Israel declares unilateral Gaza cease-fire

[David]

AP


JERUSALEM – Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire Saturday in its 22-day offensive that turned Gaza neighborhoods into battlegrounds and dealt a stinging blow to the Islamic militants of Hamas. But Israeli troops will stay in the Palestinian territory for now and Hamas threatened to keep fighting until they leave.

In announcing the cease-fire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel had achieved its goals and more.

"Hamas was hit hard, in its military arms and in its government institutions. Its leaders are in hiding and many of its men have been killed," Olmert said.

Israel launched the offensive on Dec. 27 to stop years of rocket fire from Gaza at southern Israeli towns. But the rockets did not stop coming throughout the assault. Militants fired about 30 rockets into Israel on Saturday, eight of them around the time Olmert spoke.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the offensive, about half civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. At least 13 Israelis have also died.

Olmert said the campaign will stop at 2 a.m. local time (7 p.m. EST).

If Hamas holds its fire, the military "will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us," Olmert said. If not, Israel "will continue to act to defend our residents."

Israel's insistence on keeping troops in Gaza raises the specter of a stalemate with Hamas, which has repeated that it will not respect any cease-fire until Israel pulls out of the territory, with its population of 1.4 million.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in Gaza said a unilateral cease-fire was not enough to end Hamas' resistance — echoing the stance taken earlier by Hamas leaders in exile.

"The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs," Barhoum said.

In the hours leading up to the vote by the 12-member Security Cabinet, and even as they met, Israel kept bombarding Gaza.

Earlier Saturday in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Israeli shells struck a U.N. school where 1,600 people had sought shelter. One shell scored a direct hit on the top floor of the three-story building, killing two boys, U.N. officials said.

Gaza militants launched eight rockets into Israel around the time Olmert announced the cease-fire, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of casualties. Five long-range Grad rockets exploded near the city of Beersheba in the hour after Olmert's televised address, Israel Radio reported.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni indicated that Israel would renew its offensive if Hamas militants continued to fire rockets at Israel.

"This campaign is not a one-time event," she said in an interview with the Israeli YNet news Web site. "The test will be the day after. That is the test of deterrence."

Palestinians reacted with skepticism and called on world leaders attending a summit planned for Sunday in Egypt to put pressure on Israel to withdraw immediately.

"We had hoped that the Israeli announcement would be matched by total cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza," said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival. "I am afraid that the presence of the Israeli forces in Gaza means that the cease fire will not stand and will so fragile."

The cease-fire vote comes just days ahead of Barack Obama's inauguration as president on Tuesday. Outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration welcomed Israel's decision and said the ultimate goal remains a lasting truce that is fully respected and will return peace to Gaza.

A summit set for Sunday in Egypt is meant to give international backing to the cease-fire will. Leaders of Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Turkey and the Czech Republic — which holds the rotating EU presidency — are expected to attend along with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and U.N. chief Ban.

It was not immediately clear whether Israel would send a representative, and Hamas has not been invited.

During its campaign, Israel said it destroyed roughly 60 percent of the hundreds of tunnels.

As it seeks a longer-term solution, Israel signed a deal Friday in Washington in which the United States agreed to commit detection and surveillance equipment, as well as logistical help and training to Israel, Egypt and other nations to monitor Gaza's land and sea borders.

But Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Saturday that his country would not be bound by the agreement. Egypt's cooperation is essential if the smuggling is to be stopped.

As Israel's Security Cabinet met Saturday evening, airstrikes continued. Walls shook and windows trembled in the southern Gaza border town of Rafah as fighter jets soared above head, apparently focusing their missiles on the no man's land with Egypt where many suspected smuggling tunnels lie.

But all was quiet after Olmert's announcement for the first time in three weeks, residents said, giving them a chance to sleep.

A total of 13 Palestinians were killed in battles throughout Gaza Saturday, Palestinian medics said.

John Ging, the top U.N. official in Gaza, condemned the attack on Beit Lahiya that killed the two boys — the latest in a series of Israeli shellings that have struck U.N. installations.

"The question that has to be asked is for all those children and all those innocent people who have been killed in this conflict. Were they war crimes? Were they war crimes that resulted in the deaths of the innocents during this conflict? That question has to be answered," he said.

The Israeli army said it was launching a high-level investigation into the shelling, as well as four other attacks that hit civilian targets, including the U.N. headquarters in Gaza. The army investigation also includes the shelling of a hospital, a media center and the home of a well-known doctor.

[darrels joy]

8 rockets land in Beersheba


Published: 01.17.09, 23:47 / Israel News </SPAN>

P{margin:0;} UL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 16; padding-right:0;} OL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 32; padding-right:0;} H3.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;margin-top:0px;} P.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;}</B>Minutes after Israel declared the cessation of Operation Cast Lead, eight rockets were launched from Gaza towards the Israeli city of Beersheba. (Shmulik Hadad)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...657784,00.html

[darrels joy]

Did Israel cave to Mubarak?



One reason Israel may have adopted a unilateral cease fire tonight was this speech by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday.

"I ask Israel today to end its military operations immediately," Mubarak said in an address on state television of the 22-day-old war which has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins.

"I call on its leadership for an immediate unconditional ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Strip," he said, as the Israeli security cabinet prepared to consider halting its offensive.

...

Mubarak called in his speech on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to "heed reason and conscience" to end the bloodshed in Gaza.

Mubarak insisted that Egypt was securing its border with the Gaza Strip, and Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said his country would not be bound by a just-inked US-Israeli deal to stop arms smuggling to Gaza.

"Egypt, in its efforts to stop the aggression, is working on securing its borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip and it will never accept the presence of foreign observers on its territory," Mubarak said.

"I say that is a red line we will not allow to be crossed," he added.

Egypt "is absolutely not bound by this agreement," on halting arms smuggling through tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, Abul Gheit told reporters.

The Egyptian foreign minister also said that Israel was the main obstacle to Egyptian efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. "Israel is drunk with power and violence," he said.

The US-Israel deal was signed on Friday in Washington by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni but details of the accord were not disclosed by Washington.

Egypt has repeatedly denied that arms have been smuggled into Gaza through a network of tunnels linking Egypt to the impoverished Palestinian enclave, saying the arms came by sea.

As my readers will recall, Mubarak is a liar.

On Tuesday, I reported that the IDF had sent videos to Congress that show Egyptian troops helping Hamas to smuggle import weapons and ammunition into Gaza. The goal was to convince Congress to slash Egypt's massive foreign aid (third behind Iraq's and Israel's) unless they stop assisting crack down on the smuggling.

Someone at the leftist foreign ministry has decided that would hurt poor Papa Mubarak's feelings. And so, they have prevented those videos from ever making it to the halls of Congress. If any of you has access to any members of the House and Senate Foreign Affairs or Appropriations Committees - especially the subcommittees that deal with the foreign aid budget, please forward this post to them:

Despite efforts by the country's top security echelon to share with Congress videotapes of Egypt assisting Hamas in arms smuggling, the footage has been shown only to some administration officials and never made it to Congress, to avoid infuriating the Egyptians, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The videotapes included footage of Egyptian border policemen allegedly assisting a group of close to 80 Hamas terrorists crossing illegally into Gaza through a hole they had cut in the border fence.

Defense officials said there was also evidence that the Egyptians were assisting Hamas with smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip under the Philadelphi Corridor.

The decision to send the tapes to the Israeli Embassy in Washington was made by Israel's top defense echelon to influence the appropriations process in Congress ahead of a decision to withhold part of the foreign aid granted to Egypt.

That the tape was not shown to Congress reflects a desire by Israel's political and diplomatic echelon not to escalate tension with Cairo by becoming directly involved in lobbying against Egypt in Congress.

In Friday's JPost, David Horovitz discussed those videos and what they showed.

The Post was told that the tape was being sent to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and we reported this. The security establishment's intention and expectation was that the tape would be made available on Capitol Hill. The aim was to encourage Congress to use the leverage of US financial aid to Egypt to press for more effective controls.

In the previous four months alone, according to information then compiled by the IDF, more than 100 tons of explosives had been smuggled into the Strip, as well as 20,000 rifles, 6,000 anti-tank missiles and immense supplies of ammunition. Only days earlier, Israel had also filed an official complaint with Cairo for unilaterally opening the Rafah crossing - ostensibly for Palestinians travelling to the Haj. In fact, Israel charged, this freedom of access was abused by a significant number of Hamas personnel to travel to Lebanon and Iran for military training.

Egypt ridiculed the IDF's arms smuggling figures.

"To get those quantities [of weaponry] into Gaza," scoffed an Egyptian official at the time, "you would need to have a tunnel every 10 meters."

Despite the extraordinary gravity of the arms smuggling, and despite the most senior defense echelon's profound interest in alerting US legislators to the danger in the hope of prompting economic pressure on Cairo, the security establishment's videotape was not, in fact, swiftly made available in Washington.

Reading the Post's report on the tape, several US legislators contacted Israeli diplomats to ask why they hadn't received it. In response, in some cases, they were told that there was no such tape, and that the Post's story was untrue.

In fact, as the Post then established, the tape was shown only to some US administration officials and not made available to Congress because Israel's political and diplomatic leaders decided it did not want to infuriate the Egyptians by distributing it more widely.

A senior defense official had noted to the Post that "if key congressmen and senators see this, then it will provide a clear picture of the situation and ensure that [part of] the [US military aid] money is withheld. When this happens, [Egypt's President Hosni] Mubarak will feel that he has no choice but to stop the smuggling."

The political-diplomatic echelon thought differently. As we reported, "The perception that won the day this time was that over-involvement would be seen by Cairo as an infringement of certain diplomatic 'rules' between the two countries and could lead to a major crisis."

If Saturday night's announcement was a concession to Egyptian sensibilities, Israel has once again made a grave mistake.

Over the past three weeks, the IDF has carried out repeated bombing attacks on the tunnel network beneath the Philadelphi Corridor, destroying dozens upon dozens of smuggling routes. But the challenge is considerable. It is estimated that no fewer than 300 tunnels were operating at the start of Operation Cast Lead, many of them coming up to air inside Palestinian homes that had encroached ever closer to the border. This weekend, IDF sources said many of the tunnels were still operating, and that Hamas was still able to import further weaponry even as the fighting raged.

Quite unrepentant, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit twice this week dismissed Israeli complaints about the tunnels. As far as he knew, only food and other essential supplies were being spirited into the Israeli-blockaded Strip. How, he asked aloud, could Egypt intervene to stop such essential supplies reaching the Palestinian people?

Arms were reaching Hamas, Aboul Gheit allowed, but from the sea, where it was Israel's responsibility to intercept them.

Does anyone really believe that? But Horovitz points out that it's not just the incumbent Israeli government that didn't want to go further with this operation.

The government has hesitated and ultimately seems disinclined to order a greatly escalated "Phase Three" ground offensive. Key figures in the Likud opposition, including party leader Binyamin Netanyahu and the would-be defense minister Moshe Ya'alon, strikingly, are not pushing for "Phase Three" either.

Israel made a mistake tonight on a par with the disastrous UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to which it agreed two and a half years ago. And if it installs a UNIFIL-like force in Gaza, it will just be inviting the next, worst war.

By the way, read the whole thing.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/200...o-mubarak.html