Hamas and Israel agree on ceasefire, will begin on Thursday

"Officials in Israel are worried that the ceasefire will be fragile and wont last long as Hamas intentions have not changed." if they don't expect it to last, it's not going to last...

HAMAS IS A TERRORIST GROUP!!! They will NOT keep their side of the cease-fire... Unfortunately for them, their weapons consist of old U.S.S.R. arms and Israel has the world's most technological weaponry and training. Hamas better watch it, they're one bomb attack away from being annihilated. It's Hamas that has given into this cease-fire... Without it, their existence is only temporary.

it obviously depends on your perspective...if you're a palestinian then israel is the terrorist group and vice versa. the cease-fire is a temporary solution to this problem but it's always a good thing when people stop killing each other. the only way there can be some sort of peace at all is if the palestinians are alloted their own separate state which would have to include all occupied territories and east jerusalem as their capital...will it ever happen? i sure hope so but it's a ways away. both groups have ties to the holy city so i can't see how you can deny either when history shows they're both right.

Hamas, love them or hate them, are the democratically elected organization. To be against Hamas as a representative government, is to be against the democratic voice of the Palestinian people. There have been many Israeli leaders and the Likud political Israeli part that state publicly - "There is no such thing as a Palestinian." Hamas does need to change its position on Israel, true. Israel has to change its position on the rights of the Palestinian people as well. Only with true change on both sides will a true peace occur.

Hamas needs to be at the decision table.
Israel agreed to it and so did the PLO.
Hamas was voted in democratically by the Palestinian people.

All that AIPAC talk about Jerusalem being giving to Israel.
That won't work!
Palestine will never agree to such a deal.

Hamas is a Syrian terrorist group.
It may have ties with Palestine, but it is in no way recognized by Palestinian government.
Hamas represents no people... It's leaders are militarily ranked. The people it claims to represent are towns in which they have superior control over government authority, towns they've taken with brute force.

Just another cycle..

Deja Vu. Even the officials aren't giving it chance. It looks as if they're just going through the motions. We'll see how long this lasts. Let the countdown begin.

Hamas ceasefire, eh?
Sounds like they need more time to re-supply their war materials. They don't want the Israelis to blow up their supply convoys!

The reason Hamas was elected was because the PLO was so corrupt. I am not saying Hamas is a bunch of nice people. There is more to Hamas than just the military wing.

isreal needs to stop being such a pansy about this and just finish the job. you back them into their corner, put a gun to their head, say surrender or die. i'm tired of hearing about this crap

Thanks all for your responses, I agree with most of you.

I'm also sure this ceasefire won't last, its obvious and its not because the sides are not giving it a chance, its because the situation is the way it is.

And about Hamas being elected democraticly, well, its because the Palastinians will vote for whoever is more powerful, so it doesnt matter if they take control by force or by election, thats how things work there.

And I don't need to research to know this, I live in Israel.

hamas is a pain to israel.. if israel could have finished off hamas, they would have done so by now..

this truce involves 2 sides.. it is as much of a relief for israel as it is for hamas.. israel has realized that continuing to raid palestinian officials' homes and offices in the midst of an economic choke hold have not broken the palestinian people..

israel also needs to get its own house in order with olmert politically paralyzed and nothing moving in any direction..

at the end of the day, every entity which does not bow to israeli demands is labeled a terrorist organization, the top of which are hizbollah, hamas, and iran.. you can label anyone you want as a terrorist.. but all the bullets and bombs in the world cannot stop someone from claiming their due rights and demanding justice..

peace

The conflict there won't be resolved until Israel is gone.
And, mrpibb, those "old USSR weapons" may be old, but they've been proven as some of the most effective military hardware on the face of the planet. The Tavor may be as accurate as a sniper rifle, but in urban combat an AK will do great.

Right now, this should last at least 20 minutes maybe unless israel decides to build a million more houses in the settlements which is what they are probably planning. No one has been able to live at peace with Israel, I wonder why? Could it be that they never keep thier part of the bargin and can't be trusted to keep thier word? Can anyone dispute this as being anything but true? It seems they annnounce a peace plan ad follow it with a violation if building more homes and taking more land. True or False?

Um, they have peace with Jordan and Egypt, and Turkey, and the majority of the world, actually, if you think about it. Right now they're in talks with Syria to have a truce, as well. Thats what, 3 out of 5 neighbors? So there goes that theory.

Dream on dgold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Facts are facts. The Syria thing is still unofficial, but if you've been paying attention to the news, which I'm sure you haven't, its looking more and more real every day.

Israeli government needs to give back land it illegally took from innocent Palestinians and stop the genocide it has brought on to these people. 78% of the people in Israel will agree and close to that percentage of the young generation is avoiding the military for the same reasons.

Thats why most people in the world hates Israel (and not the real people there). The Israeli government is a ruthless, blood thirsty, greedy and corrupt government. If it were a caring and fair government, peace would have been provided 40 years ago.

dgold - right on, good points.

WorldPeaceTV, I doubt that you really have an interst in promoting world peace, the way you talk.

Check some history before you talk like that. Israel's acts of violence are always a reply to something being done to them.

Check what the years 1921, 1929, 1920 (and a few more I cant remember) have in common, check who was controlling Palestine at that time and tell me who is really blood thirsty.

Israel has no problem giving the lands they took after 1967 IF the Palestinians would acknowledge Israel as a country. But they wont, fact is just after Israel was announced at 1948 the Palestinians attacked because they wouldnt accept it, they dont want just the lands beyond 1967 green line, they want all of Israel and they dont want to live at peace with jews, so for all I care they can starve and die.
Peace.

Right and right after Isrel drops these bombs this morning. That is today's news. Wednesday morning bombing by Israel, right and Hamas has not signed a peace deal yet. It looks like the only one who signed a peace deal is Israel and they are dropping bombs. What a joke for people to dream in thier wildest dreams that israel can make peace. Look at this morning's news and history. Israel has not made peace for 2000 years or so(give or take a thousend years) what would make anyone think it will be Thursday (LOL). What a sad joke, and yet some people actually believe it. It is like trusting George Bush and his thugs.

"I'm also sure this ceasefire won't last, its obvious and its not because the sides are not giving it a chance, its because the situation is the way it is. "

Sadly this doesn't seem that unrealistic. I hope they can maintain the ceasefire.

In case you didnt know, this is what the word "Hamas" literally means :

"In Arabic the word "ḥamās" translates roughly to "enthusiasm, zeal, elan, or fighting spirit" In Hebrew, on the other hand, ḥāmās means "violence".

Quoted from Wikipedia

Even if there is a only a few minuets of peace, think about how many less people will die on both sides. Have faith!

That's the problem, nobody's intentions have changed! If only these people would all compromise. This fight is so old... Jeeps, if only the young people could stand up to their "Adults" and make them realize that peace is worth more than their dying principles and children... It is a barbaric conflict...thet should so easily be resolved... Live and let live people... Cherish life! How hard is that to grasp? IN THE NAME OF GOD?

Too right jjmaster!!!
I think this is the case with most conflicts in the world........... younger generations want peace and most adults are blinded by their own greed. We need a younger generation to rise above the so called "Adults".

Ghaz I guess that is where inspirational leadership comes in. Our current leaders are too involved with making money to care. War is profitable for them. They are so sleazy. They get into the govt by telling gullible people that they are big on supporting right to life or will keep them safe from terrorist....or say they are not tax and spend Democrats who want to take all your hard earned money and give it to people who want to stay on welfare all their lives and have you support them..
...then they do as they please once they get in, steal all the US Treasury and put us in debt.... and the same people never wake up from their Fox News/CNN dreams. They are ready to go get screwed again. Maybe we need to tell them in a more entertaining, simple way...I don't mean that to be insulting but trying to find ways to get to them.

The Palestinians are the newest of all the peoples on the face of the Earth, and began to exist in a single day by a kind of supernatural phenomenon that is unique in the whole history of mankind, as it is witnessed by Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist that acknowledged the lie he was fighting for and the truth he was fighting against:
“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”
“We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag”.
“When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out”.
This declaration by a true "Palestinian" should have some significance for a sincerely neutral observer. Indeed, there is no such a thing like a Palestinian people, or a Palestinian culture, or a Palestinian language, or a Palestinian history. There has never been any Palestinian state, neither any Palestinian archaeological find nor coinage. The present-day "Palestinians" are an Arab people, with Arab culture, Arabic language and Arab history. They have their own Arab states from where they came into the Land of Israel about one century ago to contrast the Jewish immigration. That is the historical truth. They were Jordanians (another recent British invention, as there has never been any people known as "Jordanians"), and after the Six-Day War in which Israel utterly defeated the coalition of nine Arab states and took legitimate possession of Judea and Samaria, the Arab dwellers in those regions underwent a kind of anthropological miracle and discovered that they were Palestinians - something they did not know the day before. Of course, these people having a new identity had to build themselves a history, namely, had to steal some others' history, and the only way that the victims of the theft would not complain is if those victims do no longer exist. Therefore, the Palestinian leaders claimed two contradictory lineages from ancient peoples that inhabited in the Land of Israel: the Canaanites and the Philistines.

An Arab writer and journalist declared:
"There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough".
- Joseph Farah, "Myths of the Middle East" -
Let us hear what other Arabs have said:
"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it".
- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937 -

"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not".
- Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, 1946 -

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria".
- Representant of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956 -

Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated:
"The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 c.e. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years".
The preceding declarations by Arab politicians have been done before 1967, as they had not the slightest knowledge of the existence of any Palestinian people. How and when did they change their mind and decided that such people existed? When the State of Israel was reborn in 1948 c.e., the "Palestinians" did not exist yet, the Arabs had still not discovered that "ancient" people. They were too busy with the purpose of annihilating the new Sovereign State and did not intend to create any Palestinian entity, but only to distribute the land among the already existing Arab states. They were defeated. They attempted again to destroy Israel in 1967, and were humiliated in only six days, in which they lost the lands that they had usurped in 1948. In those 19 years of Arab occupation of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, neither Jordan nor Egypt suggested to create a "Palestinian" state, since the still non-existing Palestinians would have never claimed their alleged right to have their own state... Paradoxically, during the British Mandate, it was not any Arab group but the Jews that were known as "Palestinians"!
What other Arabs declared after the Six-Day War:
"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel".
- Zuhair Muhsin, military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council -

"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people".
- Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to the PLO leader Yassir Arafat -

"As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their great grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education in the Middle East included. The fact is that today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, muslim Sherkas from Russia, muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door. My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants".
- Walid Shoebat, an "ex-Palestinian" Arab -