President Obama told Israeli and other Middle East leaders that he is determined to stop weapons being smuggled into the Gaza Strip, where Hamas terrorists already have fired thousands of rockets and missiles into Israel, according to the Israel Project, a pro-Israel group.
A day after he was sworn in, Obama contacted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah of Jordan, according to the group.
Obama also named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, a veteran peace negotiator, to tackle the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The new U.S. president said he wishes to block the flow of arms to Hamas while working with the Palestinian Authority to help rebuild the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Democrat Obama’s initiative came just five days after then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at halting arms smuggling.
The MOU provides a roadmap for curbing the flow of arms.
Shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared a unilateral cease-fire, six European leaders gathered in Jerusalem to show their commitment to stop the arms smuggling into Gaza, the group noted.
The six leaders were British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, the group observed.
The EU is expected to join the effort to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza through tunnels.
Sarkozy suggested that France would provide monitors to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza and supply technology to help locate smuggling tunnels.
Merkel said arms smuggling into Gaza must be prevented and that Germany was ready to support both Israel and Egypt to stop arms smuggling.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier drafted a proposal for a five-step plan for the Gaza Strip starting with humanitarian aid (financing medicine, food, shelters and fuel). The second step includes activities against arms smuggling. The Department of Foreign Affairs wants Germany to lead the way on this issue as Germany has already come to an agreement with Egypt. A delegation of four experts from the Interior Ministry is expected to travel to Egypt within a short time in order to find out how to prevent arms smuggling through tunnels.
Brown said: “We are prepared to provide British naval support to stop arms trafficking. […] At the same time we’re prepared to provide European support for monitoring at the crossings.”
Berlusconi also expressed willingness to provide military personnel to fight arms smuggling into Gaza.
Despite Israeli Air Force attacks on the smuggling tunnels dug by militants on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, however, many tunnels were unharmed in Israeli air strikes, or tunnels have been rebuilt. Iran, which trains, arms and funds Hamas, has dismissed the international efforts to deny Hamas weapons.
Separately, Lanny Davis, an unpaid advisor and spokesman for The Israel Project, wrote that in any accord involving the Jewish state, Israel must have at a minimum the right to self-defense against terrorist attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah or others. His views are his own, and not necessarily those of the project. Davis is a former special counsel to President Clinton.
Davis said it is well that Obama and Clinton named Mitchell as a peace envoy.
But he said there is a double standard applied to Israel, where Hamas or Hezbollah can fire rockets and missiles that destroy buildings and maim or kill Israelis, but any response that Israel then makes must be “proportional.”
Rather, Israel, the United States and other nations have a right to respond when attacked, without being cosseted in their military actions, Davis argued.
Very simply, when Israel attempts the route of peace and peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, terrorists there respond by murdering Israelis, Davis stated.
“Israel withdrew from all its military forces from Gaza in 2005 and, since that withdrawal, Hamas launched more than 8,000 rockets intentionally aimed at civilians in Southern Israel,” Davis wrote. “Thus, every launched rocket aimed at civilians is a war crime. Yet few, if any, human rights groups or U.N. leaders since the Gaza intervention have called for Hamas to be tried for war crimes.”
However, when Israel recently entered Gaza and struck against the terrorists, then quickly withdrew, some critics complained that Israeli forces had far greater military force than the terrorists, saying there should be “proportionality” in an Israeli response.
“Hamas used civilians and civilian locations in Gaza — schools, hospitals, and residential complexes — as shields behind which they launched their terrorist rockets. That, too, is indisputably a war crime. Hezbollah did the same thing from Lebanon. Yet again, there is only silence about Hamas and Hezbollah being prosecuted for war crimes,” Davis stated.
Iran has sponsored terrorism in both southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah in 2006 fired countless rockets and missiles into Israel, and in the Gaza Strip, where Iran sends rockets and missiles that are smuggled from Egypt through tunnels into the strip.
“Iran funds and supplies terrorist weapons to both Hamas and Hezbollah,” Davis wrote. “Yet nations of Western Europe, many of which were the locations of recent street protests calling for prosecution of Israel for war crimes, have been active in trade and commerce with Iran, and seem strangely silent about criticizing Iran’s funding of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism.”
Davis also took issue with charges that Israeli forces, in their response to attacks, callously endanger civilian lives in the Gaza Strip.
“It is a documented fact that Israeli Defense Forces continually tried to prevent civilian casualties while still defending themselves from these terrorist attacks,” Davis wrote. “They sent tens of thousands of text messages and cellular phone calls to Gazans — to warn civilians to evacuate areas used by Hamas for launching rockets; they called off attacks when they saw Hamas pushing women and children up front as shields; and they used targeted weapons and ‘smart’ bombs to avoid civilian casualties as best as they could. Yet when the IDF’s weapons unintentionally caused civilian deaths, leaders of the United Nations and ‘human rights’ groups call for war crimes investigations. And there are few, if any, counter voices challenging the United Nations at least to be even-handed and demand war crimes investigations of Hamas and Hezbollah. (including the Secretary General, who has not been hesitant to criticize Israel but strangely silent about Hamas).
“Then there is the accusation that Israel committed war crimes by using ‘excessive’ force and causing ‘disproportionate’ civilian deaths compared to the number of Israelis who died due to Hamas rockets.”
No nation should have a hand tied behind its back in responding to an unprovoked attack, Davis argued.
“What would have been the reaction of most Americans (or most of the civilized world, for that matter) if someone had made the charge that the U.S. and its military forces were guilty of war crimes after Sept. 11, 2001, because, while bombing Al Qaeda and the Taliban government harboring them in Afghanistan, ‘excessive’ numbers of civilians were tragically but inadvertently killed — because the number killed exceeded the 3,000 people who died on 9/11?
“I suggest the reaction would have been, universally, ‘that is nuts.’
“Yet where is that universal reaction when the same charge of ‘excessive’ or ‘disproportional’ force is made against Israel in defending itself against Hamas and civilian deaths are unintentional too? Only silence, it seems.
“The double standard again.”