from An Unnecessary War

By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, January 8, 2009; A15

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel's withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel's unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.
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from A Conflict Hamas Caused

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, January 6, 2009; A13

Nearly a year ago, I was in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where, on almost any day, you could see the current war coming. "The next Middle East war may start over Sderot," I wrote back then. I came by my prescience the hard way -- in a bomb shelter. That day, three Qassam rockets had hit the city. It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel.

On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot. A blimp hovered over the town, and when it electronically spied an incoming rocket, the sirens went off. In Sderot, the sirens were virtually a single, long wail on some days. Everyone took shelter because shelters are everywhere -- a constant reminder of the nearness of death or, at the very least, destruction. Even a dud can bust through the roof of a house.

I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the price Israel is supposed to pay for being...
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From Gus:
One of the major old rules of war is that "if you want PEACE, make sure your enemies are well fed".

This Israel does not want as an hungry angry Hamas provides Israel with its recurring aggressive purpose.

In the pure mathematics of this long established conflict under many guises, the sums are that Israel is at least 100 times more of a killer than Hamas (or other Palestinians). No excuses or pseudo-philosophications can change this fact. It's time for Israel to become an adult and stop being the petulant dangerous hooligan yoof it has ever been so far in its turf war over other hooligans. Mind you with the US — a simpleton big bully friend providing encouragements to victimise and tear the wings of flies — it has little chance of growing up.

The United Nations went into session late last night to vote to adopt a milestone resolution calling for an "immediate" end to military action by all sides in the Gaza Strip, a breakthrough that only became possible after the United States abruptly signalled its willingness hours earlier to accept such a text.

Officials confirmed that an agreement had been reached on the wording of a ceasefire text after hours of marathon negotiations on the sidelines of the Security Council meeting between the foreign ministers of Britain, France and the US on the one hand and their counterparts from several Arab nations on the other. Preparing to go into the session to vote, the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said he was optimistic that the vote would be "unanimous".

Speaking earlier in an implicit nod to the US change of position, Mr Miliband said: "It is not every day that the United Nations speaks loudly and clearly and across all the nations in the UN about the Middle East."

From Naomi Klein

It's time

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery

JERUSALEM — The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli soldiers with their fire.

In one apartment building in Zeitoun, in northern Gaza, Hamas set an inventive, deadly trap. According to an Israeli journalist embedded with Israeli troops, the militants placed a mannequin in a hallway off the building’s main entrance. They hoped to draw fire from Israeli soldiers who might, through the blur of night vision goggles and split-second decisions, mistake the figure for a fighter. The mannequin was rigged to explode and bring down the building.

see toon at top...

The leader of Hamas warned that Israel's offensive in Gaza had ended any chance for broader peace negotiations with the Palestinians as the Israeli military pressed on with its attacks today.

Israeli aerial bombardments, artillery strikes and ground fighting deep inside Gaza continued into a 16th day of attacks after the military dropped leaflets yesterday warning Gazans of an imminent escalation in the war.

A dozen Palestinians, apparently including several gunmen, were killed today in the Sheikh Ajleen neighbourhood on the edge of Gaza City. Five others, including four women, were killed by tank shelling in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political bureau, who lives in exile in Damascus, called for a Palestinian uprising and told Arab neighbours to break relations with Israel.

Addressing Israel, Meshal said: "You have destroyed the last chance for negotiations. No one will now believe you. Our people are fed up with compromises after they had tried them for so long. A bitter taste is all that's left."

Meshal said Israel's attack had not achieved its military goals despite overwhelming firepower and said rockets were still being fired from Gaza into southern Israel. Early today several rockets hit near the Israeli town of Be'er Sheva, although there were no injuries.

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Gus: I would not be surprised if Israel did a Bush's Osama trick... I mean I would not be surprised if Israel, in all its might, would actually let the Palestinian rocketeers fire their missiles into Southern Israel so it could claim to still have to carry on warring, no matter what.

Bush has been loosely using this trick for the last seven years to fight in Afghanistan. There are credible reports that Osama was cornered in 2001 but only escaped when NATO troops were held back by the US command... Tricks of war and conquest to allow for the myths of defence to live on, when offence is the name of the game... in order to maintain a foothold. This trick backfires 90 per cent of the times... as situation can deteriorate despite affirmation to the contary... but in its deterioration it allows for more "occupation"... Either way the looted looses.

From Robert Fisk

It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn't the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.

There was the phone call yesterday to Mahmoud Abbas. Maybe Obama thinks he's the leader of the Palestinians, but as every Arab knows, except perhaps Mr Abbas, he is the leader of a ghost government, a near-corpse only kept alive with the blood transfusion of international support and the "full partnership" Obama has apparently offered him, whatever "full" means. And it was no surprise to anyone that Obama also made the obligatory call to the Israelis.

But for the people of the Middle East, the absence of the word "Gaza" – indeed, the word "Israel" as well – was the dark shadow over Obama's inaugural address. Didn't he care? Was he frightened? Did Obama's young speech-writer not realise that talking about black rights – why a black man's father might not have been served in a restaurant 60 years ago – would concentrate Arab minds on the fate of a people who gained the vote only three years ago but were then punished because they voted for the wrong people? It wasn't a question of the elephant in the china shop. It was the sheer amount of corpses heaped up on the floor of the china shop.

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see toon at top and read more of Robert Fisk columns...