Middle East News
US, Israel sign agreement; Livni faces down US press (2nd Roundup)
By Pat Reber Jan 16, 2009, 19:21 GMT
Washington - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made a surprise visit Friday to the United States to sign a bilateral deal aimed at helping to curb arms smuggling into Gaza, as part of an effort to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with only four days left in office, said the memorandum of understanding would improve information sharing between the two countries to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas, one of Israel's chief goals in its deadly three-week incursion into the Gaza Strip.
The deal 'should be thought of as one of the elements of trying to help bring into being a durable ceasefire ... that can actually hold,' Rice said in Washington, adding she hoped a truce would be reached 'very, very soon.'
Livni called it a 'historic' deal that was a 'vital component for the cessation of hostilities.'
Israel launched its Gaza offensive on December 27 in a bid to curb near-daily rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas militants in the strip at its south.
More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the offensive, including more than 300 children, and the aid agencies have warned of an urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Thirteen Israelis have also been killed, including three civilians.
At a raucous press conference after meeting Rice, Livni defended the incursion, saying the offensive did not undermine the peace process but rather supported the efforts declared in Annapolis in November 2007. The main goal was to disarm Hamas and prevent rearmament, she said.
Livni said the agreement with the US would help interdict the 'smuggling of weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip' across the Egyptian border, which have increased militant Hamas' reach into Israel from 20 to 50 kilometres.
She indicated much of the effort would be in the seas surrounding Israel, but declined to reveal any more details. She said the US would try to work with NATO members in the efforts.
'The idea is to enhance ... the understanding that rearming Hamas is a problem for the whole world, not just for Israel,' she said.
Security guards stood tensely in front of the press podium while Livni answered strident questions from reporters from Al-Jazeera and other Middle East news organizations, CNN and NBC.
One reporter was physically removed from the microphone when he charged Livni was a terrorist.
A moderator from the National Press Club, where the event was held, tried to cut off another reporter who read at length from a Human Rights Watch report detailing the killing and 'murder' of Palestinian children.
But Livni insisted on answering the question. She said the 'loss of a child is terrible to any family,' but noted that international law draws a difference between someone killed deliberately and someone killed by mistake.
She said Israel had made 90,000 phone calls to civilians in Gaza before the offensive started, urging them to remove themselves from proximity to Hamas militants and their weapons.
Livni dismissed the suggestion that the incursion served her own political interests as she aims to become prime minister in the coming months.
'Nonsense,' she quipped, adding there was a 'four-letter word' that she would have preferred to answer with, but chose not to use.
Egypt has taken the lead in trying to broker a ceasefire between the two sides, but Rice made no guarantees that a truce would take hold before president-elect Barack Obama takes office on Tuesday.
'We're working at it on as quick a timeline as we possibly can in support of the Egyptian mediation,' Rice said.
In Tel Aviv, the Israeli government said it would convene its security cabinet on Saturday night to discuss progress made in the ceasefire talks.
Under the two-and-a-half page agreement with the US, Washington agrees to commit resources, such as intelligence and technology sharing, to help prevent Hamas from rearming.
Rice said she hoped Friday's signing would be followed by similar deals between Israel and other European countries. On Thursday she spoke by telephone with a series of foreign ministers including Egypt, France, Britain, Spain and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Livni said that only through a 'united effort' to combat terrorism could a ceasefire between the two sides be achieved.
COMMENT
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Older Talkback
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Yeah, Israel has the right to defend itself against those terrorists...check them out: 2.bp.blogspot.com/_wq9qXd2nHG4/SWMD48UNxII/AAAAAAAAGWw/S95ybh6jDXs/s400/16. jpg
Israel and its apologists time and again has proved their myopic outlook when it comes to tragedies that happens to 'gentiles'. The current one is timely reminder of the same for anyone who is in doubt. Their own soldiers talking of 'being very violent' to ensure their safety is just an example.
Where are they going to take their load of guilt! That's running since decades..
Lying themselves and to the world. If only this friends attain maturity to see the rest also as human beings, the world would have been a lot nicer a place. Our TV screens would have been less bloody..
And how the great country of the current world is behaving? Prof. Avi Shlaim just dug out that from history 'On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by 'an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders'.'
See it here guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine?1
Over 300 children were killed so that Israel could strike a deal with its closest ally, the U.S.? The deal will stop Egypt (Enemy of Iran & Hamas) to be a conduit for arms from Iran to Gaza?
Couldn't the U.S., Israel and Egypt have made a deal 300 children ago?
Tzipi Livni is an eloquent and honest spokesperson for Israel. The journalists in the story would likely not dare treat a Chinese, Russian, Syrian, Turkish, Sudanese or any other government representative as they did. It says more of those journalists and their abandonment of their pursuit of the entire story than it does of Ms. Livni.
At the end of WW2 justice for the jews would have been confiscation of the homes and businesses of 6 million Germans and then those Germans marched off to the gas showers. Instead they decided to invade a mideastern country and treat the inhabitants as they had been treated in Germany stoping short of the Gas showers only. After 60 years of occupation and starvation to think that they will be succesful in crushing the warsaw ghetto opps Gaza strip and that the way to peace is thru the murder and the destruction of homes is more delusional than the Germans were in the 30'S & 40'S!! If the people that call themselves Israelis ever want peace they will only find it inside the 1948 borders with no settlements or walls that are not on their own land. And even then it may be 60 years before things calm down
Israel is a terrorist state.
Eldar - you, unlike the vast majority of commentators on this presentation, are completely correct. I felt pride as a gentile and a Catholic to hear an eloquent and an intelligent individual respond with dignity, passion and clarity. Israel deserves to exist and anyone wiht any common sense, decency and access to Google can easily find the statistics on how many attacks it endured before saying enough is enough. Those who would rather exist in the vapid vacuum of the extremist blogs comparable only to KKK in their focus will need to learn one day that the dark ages where beheadings, stoning of women and other equally unsavory activities are not only approved but encouraged are not a part of teh civilized world or a civilized society.
oh, to John - the poor children's pictures you so uncleverly posted here can be countered by many equally heartbreaking photos from the other side. Hamas treats their own as colladearal damage and refuses to evacuate them to safety. Article 51 (as in UN resolution) allows a country to defend their own. When Hamas stops signing their weapons and celebrating death of anyone who does not support them (including those who oppose them in the Arab community and in Palestine), that is when true peace will exist. Trying to return a society to 65AD does not civilization make.
So you kill our children 'by mistake'? and you bomb the Red Cross and UN headquarters 'by mistake'? and u destroy mosques and churches also 'by mistake'? and massacre our civilians 'by mistake'? you use illegal weapons forbidden by international laws 'by mistake'?
I hope you get killed one day 'by mistake' you and the rest of your people who are war criminals.
Israel MUST go to international courts as a war criminal.
on and on it goes . Well , i'd rather be on a beach in Israel than in a bunker in Gaza . what to do , what to do ...
Greta: you know when true peace exists? when u zionists move out from our land PALESTINE .. every jew MUST go back to their original country, Poland jews German Jews .. etc. U cannot live on our land in our houses and then expect peace. Be human, think! also, stop the massacre and be assured that ISRAEL WILL GO TO INTERNATIONAL COURT AS A WAR CRIMINAL .. may you rot in hell for all the massacre you made to our children, women and inncent civilians.
Wow, 'mohannad' - great use of the victim card! Your 'people' are totally innocent and Israel is the Devil!! Aren't you wasting time on the Internet when you could be using your time to brainwash your two-year-old kid to hate non-Muslims? Or building a car bomb?
Nobody has ever played 'the victim card' more effectively then the Zionist movement. Not even getting into the basic immorality of taking Palestinian land by fiat, which was exactly what the Balfour mandate allowed (even though Balfour himself acknowledged that the rights of the Palestinians would be abrogated by the subsequent influx of Zionist settlers). Zionism is the only political movement that defines itself in exclusively racist terms that enjoys an aura of undeserved respectability. The cynical, and unethical use of European and American guilt over their own anti-Semitism, and their complicity with the Nazi party in the Jewish Holocaust, in no way excuses the racist and illegally inhumane treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist directed Israeli government policies. Anyone who attempts to criticize the actions of Israel or Zionism in general is tarred with the epithet of being 'Anti-Semitic',in a deliberate attempt to muddle and obfuscate the distinction between being 'Jewish', which is either a matter of heredity or religious choice -and outside the realm of requiring anyone's approval for legitimacy, and Zionism; which is the political and social manifestation of a violent, racist religious cult.
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BR----Raised in New York City----------------Jan 16th, 2009 - 19:43:32
I could not be prouder of Secretary Condoleeza Rice and the President for making sure that this country goes on the record for 1.) Continuing to Defend Israel's right to defend itself from terrorists and 2.) entering into a written commitment to Prime Minister Livni that simply says; we will give to you technical resources and vital political support to help Israel counter the ongoing Gazan/Syrian/Iranian weapons parade moving toward Gaza by underground and other means.
This conflict did not begin with Israel attacking Gaza by air or ground when the American press said it did. The reality is that Hamas started this conflict when it sent rockets into Israel the day that the PREVIOUS truce (which for some reason had a deadline[ mistake par excellence) attached to it) ended. The deadline obviously allowed Hamas bosses to lock and load their newest supply of Qassam and other type rockets in December into newer firing locations in Gaza. Livni is also completely correct in saying that International law has only one voice and that it defines intentional killing of children an international (prosecutable) crime and killing children by accident is not a crime.
Leave it to the attacking press corps to try to find a way to ratchet up the anger (and sell more/gain more readers).
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