Israel's Tactics Explained: Every Time It Appears Israel Might Face a New Peace Initiative — Israel Instigates Conflict

Cynical cold blooded murder for political advantage

Norman Finkelstein describes how Israel instigates conflict whenever there is a new
peace initiative. (Screen capture from DemocracyNow! video)

"A unity government was formed between the PA (Palestinian Authority) and Hamas. Netanyahu (prime minister of Israel) was enraged at this unity government. It called on the U.S., it called on the EU to break relations with the Palestinian Authority. Surprisingly the United States said, 'No. We're going to give this unity government time, we'll see whether it works or not.' Then the EU came in and said it will also give them time: 'Let's see what happens.' At this point Netanyahu virtually went berserk. And he was detemined to break up the unity government.

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"When there was the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers he found his pretext. There isn't a scratch of evidence, not a jot of evidence that Hamas had anything to do with the kidnappings and the killings.  Nobody even knows what the motive was at this point. Even if you look at the July 3rd report of Human Rights Watch, they said nobody knows who was behind the abductions. Even the U.S. State Department [at a July 7th news conference] said, 'We don't have hard evidence about who was responsible.' But that had nothing to do with it. It was just a pretext. The pretext was to go into the West Bank, attack Hamas, arrest 700 members of Hamas, blow up two homes, carry on these rampages and ransackings, and try to evoke a reaction from Hamas. This is what Israel always does.

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"Anybody who knows the history - It's what the Israeli mainstream political scientist Avner Yaniv said, 'It's these Palestinian peace offensives. Whenever the Palestinians seem like they are trying to reach a settlement of the conflict (which the unity government was) at that point Israel does everything it can to provoke a violent reaction...'  and Israel has its pretext."—Norman Finkelstein

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