UNSC votes for ceasefire in Gaza
09 January 2009 Friday 22:14
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Coverage of the fighting in Gaza has been scant in the United States. Iran's PressTV is one of the only entities with broadcasts on the ground and running commentary. Their coverage is being picked up by the international press, including this story from Haber27 (Haber="news"), a major Turkish news site. Americans who want accurate information about the events in Gaza are advised to seek non-U.S. sources for their information.
The UN Security Council has voted for an immediate and durable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces. However, the United States abstained from voting on the ceasefire resolution while all other fourteen members voted in favor of the binding resolution.
Resolution 1860 also called for 'unimpeded provision' and distribution of aid in the coastal enclave and the reopening of all border crossings to the region, which has been under Israeli siege during the past eight months.
Earlier Friday, Saudi Arabia and Britain said that a final text on the Gaza conflict was agreed on by Western and Arab nations.
And they were expecting a vote by the UN Security Council in New York, after diplomats spent three days forging the language.
Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, called the compromise 'a historic event,' speaking to reporters late Thursday following hours of negotiations between the two sides.
However, after showing up late for the meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abstained from voting.
The US abstention dashed all the hopes that diplomats had previously fostered for a unanimous vote in favor of the resolution, Press TV's Mike Mazzocco reported from the UN headquarters on Thursday.
Now all delegations, especially those looking for a ceasefire, are looking to Israel to stop its military incursion into Gaza, he added.
"At this point no one is sure whether this resolution will be backed up by force or at all if Israel does not withdraw its forces from Gaza. Palestinian delegation says they expect two more days of the Israeli incursion into Gaza," said the correspondent.
Mazzocco pointed out that Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev had walked out of the meeting in a huff, brushing off reporters and giving no indication that Tel Aviv planned to implement the resolution.
"Responsibility for the current hostilities lies squarely with Hamas… The international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas's terrorist activity," Shalev told the Council.
Rice's comments during the meeting indicated that the US was unhappy with the fact that the resolution did not include an explicit condemnation of Hamas, Mazzocco reported.
Commenting on the resolution, Professor William Beeman of the University of Minnesota said that the call for ceasefire endangers the absolute victory that Israel seeks.
Despite US efforts to give Israel more time to destroy Hamas the regime has been battling in Gaza for two weeks without much success, said Beeman, referring to the three UN motions that the US has vetoed since the beginning of the conflict.
"Israel can not be successful in Gaza. Nevertheless they are reaching very hard for a victory that can not take place," he added.
Meanwhile, Arab League chief Amr Mussa welcomed the resolution and stressed that 'there was no American veto.'
"The important thing is for Israel to respect and implement the will of the international community," he added.
Other Arab officials also welcomed the motion as they are under heavy pressure from their people to prevent the continuation of Israel's 14-day onslaught against Gazans.
Following the adoption of the resolution, US Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that he was relieved to see the motion pass through and called on all sides to 'fully' respect its content.
"I am heartened and relieved at the adoption by the Council today of a resolution to bring an end to this tragic situation. Your decision signals the will of the international community. It must be fully respected by all parties to this conflict," he said.
Just hours after the council voted for the resolution Israeli fire hit at least thirty targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least nine other Palestinians including four children.
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Showing posts with label Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Show all posts
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
LA Times--William O. Beeman Response to Halevi and Oren "Defeat Iran to Defeat Hamas"
Re “Defeat Hamas to defeat Iran,” Opinion, Jan. 4
In maintaining that Israel is really fighting Iran in Gaza, not Hamas or the Palestinians, Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren conveniently ignore the historical relations between Hamas and Iran. <
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
>
Hamas arose during the first Palestinian intifada with its own philosophy and beliefs. Iran's initial offers of aid were spurned by Hamas' leadership as pure opportunism.
Today, Iran provides little more than lip service to Hamas' cause for its own propaganda efforts.
Even now, the Israeli government seems to be exaggerating Iran's role in order to create an enemy proportionate to Israel's hammering of the people of Gaza. It is despicable to cruelly smash a small, inadequately armed group of virtual prisoners.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis
The writer is a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
In maintaining that Israel is really fighting Iran in Gaza, not Hamas or the Palestinians, Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren conveniently ignore the historical relations between Hamas and Iran. <
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
>
Hamas arose during the first Palestinian intifada with its own philosophy and beliefs. Iran's initial offers of aid were spurned by Hamas' leadership as pure opportunism.
Today, Iran provides little more than lip service to Hamas' cause for its own propaganda efforts.
Even now, the Israeli government seems to be exaggerating Iran's role in order to create an enemy proportionate to Israel's hammering of the people of Gaza. It is despicable to cruelly smash a small, inadequately armed group of virtual prisoners.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis
The writer is a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet--William O. Beeman (New America Media)
Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2008
Editor’s Note: The popular wisdom that Iran is pulling the strings behind
Hamas doesn’t take into account the geography of Gaza argues William O.
Beeman. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and past-president of the Middle East Section
of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of “The
‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran
Demonize Each Other,” published by the University of Chicago Press
(2008).
________________________
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and
Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and
is now widely promulgated with little or no support.
Iran has, it is true, been sympathetic to the Hamas situation, particularly
since the U.S.-endorsed Palestinian elections of 2006, when Hamas won a
plurality of votes, allowing it to form a government. Subsequently, the new
Palestinian government was rejected by Israel and the United States, and an
economic embargo plunged the Palestinians into economic chaos. At that
point Iran provided substantial humanitarian aid.
In the present conflict, Iran is also sending two ships to provide
humanitarian assistance.
However, American and Israeli analysts would have the world believe that
Hamas could not carry out any actions against Israel if they were not
directed by Iran. As George Joffee of the Cambridge Centre of International
Studies maintained in 2006 in an interview with U.S.-based Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty, “The Israeli government has alleged that
indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to
control the events inside the Occupied Territories and there have been
allegations with no proof at all, of involvement in some of the more
violent activities there. Those links I suspect are largely Israeli
propaganda and don't really carry water.”
The same is true today.
No one promulgating the theory that Hamas’s attacks on Israel are
directed by Iran bothers to think much about geography. Hamas has been
effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt. The Israelis
have essentially controlled the import of food and medical supplies. The
idea of Iran shipping arms to Hamas under these conditions is patently
absurd. The rockets launched against Israel that started the current
conflict were clearly homemade, low-level weapons, not sophisticated arms.
A parallel claim is that Iranians are providing training to Hamas. Given
the rhetoric, one would imagine that this is being done on a massive scale.
However, on March 9, 2008 the Times of London reported that 150 Hamas
fighters were being trained in Tehran. Hamas itself claims to have 15,000
fighters, and Israel has millions of potential fighters at its command.
Thus training for a team of 150, if the facts are correct, is hardly much
of a threat to Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is sometimes cited as an Iranian cat’s-paw in the
region, but Hezbollah has no geographical access to Gaza. Therefore they
are limited to leading protests in Lebanon. Timur Goksel, former adviser to
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon, told Reuters News Agency on Dec. 30, “With
all their rhetoric about Palestine, there is not much [Hezbollah] can do
about Gaza, short of getting Lebanon involved in another disaster. So they
are leading the popular reaction.”
Egypt is not a conduit for Iranian arms either. President Hosni Mubarak is
caught in a dilemma with regard to Gaza. He receives aid from the United
States, and has a long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Moreover, his
secular government is desperately afraid of Islamic extremism, which they
see as a threat. Because Hamas has a religious base, not a secular one like
Fatah, its rival for power in the Palestinian community, they are seen as
dangerous. For this reason, Egypt has kept the border crossing to Gaza
firmly closed except for humanitarian emergencies.
Why then does the myth of Iranian military support persist? One reason is
that it has been a long-standing American foreign policy belief that
resistance movements cannot exist without state support. Before Iran was
targeted as the source for support, Libya was the U.S. bogeyman. It is
instructive to look at rhetoric against Libya from the 1980s and see that
exactly the same accusations that were leveled at Libya then are being
hurled at Iran today.
Finally, Iran does not help matters. The rhetoric of the original Iranian
revolution is still alive and well in some segments of Iranian political
life. Iran ousted a Western-supported leader, the Shah, and tried in the
early days of the revolution to promulgate this action elsewhere in the
Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas were sympathetic rhetorical partners. Iran
supported Hezbollah in its early days, but no longer controls its
operations. Iran had nothing to do with the founding of Hamas, but sees its
conflict with Israel as sympathetic with its revolutionary ideals. This
does not mean that Iran is controlling the action.
The more apoplectic visions of Iranian involvement see Iran developing
nuclear weapons and supplying them to both Hezbollah and Hamas. However,
not only is there no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program; the
simple logistics of transfer of such weapons to a place like Gaza are
virtually impossible.
For Israel, and the world, blaming Iran for its troubles with Hamas does
not advance the peace process. Nor would attacking Iran mitigate in any way
the tensions that exist between Israel and its neighbors.
(Note: Please consult the original article for links to references and footnotes to quoted sources)
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2008
Editor’s Note: The popular wisdom that Iran is pulling the strings behind
Hamas doesn’t take into account the geography of Gaza argues William O.
Beeman. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and past-president of the Middle East Section
of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of “The
‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran
Demonize Each Other,” published by the University of Chicago Press
(2008).
________________________
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and
Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and
is now widely promulgated with little or no support.
Iran has, it is true, been sympathetic to the Hamas situation, particularly
since the U.S.-endorsed Palestinian elections of 2006, when Hamas won a
plurality of votes, allowing it to form a government. Subsequently, the new
Palestinian government was rejected by Israel and the United States, and an
economic embargo plunged the Palestinians into economic chaos. At that
point Iran provided substantial humanitarian aid.
In the present conflict, Iran is also sending two ships to provide
humanitarian assistance.
However, American and Israeli analysts would have the world believe that
Hamas could not carry out any actions against Israel if they were not
directed by Iran. As George Joffee of the Cambridge Centre of International
Studies maintained in 2006 in an interview with U.S.-based Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty, “The Israeli government has alleged that
indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to
control the events inside the Occupied Territories and there have been
allegations with no proof at all, of involvement in some of the more
violent activities there. Those links I suspect are largely Israeli
propaganda and don't really carry water.”
The same is true today.
No one promulgating the theory that Hamas’s attacks on Israel are
directed by Iran bothers to think much about geography. Hamas has been
effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt. The Israelis
have essentially controlled the import of food and medical supplies. The
idea of Iran shipping arms to Hamas under these conditions is patently
absurd. The rockets launched against Israel that started the current
conflict were clearly homemade, low-level weapons, not sophisticated arms.
A parallel claim is that Iranians are providing training to Hamas. Given
the rhetoric, one would imagine that this is being done on a massive scale.
However, on March 9, 2008 the Times of London reported that 150 Hamas
fighters were being trained in Tehran. Hamas itself claims to have 15,000
fighters, and Israel has millions of potential fighters at its command.
Thus training for a team of 150, if the facts are correct, is hardly much
of a threat to Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is sometimes cited as an Iranian cat’s-paw in the
region, but Hezbollah has no geographical access to Gaza. Therefore they
are limited to leading protests in Lebanon. Timur Goksel, former adviser to
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon, told Reuters News Agency on Dec. 30, “With
all their rhetoric about Palestine, there is not much [Hezbollah] can do
about Gaza, short of getting Lebanon involved in another disaster. So they
are leading the popular reaction.”
Egypt is not a conduit for Iranian arms either. President Hosni Mubarak is
caught in a dilemma with regard to Gaza. He receives aid from the United
States, and has a long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Moreover, his
secular government is desperately afraid of Islamic extremism, which they
see as a threat. Because Hamas has a religious base, not a secular one like
Fatah, its rival for power in the Palestinian community, they are seen as
dangerous. For this reason, Egypt has kept the border crossing to Gaza
firmly closed except for humanitarian emergencies.
Why then does the myth of Iranian military support persist? One reason is
that it has been a long-standing American foreign policy belief that
resistance movements cannot exist without state support. Before Iran was
targeted as the source for support, Libya was the U.S. bogeyman. It is
instructive to look at rhetoric against Libya from the 1980s and see that
exactly the same accusations that were leveled at Libya then are being
hurled at Iran today.
Finally, Iran does not help matters. The rhetoric of the original Iranian
revolution is still alive and well in some segments of Iranian political
life. Iran ousted a Western-supported leader, the Shah, and tried in the
early days of the revolution to promulgate this action elsewhere in the
Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas were sympathetic rhetorical partners. Iran
supported Hezbollah in its early days, but no longer controls its
operations. Iran had nothing to do with the founding of Hamas, but sees its
conflict with Israel as sympathetic with its revolutionary ideals. This
does not mean that Iran is controlling the action.
The more apoplectic visions of Iranian involvement see Iran developing
nuclear weapons and supplying them to both Hezbollah and Hamas. However,
not only is there no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program; the
simple logistics of transfer of such weapons to a place like Gaza are
virtually impossible.
For Israel, and the world, blaming Iran for its troubles with Hamas does
not advance the peace process. Nor would attacking Iran mitigate in any way
the tensions that exist between Israel and its neighbors.
(Note: Please consult the original article for links to references and footnotes to quoted sources)
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