Poor Gaza. When are civilian deaths on this scale not collctive punishment = whatever the provocation? December 19th was the date of the end of the cease-fire - and no one had made any attempt to extend it. Not Israel. Not Palestine. Nor had anyone made any attempt to homor it. Not Palestine and certainly not Israel. This came in from an organisation called Avaaz:

The Gaza crisis has exploded -- put your name to our emergency petition demanding a ceasefire. We'll deliver it immediately to the UN Security Council, the Arab League, the US and other world leaders!
Take Action NowAs we watch the Gaza bloodshed with horror, appalled at how the crisis is spiraling further out of control, one thing is clear -- this violence will only lead to further civilian suffering and an escalation of the conflict. There must be another way. Over 280 are dead so far in the Gaza Strip and hundreds more injured -- rockets are striking Ashdod deep inside Israel for the very first time, and the sides are mobilising for invasion. A global outcry has begun, but it'll take more than words -- the immediate violence won't end, nor will wider peace be secured, without firm action from the international community.Today, we're launching an emergency campaign which will be delivered to the UN Security Council and key world powers, urging them to act to ensure an immediate ceasefire and address the growing humanitarian crisis -- only with robust international oversight and action can civilians on all sides be protected and real steps be taken toward a wider peace. Follow this link now to sign the emergency petition and send it to everyone you know: http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/?cl=162568193&v=2609 After Gaza's bloodiest day in recent memory and eight or more years of ineffective US and global diplomacy, we need to get world leaders to do more than issue statements if they're to ensure a lasting ceasefire.1 Through the UN Security Council and other international bodies, the world can provide the help and pressure needed to stop the violence and change the situation on the ground in Gaza -- preventing the rockets and incursions, re-opening crossing-points under international oversight so that instead of weapon-smuggling, the 1.5 million ordinary people of Gaza can get the fuel, food and medicines they so desperately need.All sides to the conflict will continue to act as they have in the past if they believe that the world will stand by and allow them to do so. We mobilised for a ceasefire in 2006's Israel-Lebanon war and succeeded, but this time the international community must not delay -- let's raise a truly worldwide outcry. 2009 is a year that things can be different. As we face this crisis, and the possibilities of a new year, it's time for us everywhere to work together to stop this violence.With hope and determination,Brett, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Pascal, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Luis, Iain and the whole Avaaz team 1 Further actions could include: a formal resolution from the Security Council rather than issuing a press statement as was done on 28 December 2008; explicit private and public international pressure on the parties to end the hostilities including developing clear terms for the resumption of negotiations; proper international oversight of the Rafah border; and in time, a detailed Security Council resolution setting out the terms in international law for a permanent peace between Israel and Palestine. For background, see this Jerusalem Post article, "No international pressure to end op": http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456497503&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull)

Obviously Israel's recent incursion into Rafah, and consequently the end of the 5 month ceasefire, was a pretty bad piece of news. However, since William has already commented on this, I shall draw your attention to recent British moves to correct European law regarding imports from Israel. Essentially, Israel has a deal with the EU concerning its imports, whereby lower tariffs are placed on them than most non-EU nations. However, these were only supposed to be products from within the green line, and there have been allegations that some of these (including dates and wine) are the produce of West Bank settlements.

This links up with another row over supermarket displays advertising products (such as, again, dates) as the produce of Israel. Even goods which are labelled as "West Bank" could still be from settlements and therefore no informed ethical consuming can take place from this knowledge alone. Thus, British attempts to get these correctly labelled are part of a wider attempt to reduce the economic power of the settlements - described by the government as "are illegal and...an obstacle to peace". Haaretz has described this British objection as using a mere "technicality" in the trade treaty. This is ludicrous as the government of Israel agreed to the "Green Line" rather than any other borders. Israeli businesses know they are in the wrong and attempt to hide the fact by creating headquarters in Jerusalem for operations which in fact utilise land outside of that which is allowed by the mutually agreed treaty.

This is a small matter that may in fact set an important precedent in trade relations between the EU and Israel, and for West Bank settlements . We should hope that the letter of the law is observed for, as the saying of one supermarketgoes, every little helps.

After five months the Gaza cease fire is over. It was inevitable I guess but very sad. Israel decided it had had enough and wanted to go back to war. But when you consider that Ismail Haniyah has recognised Israel within its 67 borders on behalf of Hamas it seems such a shame that we can't see some better progress.

Further to Alexander's blog below, this seems to be becoming a habit. Now an Arab family evicted in Sheikh Jarar. But to be honest there are worse crimes. The Gaza seige is collective punishment. But there is muh less fuss made about that.

Sheikh Jarar eviction

The Middle-East peace process appears to be, as so often seems the case, in a state of arrest. The comparative calm of the five month truce was recently violated by both sides. Four Palestinian-owned buildings in East Jerusalem were demolished in one day by order of the Israeli governent. However, a development that may prove to have a more harmful effect on the procss is Tzipi Livni's failure to form a governing coalition. Unwilling to cave in to unreasonable demands from minor parties, she has asked Presiden Shimon Peres to call early elections. She trails Benjamin Netanyahu in the polls and, if successful, his administration could prove disastrous for the peace process. Ehud Olmert announced in July that it was his intention not to stand in September's elections. Since the new polls caused by Livni's coalition failure are scheduled for February 2009, and an effective government may not be formed until even later, due to wrangling over coalitions, Israel will have been under a lame duck leadership for six months!

This power vacuum is complemented by the period of transition that America is currently going through. While this can be a useful time for a President-Elect to form a strong cabinet, ultimately it is an error in the US Constitution that was only partly cleaned up when the inauguration date was moved back from March to January after the disastrous interregnum between Presidents Hoover and F.D. Roosevelt. George W. Bush, and many in his administration, desperately want to create peace between the Palestinians and Israelis before January 20th, and thereby repair his already tattered legacy. With the great expectation surrounding Barrack Obama's Presidential election victory, it is probably more sensible to hope that the tentative ceasefire can be reasonably well maintained until his inuaguration. Condaleeza Rice et al can do little to affect the situation and we should trust that Bush exercises his power, now unbridled by party loyalty or election worries, sparingly. Little can be done until all sides have resolved their internal struggles and electoral processes.

The Israel Defence Force have recently started to employ a new weapon called "skunk". This involves the firing of a putrid liquid from a water cannon and is principally used as a crowd control device. While the horrible smell lingers for up to three days and is somewhat indiscriminate in its targets, this organic substance must be a better option than rubber bullets and tear gas.

To sniff out the source of this, please click here.

I hope that others may be able to contribute superior punch lines than mine.

Fascinating to suddenly find Olmert reborn now that his days are numbered. Wonderful really. Uri Avnery, crusty old peacenik that he is, has his own cynical take on it of course:

I read the sensational interview that Ehud Olmert gave this week, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, to the newspaper "Yediot Aharonot".

AT THE end of his political career, after resigning from the prime ministership, while waiting for Tzipi Livni to set up a new government, he said some astounding things - not astounding in themselves, but certainly when they come from his mouth.

Our old friend Jackie Hugi sent us his latest article. Not so sure I agree with him though. Iran is the new Mid East superpower and we have to think of our policies against that backdrop.

Ma’ariv (p. B3) by Jacky Hugi (op-ed) -- Israel was up in arms once again. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the UN General Assembly and made promises, as he is wont to do, about the End of Times. “The Zionists have no way of saving themselves from the gutter that they and their supporters have dug for themselves,” he read, and established that the Zionist regime was on a steep slope and that the day of its crash was imminent. Israel, once again, found itself reeling and confused when faced with the whip lashes dealt by the little man from Tehran. President Shimon Peres wasted a great part of his speech at the same podium to rejoin Ahmadinejad’s Shana Tova best wishes. The most decorated soldier in IDF history, Ehud Barak, in the heat of coalition talks, described the Iranian president’s speech as “hateful remarks” and an “insane incident.” The newspapers, as usual, reported about the “horror show” and the surfer commenters stormed their keyboards.
For ten years Israel has been engaged overtly and covertly in a supreme effort to damage the Iranian nuclear program. The average Israeli is commanded to fear, but if you ask him what is so terrible about it, he won’t always be able to provide you with a good answer. The IDF’s hands, say high-ranking officers, will be tied on the day Tehran obtains a nuclear weapon. If that is the case, it is our right to know how that conclusion was drawn and what its significance is. Will every military operation, every assassination or raid in an enemy country, provoke a nuclear attack on Israel? Nuclear weapons do not necessarily afford their owners protection from conventional attacks. Syria and Egypt knew about the existence of Dimona and nevertheless launched a major offensive against Israel in 1973.

If you don’t have a persuasive argument that is devoid of electoral calculations, don’t scare us for nothing. We still remember Saddam Hussein’s chemical weaponry capabilities, by virtue of which you persuaded us all to wear gas masks, only to learn later that their effectiveness was questionable. The more veteran Israelis still remember the terror that gripped the young country in 1958 when Cairo and Damascus announced that they were uniting into the United Arab Community, which collapsed and was forgotten of after just three years. And those who argue that the Iranian regime is too insane to allow for its future actions to be predicted, is invited to stand in the central city squares in Amman, Riyadh or Damascus. From there, Israel appears no less wild, violent and occupying.

There are some people who latch onto Ahmadinejad’s statements about the imminent end of Israel to deduce that Iran intends to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. That is a blind assessment that needs to be proven convincingly. Until explained, it will remain pure demagoguery that exploits the existential fears of the Jewish people. There is a clear balance of terror between the two countries: the Iranians know that if they attack Israel with nuclear weapons they will be leaving themselves prone to a counterattack in kind. And if that is a mistake and the IDF hasn’t been able to manufacture an option of responding, then we have a much bigger problem than the Iranian threat.
Israel will continue to exist even in the face of a nuclear Iranian. If there are any existential dangers that it faces, then their seeds were planted long ago within Israel and not way out yonder in the Persian Gulf. The campaign against the Iranian nuclear program has been inflated far beyond its true proportions by a military establishment that has forgotten the advantages of smart raids, a political leadership that accepts the military’s perspective in full and a media that puts out explosive headlines because of marketing needs and not because they stem from a professional point of view.
The time has come for Israel to set aside its obsession with Ahmadinejad in order to address more urgent problems in education and values. If it is nevertheless hard to kick the security habit, the generals and their employers are kindly requested to provide satisfactory answers to the residents of southern Israel. Once the truce with Gaza is over, the entire area will be vulnerable to the rockets in the Palestinian factions’ arsenals. Hamas has Grad rockets, which are Katyusha rockets for all intents and purposes. Anyone who continues to promote the Iranian spin while Ashkelon is being showered with rockets is liable to find that he is entirely irrelevant.

Well here we go - days away from a new Israeli Premier. Will it be Mofaz the warrior of Tzipi the conciliator? A great deal hangs in the balance.

On Wednesday, the party's rank and file will elect Ehud Olmert's replacement as Party Chairman, who will then almost automatically become Prime Minister, unless he or she fails to put together a governing coalition - in which case new elections will take place, probably at the beginning of 2009. Until then Olmert would still act as a lame duck Prime Minister.
The real choice is between two candidates: Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz. They could hardly be more different.

This is an interesting story. Hamas, though popular, is sometimes overly brutal. The consequences are sometimes to engender fear - and sometimes, as in this instance, rebellion:

I was transferred to a prison where Palestinian prisoners from all factions were held. Even though the prison is run by the Israelis, the prisoners manage affairs on their own. Each faction plays a role in the management of the prisoners' affairs. Hamas was the majority in the prison. This was not the case at the beginning of the Intifada, when Fatah was the majority, but later, Hamas became the majority and had control of the prison – especially over its own people, who were the majority. This was the beginning of my awakening.