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The
racist Israeli regime is reportedly contemplating a ceasefire with Hamas
whereby Israel would suspend its terrorists attacks on Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip in return for a suspension of Palestinian defensive
counterattacks on Jewish settlements and Israeli army concentrations in
the region.
Israeli press sources reported Friday, 24 November, that the Olmert
government “appeared to be seeking a ‘de facto’ truce arrangement with
Hamas” which would also include the release of an Israeli occupation
soldier, taken prisoner by Palestinian freedom fighters a few months
ago, in exchange for the release of an undisclosed number of
Palestinians political and resistance prisoners from Israeli dungeons
and detention camps.
The
Zionist sources imputed the Israeli propensity to agree to a ceasefire
with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic resistance group, to two main
factors:
First,
Israel ’s utter failure to stop Palestinian resistance attacks on
Jewish-only settlements, such as Sderot, despite several campaigns of
murder and terror by the Israeli occupation army targeting mainly
civilian neighborhoods.
These murderous incursions, which often takes the form of indiscriminate
artillery shelling of Palestinian civilian neighborhoods, left hundreds
of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children sleeping in their
homes, dead and injured.
However, the often pornographic, even genocidal onslaught of Gazan
civilians, such as the recent Beit Hanun massacre, has utterly failed to
force Palestinian resistance groups to stop fighting back.
Indeed, Israeli officials have been at loss trying to find a way to stop
the firing of the essentially primitive, homemade Qassam projectiles
from Gaza onto Jewish settlements.
The
Israeli army has contemplated the introduction of every conceivable
military and technological solution to stop the makeshift rockets but to
no avail.
Eventually, some Israeli government ministers, like the manifestly
Nazi-like figure Avigdor Lieberman, have proposed carrying out
Gestapo-like ‘pacification raids” throughout Gaza which would result in
the extermination of thousands or tens of thousands of Palestinians.
However, the Israeli foreign ministry advised military officials that
although a large-scale Nazi-like rampage into Gaza was a feasible and
even desirable step from the military view point, given Israel’s
overwhelming edge over the nearly decimated and utterly unprotected
Palestinian civilians, the scenes of hundreds of mutilated children and
women would tarnish Israel’s image at the international arena as never
before.
The
genocidal Israeli rampage in Lebanon this summer, along with a series of
small and middle-size massacres in Gaza have shifted western public
opinion against Israel, placing Israelis in an awkward position as they
had to explain Israeli atrocities to disenchanted Europeans who watch
the graphic images of these atrocities on their TV screens on a nightly
basis.
Another alternative presented to the Israeli political-military
establishment is the total reoccupation of Gaza as is the case in the
West Bank .
This
scenario, too, appears to be problematic since the reoccupation of Gaza
would also result in daily massacres as the Israeli army would be bogged
down in street to street, even house to house battles with Palestinian
guerillas.
Abbas unreliable
The
second factor prompting Israel to consider a ceasefire with Hamas
is the fact that Israeli officials are convinced that Abbas is utterly
unable to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza since he has no control over Hamas
and even his own Fatah organization.
Last
week, Israeli officials, including Olmert’s Chief of Staff Yoram
Turbowicz and Foreign Policy advisor Shalom Turgeman held talks with
Abbas’s aide Sa’eb Ureikat and Rafik al Husseini.
However, the right-wing Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, reported
Friday that following the meeting, Israeli officials were “extremely
skeptical about the Abbas’s ability to deliver a ceasefire.”
“Even if he would want to, do you think Abbas has the capability of
delivering on a cease-fire?” One official was quoted as saying.
Olmert has been saying for weeks that he wants to meet with Abbas.
However, most Israeli and Palestinian sources as well as well as
observers believe that Olmert is not sincere about seeking to revive
“the peace process” with the PA, since this would require him to
dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank , which could destabilize
his government.
But
Olmert is interested in a public relations show that would help him
absorb criticisms from the international community and also from some
Israeli quarters which accused him of being a “spin prime minister” who
lacks political vision and statesmanship.
Olmert last week berated Israel ’s war minister Amir Peretz when the
later held a telephone conversation with Abbas, saying that no minister
ought to initiate contacts with the Palestinian Authority without his
prior permission.
Similarly, Olmert rebuked Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for suggesting
that Israel should come up with political initiatives of its own lest
foreign initiatives be imposed on her.
Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups have voiced a willingness
to observe a mutual ceasefire with Israel provided the total cessation
and termination of all Israeli aggressions on the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank , including all forms of extra-judiciary executions,
assassinations, incursions, forays, and killings.
Hamas had observed a prolonged ceasefire with Israel prior the
Palestinian parliamentary elections.
However, the murder by Israel of several Palestinian activists as well
as the targeting of civilian infrastructure eventually forced Hamas to
resort to the resistance. |
