News about Gaza that you won't hear from the BBC

The BBC's coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute long ago ceased to bear any resemblance to reality. The BBC's coverage is that which one would expect from an organisation that is institutionally anti-Israel. So two pieces of news that an unbiased news reporting organisation would report have not been reported by the BBC.

1. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told worshippers during a sermon he delivered during Friday prayers at Martyr Abdullah Azzam Mosque in Gaza City on 5 September.
In case you were wondering, Abdullah Azzam was a Palestinian 'scholar, teacher and mentor of Osama bin Laden. Azzam was killed in Pakistan in 1989.

"If only the West Bank had one quarter of what Gaza has of resistance tools, the Israeli entity would end in one day," Zahar declared, reiterating the claim that Hamas had scored a "big victory" in the war.

...

Those who were skeptical as to whether Palestine could be liberated are no longer doubtful after the enemy was hit from the Gaza Strip," Zahar said. "Can you imagine what would happen if the enemy is targeted from the West Bank, which makes up 20% of the size of Palestine?"

Zahar was quoted recently as saying that Hamas's goal now was to "move the Gaza example of resistance" to the West Bank.
The Iranians seem to agree that the time has come to turn the West Bank into a launching pad for attacks on Israel. During the war in the Gaza Strip, a senior Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohamed Reza Naqdi, announced that Tehran had plans to "arm Palestinians in the West Bank" in order to destroy Israel.

Naqdi boasted that the weapons used by Hamas and other Palestinian groups during the recent war had been manufactured and supplied by Iran.

The threats by Hamas and Iran regarding the West Bank show why it is critically important for Israel (and the Palestinian Authority) to insist on the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip as part of any long-term cease-fire agreement.

Even more significantly, these threats underline the need to keep the West Bank a demilitarized area in any future peace agreement, especially one that would see the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.

Moreover, these threats support Israel's insistence on maintaining permanent security control over the border with Jordan. Without such a presence, Iranian-made weapons would easily find their way into the West Bank.

What Hamas and Iran are saying is that if and when Israel pulls back to the pre-1967 lines, they, together with other Palestinians, would bring weapons into the West Bank to achieve their goal of eliminating the "Zionist entity."


A leader of Hamas openly calling for the destruction of Israel and setting out how this would be achieved, you can see why the institutionally anti-Israel BBC wouldn't report that.



2. Sheikh Iyad Abu Mujahid Funoun at the Al Huda mosque in Gaza on August 29, 2014 brandishing an AK47

Remind me again why Islam is known as the 'religion of peace'

3. There are many reports that the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has rejected an Egyptian proposal to resettle Palestinian refugees in a large tract of land in the Sinai Peninsula to be annexed to the Gaza Strip. 

Speaking to a gathering of his Fatah party in Ramallah Sunday, Abbas said that an unnamed senior Egyptian official recently approached him and suggested settling Palestinians in an area 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) large adjacent to Gaza, reviving an idea originally proposed by former Israeli national security adviser Giora Eiland.

A possible solution to the overcrowded Gaza strip, an area of land four times the size of Gaza itself. But why should the BBC report such an offer, the refusal of such an offer might lead people to believe that the Palestinians are less interested in peace with Israel than the destruction of the world's only Jewish majority state.