Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday convened his cabinet to discuss proposals for easing the dire humanitarian conditions effecting many residents of the Gaza Strip.
The measures discussed centered primarily on providing Gaza with more electricity, fresh water and food.
But by the end of the day, the cabinet couldn't come to any agreement on the proposals, and it Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's words of warning that echoed loudest.
"Whoever thinks improving the civilian and economic situation in Gaza will halt the terror kites and the violence, is simply wrong," Liberman told Army Radio ahead of the meeting.
"Enough with all sorts of illusions and delusions that improving the economy will end terror," he continued. "The opposite is true — they’ll understand that with use of force and violence they can achieve political goals. To improve the reality in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas regime must be toppled. Anyone who wants more than four hours of electricity a day must topple the Hamas regime."
Typically the situation is reported in the mainstream international media as Israel imposing unfair sanctions that amount to collective punishment on the people of Gaza.
What's often left out of those reports is the fact that Egypt is also blockading Gaza, and for the same reasons as Israel - to prevent the coastal enclave's Hamas overlords from importing weapons and bolstering its military infrastructure. Similarly, the Palestinian Authority itself, which is currently blaming Israel for all of Gaza's woes, has for years cut salaries to government workers in Hamas-ruled Gaza (the government is the largest employer) and has refused to pay for most of the electricity that Israel supplies to the territory.
Hamas-ruled Gaza is indeed under siege, but not only from Israel. In fact, of the three parties blockading and/or sanctioning Hamas-ruled Gaza, Israel is by far doing the most to ease the burden on local residents.
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