Gaza navel-gazing

What to do about bloody Gaza? This cartoon, by Lautuff, dates from last year but things have not changed much. Even Izzy Bee is feeling the Gaza Strip squeeze, as she is stuck fast like a mollusc and prevented from moving around here on work assignment due to "security issues".
Join the club, say the Gazans. Such limitation and powerlessness is standard for 1.5 million people in this enclave who lose their freedoms due to the actions of a handful of militants. Gaza is a potentially beautiful place, mired in misery for now. If only people could look to a shared tomorrow, instead of tossing rockets and recriminations at one another. Who did what when is irrelevant. Draw a line and reboot.

As soon as Erez reopens, I'll go back to Eretz Israel...or is that ersatz Israel? So few of the intelligent and cynical folks I've met here can have any hope of doing the same or going anywhere at all.

Mrs Mary Robinson, a former UN Commissioner for Human Rights, has just revisited the Strip briefly after a gap of eight years and told the BBC about her despair at witnessing the deteriorating conditions of this overcrowded and under-employed enclave.

" I am taken aback with the terrible, trapped situation of the families.Their whole civilisation has been destroyed, I'm not exaggerating.It's almost unbelievable that the world doesn't care while this is happening." --Mary Robinson

And now, after the discovery of a new tunnel which the Israelis say was part of an apparatus designed for kidnapping IDF soldiers, troops moved into the Palestinian territory near Al Bureij camp to blow it up. Hostilities ratcheted up. Shots were fired and IDF soldiers were spotted some 300 meters inside. An IDF airstrike destroyed one house nearby. Drones hover overhead and the 5-month truce appears more fragile than ever. In the night, we heard more distant booms and sirens, and learned of more deaths, 7 in all since Tuesday night.

Interesting doublespeak here:
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed further military offensives against the Gaza Strip. "We have no intention of violating the quiet," Barak said on a tour of southern Israeli areas bordering Gaza. "But in any place where we need to thwart an action against Israeli soldiers and civilians, we will act."

Jumping the Gun, Massing the troops

OK, my Hallelujahs were premature and a little naive. Check out reports that an intransigent Islamic Jihad, together with the armed wing of Hamas, already have blasted three rockets across the border--with no injuries this time-- purportedly because Israeli troops are still on patrol inside Gaza near Jabaliya. So hostilities persist. The key players could well choose to call the whole truce off, while pointing fingers (as well as guns) at each other.

Israel's Defence Minister Amir Peretz has warned that ground operations would resume in Gaza if the Qassam rocket fire is not halted immediately. Besides, Israel had only agreed "not to initiate any offensive action", and the IDF's pre-emptive style of defense is infamous. It's worrying that radical Palestinian militant factions are scrapping less than six hours into the ceasefire.

We'd hope this nastiness in Gaza could be rolled back: nearly 200 Palestinian civilians have been killed by IDF shelling in the Strip since summer, along with an equal number of militants. And in the past ten days alone, two people strolling in the southern Israeli town of Sderot were struck and killed by rockets. So it's the same grim scenario: kill and overkill, over and over again.

Ozzy Bee, an informed source, told me the buzz about backdoor approaches being made on Saturday to Israel concerning a Gaza truce, as soon as Mahmoud Abbas could hammer out an agreement with the fractious factions. But Ozzy is bothered by reports that the United States is arming Abbas and Fatah forces. Naturally, if Palestinians will be killing each other off, it makes sense for Israel to step back, look magnanimous, and save ammunition.

Lt-General Keith Dayton, who handles regional security for the Americans, told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth that the US is indeed beefing up and training Abbas's presidential guard, although he did stress that Washington is not preparing them to confront Iranian-armed Hamas. "We must make sure that the moderate forces will not be erased," Dayton said.
The US is pushing for at least 1,000 troops from the Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force based in Jordan, to be allowed into Palestinian territories to bolster Abbas's guard, which numbers about 3500 right now.

Somehow, it does not quite smell as if peace is in the air.

Gaza Truce

Hallelujah. From 0600 today, a ceasefire will take hold in Gaza. Rocket fire is to be curtailed, and IDF forces withdrawn from inside the Strip. This looks like progress, even to a cynic.
Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials just announced this upbeat news---and none to soon, because in spite of more than 350 deaths since June, any military solution looks increasingly impossible. According to the BBC, the leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert agreed to truce conditions. Talks on hostage release and prisoner exchange are still ongoing, however. Human shields were used increasingly by the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and women have figured more prominently than ever in recent resistance tactics. The photographer Alexandra Boulat spent months documenting daily life inside this densely populated combat zone. Children on both sides of the border should sleep more easily from tonight now that Qassam rockets and Merkava tanks will be put on hold.