Israel and Hamas have supposedly agreed to a two-week truce.
According to the sources, the two sides are expected to agree on a ceasefire which will likely begin within 72 hours and last up to two weeks.
During this period of time, the parties will discuss the Israel Defense Forces’ withdrawal from Gaza and the withdrawal’s timing. Palestinian sources estimated that the pullback into Israel would be swift.
According to the sources, on the issue of the supervision mechanism it has been agreed that the international forces’ presence would be on the Palestinian side of the Philadelphi route.
If this is true, then Hamas won.
The sources said that the renewed lull will last at least a year, and is expected to last even longer. According to the sources, a “weakened” Hamas will agree to a longer lull in order to recover from the current conflict.
If the agreement is executed, the agreement is expected to provide an answer to the Israeli demands in terms of the smuggling issue, the rocket fire and a serious discussion on the Shalit issue.
Hamas will gain the reopening of the crossings, the removal of the blockade and an official role at the crossings. Abbas will receive renewed access to the Strip, only at the crossings at first, and Egypt will be able to open the Rafah crossing.
That’s everything they asked for. What was the point of the Gaza war, then? To kill a few Hamas terrorists? To make the world hate Israel even more? If this is true, if Israel is lifting the blockade and allowing Hamas to run the crossings, then it truly is the beginning of the end of the State of Israel, because her leaders have lost all heart to defend their nation against the Iranian Islamists. How can the Egyptians stop smuggling if Hamas has a role in the crossings? Why does Israel think that anything will be different when the Philadelphi corridor is controlled by international forces? That’s what happened three years ago. Hamas took it over then, and will take it over now.
Israel is defeated. All I can hope for is that this article is wrong.
I hope so too. Tell me they wouldn’t make the same mistake they did after the 2006 war. Surely they learned something.
If so, it could well be only temporary.
A capitulation means that Bibi will be running the show come march, and then we shall see.
This can’t be true…
After weeks of war and refusing to budge to just rollover and give in would be sickening.
Suicide bombings will become common place in Israel again. And eventually rockets will start falling in Israel again, sadly they will probably have Iranian nuclear “gifts” attached.
I really, really wish I could disagree. The Philadelphi corridor is the center of mass of this; putting Hamas (and, perhaps, some compliant French or Turks) in charge of it is a huge defeat.
Hope Bibi wins.
Given the fact that nothing has actually come of this yet, and Hamas keeps rejecting truce offers, perhaps there’s a deeper and smarter diplomatic game being played here by Israel. If they can keep the truce perpetually 72 hours away, it continues to give them cover for operations and continues to give Egypt the cover they need to remain neutral-to-Israel leaning.
While I’m unhappy about the way Gilad Shalit is being handled in these truce offers, my hope is that Israel intends to keep negotiating right up until the point when they can dictate.
Eric, you’d have a point if the goal of the IDF were merely to keep shooting at the Arabs. It isn’t; if it were, there would have been (minimum) tens of thousands of dead Arabs within the first minutes of OCL, not around a thousand, the majority terrorists, after three weeks. At this point, just about the only Hamasholes who are popping out of the bunkers are the cannon fodder, and they’re easily replaced; those of the senior Hamasholes willing to risk their necks are already fly food.
If a goal of OCL was to inflict enough damage on the Hamas political and Gaza physical infrastructure to wise up the people of Gaza, that was a fool’s errand; they can counter that simply by choosing to remain stupid.
But . . . from this (distant) remove, it looks like there were a bunch of military goals, some of which have been met, and some legitimate political ones, all of which have failed. The key to solving the problem of Gaza — for Israel; for the Gazans, it’s insoluble, and they’ve screwed themselves — is to close down the Philadelphi corridor, at least medium-term. And that’s not going to happen under what looks like the present plan — it’s going to take somebody looking beyond next month’s election (read: Bibi) to create facts on the ground that make it impossible for the Hamasholes to resupply.