Israel declares unilateral Gaza cease-fire

[Atomic Rooster]

Israel declares unilateral Gaza cease-fire - Yahoo! News

JERUSALEM – Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire Saturday in its 22-day offensive that turned Gaza neighborhoods into battlegrounds and dealt a stinging blow to the Islamic militants of Hamas. But Israeli troops will stay in the Palestinian territory for now and Hamas threatened to keep fighting until they leave.

If Hamas holds its fire, the military "will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us," Olmert said. If not, Israel "will continue to act to defend our residents."

Now it's up to the terrorists to stop the bloodshed. But it doesn't sound like they're willing to.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in Gaza said a unilateral cease-fire was not enough to end Hamas' resistance — echoing the stance taken earlier by Hamas leaders in exile.

"The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs," Barhoum said.

[cyphen]

Well if a ceasefire won't end Hamas' resistance... maybe more bullets will...

[M_Six]

Maybe sanity is prevailing. Or maybe Hamas just needs time to rearm.

[Chuckiechan]

Hamas needs more time to rearm and rebuild it's leadership. Israel is hoping Fatah can push Hamas aside. They are a lesser degree of bad...

[Disley]

It's close to the elections in Israel., Before the attack on Gaza, Livni was behind in the polls.
As we know, nothing boosts a politicians popularity more than the bombing and killing of innocent people. It works everywhere, but needs to stop a few weeks before the election.
And they need a weak enemy they can call terrorists, and one that can't fight back, as effectively as Hezbollah.
So the Israeli politicians running the show, and who want Olmerts job, chose Gaza, and planned this attack many months ago. To be fresh in the electorates mind.
They then blockaded Gaza to starve the people living there, and killed a few to make the Gazans retaliate to the breech of the ceasefire agreement, giving Israel an excuse that Hamas was firing rockets, not hitting anyone but being a nuisance.
It was all they needed.

Author and jazzman Gilad Atzmon summed it up best in his article "Eine Kleine Nacht Murder":

"Not many people in the west are aware of the devastating fact that killing Arabs and Palestinians in particular is a very effective Israeli political recipe. The Israelis are indeed confused people. As much as they insist upon seeing themselves as a 'Shalom seeking’ nation, they also love to be led by politicians with an astonishing record of unlawful murderous activity. Whether it was Sharon, Rabin, Begin, Shamir or Ben Gurion, Israelis love their 'democratically elected leaders’ to be belligerent hawks with their hands dripping with blood and backed by a solid record of crimes against humanity."

Barak and Livni are fighting for their political survival. The carnage in Gaza probably seems like a small price to pay for, what could be, a brilliant career.

Israel uses all it's spin and propaganda skills, and it's aggressive lobbyists to persuade western politicians and media to accept Israels version of events, and to not ask hard questions.
The media and politicians are easily manipulated, but it's a pr disaster when it come to the people of the world, they see through it, and see that nothing will change for peace until Israel ends it's occupation and returns to the Palestinians their lands and freedoms.

"What is collective punishment? 'Collective punishment' is a city –

schools, hospitals, homes – civilians being bombarded every single day by

rockets and mortars."
Collective punishment is keeping a whole population bottled up under

siege and blocking supplies and exports, smashing their infrastructure,

wrecking their economy and starving their children. Trying to equate

Sderot with what’s happening in the Gaza Strip is idiotic.

[Atomic Rooster]

It's close to the elections in Israel., Before the attack on Gaza, Livni was behind in the polls.
As we know, nothing boosts a politicians popularity more than the bombing and killing of innocent people. It works everywhere, but needs to stop a few weeks before the election.
And they need a weak enemy they can call terrorists, and one that can't fight back, as effectively as Hezbollah.
So the Israeli politicians running the show, and who want Olmerts job, chose Gaza, and planned this attack many months ago. To be fresh in the electorates mind.

Yea, look how well it worked out for President Bush.

[Disley]

They stopped just in time, they didn't want to spoil Obama's big party with the bodies of mutilated children on the TV at the same time.

[tony_j15]

So the Israeli politicians running the show, and who want Olmerts job, chose Gaza, and planned this attack many months ago. To be fresh in the electorates mind.

Right. And you have the proof. Care to share it with us?

[Atomic Rooster]

Didn't you know tony_j15, disley has an advanced copy of the Zionist playbook.

[Disley]

Right. And you have the proof. Care to share it with us?

It's mentioned in articles everywhere, except perhaps in anything you would read.

With all the conspiracy theories swirling around the blog-sites, it's hard to believe that the real motive behind the current siege could be something as mundane as winning an election, but that is the most likely explanation. With Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu solidly ahead in the polls, and the balloting just 6 weeks away; the only hope for Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak is a sudden surge in public approval. War is a reliable way to bathe oneself in glory provided one's enemy is properly vanquished. That should be possible if Barak's legions move swiftly to round up some high-ranking Hamas officials and declare "victory" a week or two before the voting begins. ](A poll taken on Sunday in Israel showed that Barak's Labor Party has already gained 50 percent since the bombing began!)But could anyone really be so cynical that they would intentionally slaughter hundreds of people and wreak havoc on an entire society just to improve their chances of being reelected?

Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands.An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.

Israel's onslaught on Gaza is a crime that cannot succeed

The US-backed attempt to bring Hamas to heel by overwhelming force is in fact more likely to boost the movement's appeal

By Seumas Milne

December 30, 2008 "The Guardian" -- - Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed". The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe".

Of the ferocity of the assault on one of the most overcrowded and destitute corners of the earth, there is at least no question. In the bloodiest onslaught on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, at least 310 people were killed and more than a thousand reported injured in the first 48 hours alone.

As well as scores of ordinary police officers incinerated in a passing-out parade, at least 56 civilians were said by the UN to have died as Israel used American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian targets it linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic university. Hamas military and political facilities were mostly deserted, while police stations in residential areas were teeming as they were pulverised.

As Israeli journalist Amos Harel wrote in Ha'aretz at the weekend, "little or no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians", as in US operations in Iraq. Among those killed in the first wave of strikes were eight teenage students waiting for a bus and four girls from the same family in Jabaliya, aged one to 12 years old.

Anyone who doubts the impact of these atrocities among Arabs and Muslims worldwide should switch on the satellite television stations that are watched avidly across the Middle East and which - unlike their western counterparts - do not habitually sanitise the barbarity meted out in the name of multiple wars on terror.

Then, having seen a child dying in her parent's arms live on TV, consider what sort of western response there would have been to an attack on Israel, or the US or Britain for that matter, which left more than 300 dead in a couple of days.

You can be certain it would be met with the most sweeping condemnation, that the US president-elect would do a great deal more than "monitor" the situation and the British prime minister go much further than simply call for "restraint" on both sides.

But that is in fact all they did do, though the British government has since joined the call for a ceasefire. There has, of course, been no western denunciation of the Israeli slaughter - such aerial destruction is, after all, routinely called in by the US and Britain in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza are held responsible for what has been visited upon them. How could any government not respond with overwhelming force to the constant firing of rockets into its territory, the Israelis demand, echoed by western governments and media.

But that is to turn reality on its head. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been - and continues to be - illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Despite the withdrawal of troops and settlements three years ago, Israel maintains complete control of the territory by sea, air and land. And since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel has punished its 1.5 million people with an inhuman blockade of essential supplies, backed by the US and the European Union.

Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But there is no right of defence for an illegal occupation - there is an obligation to withdraw comprehensively. During the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel's hands this year alone. The issue is of course not just the vast disparity in weapons and power, but that one side is the occupier, the other the occupied.

Hamas is likewise blamed for last month's breakdown of the six-month tahdi'a, or lull. But, in a weary reprise of past ceasefires, it was in fact sunk by Israel's assassination of six Hamas fighters in Gaza on 5 November and its refusal to lift its siege of the embattled territory as expected under an Egyptian-brokered deal. The truth is that Israel and its western sponsors have set their face against an accommodation with the Palestinians' democratic choice and have instead thrown their political weight, cash and arms behind a sustained attempt to overthrow it.

The complete failure of that approach has brought us to this week's horrific pass. Israeli leaders believe they can bomb Hamas into submission with a "decisive blow" that will establish a "new security environment" - and boost their electoral fortunes in the process before Barack Obama comes to office.

[Atomic Rooster]

How about links to go with those quotes dis. . .

[tony_j15]

yes, please. quotes are always welcome but it's too easy to snip them to fit one's viewpoint.