I don't fault Hamas for its reluctance to embrace the Egyptian ceasefire proposal for Gaza, which as far as I can tell does nothing other than maintain the status quo, not even the status quo ante.
My first reaction when I saw the headline, "Israel’s Security Cabinet Accepts Egyptian Cease-Fire Proposal," reported by Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem, was "Here we go again." Nothing has been resolved. The Israelis "mowed the grass," killed a lot of Palestinians, terrorized Gaza, blew up a lot of stuff. Hamas, if anything, got the better of the exchange, if you ask me, because it proved that it can fire inaccurate, not-very-lethal missiles at will, forcing, for instance, Tel Aviv to suspend summer festivals. You might say that this is nothing compared to the nearly two hundred Gazan fatalities and 1,400 wounded. And while you would be right in the main, I would argue that for Israelis -- who, like their American cousins, seemed to be defined primarily by an all-encompassing infantilization, a belief that they are entitled to use any amount of force with an implicit guarantee of complete safety -- to give up their civilized summer routines and be forced to live according to the wail of air-raid sirens, this might be enough to spur a reappraisal of the long-term viability of their warfare state.
The ceasefire deal brokered by the Sisi regime calls for a cessation of hostilities followed by a meeting of the parties in Cairo within 48 hours to begin negotiations on demilitarizing Gaza -- getting rid of all the missiles and rockets and shutting down the tunnels. The Hamas position is that all the Palestinian prisoners released in the Gilad Shalit exchange and then rearrested during the phony dragnet for the three missing yeshiva students (phony because the Netanyahu government already knew the youth were dead) should be freed and the Gaza border crossings should be opened. On this last point, the opening of the border crossings, the Egyptian proposal pussyfoots, saying, the opening should be “facilitated once the security situation becomes stable on the ground.”
Rudoren reports that Hamas' unwillingness to accept the ceasefire is being happily interpreted by Israelis as a green light to commit more war crimes:
“If Hamas looks at the cards it has been dealt — and they are very weak cards indeed — resuming military operations against Israel is not a good hand to play,” Michael B. Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, told reporters on Tuesday in a conference call organized by The Israel Project, an advocacy group.
“Now that Israel has accepted the cease-fire and has offered to go into further negotiations,” Mr. Oren said, “if Hamas reopens fire, Israel’s justification for responding in a very robust way is greatly reinforced.”
The diplomatic developments followed a relatively quiet night, in which the Israeli military bombed 25 sites in Gaza, killing five people in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, bringing the total number of Palestinian deaths since the operation began to 185, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; about 1,400 others have been wounded.
Ashraf al-Qedra, the Health Ministry spokesman, and local journalists said that Ismail and Mohammed Najjar, relatives in their 40s who worked as guards on agricultural land in a former Israeli settlement in Khan Younis, were killed early Tuesday. In Rafah, drone strikes killed Atwa al-Amour, a 63-year-old farmer, and Bushra Zourob, 53, a woman who was near the target, a man on a motorbike, who was wounded.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Tuesday morning that Israel had hit 1,609 targets in Gaza during the eight-day operation, and counted 1,090 rockets fired into Israel, 193 of which had been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
That did not include the assault that began after Israel’s embrace of the cease-fire proposal: more than 30 rockets were fired between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., the military said, mainly aimed at southern areas but also as far north as Haifa and Rehovot.
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Now Rudoren is reporting, "Israel Resumes Attacks After Militants Spurn Cease-Fire Plan,"
that Israel has resumed its turkey shoot in Gaza. The ceasefire is off.
Netanyahu has been successful so far in avoiding a ground invasion, which, as I see it, will be disastrous for Israel/U.S. interests, accomplishing nothing strategically while at the same time spotlighting the bankruptcy and moral degeneracy of the warfare state. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that Netanyahu is mindful of this. But the longer the conflict goes, the harder it will be for him to resist.
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