Links from my del.icio.us account for January 8th:
- Middle East Report Online: Birth Pangs of a New Palestine by Mouin Rabbani – The great Mouin Rabbani thoroughly (and humanly!) analyzes the causes and possible outcomes of the Gaza crisis.
- How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East – The New York Review of Books – Agha and Malley review big Mideast peace books by Kurtzer, Miller and Indyk; find they were right all along. A good overview of the failures of Bush and Clinton and a call for a shift from both approaches to US mideast policy.
- ICRC: Israel delayed access to wounded for days – Yahoo! News – quot;GENEVA – The Red Cross accused Israel Thursday of quot;unacceptablequot; delays in letting rescue workers reach three Gaza City homes hit by shelling where they eventually found 15 dead and 18 wounded, including young children too weak to stand.quot;
- Le Figaro – International : Le cri d’alarme de Suzanne Moubarak – Le Figaro#039;s Georges Malbrunot got three questions to Mama Suzanne. Note that she asks for the very quot;humanitarian ceasefirequot; and humanitarian corridors that her husband delayed in asking for or implementing.
- Problems at Israel’s Haaretz: Newspaper Without a Country – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International – Profile of Haaretz newspaper, and how its politics are changing.
That Rabbani piece was very interesting. But I wish he’d sourced some statements better. For example, on the so-called breaking of the truce on Nov 4, he says: “Israel claimed that the army had successfully foiled an imminent attempt to provide Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal captured by Palestinian fighters in June 2006, with some company. But these claims were widely ridiculed by Israeli military correspondents.” But, who were these military coorespondents? I wish he’d added a line or two with an example, or a footnote. Because as far as I’m concerned, Hamas had dug a tunnel into Israel (already a violation), and had commandos on one side of it. You don’t need commandos to smuggle rice. And if it comes down to conflicting claims between the IDF and Hamas… well, IDF statements carry quite a bit more weight.
For my money, I think a recent Economist summary from the Fri Jan 9 issue, gives a very clear, very brief summary not just of this Gaza hell, but of the whole conflict.
Can you expand on your comment that “…if it comes down to conflicting claims between the IDF and Hamas… well, IDF statements carry quite a bit more weight.”?
Why is that? Is there a history of truth-telling from the IDF that contrasts with a Hamas policy of spinning whoppers?
I’d be interested to know, simply because stuck here in the States it’s a bit frustrating reading the news and I kind of have the impression that the IDF is perhaps not being very helpful in accommodating the press and perhaps might even be trying to, you know, kind of shape the way events are perceived? That sometimes IDF spokesfolks might not be a very credible source of information?
On the other hand, they do offer the most comforting reports available, and if I can just focus on what they say, what’s going on in Gaza does seem to be pretty well ok.
So anything you can give us here to support the idea that the IDF is a reliable source of news and information is going to ease my mind considerably.