Gaza Ceasefire

Well I was right again - a 'unilateral ceasefire' - and with two clear days to make sure none of this features prominently during Tuesday's inaugural address. Not on completion of any military objective: lots and lots of objectives were destroyed, for sure, but Hamas lunched another 16 rockets, one of which actually hit a target, prior to dictating their own ceasefire terms, so even if the objectives were accomlishable (doubtful), they certainly haven't been accomplished.

No, this is just politics. (please ignore the pile of stinking corpses behind the curtain.)

A lot of what is being said on TV with straight faces would make Goebbels blush, but today's favourite, for me, is that the ceasefire is more accurately being described by the IDF as a 'halt in offensive operations.' Not a cessation of hostilities, not a withdrawal, not relief of the seige, not even recognition that you can speak to or reason with the enemy, but a temporary and unilateral halt in the 'offensive' operations.

Imagine for a moment that I gouged my thumb into your eye. This is an offensive operation - if you've ever suffered an eye injury you will agree how very offensive it would be. Now imagine I agree to halt those operations unilaterally. You might be surprised to find my thumb still in your eye. But there it is nonetheless.

Gaza

A prediction (really two), a comment, and a link:

PREDICTION:

This war will be resolved in time for Barrack Obama to be inaugurated. It would be embarrassing for it to continue through his inauguration and Israel is aware of the importance of maintaining good relations with the US.

It will end prior to this arbitrary date and not on 'mission success' because you cannot simply crush someone's ability to resist (see "Afghanistan") and as long as there are Palestinians in the 'holy land' without a nation, this war will not be over. The idea that this incursion could 'defeat' Hamas or force it to stop lobbing rockets is as ridiculous as the proposition that you can delcare war on terror.

THE COMMENT:

Have you ever seen one of those shows where the bad guys take a hostage or hostages (on a plane, in a bank, in a station, wherever) and our good guys are all surrounding them on the outside but unable to let all hell loose as they so dearly want to because they can't risk killing the hostages? This is a very common plot device in movies and TV shows, I'm sure everyone has seen it many times.

See, the thing is, that the good guys don't just blow up everyone and then blame the bad guys. Good guys don't kill hostages. It's not about proportionality (although 8 Israelis dead in the last 8 years vs 1000 palestinians dead in the last 2 weeks is quite a whopper to swallow). It's an absolute moral position. The good guys NEVER kill the hostages. The IDF has no such qualms, and therefore they are ruled out, permanently and irrevocably, from being the 'good guys'.

THE LINK:

Excerpts from a panel, particularly interesting for Israeli national security expert Efraim Inbar's views about the above comment - it would not bother him if the figure were 20 or 30,000 dead, he sleeps easy blaming it all on Hamas. Also a French analyst explains the response of Egypt and Jordan. View it on Red Tory's page (couldn't get the link to work):
http://redtory.wordpress.com/