Hamas announces ceasfire in Gaza

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is calling for his troops to leave Gaza "as quickly as possible." And correspondents in the area say the ceasefire remains fragile.

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

The war with Israel is over.

You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.

Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.

What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?

We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.

Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

-- Youssef M. Ibrahim

Sadly, the cycle of Hamas terror and rocket launches and retlaiation will continue until the terorists love their children as much as they hate the Israelis.

The Palestinian president and other Arab countries groups warned Hamas and the other terrorist groups of the consequences of firing missiles devoid of any military value and of entering into unequal battles that will destroy everything the Palestinians have built so far and lead to a political, military and moral failure.

Palestinians need leadership and serious moderation.

perpetual cycle so sad

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Gaza crisis: Red Cross President visit to Gaza and Israel
14 Jan 2009 14:18:10 GMT
Source: Irish Red Cross - Ireland (Crois Dhearg na h�ireann)
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

The sheer number of Palestinian dead in the conflict -- 1,200, of whom 410 are children -- has also led to calls by human rights groups and aid workers for Israel to face examination under international criminal law, specifically on the issue of "proportionality" in the prosecution of the war.

News
World news
Gaza
Israel begins Gaza withdrawal after Hamas calls ceasefire
Hamas official says truce dependent on Israel pulling its troops out of Palestinian territory within a week
Chris McGreal and Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem, David Batty and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 January 2009 16.55 GMT
Article history

An Israeli kneels beside the remains of a rocket that landed near the town of Sderot Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

Hamas today announced an immediate ceasefire by its fighters and allied groups in the Gaza Strip, hours after Israel unilaterally declared a truce.

The Israeli army said a short time later it had begun withdrawing its troops from the territory after calling a halt to its three-week offensive, which claimed the lives of about 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children and young people.

Rory McCarthy reports from inside Gaza
Link to this audio
Israel would not say how many troops it was pulling out. Israel's Channel 10 TV showed tanks on the move and infantry soldiers walking towards the border.

Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire late on Saturday. It said it would keep at least some troops in Gaza while arrangements are made to prevent Hamas from re-arming.

A senior Hamas official, Ayman Taha, told Reuters that its ceasefire was dependent on Israel pulling its troops out of the Palestinian territory within a week.

"Hamas and the factions announce a ceasefire in Gaza starting immediately and give Israel a week to withdraw," Taha said in Cairo, where he was holding talks with Egyptian officials.

Hamas also demanded that Israel open all of the Gaza Strip's border crossings to allow in food and humanitarian aid to meet the "basic needs for our people", he said.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: "We'll play this day by day. We'll see how this goes. We want to leave Gaza. We'll do so as soon as we can."

If Hamas holds its fire, the military "will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us", Olmert said. If not

Breaking news:
FO forced to trim budget as pound plunges

Israel begins Gaza pullout after Hamas joins ceasefire
Any lasting truce depends on Israeli troops leaving within a week, says Hamas

news
Gaza
Gunfire ends but the debate in Israel begins: should we have pressed on?
Broad public support for assault on Gaza Strip leaves some Israelis believing the ceasefire is a mistake
Rachel Shabi in Tel Aviv
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 January 2009 14.18 GMT
Article history

*sigh...*

I guess some people don't think Al Jazeera's a credible source?

This peace won't last. The renewed bloodshed is going to fuel more violence and indoctrinate more children to incite more violence and hatred for years to come.

This endless conflict is complete lunacy.

Israel has built a BERLIN WALL around Gaza and cut Palestinians off from their family members. Outrageous in this day and age. One dat the wall will fall just like the other wall. What then chosen tribe?

Mr Boo..here is Israel using a child as a human shield....two wrongs do not make a right..Israel uses the same tactic

Commons debate on Gaza - live
Read what happened when MPs debated the Middle East Crisis

3.00pm: David Liddington, a shadow foreign minister, is opening the debate for the Tories. He says that 90% of Israelis support what their government is doing. A Liberal Democrat asks him to condemn the "totally disproportionate" Israeli response to the Hamas attacks. Liddington appears unhappy with that phrase. "I think the key point to make is that we need to see an immediate end to the Israeli military action and the rocket attacks on Israel ... We condemn the disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians. We regret the attack today on the UN headquarters in Gaza, which is wholly unacceptable. It is welcome that the Israeli authorities have recognised the folly of that particular ....................

3.11pm: He says he was in Syria and Lebanon last week and was struck by the "images of death and mutilation" in Gaza broadcast on Arab TV. He got a feeling for the "sense of rage" felt in those countries.

3.15pm: Sir Gerald Kaufman delivers a blistering speech which starts with a reference to his grandmother being killed by the Nazis. "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers to kill Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza," he says.

3.16pm: He says that he is a supporter of Israel. "Golda Meir [the former Israeli PM] was my friend," he says.

"When, however, the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank who are being treated like dirt by Israel.

"The time will come when it is time for our government to make it clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms embargo on Israel."

3.29pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, is next. He speaks of Israel as a candid friend.

3.32pm: "People who believe in the right of Israel to exist have to be, at this time, frank with her because she is making such a historic mistake ... Israel needs to be assured that we are with her against the Hamas rockets but we won't stand by and see her jeopardise her long-term future. The truth is that these actions are radicalising people across the world. They are not just radicalising people against Israel, but they are radicalising them against the west," says Davey.

3.43pm: Roger Godsiff (Lab) also condemns Israel.

3.46pm: "If they had sought to promote trade and economic development with the people of Gaza, instead of building a wall around Gaza, then they would have had a better chance of persuading the people of Gaza that trade was better than conflict," he says.

Israel had managed to make peace with its old enemies Egypt and Jordan and it was in negotiations, through intermediaries, with Syria, he says.

3.50pm: "The idea that the people of Gaza should suffer collective punishment for electing a Hamas government and that they should be blockaded into submission until the government has renounced its reason for existence was, frankly, disingenuous," he says. He also criticises the "simplistic view" taken by the Bush administration in the US.

'''''''''

Marsha Singh, Labour, criticises Hamas for the rocket attacks. If someone fired a rocket at his house, he would fire one back, he says.

But the Israeli response has been "completely and utterly disproprotionate". In fact, the word "disproportionate" is "completely inadequate", he says, compared to the suffering that has been inflicted on Palestinians. Around 1,000 civilians have been killed and thousands have been injured. Between 45,000 and 50,000 children have been displaced.