Another Respite

"[Israel has] resorted to threats of assassination and other actions designed to scare us, but the will of our people will not be broken."
Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesman

"Hamas authorities should immediately investigate and take appropriate action against all those responsible for these killings [executions of Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel] and prevent future killings from taking place."
Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch Middle East director

Palestinian children hold guns as they celebrate with others what they said was a victory over Israel, following a ceasefire in Gaza City.     (SUHAIB SALEM/REUTERS)

"Anyone looking for a magic solution, or a shortcut, will find themselves in a lengthier process."
Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid

"We will build and upgrade our arsenal to be ready for the coming battle, the battle of full liberation."
Mahmoud Zahar, senior Hamas leader

Israel and Hamas have agreed to an extended ceasefire, yet another cessation of violence until as has occurred on numerous previous occasions, some eleven, in fact, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad decide to lob off more rockets into Israel. At the announcement made public, crowds gathered in Gaza City with the dusk-effected truce, to wave the Hamas-identified green flags, and gunfire and fireworks favoured the territory in jubilation of the Hamas 'victory'.


Israel heaves a collective sigh of frustration; a temporary truce in the violent hostilities clearly solves nothing for the state. But Hamas is jubilant; any agreement to cease the violence that emanates from Israel represents a weakness. And so, Hamas declares itself the victor, irrespective of what they had mounted in a conflict against Israel having led to the death of over two thousand Palestinians; disposable fodder in the greater interests of terrorists destroying the fundamental order of a democratic society through terror.

A Hamas militant fired into the air in Gaza City on Tuesday to celebrate a cease-fire that will open border crossings for aid and reconstruction supplies. Credit Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
That there are now over 11,000 wounded Palestinians in Gaza, and one hundred people have been left homeless is acceptable as far as Hamas is concerned; they succeeded in tarnishing Israel even further in the opinion of the international community standing in judgement of a country forced to defend itself and its people from deadly attacks, and in the process aroused the sympathy of the world for a vulnerable population exposed to constant danger by their Islamist fanatical overseers.

In the interests of advancing the interests of Palestinians, the actions of Hamas are accepted.

And though Hamas's actions served to act as the fulcrum of the destruction of civil infrastructure leaving people in dire straits and without the needed welfare that any decent state should provide, it is satisfied that the world stands ready to pledge the huge amounts of treasury it will take to rebuild the destroyed portions of Gaza, restoring the Territory to the state it was in before this latest conflict, with improved conditions out of concern for the welfare of Palestinians who aid Hamas in its celebration of mindless violence.

The open-ended truce that Egypt proposed, to allow a respite to allow both sides to work out a more lasting accord is but a temporary and perhaps even brief break in the unspeakable violence. Extremist factions, according to Bassam Salhi, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team in Cairo, agreed to halt their fire for the beginning of reconstruction in Gaza to commence.

Palestinian Authority supervision of the Gaza side of crossings with Israel may provide some level of assurance that weapons will not be smuggled into the Territory through that venue, although Egypt too has similar concerns to those of Israel. Israel requires the oversight of a neutral third party. And Israel insists that the terrorist groups operating among the Palestinians be disarmed.

This is a demand that Hamas will have no part of, since such 'hudnas' -- brief periods of quiet during which weapons are replaced and fighters re-trained -- are only preludes to further conflict.

Shouts of “God is great” rang out from mosque loudspeakers across Gaza City. Credit Mohammed Salem/Reuters 
 
Hamas will not surrender the fanatical expectation and hope that their 'struggle' against 'the Zionists' will eventually succeed in obliterating Israel from the Middle East, even if in the process every single last Palestinian in the near geography dies in the process.