It goes without saying that Gaza has taught the Israeli military a new lesson: the days of swift Israeli wars are over. While mostly one-sided, Israel has never before fought a war that lasted 50…
Tag: ceasefire
The ceasefire agreement is the subject of intense discussion and has clearly left some people unhappy. I will make a few quick observations here before returning more fully to this subject later when I am under less time pressure than I am at present: 1. The ceasefire has been forced on Poroshenko and the junta as a result of (1) the disastrous military situation the junta now finds itself in and (2) the refusal of the NATO/EU powers to intervene militarily on his behalf to redress the balance. The last was again clearly reiterated by Obama at the NATO summit yesterday when he publicly refused even to supply the junta with weapons (NB: we should not take that seriously – weapons have already been supplied on a significant scale but clearly even the outward appearance of involvement through token public weapons transfers is being ruled out). Incidentally Obama’s talk about the importance of Article 5 of the NATO Charter was intended to underline this point. Obama brought up Article 5 not to “reassure the Baltic States” – which are not being threatened and do not therefore need this reassurance- but to underline to Kiev the point that as the Ukraine is not part of NATO it is not entitled to military help from NATO.
Within hours of the ceasefire taking effect in eastern Ukraine, Kiev’s forces were accused of breaching the truce with rocket attacks on civilian areas. The Western-backed Kiev junta, in turn, blamed pro-independence militia of breaking…
Only hours after Russian President Vladmir Putin managed to secure a fragile ceasefire between the Western-backed fascist regime in Kiev and the Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine, NATO has rewarded Russia’s efforts by shipping NATO…
Alright, not everything. And no, not you, smart-arse. Still, it’s been alarming to be reminded over the past month just how delusory much western public conversation on Hamas is. A common perception is that Hamas…
Israeli missiles and artillery shells began striking Gaza again Friday, after a 72-hour ceasefire with Hamas, the Islamist ruling party in Gaza, ended at 8 a.m. local time. Hamas fired a barrage of about 40…
Injured Palestinian children at al-Najar hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, following an Israeli military strike on 1 August. (Eyad Al Baba / APA images) Friday turned into yet another day of horror for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel committed massacres and atrocities claiming the lives of at least 100 people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Friday was meant to be the first day of a three-day “humanitarian ceasefire” announced on Thursday evening by the United Nations and the United States. The short-lived ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 8am local time on Friday morning. Predictably, the United States has blamed Hamas for violating the ceasefire by killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third, whom Israel named as Hadar Goldin. Hamas and its military wing the Qassam Brigades deny any knowledge of the missing soldier. Who really broke the ceasefire? And why did Israeli forces shell the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah so indiscriminately on Friday, slaughtering dozens of people? Could it have been in order to kill the captured soldier to prevent him becoming a valuable bargaining chip in the hands of the Palestinian resistance? Israel has long had a murky procedure called the Hannibal Directive that some interpret as an order to do whatever it takes to prevent a soldier’s capture, even if it means killing him in the process.
Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat—Herman Melville, Moby…
Already Crowded Gazans Are Now Being Jammed Into a Much Smaller Area Daily Beast reports (hat tip Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Gara): This narrow strip of land that used to be called “the Gaza Strip,” already…
the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers—Joshua 8:20…