Gaza Update: It's the Economy, Stupid....

For me, the second most important story on Thursday about Gaza was the breakdown of the truce between Hamas and the Israeli military.

The most important --- although I suspect you may not have seen it --- was this: "UN agency suspends Gaza food aid". The combination of the Israeli blockade and rocket fire meant that stocks of wheat flour ran out, cutting off assistance to the 20,000 people per day who rely on the agency. (A total of 750,000 in Gaza are dependent on food aid.)

Dig a bit deeper, and the following hard-core facts --- which of course are all too evident to those in Gaza --- emerge. Unemployment is now at 49 percent, up from 32 percent a year ago. Most people are without power for up to 16 hours a day, Many residents of Gaza City are without power for up to 16 hours a day, and half receive water (80 percent of which is substandard) only once a week for a few hours, the report said. A UN report calls the situation "a human dignity crisis".

A couple of British and American newspapers, after their eye-catching headlines on the truce breakdown and "rocket attacks" did deign to report that economic and social news. The New York Times, for example, wrote:

Hamas officials say it was their understanding at the time that two weeks after the June 19 accord took effect Israel would open the crossings and allow the transfer of goods that had been banned or restricted after June 2007.

However, deliveries increased only from 70 to 90 truckloads a day, compared with 500 to 600 before June 2007. The outcome? Ameera Ahmed, a Gaza resident who struggles to find even the formula needed for her six-month-old daughter, writes in The Observer:

During the months of the blockade, everything in my life has changed. Before, I would wake up and hope that tomorrow would be better than today. But it never happened. The reason is simple. It is because I live in Gaza, where all dreams and hope vanish because of the situation we live in.

Of course, you can make the snap response that Ahmed and all the other Gazans struggling to make it day-to-day are victims of both the Israeli blockade and the rocket fire from Gaza that is cited as justification for the restrictions. But doing so, you are into a circular argument that cannot be broken, ensuring that this dance of destruction and deprivation is perpetual.

It might be more instructive to ask: will the Israeli blockade really turn the population against Hamas, leading to an effective coup d'etat? Even if that occurred, would it produce the pliant Gazan public that will accept Tel Aviv's conditions for a political settlement? Or is it more likely that a citizenry subjected to this punishment will see its oppressor as Israel, thus stocking up more anger and more resentment for yet more conflict?

There is a way out, in other words, but no one seems willing to put forth the notion of talks between Hamas and the Israeli Government. Instead, we can settle for the farce of an American President reducing Gaza to invisibility as he meets the head of the Palestinian (West Bank) Authority and declares, "People must recognise that we have made a good deal of progress."

Fact x Importance = News (16 Dec): Camp X-Ray, Khatami, Bad Cheney, Lovely Obama

Other stories we're following:

SHHH! DON'T MENTION THOSE UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS

In contrast to the glare of publicity the Bush Administration shone on its trial of 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, cut short when he and other defendants tried to plead guilty, all the President's men and women are keeping quiet about the latest developments at Guantanamo Bay.



Three of six Bosnians held at Camp X-Ray will soon released, according to defense lawyers with information from Guantanamo and Bosnian officials. Last month, a Federal judge ruled against the Bush Administration, declaring there was insufficient evidence to show that five of the six, all of whom were born in Algeria, were "unlawful combatants". No word, however, on the fate of the others, including Lakhdar Boumediene, whose name is associated with a Supreme Court decision regarding the legal rights of detainees.

Meanwhile, "the Supreme Court yesterday kept alive a lawsuit by four British citizens who had been detained as terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and had alleged that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials were responsible for their torture and the denial of their religious rights".

TODAY'S NON-APOLOGY: CHENEY STILL GROWLS


For anyone who thought Vice President Dick Cheney might be regretting any of the Executive Power he grasped with his detaining/surveilling/renditioning/torturing/war-fighting/Constitution-shredding hands over the last eight years. Facing the tough interrogation of Rush Limbaugh, he held firm:

Once they get here and they're faced with the same problems we deal with every day, then they will appreciate some of the things we've put in place."

And...

Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE:

The BBC's Today programme confidently reported this morning that the United Nations was on the verge of endoring "the Arab proposal", first mooted by Saudi Arabia in 2002, for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

There has been no further word, however, and The New York Times has a different perspective:

Senior Arab ministers met with the quartet of Middle East peace negotiators at the United Nations on Monday and lamented the lack of any concrete results after a year of renewed efforts

KHATAMI: WILL HE RUN, WON'T HE RUN?

From Iran, The New York Times offers a non-too-veiled boost to former President Mohammad Khatami as he continues his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to challenge for the Presidency next spring.

TODAY'S LONGEST LOVE LETTER: I HEART OBAMA


Helene Cooper writes in The New York Times, allegedly on President-elect Obama and foreign policy team:

[Obama] has read “Ghost Wars,” the history of the long adventure by the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan and its fruitless effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. He has sought the counsel of an old Republican realist — Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser — who has long argued against an ideologically driven foreign policy.

And he has one-upped President Bush’s six intelligence briefings a week by demanding seven, prompting Mike McConnell, who handles presidential briefings as the director of national intelligence, to joke, “I don’t know if there’s some kind of competition going.”

Etc., etc. for 1000 words.

"Terror" Beyond Pakistan: Expanding Reach of Lashkar-e-Taiba?

McClatchy News Services has obtained a United Nations document on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group linked by many to the Mumbai attacks, and the implications go far beyond Indo-Pakistani relations. The article asserts, "LeT has sent operatives to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, established a branch in Saudi Arabia and been raising funds in Europe" and "may also have received money from al Qaida".



On Wednesday, a UN Security Council committee --- pressed by India and the US --- put three of LeT's alleged leaders and a Saudi supporter on a terrorist watch list. India also sought the inclusion of Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's intelligence service, but China reportedly blocked his addition to the list.

The misleading read of this report would be that LeT is now a branch of Al Qaeda. If only it were that simple: the indications are that LeT, while formally banned by Pakistan since 2002, is now a group beyond Al Qaeda with its own aims and ideas of how to achieve them.

And that in turn doubles attention back, not to Osama bin Laden, but to internal Pakistani politics. As Juan Cole notes cogently about Pakistan's arrest of one of the four on the UN list, Zaki ur Rahman Lakhvi, and Zarar Shah:

[Zarar Shah] is thought to be a liason to a network of retired officers of the [Pakistani service] Inter-Services Intelligence, who are alleged to have trained the Mumbai attackers.

This is a game of chicken. As the civilian Pakistani government gets closer to rogue cells in the ISI, it risks another coup or black ops aimed at destabilizing it.