Richard Engel Quotes

This was one of the most accurate foreign policy assessments ever made. The next year the first Arab-Israeli war began when the state of Israel came into being. See {624566} for another accurate prediction.

Hamas had, in a bloody armed coup, seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, and refusing to negotiate with the Israelis undermined the Palestinian hopes of peace talks with Israel. The PA could no longer speak for the Palestinians. Hamas a particularly aggressive terrorist organization whose charter called for the death of all Jews in the world, wanted to force the Palestinian Authority to join them in terrorist attacks on Israel. The Palestinians had renounced terrorism and violence. The Hamas fighters were planning to fire rockets at Israel from the West Bank and launching other terrorist attacks against Israel, hoping that Israel would retaliate against the Palestinian Authority by attacking the West Bank which had not been destroyed at all while Gaza had lost much of its infrastructure and 2,000 lives. The Palestinian Authority was not about to let themselves get sucked into a war that they could not possible win and was contrary to the policies of Prime Minister Abbas and his elected government.

This clause has been the cause of immense problems in the Mid-East. Hamas castigates any Palestinian who even suggests that there should be negotiations with Israel that are sincere as nothing less than the end of Israel is consistent with their charter. Anyone who uses the peace process for anything else but tactical advantage and buying time to strike again is a traitor. Meanwhile, the clause is taken be Israel to demonstrate that there is no point to any negotiations so long as the Palestinian Authority allows such an organization with this charter clause to be legal and operate in the open. The Palestinian Authority leadership are not willing to risk a civil war, and thus little or no progress is made.

Clinton had been spending the greater part of his time trying to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Lev Davidovich Bronstein. There was even extensive Arab hostility to the Jews in Palestine before WWII and the Holocaust. Apologists for the Arab violence to the Jews have pointed to the creation of the state of Israel, the Arabs defeat in the wars with Israel and the fact that many Palestinians left their homes and could not return as the anger which fed the conflict. But as this quote shows they were attacking the Jews even before the second world war and the so called “reasons” for their violence.

The Hamas leadership of the Gaza strip had fired thousands of rockets into Israel which their charter states should be eliminated. The Israelis after many being hit by more than a thousand rockets, used their military to attack (via the air) the Hamas leadership. However, Hamas had stored their rockets and their armaments in or very near civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, mosques and even UN humanitarian facilities. The Hamas leaders thereby made civilian facilities legitimate military targets under the Rules of War of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. So the Gaza leadership, instead of their military protecting their own civilians, used the civilians to protect the military and their weapons in the midst of war. The Secretary General also was referring to the Hamas leadership who had rejected at that point 5 different cease fires that had been proposed by the Egyptians, Americans, The Arab League and others. Israeli accepted them all.

At the time YaAlon was Rabin’s Chief of Intelligence.