ZoneFlood

From the Los Angeles Times:

As the Bush administration seeks to negotiate a diplomatic end to the fighting in the Middle East, it finds it has a strikingly weak hand.

The war in Iraq, a halting U.S. response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now the prolonged fighting in Lebanon and Israel have led to intense anti-Americanism in the Arab world. Alliances with longtime Arab friends are strained. And the U.S. lacks relations with two key regional players: Iran and Syria.

From the Independent:

A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.

It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.

The operation is codenamed “Samson’s Pillars”, a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

From CNN:

Lebanon’s lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians — three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the vast majority of our giving in the region flows to Israel. This kind of geopolitical inconsistency and shortsightedness has contributed to the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Western world seems content to allow to perpetuate endlessly.

After a week of escalating violence, around two dozen Israelis and roughly 200 Lebanese have died. That has been sufficient bloodshed for United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to join in the call for an international security force, ignoring the fact that a U.N. force is already in Southern Lebanon, having failed to secure the border against Hezbollah’s incursions and attacks and the murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

Bush: Yo Blair How are you doing?
Blair: I’m just…
Bush: You’re leaving?
Blair: No, no, no not yet. On this trade thingy…[inaudible]
Bush: yeah I told that to the man
Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not?
Bush: If you want me to
Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises…
Bush: I just want some movement.
Blair: Yeah
Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement
Read the rest of this entry »

From AP:

Hundreds of people have been stranded on the Egyptian side, unable to get to their homes in Gaza.

Rafah’s closure left hundreds of Palestinians who work and study in Egypt stranded, while preventing hundreds of others from leaving the coastal area to receive medical treatment abroad.

Last week, a 26-year-old Palestinian woman suffering from cancer died at the border while waiting to be allowed into Gaza.

From NBC News:

But all day, the U.S. was alone in defending Israel. At the U.N., the U.S. exercised the sole veto against a resolution condemning Israel’s Gaza incursion.

The European Union called Israel’s attacks on Lebanon “disproportionate.”

In fact, diplomatic sources tell NBC that Israel has been looking for an excuse to clean out Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon after weeks of rocket attacks into Israel.

What role has the U.S. played? Today, U.S. diplomat David Welch arrived in Israel, but critics say too late — 17 days after the first Israeli soldier was captured.

And Rice has not been to Israel or the Palestinian territories since last November.

“I think it’s really inexplicable,” says James Steinberg, dean of the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas. “There’s been some sense that if they get involved and fail, that somehow it will lessen American credibility. But I think the opposite is true. That American credibility has been damaged by our willingness to get involved.”

From the AP:

Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, imposing a naval blockade, twice hitting Beirut’s airport, and blasting two Lebanese army air bases near Syria. Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets into Israel, which said one also struck the port city of Haifa.