Hamas and Israel Agree to a Ceasefire Brokered by Egypt’s Morsi

11 Comments

1. 

   Oui on November 21, 2012 at 4:35 am

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   My optimism on US foreign policy with the election of Barack Obama as US President in 2008 has been shattered by the performance of his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the policy advisors she has chosen.

   Nothing compares to her presence In Jerusalem today in defiance of the Arab world and in full support of militant regime of Benyamin Netanyahu …

   PM Netanyahu and VIDEO press confereence ahead of meeting with Secretary of State Clinton

2. 

   Oui on November 21, 2012 at 6:28 am

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   An analysis which signals the same observations I have made throughout the last year of writing here @BooMan …

   U.S. approach to Gaza-Israel talks shows new reluctance to referee Mideast conflicts

   WASHINGTON (McClatchy) — The Obama administration’s hands-off approach to Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza is emblematic of what analysts see as an evolving diplomatic approach that’s easing the United States out of its longstanding role as chief referee for Middle Eastern conflicts.

   For more than a year, analysts say, American diplomats have adopted a more laissez-faire stance, which was accelerated by the Arab Spring and its new crop of leaders who are eager to prove themselves on the world stage without the old order’s dependence on U.S. backing. The Obama administration appears only too happy to bequeath its former role to allies such as Egypt and Turkey; U.S. officials are vocal about the plan to disengage from the Middle East and focus on less troublesome parts of the world.

   “The United States has checked out of the issue and essentially has ceded the arena,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research center in Washington. “I don’t think they’re appearing to be absent – I think they are absent.”

   The State Department also seems to have decided that more distance – from Middle Eastern allies and enemies alike – might spare the government from getting too entangled in high-stakes conflicts that drag on for months or years. U.S. diplomats already have been burned by what some critics consider an overzealous early approach to the Arab protest movements: Backing a weak and divided government in Libya, riling up wary Egyptians by funneling money to pro-democracy groups too soon after the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak, and calling for regime change in Syria with no clear strategy for U.S. involvement.

   Some analysts say the United States is wise to stay on the sidelines in the Arab struggle for self-determination after a long era of autocrats, many of whom were close U.S. allies. Even before the Arab Spring, they said, the U.S. government was subtly disengaging from the Middle East, and especially from the endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

   Palestinian Authority Sidelined in Hamas-Israel Conflict

   • How Obama mismanaged ME policy – Syria Disintegrating In Sectarian Violence
3. 

   Arthur Gilroy on November 21, 2012 at 10:57 am

   Why did the Egyptian negotiated deal for a cease fire not materialize as Hillary Clinton’s plane touched the runway in Tel Aviv?

   Well…yeah. The U.S. is pro-israel. So nu?

   Why? Any number of reasons are readily available.

   Internal U.S. political expediency

   An ongoing attempt to keep the Middle East in some state of controlled turmoil in order to maintain favorable oil prices

   A further attempt to keep the Muslim countries from forming a real alliance against the U.S./Western European bloc

   Maybe some secrets that have been threatened to be exposed, secrets that if they were exposed would bring down major governments. Like the real deal about 9/11, for example. Or the real deal about the U.S. assassinations in the ’60s and ’70s.

   The possibilities are endless, but the facts remain the same. The U.S. is supporting Israel over the Islamic world. This one fact is not going to change anytime soon unless something momentously rotten is unearthed about Israel. I say “momentously rotten” because there has already been enough bad news about that state to sink almost any other country in the world. Only its alliance w/the U.S. keeps it afloat. Bet on it.

   In an above comment, you write:

   My optimism on US foreign policy with the election of Barack Obama as US President in 2008 has been shattered by the performance of his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the policy advisors she has chosen.

   Your optimism was ill-founded, Oui. Sorry, but there it is. Obama was (s)elected…and re-(s)elected…president by the PermaGov because it thought that he was the best man for the job. What job? Protecting the PermaGov, of course. There are rationales for this, of course…some of which make sense, like fear for the collapse of the U.S. economy if oil prices went up and further fear that such an event would trigger a world-wide economic collapse and nuclear warfare of one kind or another…but thinking that one man’s presidency would in any way change U.S. foreign policy other than in terms of cosmetics is Pollyanna thinking at its best. JFK and Nixon were both removed from office…and RFK was taken out of contention too…at least to some degree because of PermaGov fears about their foreign policy intentions. Ms. Obama didn’t raise no fools. I am quite sure that part of the deal for Obama out front was that he had to put Ms. Clinton in charge of the foreign policy hustle because she and her husband had proven their loyalty to the PermaGov a thousand times over. She’s “leaving” now? Obama has earned the trust of the controllers.

   So it goes.

   Bet on it.

   AG

   • 

     Quentin on November 21, 2012 at 11:12 am

     She’s ‘leaving’ to organize her presidential campaign. This superfluous trip to Israel is the kick off. And just imagine, she’s still Secretary of State and making use of her positiion and taxpayers dimes to play personal politics. Stupid me, I thought she was really planning to call it quits.

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on November 21, 2012 at 12:05 pm

       No, she’s still on the job. Is she running in 2016?  Probably. But this trip is just part of her job as long as she is Sec. State. Will the trip help her in 2016? I doubt it. She’s already got good press. This is not a win-win situation for her, and if no matter what goes down she has to be damned careful that whatever it is doesn’t tarnish her image.

       AG

       • 

         Quentin on November 21, 2012 at 1:04 pm

         You underestimate the drive behind all this. There is now a truce. The truce would have come about with or without her physical presence. No you greatly underestimate the cynicism (on my part?). I never thought that she would dare extend herself into the 2016 election. Was her Bill instumental. Anyway they have a lot of Obama capital to espend.

         • 

           Quentin on November 21, 2012 at 1:06 pm

           espend = expend

4. 

   Oui on November 21, 2012 at 11:58 am

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   Bombing and shelling of Gaza by sea, air and with artillery fire coming from IDF tanks. See  photo. These targeted strikes have numbered far beyond the retaliatory rockets fired from Hamas and militant positions in Gaza. The ugly face of war has just escalated further with a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. Why did Hillary Clinton travel to Ramallah?

   Fact sheet: Operation Cast Lead – a 22 day assault on the Gaza Strip. Today Israel has amassed more troops (75,000) at the border and are prepared to do more damage to Gaza infrastructure and impose more hardship the civilian population in Operation Cast Lead 2.0.

5. 

   Oui on November 21, 2012 at 12:29 pm

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   How the ‘imminent’ Gaza ceasefire unravelled

   (Guardian) – In Israel, according to some reports, a cabinet split saw the defence minister, Ehud Barak, prepared to accept the ceasefire originally on offer while the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, were opposed. That split, some analysts have speculated, may have as much to do with Israel’s internal politics, with an election on the horizon, as the substance of any deal.

   On the Palestinian side the argument was even more complicated, pitting factions within Hamas who were happy to accept a ceasefire against hardliners around Mohamed Deif, Hamas’s military commander and other groups, who seek an immediate lifting of the blockade and opening of the Rafah border crossing.

   In Hamas itself there has been growing competition both between the military side, which has taken increasing prominence, and the political wing, and between Khalid Meshaal, the main leader in exile, and the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya. “It appears the details had not been fully worked out on both sides,” said one diplomat who has been following the negotiations. “Egypt wanted a staged approach to the ceasefire but it seems both parties moved towards wanting to negotiate something more comprehensive.

   “The regional situation has become more complicated too,” he added. “In the Mubarak era it was much more straightforward for Egypt to act as a mediator for ceasefires between Hamas and Gaza in Israel. Now it is more complex with Qatar and Turkey also part of the picture. “Another complicating factor is that there is a new regime in Egypt, although both the security structures and the Muslim Brotherhood seem to be pulling in the same direction on this.”

   In particular Israel is believed to have wanted guarantees from Egypt about arms smuggling through the Sinai to Gaza and security guarantees that were difficult for Cairo’s new Muslim Brotherhood-led government to make. Escalating security problems with Salafist groups in the northern Sinai, already heavily militarised, has challenged Egypt’s capacity to respond.

   • Violent protests in West Bank over Gaza conflict – Fear for 3rd Intifada
6. 

   Oui on November 21, 2012 at 12:50 pm

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   Gaza on the precipice

   (Mondoweiss) – Gaza has become a hell disaster. A hell disaster calculated, operated and executed by people not far from here who have no idea about the humanity they’ve set about destroying. I asked in my first report from Gaza, “Which people now preparing to go to their beds, will have their lives turned upside down by the loss of a loved one these next few days?”

   In the days since, over a hundred more people who were alive when I wrote that, who may have wondered the same question, have been burned, crushed, torn open or blown up by the Israeli bombardments and tank shelling. It’s horrifying to predict more death, more heartache with such certainty, but this is Gaza right now. Despite attempts at a ceasefire in Cairo and Jerusalem, visiting Arab foreign government delegations weeping in the hospitals, and hundreds of foreign journalists coming in to Gaza, the Israeli strategy is to continue to kill.

   Yes! The New Yorker publishes Munayyer’s call for ‘representative and democratic single state’

   (Mondoweiss/The New Yorker) – In recent years, though, maybe burned by his neoconservative expedition, Remnick has shown depth and thoughtfulness about the conflict. He has turned with anger against the occupation and said bluntly that the American Jewish community is tired of holding the bag. So it is a glorious thing that last night Remnick published a piece by Yousef Munayyer that brings the great new truths of the Israel/Palestine conflict to an elite American readership: Zionism failed in its execution, the Israeli policy of bludgeoning Palestinians will never work, and the two peoples live in one state and must learn how to live together democratically. Yesterday I said that this war has cooked Israel’s goose in the American conventional wisdom, and has pushed the divorce between American Jews and Israeli Jews; and this piece is further proof. So let’s celebrate the New Yorker!

7. 

   Oui on November 22, 2012 at 4:27 am

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   As I stated upon the arrival of Secretary Clinton in Tel Aviv and the sudden delay in a ceasefire deal, what concessions will PM Netanyahu be demanding from the US. Perhaps a sideletter to any future peace negotiations with the Palestinians … this only the future will tell.

   ‘I can assure you, if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” This was the vow made by then-senator Barack Obama in Sderot in 2008, after the besieged Israeli city had been hit by more than 2,000 rockets. During his first term as president, Barack Obama has made good on this assurance.

   President Obama promises more US funds for the Iron Dome defense of Israeli cities

   President Obama has pledged to seek additional funding from Congress for the Iron Dome system. The United States already has sent Israel $275 million for Iron Dome over the last two years, and earlier this year the U.S. House of Representatives proposed an additional $680 million through 2015, with the Senate proposing an additional $210 million.

   Iron Dome’s success during the fighting also could be a boon for Israel’s defense industry, as other countries facing similar rocket threats clamor for the pioneering missile defense system.

   • Iron Dome a Missile Shield that Works