At 6 AM local time on Thursday, June 20th, a six-month ceasefire went into effect between Hamas and smaller Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip on one side and Israel on the other.
A day later, the calm has held. There have been no Israeli attacks, incursions or air strikes on the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian rocket or mortar attacks. The truce has several stages that are to be implemented based on an agreed-upon timetable. The first stage requires a period of total military calm for three days. If that holds, Israel is obliged to begin easing restrictions on the normal supplies of fuel, electricity and raw materials to Gaza on Sunday for the first time in over a year.
The truce was brokered between Egypt and has been several months in the making. Hamas has been calling for it for months, while Israel had adamantly refused for most of that period. Israel’s leaders have been saying for the last couple of years or so that only their military and their inhumane siege of the 1.5 million Palestinians stranded in Gaza would bring an end to Palestinian reprisal attacks. Of course, when it comes to dealing with those you have oppressed, the Israeli leadership has never been known for making sense. Apparently, once you dispossess a people, destroy their society, colonize their land, kill their men, women and children and imprison them by the thousands, the only way to stop them from fighting back is to place them under siege. Even when they are calling for ceasefires and calm.
But I digress. For now, there is progress. It is not much, but a year after the Gaza siege began, there is a small, cautious hope. Not many believe the truce will last the entire six months, but even six hours of calm is a welcome respite. If memory serves me correctly, this is the first ceasefire Israel has agreed to adhere to since…before I was born. My memory really has been around that long. There are many who expect the barbaric Palestinians to be the first to breach the terms of the truce. That’s what bloodthirsty, illogical Jew-haters do. They might be well-served to recall the several unilateral truces Palestinian factions have adhered to in recent years, including the year-long truce implemented by Hamas two years ago and stubbornly ignored by Israel.
Here is the general timetable of the deal:
Day 1 (Thursday) – Truce begins at 6 AM
Day 4 (Sunday) – Israel to ease restrictions on supplies of fuel and materials to
Gaza
A week later – Israel will further reduce restrictions on the cargo crossings in Gaza, and talks will begin on the reopening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
If things go as planned, the atmosphere should be more conducive to finalizing the oft-delayed prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. Negotiations on that front are due to resume within a few days.
Like I said before, it is extremely unlikely this thing will hold out for the full six months, but heres hoping. If it does, the ceasefire should spread to the West Bank, where, despite an absence of rocket attacks or just about any other form military resistance to the Israel occupation, Israel continues to colonize, expand settlements, imprison and kill Palestinians and demolish their homes.
If the truce holds until tomorrow, I’ll post again on the internal political implications of the ceasefire from a Palestinian perspective. For now, here is Ayman Mohyeldin’s report from Gaza on the first hours of the truce.
Friday, June 20, 2008
One Day In
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2 comments:
The Palestinians have lost every war they started, with disastrous consequences for their always fractured society. The population is growing Islamist, identifying more with the Arabs to the east than with their own heritage. The fellahe class is evaporating into the modern world, and with it, Palestinian identity, which was once inseparable from the land.
These city Arabs who think themselves enlightened enough to speak for the Palestinian people have never picked an olive in their life, nor could they survive a day of real work in the field, nor do they see such a life as befitting their "laptop and thesaurus armed Marxist of the world" status. Their hands are too frail to turn a millstone and their spirits too impetuous to weave a quabbeh. The men would be ashamed of donning a bisht on hot summer days, and I have yet to see a Palestinian woman abroad sporting a shambar. No, the image of resistance they hold dear is the keffiyeh, which is not Palestinian, but Arab.
KabobFest is a relic of a bygone conclusion - the death of Marxism - and no amount of posts by QuiQui or Maytha or even the great Fayad will resurrect past glory, when Soviet trained Venezuelans joined with Cubans and East Germans to fight the IDF in Lebanon.
Your death knell pangs of agony are read by fellow brethren and sympathizers, sitting in American Starbucks, sipping their lattes. They know nothing of Palestinian society as it is, or was, nor do they care, nor do you, and that is the biggest defeat of all. You have become so consumed by hatred, so occupied by vengeance and so ashamed of your own rich heritage, that you have perverted your identity to one of endless struggle against the longest surviving people in the history of humanity - the Jews.
The enemies of the Jews have been of greater mettle and resources than you, and all have found themselves in the proverbial heap of history.
If only someone would make a list of the nations that crowd this heap, you would find yourself in unwelcome company. Perhaps you think yourself to be special - indeed, you are. So were the Amalekites, Moabites, Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Phillistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hellenists, Romans... an inexhaustive list.
If you really want to be special, if you truly wish to be unique, you will stop fighting "the ranks of the living G-d", and thus ensure your survival. After all, Marxists are nothing if not intrepid scholars of history.
Surprise! Gazans are the first to break the truce.
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