Reuters: Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in the campaign. . . .
Israeli forces have killed some 1,138 people and wounded 5,100 during the Gaza war, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
The Gaza/Israel and Palestine/Israel conflict is very long, very complex, and there are outrageous wrongs constantly being done by and to both sides. The game where we argue (usually by highlighting the negative facts about the 'bad guys') over and try to establish which side is (much) more to blame and then side with the other side is NOT part of a solution strategy. The immediate crisis, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, for example, does not require long and detailed arguments and a hammering out of the truth on all the points of contention and all the history that has gone on between Israel and Palestinians over the last century or so.
No, a solution -- at least a long-term 'temporary' solution -- to the Gaza crisis is exceptionally simple: do not allow military imports but otherwise end the killing siege on Gaza, in exchange for Hamas once again instituting a ceasefire on its own (feeble, mostly harmless) rocket attacks on Israel and doing its best to stop other groups' (feeble, mostly harmless) rocket attacks. Hamas is already willing to do such a deal. The hold up is that Israel (with the avid, vital, slavish support of the U.S.) wants to reinstitute the killing siege. (I say killing siege because through denial of medical supplies and care, denial of sanitation/sewage and water system repairs, and denial of food and water, the siege placed on Gaza has killed many Gaza civilians, a great many of them children.) The article below describes the Hamas ceasefire proposal as I have; they won't give in on an end to the siege.
(More below: machinations behind competing ceasefire proposals, a Jewish UK legislator says the Israelis act like Nazis, why Congress backs Israel, and Norman Finkelstein's insights on the whys of Israel's invasion.)
Qatar and Mauritania have severed economic and political ties with Israel in protest against the war in Gaza, Al Jazeera has learned.
The move announced on Friday followed calls by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, for all Arab nations to cut ties with Israel. . . .
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries who have signed peace treaties with Israel and have Israeli embassies.
Hamas has proposed a year-long, renewable ceasefire if Israel immediately ends its offensive in Gaza and lifts its crippling blockade of the territory.
Al Jazeera: Friday's emergency Arab summit in Doha, the Qatari capital, has highlighted the divisions within the Arab world, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia declining to attend, preferring instead to send delegates to a meeting of foreign ministers in Kuwait.
Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, admitted on Friday that the Arab nation's reaction to the war on Gaza was "in a very big chaos".
The Palestinian political factions Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) are also at the Doha summit.
Hashem Ahelbarra, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Doha, said the delegates in Qatar recognise the legitimacy of the Gazan factions, whereas Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Western nations have sidelined them from ceasefire talks.
"You have two camps: The so-called moderate Arab countries, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, some Gulf monarchies like the UAE, and those who are trying to say that we totally disagree with the US attempt to implement a new Middle East."
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Israeli military action in Gaza is comparable to that of German soldiers during the Holocaust, a Jewish UK lawmaker whose family suffered at the hands of the Nazis has claimed.
Gerald Kaufman, a member of the UK's ruling Labour Party, also called for an arms embargo on Israel, currently fighting militant Palestinian group Hamas, during the debate in the British parliament Thursday.
"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed," said Kaufman, who added that he had friends and family in Israel and had been there "more times than I can count."
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."
Kaufman, a senior Labour politician who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, has often opposed Israeli policy throughout his career. . . .
During Thursday's debate, Kaufman also said that Israel needed to seek real peace and not peace by conquest, which would be impossible.
He also accused the Israeli government of "ruthlessly and cynically exploiting the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
But Kaufman added that while it is necessary to talk to Hamas, which had been chosen by an electorate, it nevertheless is a "deeply nasty organization."
Congress is woefully out of step on the issue of Israel's invasion of Gaza.
Israel's bombings and incursions have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians, hundreds of them women and children. Meanwhile, nine Israeli soldiers have died and Hamas rockets have killed four Israeli civilians.
But this disproportionate response by Israel has received overwhelming support in Congress.
On Jan. 8, the Senate passed its resolution by unanimous consent, vigorously endorsing Israel's actions and blaming only Hamas.
The following day, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the resolution by a margin of 390 in favor to 5 against, with 22 voting "present" (presumably to register discomfort with the measure without voting "no"). This resolution, astonishingly, even blamed Hamas for all the Palestinian deaths.
This lopsided vote in Congress does not reflect U.S. public opinion, however. While polls continue to indicate a strong commitment among the American people to Israel's right to live in peace and security, there appears to be far less support for providing Israel with a blank check, such as defending Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. In contrast to the near-unanimous support by Democrats on Capitol Hill, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that Democratic voters, by a more than two to one margin, oppose Israel's disproportionate attack.
Why, then, is Congress so far behind American public opinion? And why are congressional Democrats ignoring their own voter base? It is not just the influence of the hard-line American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and others in the self- appointed "pro-Israel lobby." It is also because most elected officials have failed to recognize the dramatic shift in attitudes among ordinary Americans, particularly younger voters, who believe that, just as Israel should not be unfairly singled out for criticism, Israel should not be singled out as somehow exempt from international norms of behavior.
This growing opposition to unconditional U.S. support for Israel's massive assault comes not from any sympathy for the extremists of Hamas or from opposition to Israel's right to self- defense. It comes from the liberal mainstream of peace groups, human rights organizations, churches and the young activists who helped elect Barack Obama in November.
It also includes a growing number of American Jews who recognize that the large-scale killing of Palestinian civilians does not make Israel safer. . . .
Stephen Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. Kevin Martin is executive director of Peace Action (www.peace-action.org ). The writers wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Readers may write to the authors at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org; Web site: www.progressive.org. For information on PMP's funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmp...
To tell the truth, I think Martin and Zunes are engaging above in excessive wishful thinking, and I feel (very emphatically) that it's poor strategy for progressives to lie to themselves about where the U.S. public is at. The hard facts are that Americans largely blame Hamas for the conflict and are much more likely to think Hamas and not Israel is using excessive force (despite 0 Israelis and 346 Gazans dying in the last week). Here is the latest from pollingreport.com:
"As you may know, violence has recently erupted in the Middle East in the Gaza Strip and Israel. Based on what you have seen, read or heard, do you think that the use of force by Hamas has been excessive or is appropriate given the circumstances?"
Excessive 57%
Appropriate 18%
Unsure 25%
"Based on what you have seen, read or heard, do you think that the use of force by Israel has been excessive or is appropriate given the circumstances?"
Excessive 36%
Appropriate 44%
Unsure 20%
"And regardless of your personal feelings, who do you believe is more to blame for the current conflict: Hamas or Israel?"
Hamas 44%
Israel 14%
Both 9%
Neither 4%
Unsure 29%
The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point-and now I'm quoting the official Israeli website-Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.
Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha'aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday's Ha'aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman's language basically means Israel's capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.
And the second main reason for the attack is because Hamas was signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border. That is to say, Hamas was signaling they had joined the international consensus, they had joined most of the international community, overwhelmingly the international community, in seeking a diplomatic settlement. And at that point, Israel was faced with what Israelis call a Palestinian peace offensive. And in order to defeat the peace offensive, they sought to dismantle Hamas. . . .
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