At Ease -- versus -- On the Offensive
There were two photographs figuring large in news stories about the two-day-old truce in Gaza, an agreement for a pause in hostilities between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday's photograph was that of three or four assembled Palestinian men with threatening dark visages, all hefting kalashnikovs, leaving no mystery of their thoughts post-agreement. Seven rockets were aimed at Israel from Gaza post-agreement yesterday, and these men might very well have been the authors of the assaults.Today's photograph is one of four young Israeli soldiers relaxing at a staging area in south Israel near the Gaza border. To a man their open friendly faces are covered with relaxed smiles of camaraderie. To be sure, their assault rifles are close at hand, but they're not hoisted ready for immediate use as were those of the insurgents, but lying close by ready for use, if need be.
Why would there be such an oceans' breadth of difference between the two groups? One group of soliders seemingly fully engaged with life and all its promises, despite the warfare conditions they've been involved with. The other group, the fiercely embittered militants appear fully attuned to dealing death. They display a tunnel vision of hideously dark dimensions.
There is hope on both sides that the accord will hold. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has instructed his security chiefs to enforce the ceasefire; thirteen thousand Palestinian police officers in flak jackets and helmets patrolling Gaza's borders for the purpose of discouraging another break in the truce.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered his army to demonstrate restraint, despite the early violation of the cease-fire, "to give this ceasefire a chance". After five months of attempting to stop the daily assault of Kassam rockets into Israeli border towns, Israel is ready to wait and see what the Fatah/Hamas PA can produce beyond the current truce.
Hamas's initial demand for the release of 1,400 Palestinians in exchange for kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit has been modified; they will now accept 400 prisoners in exchange for Cpl. Shalit. It appears that combat action during the fighting between Israel and the insurgents resulted in the deaths of mostly armed fighters, significantly reducing the ranks of insurgents.
Which might explain why they compromised even their moral compass sufficiently to encourage a Palestinian grandmother to commit herself to an attempt at multiple murders while submitting herself to the will of Allah by suicide-martyrdom. An event which brought them no plaudits from a watching world, but a sense of overall abhorrence that they would stoop so low.
Time reveals all, and one can only hope that this is not yet another stalling tactic to enable Hamas to restore their weapons cache in this interregnum between hostilities.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 27, 2006
<< Home