Word: gaza
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...universal sense among the Muslim delegates that the President had offered fine words in the past year but not much action. And now, Clinton entertained a question from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, on behalf of an interfaith group of religious leaders, about the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Why wasn't the U.S. doing more to alleviate it? (See pictures of Obama's diplomacy...
Good question. In fact, it cut to the heart of the Obama-foreign policy frustrations. Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs. The Israelis have stubbornly maintained a stiff blockade after pounding Gaza into submission in January 2009. Food is allowed in; Gazans aren't starving. But tight restrictions remain on construction materials for rebuilding homes and public buildings and on many of the nonessential necessities of life (Israel recently lifted the ban on cigarettes). Israel...
Clinton's response to McCarrick's question was forceful but inadequate. She reminded the delegates that "violence preceded the suffering," a local coup d'état by Hamas, which then used Gaza "as a launching pad" for wholesale rocket attacks against Israel. She acknowledged the humanitarian suffering and said the U.S. had pressured Israel to increase the flow of essentials like food "from a trickle to a flood," but ultimately, she concluded, the fate of Gaza would have to await a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians...
...might have been more profitable for Obama to have concentrated on trying to fix Gaza first. It was the immediate crisis when he took office, and it remains so. It is difficult to solve, but not impossible. Success would set a predicate: the Administration could be relied upon to work hard, and pragmatically, on vexing issues along the way to an ultimate deal. It could be trusted by all sides. That possibility still exists, although senior Administration officials seem unduly pessimistic about the chances of success. And there is a big obstacle here: the best way to resolve Gaza...
...left Hizballah with the enviable reputation of being the only force in the Middle East to have beaten both the West and Israel. Not to mention that Hizballah is now the de facto government in Lebanon. No wonder the IRGC would like an encore in the West Bank and Gaza, where it has been arming militants for more than a decade...