When Israel ended its 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip by withdrawing settlers in 2005, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hailed it as a \”disengagement\” from conflict with Palestinians in the densely populated coastal enclave.
An Israeli television station retracted its report on Tuesday that a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict had been agreed, saying instead there was \”movement\” toward a truce between Israel and the Palestinian territory\’s dominant Hamas Islamists being brokered by Egypt.
Behind the feud between John Kerry and Israel over the secretary of state’s efforts to broker a Gaza cease-fire is a larger tension concerning the role of Turkey and Qatar in Palestinian affairs.
Until this latest war, if you asked most Israelis about the threat from Gaza, they would probably start talking about Hamas rockets.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire in the Gaza Strip, some are seeing the noticeable absence of vociferous support from the Arab world for beleaguered Gazans as a function of the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood relationship.
Israeli shelling killed four boys on a Gaza beach on Wednesday, a local health official said, and Palestinian militants fired a further 70 rockets into Israel after a failed Egyptian attempt to halt more than a week of warfare.
President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he supports Egypt\’s attempt to reach a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians to head off more deadly clashes.
Rockets fired from Gaza continued to land in populated areas of Israel after its security Cabinet accepted and put into effect an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire.
Israel’s military resumed operations against Hamas in Gaza, six hours after accepting an Egyptian cease-fire proposal, following rocket attacks from the strip.
Israel and Hamas are fighting their third major conflict in six years, and while some things have stayed the same, the battle lines have also shifted in a few notable ways.
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