Gaza Turmoil Threatens Peace Negotiations

Posted on January 19, 2008 by | 6 Comments

Within a week after the departure of President Bush from the Middle East, there has been a surge in operations by the Israel Defense Force in Gaza including closure of crossings through which much needed supplies were being trucked by the United Nations UNRWA operation. President Abbas strongly criticized the Israel closure and his emotions revealed that Palestinian leaders were gravely concerned as to whether or not they could continue negotiations with Israel. “In these days,” he said, “we can only condemn gravely wha hapens in our cherished Gaza, the brutal a ttack on this cherished part of our land, every hour, which targets women, children and the elderly.” Kassam rockets continue hitting Israel and IDF forces are sweeping into Gaza seeking those who fire the weapons.

UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon urged restraint on the part of both sides asking for a cease in rocket attacks and an end to the closure of crossings. It is time for the UN to appoint a well known meditator like Nelson Mandela in order to bring together Israel and Hamas leaders, as well as President Abbas, in an effort to halt the rocket attacks and IDF attacks on Gaza. The Israel Defense Ministry claims there are sufficient food stocks in Gaza, a statement that bears slight resemblance to reality. The people of Gaza and the people of Israel need peace. The people of the Middle East may well wonder if there is a connection to the acceleration of IDF attacks and the Bush visit.

This entry was posted in George Bush, Human Rights, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Muslims, Peace, Politics, Social Justice, United States, US Foreign Policy and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • ginger

    Cakewalk Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

    Everybody knows the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is at the core of problems in the middle east – the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group knows this, Jimmy Carter knows it, Pat Buchanon, Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, Ron Paul, Hagel, Feingold all know it and as a matter of fact everybody knows it. It is simply uncontested by any sane person that resolution of this conflict is at the very heart of peace in the middle east and the wars America is currently fighting and will be fighting in the coming months.

    Guess what? – the solution was just sitting there in front of our faces all along and it’s a cakewalk – what America needs to do first is to exert tremendous and overwhelming political pressure on Israel – America needs to LEAD the international effort to put this UN-violating country back in it’s pre-67 box as demanded by the UN time and again rather than time and again VETOING that very pressure from the international community. Sure – conforming to these UN Sec Council Resolution 242, 194, 338, the Geneva Conventions, and International Law will be a pinch for Israel and just exactly what the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, and the neocons don’t want to happen – so what?

    So what’s stopping us putting this pressure on Israel? – could the Israelis, her Israel Lobby, and her Neocons be stopping this pressure which is actually the critical solution to the Palestinian Israeli conflict that we all desperately need and that everybody knows underlies successful solution of our ‘war against terror’ ? Why yes – this appears to be the precise problem – Israel and her Israel Lobby are fighting AGAINST just such a solution of our needs. Why Israel and her Israel Lobby are preventing this solution in the middle east is because they want something else…

    What Israel, her Israel Lobby, and her neocons desire is to successfully manipulate America to permit and support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine (which takes care of her internal enemies, the Palestinians) while manipulating America to illegally attack any nation Israel and her Israel Lobby sends us to attack (which takes care of her external enemies). So far this has worked succesfully to the extent that the Israelis have for decade after decade continued to occupy the Palestinian territories and they have had America attack Iraq for them and will have us attacking Iran for them in the next few months – thus taking care of two of Israel’s biggest external enemies for her

    What workable plans do Israel and her Israel Lobby have for the Palestinians and peace in Palestine? The Likud/Netanyahu extremist Israelis running Israel have put the dead Palestinians in a jar of formaldehyde on the shelf – preserved dead forever (as Dov Weisglas of Ariel Sharon’s staff so disgustingly stated).

    So amazingly enough this whole time we were just letting Israel, her Israel Lobby, and the neocons stand in the way of resolving the very issue that everybody knows is at the root of our involvement in the middle east – the very issue that everybody knows needs to be resolved and here these guys are preventing it from being solved. Boy! No wonder it’s been so apparently insoluble! Talk about being part of the problem instead of part of the solution – these guys are experts at that! These guys have the solution to peace in the middle east in a jar of formaldeyde on their shelf! And that jar sits next to the jar of fomaldehyde containing UN Sec Co resolutions 242, 194, 338, the Geneva Conventions, and International Laws Israeli is currently violating, and the 4000 Americans who have died for Israel in Iraq

    Isn’t that funny! Our whole problem all along is that we were just letting Israel and her Lobby and her manipulation of our congress and her manipulation of our UN veto power create a string of UN vetos that are most disgraceful chronicle of gaming the UN in it’s history. It’s a chronicle of how a AIPAC-manipulated US was getting in it’s own way of actually honestly brokering a resolution to this conflict. And it turned out it was not insoluble afterall! It probably never was! It wasn’t really hard either, when we finally just started working smart and forcing Israel to conform to the international obligations she has so blatantly violated for all these years

    I’m waiting for our first presidential candidate to start pressurizing the Israelis and keep turning up the pressure more and more and finally to call for sanctions against Israel until she conforms with the UN Sec Co Resolutions demanding she return to pre ’67. That is what any serious American presidential candidate and eventual president would do. But what if AIPAC and the Israel Lobby will destroy you if you do? Well hadn’t we better destroy the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, and the Necons then? Why wouldn’t we?

    So we just dial up the sanctions on Israel, stop the $5 billion in yearly aid that Israelis demand in euros if we must, and I don’t even think we would need UN authorized military action to kick the Israelis back behind ’67. It will be a cakewalk solving this – it was just that we needed to put the exact pressure on the Israelis necessary to solve the problem! The Lobby was having us put no pressure at all on the very thing that needed pressure to be resolved – the Lobby was having us do exactly what it would take to keep the Palestinian-Israeli problem at the heart of everybodys problems in the middle east. The Israel Lobby wanted no pressure to be put on the Israelis at all and here we are pressuring the hell out of them and solving the problem of Middle East peace.

    Once we do this and stop Israel in Palestine we will find a miracle begin to occur – a war of terror that many did not understand was being waged will have stopped – for what we will have stopped is the ‘war of terror for Israel’ the neocons and the Israel Lobby have been having us fight. Oh wait – let me say it again – there stopped being a war of terror because the US stopped carrying out our war of terror for Israel – like when we attacked Iraq for Israel. And the effects will almost be instantaneous – we won’t have to send our boys to terrorize Iran for Israel in a few months

    As for the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, and the Neocons who have prevented the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is in our national interest to actually solve once and for all? I say the neocons have suggested their own perfect solution – we put the neocons and the Israel Lobby in formaldehyde and we put it up on a shelf and teach generations of Americans what crimes, disasters, and holocaust they have wrought upon the world, America, and the Palestinians

  • http://www.theimpudentobserver.com Fred Stopsky

    It is interesting your entire discussion is about Israel and the Israel lobby. Not a word about failures on the part of Palestinian leaders, not a word about Palestinian rockets hitting Israel, not a word about Palestinian sucide bombers killing Israel women and children.
    Israel has made terrible mistakes and its current policy in dealing with Gaza is disastrous in scope. The dfference between you and I is my goal is peace, not anti-Israel rhetoric. Bill Clinton negotiated a peace settlement that was agreed to by Israel and rejected by Arafat. Have you forgotten that piece of evidence? Did the Clinton proposal meet all needs of Palestinians? No, it did not. But, it provided the basis to move ahead in peace and allow the intervening years to achieve other goals. Nelson Mandela did NOT get everything he desired in his initial discussions with the South African government. But, time has now allowed most of them to be achieved. Why don’t you cease your tirade against Israel and come up with a single concrete peace proposal that might be viable?
    P.S. Israel has never committed any Holocaust against anyone. Funny, not a word in your discussion about centuries of oppression against Jews by Muslims.

  • http://blog.une.edu.au/klausrohde/ KlausRohde

    Jews were granted asylum in Muslim countries (the Ottoman empire) when they were expelled from Spain, a chain of large synagogues exist in North Africa. So, it seems that Islam has been more tolerant to Jews through history than for example Christianity. All this changed after the formation of Israel. Israel is economically and militarily by far the strongest of the two opponents: Palestinians and Israelis. So, it seems to me that is has a greater responsibility for establishing peace. The deal negotiated by Bill Clinton did not address the fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees. Today the major stumbling block is the continuing illegal extension of Israeli settlements in Palestine.

  • http://www.theimpudentobserver.com Fred Stopsky

    Please read the workd of Bernard Lewis, among the greatest expert on Jewish-Muslim relations. Jews, and Christians, were always second rate citizens in the Muslim nations. Jews went through periods of violence under some Muslim rulers. In the 1890s, America was shocked at the killing of dozens of Jews in the Middle East. You are simply mouthing the typical Muslim fairy tale about the benevolent life of Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Again, reality was they were second class and expected to behave or else. Something like treatment of black people in the American south.
    The reality is compromise means one can not get everything they desire. There is no way that millions of refugees can return to Israel. Sorry, that is a hard reality that must be faced. I notice you ignore the discriminatory manner in which those refugees have been treated in nations like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc.. Tell me which Arab nations offered citizenship to refugees?
    You also ignore that Israel was invaded after the partition by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria at a time when the new nation of Israel lacked an army or air force or navy. There was some brutal killing of civilians on BOTH SIDES.
    Fact: Arafat was offered 90% of what he desired in terms of geography. Nelson Mandela did not get 100% of what he wanted. He took what he could get at the time. That is termed living in the real world, not fantasy worlds.

  • Vera

    As Truman’s Secretary of State, George C. Marshall strongly opposed recognizing the State of Israel, telling President Truman, “If you (recognize the state of Israel) and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.”
    IF Truman would have followed Marshall’s urging things in the Middle East would be much different today!
    Truman like G W Bush was just another poor excuse for a leader of a great nation!

  • http://www.theimpudentobserver.com Fred Stopsky

    You are right, Marshall opposed it. Harry Truman is undoubtedly among the great presidents of the 20th century.
    If Israel did not exist, there would still be turmoil in the Middle East. Saddam invaded Iran and Israel had nothing to do with it. The Baath party of Syria and Iraq was hated by other Arab leaders and it had nothing to do with Israel. the conflict in Lebanon has nothing to do with Israel. Conflicts in Turkey have nothing to do with Israel. The problems of Egypt have nothing to do with Israel. The backward religious fanatics controlling Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with Israel. Are you claiming America’s problems with Iran have something to do with Israel!! How about studying Middle Eastern history.