Jim Hoagland - Cairo's Camp David Bargain Endures - washingtonpost.com

Jim Hoagland - Cairo's Camp David Bargain Endures - washingtonpost.com: "Such inspiration is badly needed for Palestinians and Israelis right now. They have not been able to find a sustainable equilibrium in peacemaking efforts that have been punctuated by prolonged guerrilla warfare, two intifadas, waves of suicide bombings and rocket attacks launched against Israel, and recently by Israel's bloody three-week assault on the Gaza Strip and the leadership of Hamas."

In his description, we see that until "recently" Israel has not contributed anything to the lack of progress in reaching peace. The continual building of settlements in the West Banks has not happened. The control of Gaza's borders; land sea and air since before Hamas took power is constructive. The building of walls and fences beyond Israel's pre '67 borders is of no consequence. The refusal to talk to the elected Hamas government is immaterial. The daily disruption of life by Palestinians by checkpoints, occupation soldiers is all well and good. The breaking of the ceasefire with Hamas on November 4 2008 is an illusion.

How can we take serious opinions that are so completely one sided? The failure of reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is a failure of both sides and in fact of the US which is anything but a fair broker. As has been repeated endlessly the seeds of a solution is obvious. A return by Israel to the pre '67 borders and removal of all colonists established in the land conquered in that war. This of course to be accompanied by a cessation of violence by both sets of combatants.

Israel using Holocaust guilt to continue Gaza op, says British MP - Haaretz - Israel News

Israel using Holocaust guilt to continue Gaza op, says British MP - Haaretz - Israel News: "Kaufman, a frequent critic of Israel who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, commented on the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants. 'I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants,' he said.

Kaufman urged the British government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

'My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town.... A
German soldier shot her dead in her bed, he said. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza,' the MP said."

George Bush 'shamed' Condoleezza Rice, says Ehud Olmert - Telegraph

George Bush 'shamed' Condoleezza Rice, says Ehud Olmert - Telegraph. A demonstration of US government's traditional fair handedness in the Israel Palestine conflict...

Op-Ed Contributor - What You Don’t Know About Gaza - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - What You Don’t Know About Gaza - NYTimes.com - a short piece by Rashid Khalidy that reminds us of some inconvenient facts about the events in Gaza.

This reminded me of another "forgotten" issue; the involvment of the US in the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. The Gaza Bombshell at Vanity fair. Not news, but still probably unknown to most.

In the Economist The hundred years' war has a reasonably fair outline of where we are in Gaza.

Finally in Haaretz Hamas seeks Gaza war of attrition ending in IDF pullout offers a view of where this may end in the short term.

Today I read that the US, in it's continuing effort to advance human rights, come up with a blacklist of countries that have failed to stop trafficking people. Can you guess the 2 countries in the Americas which are in that list?

Let's see. It can't be Columbia can it? No much too civilized. Maybe Haiti? No not likely. How about Panama. Not a chance. Ah yes, of course, what a surprise. Cuba and Venezuela.

And then they wonder why people apply a hint of salt to the US's good intentions...

When is a wall not a wall?

In the New Yorker we get the following paragraph:

In 2005, Banksy travelled to the West Bank, where he painted the security fence at Bethlehem with a trompe-l’oeil scene of a hole in the concrete barrier, revealing a glittering beach on the other side; it looked as if someone had dug through to paradise.

The article contains a photo and caption as well.
A Banksy trompe-l’oeil painting on a security fence in the West Bank.

Strange that the painting in the photo seems to be on a big motherfucking wall, while the fence in front of it is paint free. I wonder if they got the wrong painting.

Today's morsel:

Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments.

and later...

Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. He thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest, and so the new embassy will serve its purpose for several years to come.

"A fortress-style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof," he said, adding his own advice to the architects of the building: "Include a large roof."

There is one added irony - the embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget.