Israel agrees to cease-fire
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared Israel has met it’s objectives in the assault on Hamas and Gaza and has agreed to a cease-fire, effective at 7:00 PM EST. Egypt has evidently been instrumental in bringing this about. From CBS:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel will unilaterally halt its 22-day offensive against Hamas, but will keep troops on the ground in the Gaza Strip for the time being.
“Olmert says that troops will remain in Gaza – apparently for 10 days,” reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger in Jerusalem. “During that time, Israel and Egypt will work on security arrangements to halt Hamas weapons smuggling to Gaza.
“Saying that Israel has achieved its goals in the offensive, government leaders voted to stop the assault during an emergency security meeting Saturday.”We have achieved our goal,” Olmert said. “Hamas has been beaten badly.”
There seems to be one small snag in the effort to bring a halt to the fighting in Gaza. Hamas has declared it will fight on. That’s right, for all of their posturing and declaring how they want the fighting to stop because Israel is killing more civilians than anyone else, they are saying they are going to continue the fight.
In my previous articles about the fighting in Gaza, I made it clear that I believed Israel was well within it’s rights to defend itself from the rocket attacks in Gaza. I do believe they could and should have been more precise and careful in how they conducted these attacks. Many more civilians have been killed than was necessary. That being said, they are now ready to stop and if Hamas insists on continuing the rocket attacks, then any blood that is spilled from here on out is on their heads. This is their chance to stop this fighting, once and for all. Let’s see if they follow through.
Israel unilaterally agrees to a ceasefire, even though their stated goals at the beginning of ‘Operation Cast Lead’ included the freeing of POW Gilad Shalit (held for over 934 days), and the elimination of rocket-fire from Gaza.
Gilad is still held, and just minutes after Ehud Olmert announced the ceasefire, six rockets hit Be’er Sheva. The ceasefire does provide for retaliation if Hamas continues their aggression, but tit-for-tat will not end the terrorism.