via LobeLog
by Mitchell Plitnick
With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be [...]
via LobeLog
by Mitchell Plitnick
When Israel, or any country, engages in armed conflict with a guerrilla group, even if that group controls significant territory and resources, it is a virtual truism that the longer the fighting persists, the greater the gains for the non-state actor. In Gaza, Hamas’ quasi-governmental position still leaves it [...]
via LobeLog
by Mitchell Plitnick
The two ceasefire proposals aimed at ending the accelerated violence in Gaza and Israel also offer one of the best illustrations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The circumstances and the content of each proposal demonstrates very well why outside pressure is necessary to end this vexing, seemingly endless struggle and [...]
via Lobe Log
As former top State Department intelligence specialist Wayne White points out for Lobe Log, in the absence of a tenable ceasefire agreement, the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war will likely intensify, thereby only worsening post-Assad scenarios.
“The bottom line is that a sort of Catch-22 situation is [...]
via Lobe Log
Only 1% of the world stood by US-Israeli rejection of President Mahmoud Abbas’ request for non-member state status, which puts Palestine on par with the Vatican and allows Palestinian claims to be filed in the International Criminal Court. Lobe Log’s Mitchell Plitnick reported at the time on the politics [...]
via Lobe Log
The vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the Palestinian application for non-member status is a foregone conclusion. They’re going to win and it’s not really going to matter much, at least in the short term. Nonetheless, the decidedly warped world of diplomacy around the Israel-Palestine conflict has managed to [...]
via Lobe Log
From the London Review of Books:
But the price of war is higher for Israel than it was during Cast Lead, and its room for manoeuvre more limited, because the Jewish state’s only real ally, the American government, has to maintain good relations with Egypt and other democratically elected [...]
via Lobe Log
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, provides seven takeaways from the Gaza ceasefire in the Daily Beast. From Number 5, “Denying Palestinian political realities just got (much, much) harder”:
Let’s keep this short. Hamas-run Gaza in the midst of conflict with Israel has just played host to the [...]
via Lobe Log
Mark Perry — who recently explained that the “chance for calm” has been assassinated by Israel in the past – on the current potential for a ceasefire (via CNN’s transcript):
MARK PERRY, MIDDLE EAST EXPERT: I would have said six hours ago if you had asked me that I [...]
via Lobe Log
If current diplomacy fails, pent up rage on both sides, a cycle of tit-for tat-retaliation, Hamas’ hopes for greater Arab assistance, and a yearning to emerge from this latest round of heavy fighting on better footing than either side did from the last face-off in 2008-2009 could sustain Israeli-Hamas violence for quite a while. Without [...]
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