Vergil Reality

Views, comments, opinions, musings from Vergil Iliescu

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Name: Vergil Iliescu
Location: Sydney, Australia

This blog is an exercise in self indulgence; a way of clarifying or testing my own thoughts - about the random things that interest me. Everything from politics to philosophy to poems and songs I like or even dislike. Putting it online forces me to think.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Gaza

The Avaaz organisation provides links to information about this situation, both now and how it got to this point.

1. Associated Press: "Israel Shells Near UN School, killing at least 30" (5 January 2009)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD95HTJE00

2. "Gaza: outlines of an endgame", Ghassan Khatib (6 January 2009)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/gaza-outlines-of-an-endgame

Al-Jazeera: "Arab ministers hold UN ceasefire talks" (6 January 2009):
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/01/20091522052418539.html

Associated Press: "Diplomats seek truce as civilian toll rises" (5 January 2009):
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD95HCD4G3

3. Israel Today: "Israel rejects European, UN efforts for immediate ceasefire" (5 January 2009):
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17938

Yediot Aharonot: "Israel examining international treaty to isolate Hamas" (5 January 2009)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3650522,00.html

4. These parameters are advocated by a broad range of experts and policymakers. See for example International Crisis Group's Ending the War in Gaza report (5 January 2009):
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5838&l=1

5. Reuters: "Hamas seeks truce but says lifting siege a must" (5 January 2009) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L5111105.htm

Strikingly, the US Army War College has just released a substantial report supporting the view that Hamas can and must be brought into negotiations and is capable of sustaining a long-term truce, or even peace with Israel. Linked via:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/node/10703

The inside story of the civil strife between Fatah and Hamas and the Bush administration's involvement in this debacle is best-told in The Gaza Bombshell, an investigative article published in the leading US magazine Vanity Fair in April 2008:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

This news item from November 2008 provides more background to the story of how the Israel-Hamas truce collapsed:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

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