United Nations: "Hamas? Who Are They?"
Friday, January 9th, 2009 at
1:11 pm
In its continuing slide into irrelevancy, the United Nations Security Council called for a ceasefire in Gaza and never once used the H-word. Now that could mean that they don’t thing Hamas has anything to do with what’s going on in Gaza, or they realize that asking Hamas to honor a ceasefire is pretty much pointless given their history.
Then again, there’s always the third option; they’re just blaming Israel, like they always do. That would be the safe bet.
Filed under: Doug • Israel • Middle East • United Nations
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To be fair, they only mention Israel’s army once, in asking them to withdraw from Gaza.
They stress, “the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.”
It would seem obvious to me that the ceasefire is on the part of both sides, as that is what a ceasefire generally means.
Also, they call for efforts to be put in place for Israel and Palestine to live in peace. They condemn, “…ALL violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorist[m?].”
That would seem to be directed not towards Israel but only towards those who have used hostilities directed towards civilians. If that describes Israel, that is who it applies to. If that describes Hamas, that is who it applies to.
I think some are looking for inequity where none exists.
This formal document calls for a cease fire without mentioning both parties. I don’t think that’s standard operating procedure anywhere else. “There should be a ceasefire and Israel should leave” is very one-sided.
And I think all Palestinians would reject the idea that they’re all members of Hamas. This is really an issue with Hamas, not the Palestinian people, so again the UN missed the target while potentially putting forth a generalization that isn’t true.
And the fact that little if anything came out of the UN (and certainly nothing this strongly worded) specifically aimed at Hamas while they spent 7 years shooting rockets at Sderot and its environs laid the foundation of this inequity. They only call for the cessation of hostilities when Israel shoots back.