Operation Cast Lead - Tag Search

It seems crass to talk about "winners" and "losers" after Israel's deadly attack on the flotilla of ships bound for Gaza last month. Nine people were killed, after all; dozens of others were wounded.

Still: It's worth stepping back and thinking about how the flotilla incident has reshaped the politics of the region. My initial take -- bearing in mind that it's too early to predict long-term consequences -- is that the Israeli attack has mostly accelerated existing political trends, rather than creating new ones.

It has accelerated Israel's isolation from several of its neighbors and allies; it has sharpened divisions within Turkish domestic politics; it has deepened perceptions that the Obama administration as too close to Israel. And it seems to have had a remarkably minor impact on Palestinian domestic politics.

A bit of a rant here, I'm sorry, but this is rapidly becoming a pet peeve: Dozens of news outlets -- the Associated Press, the Jerusalem Post, the Wall Street Journal, many others -- have used the phrase "Turkey turning away from the West" over the last few weeks. This trend actually started because of Turkey's role in negotiating the tripartite nuclear fuel swap deal, but it has accelerated following Israel's flotilla attack last week.

The Washington Post is the latest newspaper to trot out this dire conclusion, in a page-one story this morning written by Mary Beth Sheridan. Missing from the article, though, is a clear definition of what it means for Turkey to "turn east."

The Israeli government passed on an offer from Qatar to re-establish limited economic ties, according to a report in Ha'aretz -- but why?

The two countries never had full diplomatic relations, but Israel maintained a trade office in Doha since 1996. Qatar's government shuttered the office last year, at the start of Operation Cast Lead, and gave its employees seven days to leave the country. Qatar was the only Gulf country to have economic ties to Israel.

Hamas bulldozed dozens of Palestinian homes today which it said were built illegally on government land in Gaza. It seems the irony of this action was lost on the Hamas leadership.

More demolitions are expected today, according to local residents, who worry they won't be able to rebuild because Israel does not allow building materials into Gaza. (A small shipment -- 30 tons -- was approved today, but that material is earmarked for French workers who are rebuilding a hospital destroyed during Operation Cast Lead.)

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly today to give Israel and the Palestinians five months to finish investigating the Goldstone Report's claims.

The final vote was 98-7; 31 countries abstained, and another 56 didn't bother to vote. The seven "no" votes were Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, Macedonia, and the United States. Most of the abstentions were European states (a full list of results is here).

The U.N. resolution gives Israel and "the Palestinian side" five months to finish investigating; as we noted earlier this week, it doesn't specify whether that demand is directed at Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

U.S. congressman Brian Baird (D-Washington) told a group of Palestinian schoolchildren in Gaza on Sunday that the United States should unilaterally send supplies through the Israeli blockade, according to the Associated Press.

"We ought to bring roll-on, roll-off ships and roll them right to the beach and bring the relief supplies in, in our version of the Berlin airlift," Baird said.

Baird has announced that he will not seek reelection this year.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon can't say whether Israel and the Palestinian Authority are on the right track when it comes to investigating the Goldstone Report's conclusions.

Israel and Hamas, you'll remember, last month released preliminary results of their investigations. Neither was particularly convincing: Hamas absolved itself of any wrongdoing, and Israel rejected most of Goldstone's findings.

Israeli officials still haven't responded to The Guardian's report that the el-Bader flour mill in Gaza was destroyed by an air-dropped bomb -- and not a tank shell -- during Operation Cast Lead.

We tracked down a photo of the remains of the bomb; this was taken by a United Nations de-mining team on Jan. 25, 2009, about a week after the war ended.

Hard to tell anything conclusive from a single picture -- but the shape of the ordnance, the lightly tapered body and the flat top, is characteristic of an Mk82 bomb.

The United Nations is already poking holes in Israel's preliminary response to the Goldstone Report.

The IDF's response says the el-Bader flour mill -- the only working flour mill in Gaza, destroyed during Operation Cast Lead -- was hit by tank shells. But a United Nations de-mining team says it found the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 bomb inside the mill, according to a report in The Guardian by Rory McCarthy.

We blogged yesterday about the IDF's preliminary response to the Goldstone Report, which includes a rebuttal of three specific allegations of war crimes. A commenter raised a fair point: Since we wrote extensively about Goldstone's allegations, we should do the same with the IDF's rebuttal.

So, after the jump, a little detail on each of its three responses.

We've posted a copy of the IDF's preliminary response (pdf) to the Goldstone Report -- though I would suggest that you don't even bother reading it, honestly.

Much of the 52-page document outlines how the IDF investigates allegations of war crimes and other criminal activity. It's useful background -- but also not particularly relevant to the allegations in the Goldstone Report. The presence of a well-conceived judicial system does not guarantee justice. (Just ask O.J. Simpson.)

The second half of the report summarizes the progress of dozens of ongoing investigations, some initiated by the IDF, others by the Goldstone Report.

I've been waiting rather eagerly for the IDF's response to the Goldstone Report (probably a sign I need to find new hobbies); it was rumored to be ready for release as early as this afternoon.

Looks like we'll have to wait a while longer, though. Israel gave United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon a response today -- but it's only a 40-page explanation of how the IDF investigated allegations of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, and not the results of the investigations themselves.

Diplomatic officials stressed that this letter is not the IDF's answer to the Goldstone Commission report. The IDF rebuttal is currently being completed, will number more than 1,000 pages and will answer point-by-point all the allegations in the Goldstone Report.

Israeli officials haven't said much about Goldstone this winter -- happy to see it recede from the headlines, I'm sure -- but they've stepped up their criticism over the last few days. Barak denounced it as "warped" in a press briefing earlier today.

Hamas' reported conclusion that it did not commit war crimes during Israel's Operation Cast Lead "contradicts all the facts on the ground," Human Rights Watch told the Majlis today.

The Islamist movement's indiscriminate rocket fire "landed exactly in civilian areas across Israel's south, which suggests that civilian[s] were the target," Fred Abrahams, a New York City-based senior emergencies researcher, wrote in an e-mail.

Nine days after a coalition of human rights groups asked the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza to investigate alleged war crimes committed against Israeli civilians during Israel's most recent incursion into the Strip, Hamas has cleared itself of any responsibility.

The speed and result of the Hamas "investigation" is certain not to please Israeli officials or the authors of the Goldstone Report, which recommended that its findings of war crimes on both sides be turned over to the International Criminal Court if Israel and Hamas "failed to carry out credible, independent investigations," according to the AFP.

The Israeli state comptroller's office says the country is still doing a poor job in Arabic-language public relations (hasbara), according to a new report.

We haven't read the full document, because it's currently available only in Hebrew, which neither of us speak. But news reports say the comptroller slams the Israeli government for a lack of Arabic-speaking spokespeople, and for poorly-run Arabic-language radio stations broadcasting to the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon.

If you just woke up from a year-long sleep and wanted to know the current state of the Arab-Israeli "peace process," these three quotes -- from three Israeli ministers -- pretty much sum up the situation.

Israel's foreign minister, Yuval Steinitz, said today that Israel doesn't need loan guarantees from the United States -- the same loan guarantees at the heart of George Mitchell's purported (and now, denied) threat to cut off foreign aid to Israel if the peace process remains stalled.

Ongoing fallout from Operation Cast Lead: Israel has agreed to pay the United Nations $10 million for damage to U.N. facilities caused during the war. A spokesman for the U.N. declined to provide any more details.

Jeffrey Goldberg has been blogging a lot this week about an anti-Semitic outburst on C-SPAN. The network was interviewing Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, and a caller spouted off about how Jewish neoconservatives "Jewed us into Iraq." Scheuer replied with some intemperate analysis of how America's relationship with Israel fuels terrorism.

The British government, embarrassed by the arrest warrant issued earlier this week against former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, wants to make it more difficult to issue similar warrants in the future.

Livni, you'll remember, canceled a trip to the Jewish National Fund's annual U.K. conference when she learned that a London magistrates court had issued an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead. The warrant was later withdrawn.

Prime minister Gordon Brown and foreign secretary David Miliband both called Livni to apologize. Brown reportedly said he was "completely opposed" to the warrant, and told Livni she's welcome in the U.K. anytime, according to Livni's office.

Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni reversed plans to attend yesterday's annual conference of the Jewish National Fund's United Kingdom branch because a warrant had been issued for her arrest in connection with the 2008 Israeli offensive into Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, Al-Quds Al-Arabi has reported.

Sources close to Livni, the leader of Kadima, the largest parliamentary party, told the Jerusalem Post that she decided not to attend because she wouldn't get a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was traveling. Livni's office first told Haaretz that she had canceled the London event two weeks ago due to a "scheduling conflict."