza and the military action by Israel is a response to attacks on innocent Israeli civilians, yes? Of course you do, you've said so right there, though you do minimize them to "primitive harmless fireworks" in a sad attempt to pretend that those rockets can't and haven't killed people.
Oh! The military response cliché. Heard it before from the Israelis. Didn't believe it for a minute.
Every decade or so the Israelis joke about mowing the lawn which is an astonishingly cruel way of describing disproportionate reactions to a few harmless fire crackers lodged by a handful of rogues. When the Israelis wish to go on the rampage against defenseless children and families, they will typically provoke a token response to an assassination of a Hamas politician, children playing football being shot to death, or some other turning of the screw on Gaza.
Let's get our cause and effect straight, shall we? The CAUSE of the conflict in Gaza is the violent, hostile actions of the Gazans. The instigating act is the violent, hostile actions of the Gazans. No more rockets, no more response. No more tunnels, no more response. No more rockets, no more blockade (after one year). No more tunnels, no more blockade. Simple, really. But it seems to be too difficult a concept for you, Team Palestine and the Gazans to understand.
No, you are wrong to imply that toddlers and families have been involved in any violent actions against the Israeli Defense Force. Decapitating little girls by Israeli rockets and bombs and shooting children playing football or retrieving a schoolbag from near the Israeli fence are crimes against humanity as is the conditions under which the Israelis keep the people of Gaza.
Now, next you are going to say that the Gazans have the right to resist. You'll use all sorts of emotionally charged language, but that will be the meat of your next argument. Here's the deal. What are the Gazans resisting?
The people of Gaza have as much right to resist their oppression by the Israelis as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had the right to resist the Nazis, no matter how futile.
1. The blockade. But the blockade exists because of the continued violence and the importation of weapons to commit violence. Removing the blockade before the violence ends only subjects Israel and her innocent civilians to potentially quite a bit more harm. (You DO believe that Israel not only has a right, but also an obligation to protect her citizens, don't you?) The continued violence by Gazans against Israel actually keeps the blockade in place and prolongs it.
The blockade which keeps the people of Gaza barely at subsistence level is collective punishment of the families there by their wealthy Israeli neighbors.
2. Self-determination and self-government. Gaza has a government and is self-governed. Their ability to utilize their self-determination is evident in their ability to smuggle rockets and build tunnels (instead of houses and hospitals and clean water facilities for their people).
The government of Gaza is in a similar position as the Judenräte in the last century, kept impoverished, restrictions on its imports and exports including humanitarian aid, making it impossible to function properly. We are witnessing the destruction of a people before our eyes. How this has been tolerated by the international community defies explanation.
3. The right to travel through Israel to the West Bank without crossing a border or checkpoint. No country in the world has this right. If you want to travel by road from mainland US to Alaska -- you have to go through Canada. Canada's border guards and patrols have every right to enforce both their own entry regulations and Canada's laws while you are in our country.
Technically, you are correct but since the Israelis are preventing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, it is moot whether it is impossible to have a corridor between the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
4. A dispute over territorial borders. The borders between Gaza and Israel are clear. There is no dispute about them, like there is between Israel, Area C and Areas A and B.
So-called areas is code for apartheid. All of them are in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
5. Having to live with a hostile population. There are no Jews in Gaza. And virtually no Christians remaining. it is virtually an entirely homogeneous population.
Gaza is as homogeneous today as the Warsaw Ghetto was between 1940 and 1943.
So, what exactly, are the Gazans "resisting"?
Bare subsistence ghettoization and periodic massacre.