Killing a chance to make peace

Hamas-Israel war

A supporter of the Islamist Hamas movement reacts as she holds a poster of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh during a protest to condemn his killing, at the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh near the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.

Every week we seem to reach a new milestone in barbarity in the Israel-Hamas conflict. In the last few months, hospitals have been bombed and children massacred, with each atrocity marking another level of depravity which can hardly be believed.

Recent events have certainly conformed to that trend. Earlier this week, we saw Israeli protestors storming military facilities in that country — their protests were not against Palestine or Hamas, but rather were focused against the detention and questioning of Israel Defense Forces reservists who are suspected of raping and abusing a Palestinian prisoner. A member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, speaking on the same day as those protests, justified the rape and abuse of Palestinian prisoners.