Sullied Israel Embraces Ceasefire + Emerging Zeitgeist Spotted in Afghanistan

A ceasefire went into effect in Gaza this morning. The IDF has announced its complete withdrawal from the territory. Now negotiations with Hamas will begin in Cairo. The ceasefire is to last for 72 hours. Steven Erlanger recites the numbers in "Cease-Fire in Gaza Begins as Israel Says It Pulls Troops":

Gaza officials say that 1,834 Palestinians have died in the conflict, most of them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8. 

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Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, said that Israel had completed the destruction of “approximately 32 tunnels” built by Hamas into Israel, and that Israeli forces had killed “approximately 900 militants in combat.” He said that Israel had destroyed more than 3,000 rockets belonging to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, that those groups had launched more than 3,300 rockets toward Israel, and that Israel believed they had remaining stocks of 3,000 rockets.

Erlanger opines that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were ready to call it quits. No evidence or analysis is provided other than "They accepted an Egyptian proposal little changed from one that they had rejected earlier in the conflict; an earlier American attempt at a similar cease-fire also broke down quickly." Given that Netanyahu's cabinet unanimously rejected the previous ceasefire, one could just as easily say that it was the Israelis who were ready to call it quits. International public opinion was overwhelming opposed to Israel's assault on Gaza and its attacks on UN sanctuaries. Israel had also succeeded in alienating its benefactor in the White House. Mark Landler has the sordid details in "U.S. Diplomacy on Gaza Has Little Sway on Israel":

When the State Department condemned Israel’s strike on a United Nations school in Gaza on Sunday, saying it was “appalled” by this “disgraceful” act, it gave full vent to what has been weeks of mounting American anger toward the Israeli government. 

The blunt, unsparing language — among the toughest diplomats recall ever being aimed at Israel — lays bare a frustrating reality for the Obama administration: the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dismissed diplomatic efforts by the United States to end the violence in Gaza, leaving American officials to seethe on the sidelines about what they regard as disrespectful treatment.

Even as Israel agreed to a new cease-fire with Hamas, raising hopes for an end to four weeks of bloodshed, its relationship with the United States has been bruised by repeated clashes, from the withering Israeli criticism of Secretary of State John Kerry’s peacemaking efforts to Mr. Netanyahu’s dressing down of the American ambassador to Israel.

“This is the most sustained period of antagonism in the relationship,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel who now teaches at Princeton. “I don’t know how the relationship recovers as long as you have this president and this prime minister.”

Landler then goes on to admit that the U.S.-Israel relationship is essentially unchanged:

The White House seems determined to tamp down the latest eruption in tensions. “The nature of our relationship is strong and unchanged,” the press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters on Monday, pointing to comments by Mr. Netanyahu over the weekend, in which he said, “I think the United States has been terrific.” 

The two statements are part of a recurring pattern for this administration: an angry outburst, followed by calmer words and the grudging recognition that little is going to change in the fundamental relationship between the United States and its closest ally in the Middle East.

Israel has the political establishment and media monopoly wired. That is a given. But I believe what hastened its withdrawal from Gaza along with an acceptance to begin negotiations in Cairo is that the disconnect between public opinion on the one hand and the captured media and political elite on the other was gaining too wide a purchase. As Robert Fisk pointed out last week, readers were in open rebellion against their newspapers' false-equivalence portrayal of the conflict. The slaughter of innocents, particularly those located in UN sanctuary schools, could not be papered over with crude and specious arguments about "terror tunnels" and human shields. And when the pro-Israel media monopoly attempted to do just that, it had the effect of confirming to a mainstream audience all that we on the "lunatic fringe" have been saying about Zionist domination of Western public discourse. Also, I would imagine, the BDS Movement, which I am sure Israel keeps a close eye on, received and is receiving a big boost.

No, the Zionist domination of public discourse was too much on display in this the latest orgy of war crimes inflicted on the people of Gaza; hence, the ceasefire. Now the pressure will be on the Palestinians to avoid the outcome that followed the last two Israeli assaults, after which the ceasefire held but so too did the blockade. Hamas will have to deliver; the blockade will have to end. Otherwise, Israel wins and the death of 1,800 Gazans will be just another episode of Israel "mowing the grass."

Ramzy Baroud, in article last week, "The War Netanyahu Cannot Possibly Win," thinks that at the very least the old leadership of the Palestinian Authority, represented by Mahmoud Abbas, will be swept away. As Baroud says, "[T]here is much more to Palestine than the whims of the aging Palestinian Authority ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based henchmen, or even Hamas’s regional calculations following the rise and fall of the ‘Arab Spring.’ " I hope so.

Before signing off this morning, Matthew Rosenberg and Harris Kakar are reporting, "Three NATO Officers Killed at Afghan Military Academy, Officials Say," a big green-on-blue attack at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy outside Kabul:

The Afghan official and a coalition official said that it appeared that the foreign casualties were high-ranking officers who were taking part in a meeting at the academy.

Lt. Gen. Afzal Aman, the director of operations at Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry, said that the academy’s commander, Brig. Gen. Ghulam Saki, was wounded in the shooting along with two other senior Afghan officers.

General Aman added that it was only American officers who were present during the shooting, but said that he could not provide any additional details because the entire academy was under lockdown and information remained scarce. 

The attacker was killed, the defense official said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry declined to comment, saying it was still investigating the incident. 

Sher Alam, an Afghan soldier guarding the entrance to the academy, located at Camp Qargha, said that senior Afghan and coalition officers had been meeting there on Tuesday, and that reports from inside the camp indicated that a number of the foreign officers were killed in the attack. He said that soon after the shooting, coalition helicopters landed inside the academy to evacuate the dead and wounded. 

Tuesday’s shooting was the first so-called insider attack in Afghanistan in months. Such attacks, in which Afghan troops open fire on unsuspecting coalition forces, at one point posed a serious challenge to the war effort, sowing distrust and threatening to upend the American-led training mission that is vital to the long-term strategy for keeping the Taliban at bay. 

Though the number of attacks has dropped sharply since 2012, when dozens occurred, they remain a persistent threat for coalition troops serving alongside Afghan forces.

As Afghanistan falls back under the sway of the Taliban and the U.S. moves towards its exit, I am going to try to keep a watch on events there. The Iranian Revolution and U.S. funding of the mujahidin in Afghanistan mark the entryway at the end of the 1970s to our current exhausted neoliberal paradigm. Events in both countries will reveal the way forward to the new Zeitgeist emerging.