Gaza (Part II)

As I said in my last post, right now the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict seems far. Hamas won’t resign to its core principles while Israel won’t allow the Palestinians to make a second refuge for the rocket launchers after the withdrawal in Gaza. Without an efficient mediation, it doesn’t look good for the civilians in both sides.

The worst of all is that there aren’t many qualified mediators. The old valid Egypt is now attacked for at least not responding firmly against the Israeli bombing campaign. There are even rumors that say Egypt knew about the Jewish attack and didn’t do anything. Rumors go further to say that they even gave the approval for it.

The truth is that the country of the pharaohs is between two friendly fires.

On one side is his commission with the Arab world. Egypt is, probably, the country that has done more for not only the Palestinians but for all the Arabs. From his land panarabism was born, as well as the idea of the Arab solidarity, it was involved in several wars against Israel in the past to defend the Palestinians and is thanks to the traffic on his borders that the people in Gaza has survived for the last six months to the Israeli blockade.

With the collaboration of Hamas (that for once was able to look further than his own benefit), Egypt gave oxygen to Gaza. First they made both sides to sign a ceasefire. Then, they convinced Hamas to use the tunnels only for a humanitarian use, and not for gun trafficking (or at least no more than what Hamas needed for themselves)

But the weakness when condemning the Israeli bombing campaign has condemned themselves in front of the Arab world. To that fire, the photo of a smiling Mubarak giving his hand to Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, a day before the attacks, was like gasoline. Hamas understood that there was no reason to worry, and everything caught them by surprise. If Mubarak knew what was going on then or not remains a mystery.

On the other hand, Egypt is trying to avoid as well that a hypothetic open of the border will make that, with the massive flow of Palestinians, come as well some Islamic terrorists from the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization active in Egypt of whom Hamas is a franchise.

Egypt fears as well of an open war with Israel. In the past decades, the pharaohs have fought against the Jews in several times to defend the Palestinians. And they only had back a loss of land, lives and international aid. Today, Egyptians don’t want to lose the aid from the USA, don’t want to see their sons die in a war they are going to lose -the own Egyptians complain that the countries most critical with them, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are the ones that have done less action and the richest and remotest ones- and of course, they don’t want an angry Israel, who they have had cold but cordial relations for years now.

Another one of the great possible mediators in this crisis like the USA looks out of game. First, it’s its big support for Israel -just remember the speeches of Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain and Ms. Clinton in front of the AIPAC when they were running for the presidential campaign.

From the USA come the cluster bombs used by the IAF [in the photo, via El Mundo] in Gaza. Of course, according to
Ehud Olmert civilians aren’t the main target in Gaza. Even if they cover Gaza’s sky with bombs about to fall over the most overcrowded place of the world.

Because everybody knows that bombs only fall over the terrorists of Hamas with chirurgical precision. Never over civilians. Like with this truck that was being loaded with Grad missiles by Hamas’ members. Truth is that at the end they were oxygen bottles. Really.

Maybe they didn’t have activated the SMS subscription alert system.

Back to the States, from the Bush executive -W. on holidays in Texas, Rice missed in action- nothing new is expected. Plus, they won’t have time to do anything. Well, almost anything. From the new Obama team things aren’t better. Obama remains silent -in Hawaii-, but his left hand has already spoken in the terms of Bush administration (the right of Israel to self-defense and blah, blah, blah...), and Ms. Clinton, the successor of Ms. Rice, will have to clarify some doubts about her. Like how well will make a good mediation a senator (herself) who rely her career on the defense of Israel and the Jewish vote. She will have the help of her family name (Clinton), however.

The USA is the only fervent defender of Israel, or at least its most fanatical. Why others don’t defend the Jews is not because of the marketing campaign (quite good, btw), but because the product itself is really bad.

“When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?

“That is why the television kills us. Newspapers are better because they give context.”

Maybe that’s why Israel doesn’t want journalists in Gaza.

Following with the list of possible mediators, the EU -the second of the quartet for Middle East: UN, EU, USA and Russia- is not likely to be as active in the next six months as it has been in the past six with Mr. Sarkozy. If the French president is as energetic in the bedroom as he has been with the European diplomacy -and still is-, then we all know why Ms. Carla Bruni-(Sarkozy) has that smile in her face always. The new European president, the Czech Valaklav Klaus, is not as energetic as his predecessor (politically speaking; no idea about the other)

The other two are quite out of the game right now. Specially the UN. Since Ban Ki-Moon took over on the General Secretary, the political profile of the organization has been lowered until had made almost imperceptible in the international ground (its natural ground). As an example, everybody knew Koffi Annan, but not many people know who the hell is the Korean guy. Not even in the office of New York.

The new General Secretary has renewed the top positions at the UN with people from his own circle and shows little interest for things don’t related with Korea or, sometimes, Africa. By the way, talking about Africa... Since Christmas Day, and making it along with the Israelis in a frenetic race of deaths, the LRA has killed more than 400 civilians in Uganda -technical draw for the LRA and the IAF/IDF for now- and made 20000 refugees flee into the mountains.

So, for now on, the only thing the UN has done so far is ask for a ceasefire -like the others; nowadays asking for something is free. But that’s all they have done. But hey, Palestinians should be happy. At least they got that; the Africans didn’t even got it.


PS. Photos of the war, via The Big Picture.



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