1:17PM NZDT: Live on TV just now outside a [UPDATE: Security Council] meeting : The UK Foreign Minister, Miliband, said an agreement to end the hostilities in Gaza was a "noble" endeavour that would bring "dignity" to the people of Gaza and "security" to Israel. What!? the people of Gaza are to be left with no security? That is what he said. I could hardly believe what Tony Blair Jr had said. As I rushed in disgust to post this - the Arab League spokesman grabbed the microphone (obviously in as much consternation as I) to say: "and security for the people of Gaza!" That's the British, they helped the Israelis take the Sinai and get nukes so perhaps it isn't that surprising that an off-the-cuff remark from their Foreign Minister might let us know what they think of the Gazans. Second class non-citizens of Israel, state-less refugees in their own non-state enclave. Their dignity will not include security according to the British Foreign Secretary. The Israelis of course must have no less than both.
Miliband is a little cock. Every photo of him on Google images is of him being a smug, phony prat. Add him to Sarkozy, the Egyption dictator, Abbas for the PLO (and for the Vichyesque regime they control on the West Bank) and Olmert (the guy who started the Lebanon War) - they are all going to have a tea party in Cairo presided over by Condi, for the out-going and thoroughly discredited Bush administration. And the Hamas representative is going to have to get a deal out of these arseholes. Unequal dignity and unequal security is the assured outcome. The cards are completely stacked against the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israelis have reportedly violated their own self-declared lunch-break micro-cease-fire today, so that's a turn for the worse. But a tape aired on CNN of a Hamas official on the Gaza-Egypt border talking solid terms for a cease-fire (before he was pushed back by Egyptian plane clothes security) is a positive sign that Hamas does not want to drag this out. They can't afford to. The Israelis are probably happy to pound away at whatever moves in Gaza for weeks, maybe all the way to the election if that's the most expedient course to take; but they are only one POW away from it turning politically septic. I sense a window is open now.
Barack Hussein Obama takes over in ten days. The Israeli election is in thirty days - the outer-window.
[UPDATE: 2:55PM NZDT
The UN Security Council is about to vote in the next hour on a text for a possible Hamas-Israel cease-fire. It is really a deal that Israel has pursued through aggression and now it is about to pay off. Awaiting the text. If it does not have security for Gazans (as well as Israelis) then it must be invalid (as it would not be the much-promised unanimity), so I must assume that security for Gaza is on the text and that Miliband's comment was just an insight into his own view (or the previous British position).
-- UPDATE ENDS]
Israel's fait accompli in Gaza
ReplyDeleteBy Eric S. Margolis
"There are two completely different versions of what is currently happening in Gaza.
In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas - 'Islamic terrorists' backed by Iran - have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state.
North American politicians and the media say Israel "has the right to defend itself".
True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on Israel's roads.
The firing of the feeble, home-made al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counter-productive.
It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.
Israel's supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds of tonnes of bombs on 'Hamas targets' inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip to 'take out the terrorists'.
Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among them.
Actually, it is more like shooting fish in a barrel.
As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of nuance and background. "
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/200914102257130539.html
From the New York Times:
ReplyDeleteNEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.
THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.
WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Rashid&st=cse