Saturday, January 17, 2009

Ceasefire announced unilaterally


Wire reports say:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel will unilaterally halt its 22-day offensive against Hamas at midnight GMT but keep troops on the ground in Gaza for the time being. (Up to 96 hours)
Government leaders voted to stop the assault during an emergency security meeting Saturday. Shortly before the meeting began, Hamas vowed to keep fighting until Israel pulled its forces out of Gaza.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began on Dec. 27, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. [And more than 5000 wounded.]At least 13 Israelis have also died.
Four of them were killed by "Friendly Fire". And what's the point of all this brutality? Rockets still are raining on southern Israel. No triumphalism, fellas. If anything, this bloody three weeks has strengthened Hamas. And brought world opinion against Israel for the use of phosphorous in crowded urban areas. Hey, there are three hours before the deadline looms, so the killing continues.

Says the BBC:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has offered British naval resources to help monitor events in the Gaza conflict and stop weapons being smuggled in.He wants to help ensure protection and monitoring of the crossings into Gaza.

Mr Brown said: "We will do everything we can to prevent the arms trading at the root of the problems."
Israeli is to unilaterally halt offensive military activities in the Gaza Strip three weeks after operations began, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.

Mr Olmert's announcement came in a televised address following a late-night cabinet meeting.
He said Israel's operation in Gaza had fully achieved its aims, with Hamas badly damaged militarily and in terms of infrastructure.

Earlier, a Hamas spokesman said it would fight until its demands were met, including an Israeli withdrawal.
Mr Brown said he had been involved in talks with Mr Olmert and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.
"Germany, France and Great Britain have just sent a letter to Israel and Egypt to say they will do everything we can to prevent arms trafficking," he said."We're prepared to help move children, to take them out of the area so they can be treated elsewhere.
"We're also determined that we do everything in our power to deal with unexploded bombs so that people feel more secure in the Gaza area."

He promised that Britain would be increasing its humanitarian aid over the next five years.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox criticised the prime minister's offer of naval resources, saying he "must stop grandstanding and committing our already over-stretched forces to more and more missions while reducing their resources".
Mr Brown is considering an invitation to attend an international summit on Sunday in Egypt about the conflict.
Staged at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, it will be co-chaired by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza says 1,193 people have been killed so far, including 410 children and 108 women, since the conflict began on 27 December.There were 5,300 people wounded, including 1,600 children, the ministry said.
Thirteen Israelis, mostly soldiers, have been killed during the campaign.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and what about Gilad Shalit???
Languishing in Hamas captivity, or maybe he was killed by the IDF while inside a Gazan house or one of those tunnels. Can he possibly still be alive?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The horrors unleashed on captive civilians in Gaza is tarnishing the image of Judaism.
many of us are ashamed and don't want this massacre to take place in our name. Thank G*d it has stopped

HRH said...

Do you delete all of the clever comments that aren't anti-Semitic? This should be a forum for debate not censorship!

Izzy Bee said...

Calm down, HRH- in this case Golum appears to have doubleclicked, so double-posted the same comment. We are not anti-Semitic, and criticism of Israel does not constitute anti-Semitism.

FYI-Rules of the Road:
Blog administrators and moderators have the right to delete or close any comment at any time. True, some content may lead to message deletion and/or user bans.

Play nice: Messages containing intentionally misleading information, defamatory content, threats, verbal abuse, harassment, obscenity or personal information about other individuals are not allowed. Comments should be brief and stick to the facts. Keep a civil tone. Resist indulging in name-calling. If your item doesn't get posted or is deleted, tone it down a bit and try again.

Keep your posts commercial-free: Advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes and solicitations are unacceptable.

Spam is not allowed: Spamming includes multiple disruptive, meaningless or repetitive messages, or messages posted solely for solicitation. Messages considered spam, trolling or flaming will be deleted.

Fair Use: Do not post entire articles into comments or forums. This is a potential violation of copyright laws. It's unnecessary and results in needlessly long posts. Instead, post a brief abstract of the material and a link to the complete source. If you are not sure how much of an article you can legally post, just post a link.

Don't see a message you posted earlier? It may have been deleted because of objectionable content. Feel free to try again or contact the moderators for details.

HRH said...

Play nice? I doubt I would get away with calling an Arab a "grunt" on this site. Such a comment, doubtless from one of your sympathizers, was left on this site in reference to an IDF soldier. Given the probable chance that he's a Jew, I find the comment anti-Semitic, especially since his work is to defend the Jewish state.

I'm a reasonable guy who supports a real two-state solution, and I don't throw out the label of anti-Semite or racist lightly. I would NEVER use words like "grunt" to describe Arabs or their supporters, but I'm not sure that you can ensure the same about the comments regarding Israelis and their supporters.

And, I never said that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism; I know what it is. Don't hide hate behind semantics. When I hear it and see it, I will call it what it is. Until Jewish student centers and synagogues outside Israel cease to be places of protest and violence, I will find it hard to see that anti-Zionists can separate liberal Jews from conservative Israeli politicians.

Izzy Bee said...

What I assume HRH objects to is a caption where a member of the tank crew is referred to as an IDF grunt. Well, that's common US military slang for a soldier in the infantry (originated in Vietnam era.) And a surprising number of the IDF are Americans. No offense intended.

To spare feelings (wouldn't call any victim a Gook or the equivalent), this caption will be amended. Soldiers call themselves TzafLad,Tzair or Vatik, depending on length of service. But we'll just label this "soldier".

By the way, there is a graffiti all over Gaza which is kind of like "Kilroy was here." It says, in Hebrew, Gilad, I was here. (addressed to the captive soldier.)