Israel’s security cabinet is expected to meet Saturday night to declare a cease-fire in Gaza and will keep its forces there in the short term while the next stage of an agreement with Egypt is worked out.
“It looks as if all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together,” Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Friday. “There will be discussions tomorrow morning, and it looks like a cabinet meeting will take place tomorrow night. Everyone is very upbeat.”
Meanwhile, Israeli tank fire killed two boys at a United Nations-run school on Saturday in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, a U.N. official told Reuters. Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said two brothers had been killed and 14 people had been wounded in the attack, including the boys’ mother. An Israeli army spokesman said that he was checking the report.
Right before Obama gets inaugurated.
Not so fast, Hamas has rejected the last few attempts Israel made at negotiating a truce.
I think it is mainly the Egyptians and the Hamas types actually inside Gaza (as opposed to their leadership safely in exile) that have been pressing hard for a ceasefire. Hamas leadership and Israel have both, for differing reasons, been lukewarm about any ceasefire. However Israel seems to have reached a point where they feel that the message they wanted to send has been delivered. Also enough damage has been done to Hamas to allow a viable international security team into the area to enforce a ceasefire. For its part the Hamas leadership have probably milked the misery of the Palestinian people (which is very real) for about all its worth. They also understand that to prolong the conflict runs the risk of sustaining damage that could take years to recover from, even with Iranian help.
I suspect that some sort of cease fire will be declared in the next couple of days. But unfortunately Israel may have won a Pyrrhic victory in this campaign. While some sort of action was necessary in response to the intolerable daily barrage of mortars and missiles on their people, the sheer ferocity of their attack and the high number of civilian casualties has damaged Israel’s standing in the eyes of much of the world and it has certainly been a boon to recruiting efforts on the part of terrorist organizations all over the Middle East.
The sad truth is that you can not make peace with bombs. The term ceasefire is very apt here. These people (both Israelis and Palestinians) are adrift in a sea of blood and they are so consumed with their hatreds that they do not realize it. The war will go on and on, until both sides realize the futility of the perpetual slaughter and decide that peace will only come with compromise and justice for both sides, beginning with each acknowledging the other’s right to exist as a free and sovereign entity.
If Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, AO, its entire reason for being evaporates.
It’s looking like you may be right, AO, as an intended ceasefire is now in the news broadcasts. It is made clear that this is a [i]unilateral[/i] ceasefire. That is, Israel calls the shots, and what Hamas thinks or does is of little import. Does this remind us of any other situation, e.g. the US in Iraq? Without intending to make a judgement on the US here, I submit that what Israel has done to Hamas in Gaza is nothing more or less than an echo of the US war in Iraq; seeing that the US has sort of succeeded, Israel firmly believes they are thus empowered to do likewise against their enemy. Don’t agree? Just try and stop them!
As AO says, of course this is not the same as making peace. Such wars will go on and on, simply because both sides are convinced of their right to perpetrate the attacks they have made. Few people in the US ever seem to reflect long enough to conclude that just possibly, [i]neither[/i] side in the Israel/Arab conflicts is in the right. Public understanding of these events is like sign-bit recording, on/off, in which everything is black or white and either one side or the other must be in the right.
I just read on Yahoo! that Israel has declared the cease-fire, but retains the right to resume hostilities if Hamas does not follow suit.