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"Israel exits Gaza; truce takes hold" by Steven Erlanger and Ben Hubbard | New York Times August 06, 2014
Related: Israeli Censors Cleared This New York Times Report
Must have cleared this one, too.
JERUSALEM — As a 72-hour cease-fire mediated by Egypt took hold Tuesday, Gazans emerged to view a shattered landscape with Hamas still in power, while Israel began to debate the politics, costs, and accomplishments of the monthlong war.
Israel announced the withdrawal of all its forces from the Gaza Strip, and both sides said they would engage in talks on a lasting arrangement to keep the peace. But the negotiations, also to be mediated by Egypt, are bound to be tricky, and given the participants’ antagonisms and sharply different goals, the cease-fire could still collapse. Israeli officials emphasized that their army, navy and air force remained deployed near the coastal territory, primed to respond to any attacks from Gaza.
Since the conflict began in earnest July 8, Gaza officials say that more than 1,830 Palestinians have died, most of them civilians, with more of the dead likely to emerge as the rubble is cleared away. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed.
People on both sides are wondering whether the death and destruction was worth what is essentially another standoff between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamic group that governs Gaza, and its ally Islamic Jihad, with no clear victor or vanquished.
If that question has to even be asked then Israel lost. All that disproportionate military might and all they got out of it was a draw?
The cease-fire proposal accepted Monday night is essentially the same one that was rejected by Hamas three weeks ago, before the Israelis moved into Gaza with ground troops, and on its face it resolves little.
In Gaza City, there was little sense of celebration that the fighting had stopped, although many of those interviewed said they thought this cease-fire was more likely to succeed than previous ones, which quickly collapsed amid new violence.
Gaza’s streets on Tuesday slowly filled with cars, donkey carts, and trucks, many of them piled with the belongings of displaced families moving from one spot to another toting mattresses, kitchen supplies, and bags of clothes.
How heartbreaking it is that Israel has treated Palestinians the way the Nazis allegedly treated them.
Gaza faces a major challenge in reconstruction, with its infrastructure, always shaky, badly damaged. Electrical cables are down, the only power plant is out of action, the water and sewage systems are damaged, and hospitals urgently need resupplying.
The place was leveled.
About 260,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents have been displaced by the fighting, according to the United Nations, and many thousands of them remain huddled in schools or living with friends and relatives. Many have no homes to return to.
“We lost in one instant all we had worked for 40 years to build,” said Fouad Harara, 55, who had worked for decades as a laborer in Israel. “The only thing we gained is destruction.”
I know it doesn't mean much, but you did gain the sympathy of the world.
After remaining nearly invisible to most Gazans throughout the war, Hamas police officers emerged in some areas, patrolling in blue and white trucks and inspecting damaged neighborhoods.
New billboards had been put up recently in Gaza City, one of them showing a group of fighters and a tunnel with the words “The Tunnels of Glory” and “Passages to Arrive in Jerusalem.”
Hamas’s Al Aqsa radio station alternated between triumphant jihadi anthems and talk shows about how “the resistance” had vanquished the “Zionist enemy” with its rockets, forcing it to withdraw from Gaza.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, said that Israel had destroyed about 32 tunnels built by Hamas and leading into Israel, and that Israeli forces had killed about 900 militants, a figure that is bound to be challenged by Hamas. He said that Israel had destroyed more than 3,000 rockets belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and that those groups had launched more than 3,300 rockets toward Israel. Israel said it suspected that they had 3,000 rockets left.
The cease-fire could break down over negotiations for a more durable arrangement, or it could be extended beyond the initial 72 hours. Israel is demanding security, a durable end to attacks from Gaza, and strong control over what comes in and out of Gaza, aided by the Egyptians, to prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad from easily rearming or building new networks of tunnels with diverted or smuggled cement.
As the U.S. rushes to restock and replenish Israel's arsenal.
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"Negotiations to extend Gaza cease-fire begin; Delegations take hard-line stance, air complaints" by Maggie Michael and Brian Rohan | Associated Press August 07, 2014
CAIRO — Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s intense bombardment of Gaza, saying that despite the high civilian death toll it was a ‘‘justified’’ and ‘‘proportionate’’ response to Hamas attacks.
Speaking to international journalists, Netanyahu presented video footage he said showed militants firing rockets from areas near schools and Hamas deploying civilians as human shields.
He must be feeling the heat over this war-criminal action.
‘‘Our enemy is Hamas, our enemies are the other terrorist organizations trying to kill our people, and we have taken extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties,’’ he said.
Then your measures failed.
Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Israel says some 900 Palestinian militants were among the dead. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians inside Israel have also been killed....
Hamas ‘‘finger is on the trigger.’’
The rest was worthless cease talk stuff.
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Of course, it's all Hamas's fault.
"Hamas rejects Israeli disarmament proposal; As cease-fire ends, barrage of rockets fired from Gaza" by Hamza Hendawi and Maggie Michael | Associated Press August 08, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A hard-line stance by Hamas....
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a tough reaction....
About 2,000 people showed up for Hamas’s rally in the heart of Gaza City on Thursday, well below the levels of previous such gatherings.
The modest turnout was not necessarily a sign of waning support for the group but most likely a reflection of the fatigue felt by most of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents after four weeks of a ruinous war, as well as anxiety over whether the three-day truce will be extended.
‘‘Our fingers are on the trigger and our rockets are trained at Tel Aviv,’’ Mushir Masri, a Hamas official, told the rally.
In the month-long fighting, nearly 1,900 Palestinians, three-quarters of them civilians, have been killed, more than 9,000 wounded and some 250,000 people made homeless, according to Palestinian medical officials and the United Nations. Israel lost 64 soldiers and three civilians.
Hamas, meanwhile, announced that Ayman Taha, a former spokesman for the group, on Thursday died of wounds he had sustained in an Israeli airstrike on a makeshift Hamas detention center 11 days earlier. Taha had been detained by Hamas security in January, though the charges against him were never made public. Before his arrest, Taha had also served as a liaison with Egypt.
He was the first senior member of the Hamas political leadership to be killed in this war....
Addressing communities in southern Israel close to Gaza, an area that suffered the most from Hamas rockets, he said: ‘‘You are advised not to return to your homes. . . . Netanyahu is gambling with your lives for political gain.’’
The blockade, which Israel says is needed to prevent weapons from reaching Gaza, has led to hardship in the Mediterranean seaside territory. Movement in and out of Gaza is limited and the economy has ground to a standstill and unemployment is over 50 percent.
End the siege!
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Breaking News: Temporary truce in Gaza war expires
"Israel responded with a series of airstrikes that killed at least five Palestinians, including three children, Palestinian officials said. Hamas had entered the Cairo talks from a position of military weakness, following a month of fighting in which Israel pounded Gaza with close to 5,000 strikes. Israel has said Hamas lost hundreds of fighters, two-thirds of its rocket arsenal and all of its tunnels under the border with Israel. The heavy toll of the war appears to have made Hamas even more resistant to returning to the status quo. The group is unlikely to accept a cease-fire without assurances that Gaza’s borders will be opened — particularly after the fighting left more than 1,900 Gaza residents dead, close to 10,000 wounded and tens of thousands displaced, with entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
Accepting any deal with borders still closed would mean that spilled blood was for nothing.
The Israeli authorities banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other areas within 50 miles of the Gaza border.
That might be for safety, but it is more likely a way to shut down peace protests that have gone uncovered by AmeriKa's jew$media.
Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, struck about 40 targets in Gaza, the army said. Palestinian officials said at least five people were killed in three separate strikes, two of them near mosques. Among the dead were three boys, a 10-year-old and two cousins, aged 12. At least five boys were wounded. The deaths brought the overall Palestinian toll since July 8 to 1,902, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra. The war grew out of the killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June.
Related: The 21st-Century's First Genocide
Israel and the NYT knew the kids were dead yet hid that information for a week so they could go after Hamas?
Israel blamed the killings on Hamas and launched a massive arrest campaign, rounding up hundreds of its members in the West Bank, as Hamas and other militants unleashed rocket fire from Gaza. Israel launched an air campaign on the coastal territory on July 8 and sent in ground troops nine days later.
Why did they attack Gaza when the incident occurred in the West Bank and the suspects were not even from Hamas? What is with the AmeriKan jew$media and their obfuscation?
The U.N. said most of those killed in Gaza were civilians and that in dozens of cases, strikes hit family homes, killing multiple members of the same family at once.
That is not only genocide, it is Israel exercising extreme care.
Previous rounds of Israel-Hamas fighting ended inconclusively, setting the stage for the next confrontation because underlying problems were not resolved, particularly the stifling border closure of Gaza. Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, and have since enforced it to varying degrees.
It wasn't a takeover, they won elections and the AmeriKan media know it, yet they still repeat the distortion.
The closure led to widespread hardship in the Mediterranean seaside territory, home to 1.8 million people. Movement in and out of Gaza is limited, the economy has ground to a standstill and unemployment is over 50 percent."
I don't know where this blog is going.
