The 8th day of Operation Pillar of Cloud, or Pillar of Defense, has come to an end, and with it the operation itself, with a "ceasefire" which went into effect at 9 p.m. local time.
The reason I wrote ceasefire in quote marks is because it had barely started when it was broken by Hamas firing 12 rockets into Israel…
I was graduated from Yale University in 1963 with a B.A. in economics and from the University of Virginia School of law, where I was the notes editor of the Virginia Law Review, in 1966. Following four years of active duty with the Army JAG Corps, with two tours in Korea, I entered private practice in Washington, D.C. specializing in communications law. I retired in 1996 to sail with my wife, Jeanie, on our sailboat Namaste to and in the Caribbean. In 2002, we settled in the Republic of Panama and live in a very rural area up in the mountains.
I now contribute to China Daily Mail and Opinion Forum. I have contributed to Pajamas Media and Pajamas Tatler.
Hamas is totally untrustworthy, we all know that. Thus, a bilateral settlement is impossible. They are demented, crazy.
The only way Israel can settle this on their own would be by obliterating Hamas and large parts of Gaza. They’re sufficiently trigger-happy to try that, but the horror of that precludes such a unilateral settlement, and the rest of the world would enforce stringent sequestration on Israel if they try it.
That leaves just one solution: outsiders have to contrive a solution and impose it on both sides. And they can’t fake it by endorsing one sides demands only. But both sides have some extreme demands that will have to be rejected by such a third party, so there will be bitterness, probably on both sides.
Jimmy Carter created the only lasting peace in the middleeast in the 70′s, between Egypt and Israel, but I think he did it with bribes of US financial asistance to both sides, and I don’t know if that will work now. Maybe the Hamas is too crazy and Israel too exasperated.
12:12 AM (Thursday) As rockets continue to fall on Israel, the official IDF blog announces the end of Operation Pillars of Defense.
Courtesy of http://muqata.blogspot.co.il
Thanks, Ruvy. Please, be safe!
Here’s the most recent from http://muqata.blogspot.co.il