Israeli War on Gaza 'Killing Peace Prospects'

By SANA ABDALLAH

AMMAN -- Despite a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, the Israeli war on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip continued for the 14th day on Friday, virtually eliminating any prospects for peace in the Middle East after seriously damaging an already weak peace process.

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, following a meeting with his security cabinet, effectively rejected Resolution 1860 by announcing that the offensive on Gaza will continue, after Israeli warplanes launched 50 air raids overnight, killing 12 more Palestinians.

Earlier, Hamas brushed aside the resolution as insufficient to stop the Israeli onslaught, and thus the militant resistance, indicating that the events on the ground speak for themselves.

Almost 800 Palestinians, many of them civilians and children, have been killed and more than 3,100 injured in a relentless Israeli military offensive launched on Dec. 27, while Israel confirmed 10 Israeli soldiers dead, most of them in ground battles in one of the world's highest populated territories. Three Israeli civilians were killed in rocket attacks.

Independent Palestinian analysts say the resolution, passed almost unanimously late Thursday with 14 votes in favor and a U.S. abstention, was not expected to hold because it lacked a mechanism for implementation. The decision "stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully-respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."

Israeli leaders, who are facing national elections on Feb. 10, say they will not stop the "war on Hamas" until their goals are achieved, including stopping Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza and what seems to be ending Hamas' rule there.

The Islamist Hamas movement came to power after winning an overwhelming victory in 2006 legislative elections, which international observers said were free and democratic, but forced out its partners in the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority from Gaza in June 2007.

Since then, the 1.5 million Palestinian population of the narrow strip have been living under an Israeli blockade sanctioned by the Western nations, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas set up another government in the West Bank.

Many Arab commentators described the Israeli war on Gaza as a desperate Israeli attempt to wipe out Hamas and other Palestinian militant and political resistance so as to impose a political settlement that will not meet the fundamental Palestinian national aspirations.

The peace talks that outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush launched between Israel and Abbas at Annapolis in November 2007 for a two-state solution – which were supported by the Arabs – failed to move an inch amid Israel's continued settlement expansion in the West Bank and its refusal to remove hundreds of military roadblocks.

The onslaught on Gaza, the worst on the territory since Israel captured it in the 1967 war from Egyptian control, came to shut down the peace process entirely, according to both analysts and Arab politicians.

The scenes of bloodshed from Gaza have sparked angry, daily street protests across the Middle East, and distanced Israel from some of its own Arab and regional "friends," including Jordan, Turkey and Qatar, which had until Dec. 27 played instrumental roles in supporting the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Analysts say this war on Gaza seems to have "awoken" some of these leaders into realizing that Israel was not only indifferent to achieving peace with the Palestinians and rest of the Arabs based on the establishment of a Palestinian state, but that it seems to have belligerent political plans of its own for the Palestinians and the rest of the region.

Expressing these concerns publicly was Jordan's King Abdullah II, whose country signed an unpopular peace treaty with Israel in 1994, making it the second Arab state after Egypt to have such a pact.

The monarch said he was worried that Israel was plotting a "conspiracy against the Palestinian people and the future of Palestine" in its offensive on Gaza.

King Abdullah told Al-Jazeera news channel on Tuesday: "We must be aware of this conspiracy and God willing, we along with Arab and other countries, will stop Israel's agenda as soon as possible. We will work with other countries in the coming days to press Israel and its army to stop the aggression on Gaza." He added that Jordan was "concerned and upset, and fears about what could happen after Gaza, the aftermath of Gaza."

His remarks came after meeting with a visiting delegation from the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, whom he told that "intensified efforts are needed to protect the Palestinians from the conspiracy that targets their right to establish an independent state," according to a palace statement.

Jordanian analysts say there are fears that Israel was seeking to impose geopolitical realities that would make it impossible to set up an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and try to force new conditions that threaten Jordan's own sovereignty.

Half of this kingdom's 6 million people are originally Palestinian, and Amman has over the years rejected Israeli suggestions that Jordan merge with a condensed West Bank, whose 2.4 million Palestinians would change the country's demographic balance.

Egyptian analysts say that Cairo was also concerned with Israeli plans to turn parts of the Gaza Strip into a buffer zone and force the rest of the territory and its people further into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Some critics argue that this assault has already broken whatever trust some of the Arab regimes had for Israel and its intentions for bringing peace to the Middle East, taking the peace process, first launched in Madrid in 1991, back to square one.