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Gaza conflict shows Israel must "bow" to Palestinian rights: Iran
DUBAI |
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the head of the Hamas government in Gaza on Saturday that eight days of cross-border fighting showed that Israel had no choice but to "bow" to Palestinian rights, according to Iran's IRNA news agency.
The Iranian-backed Hamas has basked in what it called a victory against Israel after an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on Thursday ended the conflict in which 163 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed.
IRNA said Ahmadinejad, in the rare telephone call with Ismail Haniyeh, praised the Palestinian "resistance and perseverance".
"Zionists have reached the dead point and have no other alternative but officially recognizing and bowing to the absolute right of the Palestinian nation," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying, referring to Israel.
The agency's English website did not elaborate but Ahmadinejad has previously said that Israel was an alien body in the Middle East.
Israel's arch-foe Iran, which has an alliance with Hamas, had referred to Israeli strikes as "organized terrorism". The exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, on Wednesday thanked Shi'ite Iran for what he described as arms and funding.
In September, Ahmadinejad told the U.N. General Assembly in New York that Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be "eliminated", ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid incendiary comments.
Hamas's founding charter also calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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Israel’s only long term solution is to recognize Palestinian rights and conform to international law. You can get away with being an oppressor and outlaw only for so long. The oppressed and the law never go away.
FYI, Israel has already recognized the rights of the Palestinians formally, in a peace agreement brokered by US president Bill Clinton.
President Clinton, together with Israeli PM Rabin and Palestinian president Arafat, jointly received the Nobel peace prize for that agreement.
Later, Rabin was murdered, Arafat decided the agreement was no good, and the rest is history.
Hamas is labeled a terrorist organization by the US and by most Western countries. This organization does not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a state.
In 2007, Hamas took over the Gaza territory by force, after driving the Palestinian Authority’s forces out of it.
No wonder Israel reacted forcefully to Hamas’ latest provocation, labeled ‘Defiance’ in Iranian-Palestinian lingo.
A for Ahmedinejad, he obviously suffers from a lack of a solid background in history, as well as from a marked tendency to distort facts and invent pseudo facts.
Mark my words, some Palestinian will soon do something supremely stupid like blow up another bus, fire another rocket into Israel or kill or kidnap another Israeli and Israel’s inevitable response will divert the current heat from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Mursi.
Has anyone noticed that most “agents provocateurs” are young Muslims of limited education and skill with no job or prospects for a worthwhile future? There appears to be an endless supply them because all they do is breed and all they teach or learn and export is violence and hate.
They know what happens every time they “tug on Superman’s cape”, but they do it again and again, unable to control their emotions and temper tantrums. They swim against the tide at a time far more peaceful than most of recorded history demonstrating to the rest of the world one way in which evolution cleanses the gene pool.
These offer themselves up as cannon fodder, one after another, in hot pursuit of their 72 vegans and taking the whole world back to a 1200AD level of subsistence existence. It is apparently beyond their math skills that many of the earth’s SEVEN BILLION residents would rapidly starve if ever advanced agriculture and global commerce grind to a halt. Their own “society” and countless others in the third world would suffer first and most.
Today Egypt cannot even feed itself, depending on manna and moola from western governments to keep it afloat. Choices have consequences. Choose wisely!
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