VIDEOS OF
THE WEEK: We recommend the following:
“Starling migration” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_1o0ao9Uqc
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ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
By Editorial Board, Washington Post 1.02.2015
For the full article go to; http://tinyurl.com/nzgbc5y
THE POST’S William Booth witnessed a chilling event in the Gaza
Strip on Thursday: thousands of youths lined up “in crisp military fashion” for
a “graduation ceremony” after a week of training by the armed wing of the Hamas
movement. Even as thousands of Gazan families struggle to survive amid the
rubble of last summer’s war with Israel, and children are reported to be dying
from exposure, Hamas is once again investing its resources in preparing for
another unwinnable battle.
That this is happening is yet another indictment of
this Islamic terrorist movement, which has started three wars with Israel in
six years while depriving the 1.8 million people on its devastated territory
any hope of peaceful development. But it is also shameful evidence of the
failure by other parties — from the Palestinian Authority and Israel to Egypt
and the United States — to take steps to lift Gaza out of its tragic cycle of
bloodshed and blockade.
Last year’s war, which killed more than 2,000 Gazans
and damaged or destroyed 124,000 homes, could have been a turning point. Israel
pressed for Hamas’s disarmament as part of a cease-fire; though that proved
impossible, the United States and Egypt pressed a formula under which the
Palestinian Authority would take over responsibility for security on the
territory’s border, allowing for an expansion of trade and humanitarian relief.
The deal never took hold. Hamas refused to give up
its checkpoints on the border, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas chose
to focus his energies on another empty diplomatic offensive at the United
Nations rather than the more difficult work of restoring order in Gaza. The
predictable result was that Egypt, ruled by a regime deeply hostile to Hamas,
sealed its border and redoubled its effort to prevent smuggling, while Israel,
worried about Hamas’s rearmament, allowed only a fraction of the imports the
United Nations says are needed for reconstruction.
International donors — above all, the Arab states —
have meanwhile held back the reconstruction funding they pledged. The result
was that the U.N. refugee relief agency in Gaza was forced to suspend payments
to families last week. Its director, Robert Turner, issued a statement saying that “people
are desperate and the international community cannot even provide the bare
minimum — for example a repaired home in winter — let alone a lifting of the
blockade, access to markets or freedom of movement.”
U.N. officials, like much of the rest of the world,
are quick to blame Israel for this horrific situation, even though Egypt’s
border “blockade” is tighter. It’s certainly striking that while Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is said to consider the danger of Iran so serious that it
justifies his violation of diplomatic protocol to address a joint meeting of
Congress, he appears to have no policy for Gaza — the source of the most lethal
attacks on Israelis in recent years.
Israel, however, can hardly be expected to facilitate
Hamas’s relentless preparations for more war, to which concrete and other
reconstruction materials have been diverted in the past. An Israeli official
told Mr. Booth that Gazan workshops were “assembling new rockets as fast as
they can” and that the strip’s militias would be fully rearmed and trained
within months. Sadly, that is likely to be the next time the world pays heed to
Gaza — when war with Israel again erupts.
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