[The utterly funny (if that word can be used given the sheer grimness of the situation) part of the talks is that the two contending parties do not sit across the table; the talks are conducted via the medium of a third party, the host Egypt. Neither considers the very existences of the other as legitimate. Israel considers the Hamas as "terrorist", and hence untouchable; the Hamas considers the state of Israel as illegitimate. Yet they somehow mange to communicate. But this must be adding to the difficulties which even otherwise look too formidable. That the talks are still on in itself is quite something. Both the sides are apparently subjected to diverse pulls. Given the huge asymmetry in tolls, the world opinion is very much tilted against the Zionist regime. Its very military success turns out to be a diplomatic albatross around its neck. But then the Islamist Hamas also does not appear to be too popular with the world outside. Within Gaza the picture is far from clear. As per one of the two reports reproduced below, in the West Bank its popularity has soared. One can only hope, under the circumstances, against hope that the bloodbath will not resume and the Palestinians, in general, and the inhabitants of Gaza, in particular, will see some better days and things will eventually inch forward towards a fair and just permanent solution.]
I/II. http://news.yahoo.com/gaza-rocket-hits-israel-ahead-truce-deadline-police-191528741.html Gaza truce holds as US ties with Israel show strain By Steve Weizman 38 minutes ago Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A fragile ceasefire around Gaza held for a second day Friday as Israel's relations with its US ally showed new signs of strain with tough talks looming on a more lasting peace. Washington denied a report that the White House was tightening the reins on the routine delivery of military aid to Israel over concerns about the proportionality of its military action in Gaza. But the State Department acknowledged that arms shipments were being kept under review in the face of a conflict that has killed 1,962 Palestinians and 67 people on the Israeli side since July 8. Egyptian mediators won a new five-day ceasefire late Wednesday to give Israeli and Palestinian negotiators more time to thrash out a longer-term truce. The ceasefire got off to a rocky start in its first few hours but Israeli officials said it had held into a second day Friday. The military said there was no Palestinian rocket fire overnight and that it had carried out no air strikes. View gallery An armored personnel carrier sits on a trailor waiting … An armored personnel carrier sits on a trailor waiting to be unloaded at a new deployment position n ... "There was nothing," a spokeswoman told AFP. But the negotiations in Cairo for a longer-term settlement were not expected to resume before Saturday evening as negotiators from both sides held consultations with their political leaderships about the parameters for an eventual compromise. Gaza's Islamist de facto rulers Hamas, who have representation on the Palestinian negotiating team, are insisting that there can no return to peace without a lifting of Israel's eight-year blockade of the beleaguered coastal enclave. But Israel's rightwing government -- under pressure from constituents from Gaza border towns that have endured persistent rocket fire from the territory -- is refusing to countenance any major reconstruction effort without full demilitarisation. - 'Live in peace' - View gallery Picture taken on August 11, 2014, and made available … Picture taken on August 11, 2014, and made available by the Associated Press, shows Italian Associat ... Thousands of Israelis joined by the mayor of the border town of Sderot, Alon Davidi -- a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party -- rallied in Tel Aviv late Thursday against any outcome that does not provide them with lasting security. "This is a universal principle. We want to live in peace," Davidi told the crowd. The army says Palestinian militants in Gaza have launched more than 3,500 rockets since July 8. More than 2,790 have slammed into Israel and around 600 have been shot down. Netanyahu was to convene his security cabinet for a second day Friday to hammer out a negotiating position for the resumed truce talks. The Israeli premier leans heavily on support in his governing coalition on parties to the right that advocate a wholesale reoccupation of Gaza which Israel evacuated in 2005. View gallery Family and friends mourn over the body of a Palestinian … Family and friends mourn over the body of a Palestinian translator, Ali Abu Afash, who was killed in ... Top-selling Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted one minister as saying he and colleagues had been kept in the dark about progress in the Cairo talks and only learnt of Wednesday night's ceasefire extension from watching a televised news conference by the Palestinians. "It was simply unreal," the unidentified minister was quoted as saying. But with three civilians killed on the Israeli side against many hundreds in Gaza, Israel faces mounting pressure from its Western allies that has drawn appeals from more centrist ministers for a compromise. "The relations with the US are a strategic asset that must not be harmed," Friday's Maariv daily quoted Finance Minister Yair Lapid as saying. "This is a worrying trend and we cannot let it continue." View gallery An Israeli soldier walks under the lights at a new … An Israeli soldier walks under the lights at a new deployment position near the Israel-Gaza Border o ... - Tension with US - Israel secured supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon last month without the approval of the White House or the State Department, The Wall Street Journal reported. President Barack Obama's administration, caught off guard as it tried to restrain Israel's campaign in Gaza, has since tightened controls on arms shipments to Israel, the newspaper said, quoting US and Israeli officials. The newspaper said Obama and Netanyahu had a particularly tense phone call on Wednesday and that the Israeli leader wanted US security assurances in return for a long-term deal with Hamas. But the newspaper said Netanyahu had essentially "pushed the administration aside," reducing US officials to bystanders instead of their usual role as mediators. View gallery Two boys walk past destroyed homes in the northern … Two boys walk past destroyed homes in the northern Gaza strip a few miles away from the border with ... State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf disputed the article. She acknowledged that the administration was looking carefully at arms shipments to Israel but said the process was "by no means unusual." "Given the crisis in Gaza, it's natural that agencies take additional care to review deliveries," she told reporters. Relations between Washington and its Israeli ally were already strained by the collapse of US-brokered peace talks earlier this year that Obama administration had made a top foreign policy priority. Obama has defended Israel's use of force against rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip but has repeatedly voiced concern over the civilian death toll. The United Nations says that 72 percent of the Palestinian dead have been civilians. II. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21612231-palestinians-gaza-ponder-how-resurrect-their-damaged-enclave-after-storm *Israel and Gaza* After the storm *Palestinians in Gaza ponder how to resurrect their damaged enclave* Aug 16th 2014 | From the print edition FOR decades archaeologists have searched for the ruins of Tida, Gaza's lost port of the ancient world. Plans for a modern version look almost as mythical. Closed to most shipping since the six-day war in 1967, Gaza longs for the sea access that Israel has repeatedly considered in negotiations over the past two decades. The issue is once again on the table. The two sides this week resumed indirect talks in Cairo designed to achieve a long-term ceasefire after five weeks of war. The guns have at least been fairly quiet in recent days. But the negotiations are complex, and the issue of Gaza's blockade is central. The enclave's power-brokers, the Islamists of Hamas, are trying to revive the idea of a seaport while scaling back demands for an airport and a corridor to the West Bank. So far Israel, whose main objective is to get Hamas to demilitarise, has shown little interest. Its negotiators, say Palestinians in the talks, have offered to lighten but not lift the blockade of the enclave. Israel, they say, has proposed doubling the number of lorries allowed into Gaza to 600 daily, permitting 5,000 people to cross the border each day, and increasing Gaza's exclusion zone at sea from three miles to nine. It also wants Hamas to return the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured on the battlefield in return for dozens of prisoners it rounded up in June after releasing them as a part of an earlier prisoner exchange. Anxious to douse at least one of the region's conflagrations, European diplomats are trying to help. Germany, France and Britain are pushing a plan offering a secure sea route from Gaza to Cyprus, perhaps by using Greek roll-on-roll-off vessels. Apparently they could land on Gaza's shores within weeks. The plan also envisages a revival of the European Union's border-assistance mission, EUBAM, a moribund monitoring initiative that briefly oversaw Gaza's crossing point to Egypt at Rafah, but could in future also monitor crossings to Israel. That would provide the Palestinians with some access to international trade, and offer Israel some guarantees against Hamas's rearmament. Such arrangements have been mentioned in agreements dating back to the Oslo accords in 1993, and again in 2000 and 2005. The Europeans may attend a donor conference, tentatively scheduled for September 1st in Egypt, to finance the rebuilding of Gaza after the Israeli pummelling of recent weeks. They have repeatedly funded infrastructure that Israel subsequently destroyed and wish to stop this cycle. An EU-funded airport was opened in 1998 and bombed in 2001, 2009 and 2012. (Hamas, meanwhile, has taken steel bars from the airport's ruins to build tunnels into Israel.) A small port with three berths as well as desalination and power plants have also been destroyed, rendering Gaza more dependent on Israel. The war and its aftermath have provided an opening for Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He has had little say on Gaza since Hamas won elections there in 2006 and Israel persuaded Western countries to cut off ties with the Islamist government. Earlier this year, Hamas reconciled with Mr Abbas, much to Israel's anger. But Israeli attitudes are changing. Its ministers have championed Mr Abbas's re-engagement in Gaza, and eased the ban on his ministers visiting the enclave, most recently allowing the deputy prime minister, Ziad Abu Amr, to inspect Gaza's wreckage. Next off, says an Israeli close to the negotiations, will be the dispatch of two battalions (about 1,000 men) of Palestinian presidential guards to Gaza's southern border, as a precursor to persuading Egypt to open the border at Rafah. Although Mr Abbas offers a convenient interlocutor, rebuilding Gaza will inevitably require co-ordination with Hamas. Internally, the war may have weakened it. Only a few hundred answered a recent call for rallies in Gaza City. But in the West Bank its political capital has rarely been higher. Even pragmatic Palestinian businessmen marvel at Hamas's relative success. After weeks of trying to crush the Islamists, Israeli negotiators are increasingly engaging Hamas on the terms for a long-term ceasefire, albeit indirectly. "By day they will not meet, but by night it is impossible that they will not," says Shaul Mishal, a veteran observer of the region and author of a book on Hamas. In the meantime, European diplomats hover on the edge of the talks. For all their ideas, they are hampered by anti-terror legislation and no-contact policies that make it more difficult for them to speak to Hamas than to far more extreme groups in, say, Afghanistan. >From the print edition: Middle East and Africa -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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