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A FRAGILE CEASEFIRE in Gaza pushes into a second day today as Israeli and Palestinian delegations prepared for crunch talks in Cairo to try to extend the 72-hour truce.
The ceasefire, which came into effect yesterday and carried past midnight into today, has brought relief to millions on both sides after one month of fighting killed 1,875 Palestinians and 67 people in Israel.
Cairo talks
Israeli and Palestinian delegations are now set for what are expected to be tough talks aimed at securing a permanent ceasefire after the three-day window closes.
Officials on both sides confirmed sending small teams to the Egyptian capital, but they bring conflicting demands and face an uphill diplomatic battle ahead.
The Palestinians insist Israel end its eight-year blockade of Gaza and open border crossings, while Israel wants Gaza fully demilitarised.
But after the longest period of quiet since fighting began, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said he expected “the ceasefire to expand into another 72 hours and beyond”.
The United States is set to participate in the Cairo talks.
“We are determining at what level and in what capacity and when,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a BBC interview, called for a sustained ceasefire but stressed that the crucial wider issues will need to be addressed.
How are we going to make peace? How are we going to eliminate these rockets? How are we going to demilitarise and move towards a different future?
In Gaza City, people came out in numbers on Tuesday afternoon, children played on the street and the beach, and some shops reopened for the first time in days.
Scenes of devastation
Others ventured home for the first time only to witness scenes of devastation.
“What am I going to tell my wife and children? I don’t want them to see this! They will go crazy,” said Khayri Hasan al-Masri, a father of three who returned to his heavily damaged home in Beit Hanun in the north after fleeing when Israel’s ground offensive began on July 17.
At a bullet-riddled girls’ school, an Israeli flag and an anti-Hamas slogan had been etched on the wall of a classroom, and discarded ration packs and tuna cans labelled in Hebrew littered the floor.
Relief but scepticism in southern Israel
Israel’s security cabinet convened to discuss efforts to secure a long-term ceasefire deal, but broke up without any public statement.
In southern Israel, there was relief but scepticism.
“I never trust Hamas,” said Orly Doron, an Israeli mother living in a kibbutz on the Gaza border that has been battered by rocket fire.
We had three or four ceasefires during this war; we all saw they weren’t kept.
It is the second time in four days the two sides had agreed to observe a 72-hour humanitarian truce. The last attempt on August 1 — brokered by Washington and the UN — was shattered within just 90 minutes.
This time Israel has withdrawn its troops, ending the ground operation aimed at destroying tunnels Gaza militants use to attack its territory.
Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said troops would respond to any truce violations.
Israeli brigadier general Guy Goldstein, deputy head of the unit responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said more than 250 trucks of supplies crossed into Gaza on Tuesday.
“We transferred food, animal feed, water, medicines, medical supplies, mattresses, blankets,” he said.
We let out people with dual nationality and let in medical teams… dozens of people.
He said that four power lines leading into Gaza were repaired and two more should be fixed by morning.
The territory’s only power plant was shelled during the conflict, leading to a blackout.
Up to $6bn worth of damage in Gaza
The ceasefire, announced by Egypt late on Monday, is the longest lull since fighting began.
The Palestinian health ministry said 1,875 Palestinians had been killed during the conflict, including 430 children, and said 9,567 people had been wounded, including 2,878 children.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, deputy economy minister Taysir Amro said the 29-day war had caused total damage of up to $6 billion dollars (4.5 billion euros).
Some of the worst devastation is near the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which was flattened in a massive Israeli assault that began on Friday.
The United States and the United Nations have welcomed the truce, saying the onus was on Hamas to uphold its end of the deal.
Criticism
Israel has been subject to increasingly harsh criticism over the high number of civilian casualties during its military operation launched on July 8 to counter rocket fire from Gaza.
A British parliamentary committee said today that excessive Israeli restrictions on Palestinian territories cannot be justified on the grounds they protect the Jewish state.
The Israeli army says it destroyed 32 cross-border tunnels, struck nearly 4,800 targets and killed 900 Palestinian “terrorists”.
“We expect that they still have about 3,000 rockets left. This is a challenge we have to address,” Lerner said.
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there are a lot of people out there willing to help. just don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask.
Best thing you can do is talk. It will be hard but by god does it get easier
Or write it down to try to make sense out of it but talking works…
Some good news for men for a change. Would do no harm to add the text number in the list of help numbers instead of being stuck in the article. Fair play to Console. At least some group seems to be concerned about men.
There need’s to be a place to go like for DVAM. So glad that the fellas are using it and for talking. Huge step. Proud of you all.
I think that is due to stress, how people treat each other, how relationships are suppose to develop according to what people are told, the westernisation of how a man should be a certain way to act to show that he is a man. That the only way to be a man is sex the whole time with strange women, aggression, fighting, treating others with contempt, being hard and nasty as well as ready to start a fight with anyone…
This nonsense is coming from U.S. television telling men that they are not men unless they are total b….ds.
People are too busy chasing images of what they should be from pop culture, TV and the media and it has become a race to be popular by doing what others tell them in order to be popular. In order to be part of a consumerised society and at its core is bullying and greed.
@ Michael Sands. So what way should a man be then?
Rossa, Be himself and not try to be like others, some say to find what you do not like in your life to get an idea to find out what you do like or want in your life then.
Too many are told what will make them happy rather than trying to find this out for themselves. I think what makes people happy is finding their life’s purpose as people are social, they need to be amongst people and not being on FB etc but with people. Secondly, to feel that they have done something meaningful with their time as in work, hobbies etc instead of playing games or watching TV, THAT THERE IS SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR THE TIME THEY USED.
I think if it is gardening, hunting like fishing etc or being creative as in making things that this will make people happier. I think being busy and creative is the best medicine as it gets people from being focused on themselves and their problems and focused onto something different.
To be a man is to be masculine and to be enjoying who you are and what you can do and not to be led about like a dog on a leash by anyone or anything. So what do you think a man should be Rossa?
@ Michael. Unfortunately I am so un- pc in my thinking that I couldn’t possibly share my views on a public forum with my name attached. Primarily we are fathers, brothers and providers and for those of us gifted with natural ability or even inherited fortune we should expect more.
The key to life is to do onto others as you would like done onto you, that is a good start I suppose?
In the case of bullying talking about it can make it worse as bullies who get caught bullying try to control what was said about them by denying it and putting all the blame on their victim from being stupid, evil, an object of fun to being a bully themselves and accusing that person of doing the things the bullies did themselves in order to pass the blame. So you have to be careful who you tell as some bullies are sociopaths and they have friends…
They try to make light out of bullying and control the damage sometimes in order to keep on bullying. The motivation of bullies is control over their victim and their environment, if they can’t effect their victim then they try to control what others think of their victim because control over another person is control for them. If they can’t control their victim then they can control people around that victim, so they use others to satisfy their need for control but that is what sociopaths do. So many who are in such despair are victims of others or circumstances beyond them and that means they feel they have lost control and have become so focused in on their problems that in fact then they are their worst enemy then because they do not see the wider fuller picture as in those who love them, respect them or who like them. They forget or can’t see the options in front of them and they get into dark ways of thinking and feeling because they can’t step back and that is what bullies do to. Bullies are not happy unless they lower someone’s self esteem lower than their own as they live in slurry and try to grab people and drown them in the same slurry that they live in and their victims can’t see then that what others do and think says more about those saying or doing these things than it does about the victim as what people say and do is who and what they are and has nothing to do with facts or the truth but control and bitterness.
I think bullying in society is getting worse and it has to do with people who are angry, envious, wanting to be accepted by a group, who do not want to be bullied themselves so they join in on bullying. a way to proves ones own masculinity to others in order to feel that their manhood isn’t the size of a peanut and transferring anger in one part of their lives into another part by bullying.
I think the best way to defeat suicide is to let people know that they are loved and that their problems are bigger in their head than they are in reality as they can do and be whoever they want as problems are always temporary and it is better to live life and leave the bullies or problem when they live and that is normally in the cesspool that is who they are.
Good that people are reaching out but hoping they get the right support and information when they do.
Time that doctors and pharma companies stop lying to the public and misinformation people. The “chemical imbalance” theory is a myth. People get depressed for various reasons.
The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Harvard Professor Irving Kirsch ~
http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-New-Drugs-Antidepressant/dp/0465022006
Psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff – The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV1S5zw096U
{ Do not stop or change prescribed psychoactive drugs without talking to a good doctor, due to the dangers of withdrawal }
Something that helps is ASIST training (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) ~
http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/4/Mental_Health_Services/NOSP/Training/
http://www.yourmentalhealth.ie/Get-involved/News-events/Events/ ( Under select Period put the next 6 months )
We deserve informed consent about these mind altering drugs. According to medical journalist Robert Whitaker, in his book “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, anti-depressants can turn mild/moderate depression into a chronic, long term condition.
My experience on these drugs, which I unwittingly took for anxiety ~
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