The worrying part about whether the cease-fire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel is getting its planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there is every chance it could start up again.
The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is shocking. For example, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack must be to “inflict a heavy death toll and heavy pain on the Gaza population.”
Replace “Gaza” with “Western,” and that could have been written by Al-Qaeda. Maybe this is the problem: The Israelis are writing their policies by downloading statements from an Islamic Jihad website and just changing the place names. Also, if the Israelis think the Hamas rockets are as lethal as they say, why don’t they swap their F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters for a few of them?
These things are capable of terrorizing a whole nation for years apparently, yet the Israelis have neglected to buy any, wasting their money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2 billion plus $2.2 billion in “aid,” they would save enough to buy a selection of banks in every country in the world.
The military advantages would be enormous because the Israelis’ complaint about Hamas is the use of tunnels to smuggle arms. But if Israel gave Hamas a few planes and tanks and helicopters, they could probably be persuaded to shut down those tunnels that seem to be the cause of such bad feeling.
Whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about legally — except for when it secretly built a nuclear arsenal against an array of international agreements. But they did it above ground and not in a tunnel and that is the main thing.
Watching the reports from Gaza, another reason why the cease-fire may break down becomes apparent. The Israelis might claim that their satellite pictures now show Palestinians in possession of huge mounds of rubble — lethal if thrown over the border. Luckily, these weapons are easy to spot. Most of them are next to women howling, “Look what they have done to my house,” but perhaps the air force should bomb them again — just in case. The Israelis say they fear Hamas will once again break the cease-fire by sending over those rockets. But the whole point of the operation was to make that impossible. Because they must have asked themselves the question, “If we slaughter 1,300 people, including 300 children, is that likely to make people: A. Less cross or B. More cross?” And presumably they concluded it will make them much less likely to grow up full of hatred and determination to retaliate. Perhaps they saw medical research that shows when someone is suffering from anxiety and bouts of irascible ill-tempered behavior, the best treatment is to pen them in with no food or medicine and then kill some of them, and that calms them down a treat.
Another way to allay their worries about Hamas breaking the cease-fire is to read the report from their government’s own Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. This states that during the cease-fire “Hamas did not take part in any rocket fire and sometimes prevented other organizations from attacking.” Still, with all that has been going on I suppose they haven’t had time for reading.
Despite all this there might be one cheery sign, which is that never before have so many people seen through the Israeli government’s excuses for handing out mass destruction. The demonstrations in support of Palestinians have been bigger than ever before, and even the United Nations and The Wall Street Journal have suggested Israel has committed war crimes. One poll in America suggested that 60 percent of people opposed the bombardment, and the change of opinion reached the point that an Israeli diplomat has admitted that “The harm to civilians in Gaza is causing us huge damage.”
Maybe, best of all, was genetics expert Steven Rose who appeared on Radio 4’s Today program to talk about a new study that has located “morality spots,” the part of the brain that deals with our morality. Asked how we could know whether this was true, he said in a marvelously posh academic Radio 4 voice, “Well, we could test the brains of the Israeli Cabinet and see if they have got no morality spots whatsoever.”
And the most immoral part of all is the perfectly cynical timing, as if three weeks ago George W. Bush shouted: “Last orders please. Any last bombing, before time’s up? Come along now, haven’t you got homes to demolish?”
