Broken Ceasefire

Michael Hess
BBSNews
January 1, 2009

Western press have recently and erroneously reported that Hamas broke a
six month ceasefire even as most reported in November 2008 that Israel itself
first broke the informal truce. In recent days Prime Minister Olmert has
tied the end of the current attacks by Israel on Gaza to an international
“monitoring” force to ensure that Hamas meets terms of a new ceasefire.
Some of the early pre-strike tactics have been questioned by officials, and it
is unlikely this latest conflict will resolve anything because it does not
address the root cause, the ongoing occupations.

In this decades long occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem
there have been many lulls that lapse into tit for tat violence and then creep
back into lulls again.

In the most recent case, Hamas and Israel came to an informal agreement in
June 2008 where Hamas would halt rocket fire and reign in various militant
factions in the Strip while at the same time opening border crossings.
Instead, Hamas largely kept the ceasefire and the crossings never opened
except for the most sporadic of instances and the humanitarian crisis
deepened in Gaza.

Western press in light of the most recent assault on Gaza seem to have
forgotten who broke the truce and are erroneously attributing the end of the
ceasefire to either rockets and or the expiration of the original agreement.

Hagada Hasmalit* provided an analysis of of articles describing the
breakdown of the ceasefire and who was responsible and also took the
New York Times to task for the devolving reportage during this most recent
spate of violence. Viewing the timeline of news reporting from
November 4-15, 2008 it becomes crystal clear that Israel broke the ceasefire.

More:
http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20090101212318310