The War In Gaza

The news out of Gaza is quite terrible. Israeli forces have moved deeply inside the strip and bisected the country. To soften up the defenses from Hamas, the ground invasion was preceded by a shock and awe artillery strike and aerial bombing, which allegedly included banned weaponry.

The ground invasion was preceded by large-scale artillery shelling from around 4 P.M., intended to "soften" the targets as artillery batteries deployed along the Strip in recent days began bombarding Hamas targets and open areas near the border. Hundreds of shells were fired, including cluster bombs aimed at open areas.

Cluster bombs are nasty, and most of the deaths from them typically are civilians who step on unexploded ordnance. There are other credible reports that the IDF has used white phosphorous, which is a banned substance.

One example of this is the use of White Phosphorus rounds in a way where the phosphorus does not burn off before it hits the ground. Phosphorus burns more or less on contact with air, and keeps burning until deprived of oxygen. People who suffer phosphorus burns not only have terrible burns, but they absorb the phosphorus through the skin, and suffer acute phosphorus poisoning. This used to be more common than it is, because phosphorus was used in friction matches and in industrial processes, it was sold for rat poison. During World War II, it was dropped on London as part of "the blitz." In the 1940's it was called by one journal article a menace to public health after noting that 50% of the people admitted for phosphorous poisoning died, as compared to 6% of all other non-alcohol poisonings.

So while using phosphorus rounds itself isn't against the relevant treaties, using it in a way that takes advantage of its toxic qualities makes it a chemical weapon, and it is completely inconsistent with any claim to be cautious or worrying about civilian loss of life to use it in a populated area, and allowing it to fall to the ground.

FDL has more.

Aside from the atrocities (which really shouldn't be put aside), I'm still wondering what Israel hopes to achieve. The standard claim is that they want to stop the rocket fire into Sderot and points south from Hamas. But outside of emptying Gaza of people, I can't see how this ground invasion will actually accomplish that. Not even the residents of Southern Israel think so.

"It's the same as usual," Peled, the community's security coordinator, said as he stood in a wheat field examining the mangled remains of a 19mm Qassam rocket that had slammed down minutes before. "They probably built this one just a couple days ago. It's brand new."

Since the Israeli offensive began nine days ago, the country's leaders have insisted that Israel's largest military operation in Gaza since its troops withdrew in 2005 would not stop until it ended the Hamas rocket fire. But residents of southern Israel have no such expectations. The rockets, they say, will go on despite what Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak described as an "all-out war" on the armed Islamist group that runs Gaza [...]

Most of the Qassams, Katyushas and mortar shells fired from Gaza have fallen without causing damage. But four Israelis have been killed in the barrage, while other strikes have caused injuries or destroyed buildings. Cities once believed to be beyond the range of rocket fire from Gaza -- including Ashdod and Beersheba -- have been hit regularly in the past week.

"I hope the invasion succeeds," said Peled, 65, who is responsible for finding the rockets after they land and making sure they have detonated. "But after so many years, it's difficult to believe this will work."

In fact, even if Hamas is disarms and overthrown - which Israel has stated is NOT their policy - there are other radical elements inside Gaza who could be strengthened by a weakened Hamas. The Salafists would be even worse than Hamas to deal with on Israel's southern border (think Al Qaeda in Palestine), and indeed the history of this conflict is a radical actor in the Palestinian territories replaced by an even more radical adversary. We have this notion that there is one radical Islamist unified front, but it's not true, and picking winners and losers often has unintended consequences.

Instead of airstrikes and ground attacks, why not talk to the enemy, as this former head of Mossad suggests.

The former head of the Mossad intelligence service, Ephraim Halevy, argues that ultimately it may be in Israel's interest to negotiate with Hamas if it helps to curb Hamas's political influence.

Alpher agrees that Israel should talk to Hamas. "Hamas doesn't want to talk to us ... just as Hezbollah doesn't want to talk to us, they don't recognise us. But as a strategic approach to Hamas, the offer to talk and recognise is another viable option which we have not taken."

Obviously, with an election coming in Israel, this is not going to happen. But ultimately, it's the only end to the conflict, and one wonders if the Israelis are learning from their losing of the propaganda war inside the United States, that bluster and neoconservative maneuvering has no home anywhere in the world anymore.

Feel The American Pride

Yesterday 100 nations, including Afghanistan, signed a treaty banning the grisly practice of cluster bombs, which have the tendency to kill innocent civilians who step on the unexploded ordnance. The United States didn't join the other signatories. It would hurt security, you see, to not have the option of killing civilians by deploying thousands of bombs scattered over an area that mainly hit civilians. Or at least, that's the best answer anyone could get out of Dana Perino:

THOMAS: Is the President going to sign the anti-cluster bomb treaty? Apparently this is –

PERINO: Right, this is a treaty that was passed out of the U.N. Security Council several months ago. We said then that, no, we would not be signing on to it. And so I think that the signing is actually — we did not participate in the passage of it, and therefore we’re not going to sign it either.

THOMAS: Why not?

PERINO: What I have forgotten is all the reasons why, and so I’ll get it for you. (Laughter.)

We're the greatest country the Earth has ever known, of course, so we don't need to explain why we'll continue to cause humanitarian catastrophes.

Hey, President-elect Obama? Want to show the world that it's a new dawn for American foreign policy? Sign the ban on this barbaric weapon.

Cluster Bomb Breakthrough

Gordon Brown hasn't had a great couple of months, but he showed some backbone today and greatly improved prospects for an international ban on cluster bombs.

In a major diplomatic defeat for the U.S., Britain broke ranks Wednesday and joined more than 100 nations in agreeing in principle to an international ban on cluster bombs, the small, insidious weapons that have killed thousands of civilians in the aftermath of battle.

Though the Bush administration has lobbied hard against the treaty and many U.S. and British officials consider cluster bombs valuable weapons, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown overruled elements of his own military and threw his support behind the prohibition. Brown's decision cleared the way for an agreement that supporters said would lead to the removal of cluster munitions from arsenals around the world.

Most interestingly, the convention not only prohibits the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs among signatories, but it calls on any nation conducting joint military operations with a non-signatory to "actively discourage use of the weapons." With Britain on board, that will have an impact on the United States regardless of what a future President and Congress do with the treaty (for example, these have been used in Iraq).

Cluster bombs are a truly hideous by-product of modern warfare, canisters that open upon ejection and pour a series of "bomblets" across a wide area that are meant to explode on impact. However, up to 25 percent do not, creating minefields that kill hundreds or even thousands of civilians wherever they are deployed.

But while a ban on these weapons would be a major human rights victory, it is more reflective of the waning credibility of the United States under Bush. It would have been unthinkable a few years ago for a stalwart ally like Great Britain to break with the US on a diplomatic issue such as this. But Brown is in trouble domestically, and may have seen such a split as a political cure-all. It's not only McCain who wants to show his independence from Bush. Moreover, here is the United States, on the wrong side of a human rights issue YET AGAIN, lining up with China and Russia and using technicalities like "China and Russia don't support it, so we won't" to justify their behavior. Which is essentially saying that "We don't think this effort will succeed until you bring users of the weapons, like us, to the table."

How many foreign policy failures from this Administration can you name off the top of your head? Because you can add this one.