January 3, 2009Global Jihad
Dani Reshef
After yet another day of IAF bombardment and a counter shelling of rockets on Israeli villages and towns around Gaza, Israeli ground troops, at 19:00, entered Gaza Strip in order to cripple, as much as possible, the military wing of Hamas of about 16,000 men trained by Iran and organized in four fighting brigades.
* Israel mobilized 20,000 additional reservists to the army:
A. to back up Gaza operation should things go wrong.
B. To deter the Hizbullah in Lebanon from any interference in the operation.
C. To contain any unrest in the West Bank from the very beginning.
* The general draft of the political settlement after the operation becomes clearer. The base of the arrangement will be a combined supervision of Egypt, the Palestinian Authority under Fatah and international segments who will assume control on the Egyptian-Gaza border in order to prevent a renewal of the mass weapons smuggling to Gaza and to totally inspect the relations between Hamas regime in Gaza and Iran. President Bush already said, on Friday 01/02/2009, that weapons smuggling is "Totally unacceptable". Hosni Mubarak, the President of Egypt, pledged in a speech in the Egyptian Parliament two days earlier that the Rafah border crossing with Egypt will be open only under the Palestinian Authority control with international inspection. Even NATO secretary general Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said, on Saturday 01/03/2008, that deployment of a NATO force would be conditioned on Israel and Arab states requesting an international military presence to implement the peace. Speaking generally but referring to Gaza current crisis.
* All over the world there were demonstrations against Israel. Generally the demonstrations numbered at around 1000 participants. The biggest anti Israeli demonstration took place in Brussels, Belgium, with about 7,000 participants and in London, UK, with about 1,500 demonstrators. The largest demonstration against Israel on Saturday took place in the Israeli Arab town of Sakhnin, in the Galilee, where at least 40,000 demonstrated against Israel's Gaza operation carrying PLO flags. Some of the children in the demonstration carried toy rifles, given to them by their parents. The demonstrators said the Israel political leadership of "war criminals" should be prosecuted as such. The Sakhnin event was the biggest ever carried out by Israeli Arabs. Another large rally, of few thousands, against Israel operation in Gaza, happened in Tel Aviv.
* On the diplomatic arena, on Saturday 01/03/2009, UN Security Council dissipated without reaching any resolution after USA blocked a Libyan draft to declare immediate cease fire in Gaza. The next meeting is scheduled to Tuesday 01/06/2008 evening. The new President of the European Union for the next half year, from the Czech Republic defined the Israeli operation as a "defensive measure'. The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called upon both sides to stop the mutual shelling and bombardment.
* The next two days will determine the outcome of operation Cast Lead, which reaches its decisive point.
