GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli planes pounded Hamas targets and rival Palestinian factions exchanged bursts of automatic weapons fire outside Gaza City‘s Islamic University on Friday, as a volatile mix of Israeli strikes and Palestinian infighting plunged Gaza deeper into chaos.
The fighting largely died down later in the day after Fatah and Hamas fighters took up positions around the university. Earlier, the office of the university’s president, Kamelen Shaath, was attacked by rocket- propelled grenades, according to Hamas.
from AP
Will this madness never end? You shoot rockets at people long enough, they’re gonna shoot rockets back at you. What do you expect? And considering the Israeli rockets are high-impact, laser guided missiles fired from supersonic fighter jets, they are going to kill some innocent people. Turning their friends and family into the kind of people who would shoot rockets at you. What do you expect? Someone has to bust the chain before it drags them all down the drain, and us with ’em.
As a college Joe from the get go it particularly pains us to read of the use of a UNIVERSITY CAMPUS as a “stronghold” and a battleground! What sacrilege! Can you imagine Massachusetts Hall, built in 1720 and home office of octogenarian President Derek Bok, being attacked by ROCKET-PROPELLED GRENADES! Even at the height of student protests, late 60’s-early 70’s, when Massachusetts hall was surrounded, occupied, the President (Derek Bok, coincidentally) trapped for days in his office, we never DREAMMMMED of rocket-propelled grenades. But time marches on, and Cambridge is not Gaza City. At least, not yet.
For this kind of madness, if not contained, can infect us anywhere. The global information and transportation revolution constitute the central nervous and circulatory systems, respectively, of the emerging global body politic, . Which, unfortunately, opens the doors to a host of new diseases, infections, breakdowns and modes of transmission. Rocket-propelled grenades, IED’s and suicide bombers are only a six-hour flight, or maybe a two-hour drive, from where you are sitting right now. Who can break the chain? How do we protect ourselves?
