The question: what did the secret internal Foreign Ministry report distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad mean? The document declares that the US administration will not put much effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations, opting instead to focus on November’s Congressional elections.
Why was this released in the wake of the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Israel? Was this a message to Washington over the previous “unwanted” Ametrican statements on settlements in East Jerusalem and West Bank or was it just an example of Israel trying to box in the Obama Administration by revealing, through a well-timed leak, the supposed US policy?
Then there’s the Hamas question: on Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed to Hamas to argue that an early deal for a Palestinian state is unlikely, given the strength of the organisation in the Gaza Strip.
Sunday is the anniversary of the symbolic Nov. 15, 1988 declaration of independence by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
On the Hamas side, despite an earlier decision to keep schools funded by Fatah open on independence day, it was declared that schools would be shut.
Hamas also targeted Israel with words that claimed that “Israel was trying to find pretexts to cover up its previous war crimes with a preparation of another war.”
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, director of Military Intelligence, announced last week that Hamas had launched a rocket some 60 kilometers into the sea. In other words, it meant that Hamas could hit Tel Aviv if this rocket was fired from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said:
These claims are part of the Israeli lies to justify a new aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Such threats are coming under the title of incitement and creating pretexts in order to commit more new crimes against Gaza and cover up the previous crimes that were committed during the last war.
However, another Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said that he could not confirm or deny that the group had test-fired a rocket, “since such news come from the occupation [Israel].”
Last week, we noted — via the wisdom of William Kristol — the litany of comment setting out the fight in Gaza as a de facto fight against Iran. Israel had to triumph over Hamas, the argument runs, or Hamas’ sponsors in Iran would win a big victory in their drive for regional supremacy.
Israel, Gaza and Iran: Trapping Obama in Imagined Fault Lines
In talking about the assault on Gaza, neo-conservative pundits and Israeli hardliners have relied on a familiar frame. The fighting in Gaza, they say, is a struggle between Israel and so-called “moderate” Arab states (namely, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) on the one hand, and Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas on the other. In reality, Israel is fighting Iran in Gaza, the argument reads.
These imagined Manichean fault lines defy logic and reality. This conflict is the last thing Tehran would have wished for in the last few weeks of the Bush administration. It increases the risk of a US-Iran confrontation now, and reduces the prospects for US-Iran diplomacy once President elect Obama takes over – neither of which is in Iran’s national interest. Rather than benefiting from the instability following the slaughter in Gaza, Iran stands to lose much from the rise in tensions. And so does Obama.
The question: what did the secret internal Foreign Ministry report distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad mean? The document declares that the US administration will not put much effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations, opting instead to focus on November’s Congressional elections.
Sunday is the anniversary of the symbolic Nov. 15, 1988 declaration of independence by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
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