As I've previously mentioned Israel on Friday (25/7/14) declared a
unilateral 12 hour cease-fire starting at 05:00 (08:00 local) on
Saturday (26/7/14). Hamas also agreed to join that cease-fire creating a
humanitarian truce.
The purpose of this truce was to allow humanitarian aid such as food and
medicines to be distributed throughout Gaza whilst allowing the injured
and civilians to be evacuated to either Israel or Egypt or to the
roughly 55% of Gaza that is not subject to military action. It also gave
everybody a short break from the relentless horror of aeriel
bombardment that frequently drives even hardened, professional soldiers
insane.
The truce also provided authorities in Gaza to clear through the rubble
of destroyed building discovering bodies of the dead as they did so. As a
result the death toll in Gaza now stands at around 1050 up from 805 on
Friday with some 245 bodies being recovered primarily from the Shejayia
district of Gaza City. However if for no other reason then the chaotic
nature of the situation this death toll is not considered hugely
accurate with clear evidence of the same fatalities being recorded
several times over. Also there seems to be confusion over whether the
Gazan Health Authority is classing everyone under 18 years old as a
child or using the accepted wartime definition of a child as anyone
under 15 years old*. Finally
this represents the total death toll because Gazan authorities do not
distinguish between civilian and combatants. According to Israeli
estimates - the only ones available - at least 450 of those killed in
Gaza have been Hamas fighters.
Due to the scale of the task the United Nations (UN) requested that the
truce be extended by a further 24 hours. This prompted Israel to
immediately extend the existing truce by four hours so the UN's request
could be discussed by it's cabinet. There was no similar statement from
Hamas. However within minutes of the original planned end of the
cease-fire 17:00 (20:00 local) mortars were fired from Gaza into
southern Israel. It is not clear whether these were fired by Hamas or
one of its rivals in an attempt to force Hamas and Israel into breaking
the cease-fire. This actually highlights one of the problems in the
Israel/Palestine conflict that has been increasing in recent years.
Islamist ideology is most certainly not a monolithic bloc and instead
represents more of a spectrum. Despite the claims of Israeli hawks Hamas
are actually very much at the moderate end of that spectrum which
progresses to include groups such as Al Qaeda right up to groups like
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who genuinely want to
provoke the war of wars that will see the Messiah return to earth and
the bring about of the apocalypse. Due to the relentless sectarian
propaganda that is being pumped out of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in an
effort to fuel the conflict in Syria more and more Muslims have begun to
identify with the nihilist Islamist views of ISIL forcing groups such
as Hamas to behave in an ever more extreme fashion in order to avoid
being overthrown by rivals further along the spectrum.
Whether it was in response to internal pressures or because is was part
of their own ideology about an hour later - well within the 4 hour truce
extension - Hamas did resume firing half a dozen rockets into southern
and central Israel. The irony was that at the time several thousand
Israeli Jews had gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the operation in Gaza -
an operation that only began after the hawkish Yiseral Beiteinu Party
pulled out of the governing coalition in protest at the centre-right
Likud Party's perceived inaction in the face of Hamas rockets fire. The
resumption of Hamas rocket fire of course broke up this demonstration
early as the protesters were forced to head for the nearest bomb
shelters.
Despite the resumption of Hamas rocket fire Israel decided to agree to
the UN's request and unilaterally extended the truce for a further 24
hours starting at 21:00 (00:00). Unfortunately Hamas declined to follow
suit and continued to fire several dozen rockets into Israel. After
seven hours and several casualties Israel started to return fire to
suppress that rocket fire bringing an end to the truce.
Three hours later Hamas requested a new truce. Due to the fact that
Hamas made no attempt to cease-fire during that time and a reasonable
suspicion that Hamas was merely trying to buy time to regroup by
disrupting the momentum of Israel's operation that request was denied by
Israel. However as Israel's military had planned to spend today in a
state of cease-fire its use of air-power and artillery has been
extremely limited.
After all the hope is that Israel's ground forces will be able to get on
with their job of dismantling Hamas' tunnels and bunkers without having
to call in air-support or artillery fire.
(Originally Posted) 16:55 on 27/7/14 (UK date).
*I personally think that definition is
too low. However it is the agreed definition meaning that the flip side
of the argument is that Hamas along with the UK and the US use child
soldiers.
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