Egypt brokers unofficial truce between Israel and Gaza

After two days of fighting, Egypt has brokered a tentative ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. According to Israel, no rockets have been fired since Wednesday night and the unofficial truce is appearing to hold. Fighting began on Tuesday after a landmark visit from Qatar’s emir to Gaza, when Hamas militants fired rockets into Israel drawing retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, which killed four Palestinians including three militants. Israeli officials said around 80 rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israel injuring six people, including two Thai workers who were critically wounded. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he hoped the truce would stand, but said over 600 rockets had been fired into Israel since the beginning of 2012 and that the struggle was far from over. Meanwhile, EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton is visiting with Israelis and Palestinians in attempts to revive stalled peace talks. 

Syria

The Syrian government is expected to give its decision Thursday on a ceasefire for the Eid al-Adha holiday brokered by U.N. and Arab League envoy Lakdar Brahimi. Brahimi announced Wednesday that President Bashar al-Assad agreed to the temporary truce beginning Friday, but that was immediately thrown into question when Syria’s foreign ministry said the military was still studying the proposal. In a meeting with the U.N. Security Council, Russia said it had "indications" that the Syrian government would approve the plan, and the Security Council members expressed their support for Brahimi’s proposal. The opposition Free Syrian Army said it would adhere to a ceasefire if the government does, but expressed doubts. Other groups within the opposition said that no one is taking the ceasefire proposal seriously. Meanwhile, a day ahead of the truce deadline, violent clashes have broken out in the Sunni dominated Damascus suburb of Harasta. Fighting began when opposition fighters overran a roadblock on a highway connecting Damascus to the north. Syrian forces have retaliated with fierce tank and rocket fire, killing five people. Fighting also continued in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the town of Maarat al-Numan, along the highway between Damascus and Aleppo, and in the city of Homs near the Lebanese border with over 100 people reported killed across the country on Wednesday.

Headlines  

• A man suspected of involvement in the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi has been killed in Cairo. Meanwhile, Tunisia has arrested a Tunisian man linked to the attack.
• Sudan has blamed Israel for carrying out air strikes on an arms factory in Khartoum that was hit by several explosions late Tuesday and said it reserves the right to retaliate.

Arguments and Analysis

Meet the Israelis (Gideon Levy, Haaretz)

"Nice to make your acquaintance, we’re racist and pro-apartheid. The poll whose results were published in Haaretz on Tuesday, conducted by Dialog and commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund, proved what we always knew, if not so bluntly. It’s important to recognize the truth that has been thrown in our faces and those of the world (where the survey is making waves ). But it’s even more important to draw the necessary conclusions from it.

Given the current reality, making peace would be an almost anti-democratic act: Most Israelis don’t want it. A just, egalitarian society would also violate the wishes of most Israelis: That, too, is something they don’t want. They’re satisfied with the racism, comfortable with the occupation, pleased with the apartheid; things are very good for them in this country. That’s what they told the pollsters."

Hezbollah uses its military power in a contradictory manner (David Hirst, The Daily Star)

"Nobody, neither its friends nor its foes, ever questions Hezbollah’s military prowess. During its last major engagement, the July war of 2006, an Israeli general ruefully called it "the greatest guerilla organization in the world today," and the entire Arab world thrilled at its exploits, not only in classical guerilla warfare, but in higher-tech forms of combat, such as the sea-borne missile which very nearly sank the Israeli navy’s flagship.

The really contentious question is: What does it use its prowess, and its weapons, for? In the past two weeks, it has given two dramatic, and profoundly contradictory, answers.

One came in the shape of the drone that Hezbollah launched over Israel on Oct. 6. In a subsequent speech, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called it an "Iranian-built," "Hezbollah-assembled" device which, during its three-hour, 300 km mission, conducted reconnaissance of sensitive sites, including that "holy of holies," the ultra-secret nuclear facility at Dimona."

–By Jennifer Parker and Mary Casey