"Both sides (Hamas and Israel) say they are firing in self-defense. We know that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Israel's policy is clear (if not to consumers of Israeli media): Cut Gaza off even more, thwart any possibility of Palestinian unity and divert attention from the accelerating colonialist drive in the West Bank.
And Hamas? It wants to boost its standing as a resistance movement after the blows it took as a governing movement. Maybe it really thinks it can change the Palestinian leadership's entire strategy vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation. Maybe it wants the world (and the Arab states) to awaken from its slumber.
Still, with all due respect to Clausewitz, rational calculations are not the only explanation. Let's not forget the missile envy -- whose is bigger, longer, more impressive and reaches farther? The boys play with their toys and we've gotten used to calling it policy."
In all of this swamp of hawkish sludge, what do we make of an alternative explanation embraced by the writers who follow these events most knowledgably, when we even hear from them. Here's a peace activist, Richard Silverstein:
"Let's talk about the faux ceasefire. Really a fraudulent ceasefire. Egypt's ceasefire with no one. My Israeli source, who was consulted as part of the negotiations, tells me that this was not, in reality, an Egyptian proposal. It was, in fact, an Israeli proposal presented in the guise of an Egyptian proposal. Israel wrote the ceasefire protocol. The Egyptians rubber-stamped it and put it out under their letterhead as if it was their own.
Jodi Rudoren typically called the ceasefire "one-sided," meaning Israel honored it and Hamas didn't. But it was "one-sided" in a way she hadn't considered. Only one-side prepared the ceasefire and essentially presented it to itself and accepted it. The other side wasn't consulted.
The contents of the ceasefire proposal were a fraud as well. They promised and delivered nothing. They only called for a cessation of hostilities on the part of Israel and Hamas. The same document has been signed in the past only to see Israel violate it almost as soon as the ink was dry. There were no provisions for easing the Israeli siege. No provision to open the border with Egypt. Most importantly, the ceasefire didn't address any underlying issues between the parties. It was a guarantor for resuming hostilities at the earliest possible opportunity: these wars have come at two-year intervals over the past six years. The next one will be in 2016, if not sooner."
The Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reported that neither Hamas' military or political wings were consulted. So, if this is not a charade, what is? The goal was not to engage Hamas in a peace process, but to create a one-sided media narrative as a pretext and ultimatum for more war.
It turns out that Tony Blair, the former pro-Iraq war British Prime Minister, and representative of the so-called "quartet," arranged the phone call between Israeli and Egyptian officials.
This does not mean that eventually there won't be negotiations of some kind between the warring parties. Christiane Amanpour spoke with a former Israeli intelligence chief on CNN. He called for negotiations with Hamas.
"Hamas is a very bad option, undoubtedly. But there are worse options than Hamas," Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief, said.
"And we already know what some of them might be, especially one of them: the ISIS -- which is operating now in the northern Iraq and central Iraq -- has its tentacles in the Gaza Strip too."
Halevy said that just as in Europe, ISIS is recruiting in Gaza.
It is "inconvenient politically," Halevy said, for both Israel and Hamas to admit that they negotiate. But the truth, he said, is that they have already been doing it for years.
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