Ban Ki-moon today voiced his regret that Israel has launched a ground offensive against Gaza, despite calls for restraint, and stressed that there can be no military solution to the conflict which flared up over a week ago.
Each side increases its amount of violence in response to the other.
He voiced support for international efforts, led by Egypt, for a sustainable ceasefire, and expressed hope that today’s humanitarian pause can lead to a “more durable calm.”
But the latest round of fighting appears to have given Israel the upper hand in a conflict that has already outlasted all expectations and is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.
Israel’s advantage has never looked more lopsided. In contrast to the earlier phase of the war, Israel this week deployed its extensive intelligence capabilities and overwhelming firepower in targeted bombings with limited civilian casualties less likely to raise the world’s ire.
“There’s a longstanding conventional wisdom that Israel doesn’t do well in wars of attrition,” said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli historian and a former ambassador to the United States. “That overlooks a broader historical view that Israel’s entire existence has been a war of attrition, and we’ve won that war.”
Even more significant would be the death of Mohammed Deif, the shadowy figure who has survived several previous Israeli assassination attempts with severe injuries and was the target of Tuesday night’s attack. Mr. Deif’s fate remained unknown Thursday, though the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Sara, was recovered from the rubble of the Gaza City home where five one-ton bombs also killed Mr. Deif’s wife, baby son and at least three others.
Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli chief of military intelligence, called the killing of Mr. Deif’s three deputies “a very important operational achievement” and said that if Mr. Deif also turns up dead, “this will badly hurt Hamas’s military wing.”
“We’re now going to a war of attrition that was a threat of Hamas. Israel basically turned it upside down and said, ‘You want attrition? You are welcome. You lost your strategic military tools against Israel. Our firepower and our intelligence and our capability to sustain more days is much bigger than yours.’ This is the strategy.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 60 people since the collapse on Tuesday of cease-fire negotiations in Cairo and the resumption of violence after nearly nine days of quiet, bringing the Palestinian death toll in the operation that began July 8 close to 2,100.
As the conflict grinds on, Israelis see time as on their side. Experts estimate that Hamas began the summer with a stockpile of about 10,000 rockets. It has fired nearly 4,000, according to the Israeli military, which says it has taken out at least 3,000 more. So it cannot keep launching at this pace for long.
With Israel and the Palestinians apparently still far apart on terms for a durable truce, analysts suggested settling in for days or even weeks more of cross-border air exchanges, after what is already the longest Israeli military operation in decades. Diplomatic pressure appeared to be easing, if only because the world’s attention seems focused on other crises including the rise of Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, the Ebola outbreak in Africa and civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
Look at how other events around the world impact this major conflict.
Israel has much vaster resources, though its politicians and people are increasingly fractured over the prosecution of the campaign. There are growing calls for a more aggressive ground invasion, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted, and intense opposition to the idea of making concessions in a cease-fire agreement that might seem to reward Hamas.
In Gaza, time is a liability. The number of displaced residents seeking shelter in United Nations schools swelled to nearly 300,000 as the violence resumed; officials have already given up any hope of classes starting Sunday as planned.
“Israel can play that game for a long time, certainly longer than Hamas can. That’s true on a purely military level, but the fact is, as the war drags on, it’s going to be harder and harder for Netanyahu not to do one of those two things.”
When Sergeant Shalit was exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011 after Hamas held him in captivity for five years, it was Mr. Attar seen in a video ushering him from a pickup truck. Mr. Abu Shamalah, the Israeli military said, was also involved in a 2004 tunnel attack that killed six soldiers, and the 1994 murder of an Israeli officer in Rafah.
In the Rafah refugee camp, a friend of Mr. Abu Shamalah’s said he had last seen him at the onset of the war, with Mr. Attar, and that he had said then he hoped to be a martyr.
President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will continue to meet on a bi-weekly basis to follow up the negotiations in order to offer all necessary assistance for their advancement.
The parties also commit to immediately implement their respective obligations under the performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian
The three months of increasingly intense fighting between pro-Kiev forces and eastern separatists have unleashed both sides' worst instincts and demonstrated their high tolerance for loss of civilian life.
Notice the language here. "pro-Kiev forces" not Ukrainian forces. Also, "eastern separatists"
These developments exclude any recovery of Ukrainian statehood, even in its dysfunctional post-Soviet form. The Ukrainian state, as it emerged after the Soviet dissolution, is finished.
And as Ukraine's conflict grows deeper, the reputation of the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of the international system has yet again suffered. As with Iraq, Ukraine is a case of a violent disintegration, and there is not much Washington can do about that.
But the potential economic effects of the likely Ukrainian collapse will be devastating on Russia, even if Moscow manages to not get involved in a direct military confrontation with Kiev. The deeper Ukraine moves into a civil war, the more costly it will ultimately be for Russia to rebuild what is left of Ukraine's eastern regions. As Ukraine's largest neighbor and the international supporter of the eastern fighters, Russia won't be able to step aside.
f the international community summons the will to pressure Kiev, Moscow can be helpful in pressuring Donetsk and Luhansk to negotiate a cease-fire.
Andrei Tsygankov is professor of international relations and political science at San Francisco State University. His forthcoming book is "The Strong State in Russia: Development and Crisis" (Oxford, 2014).
foreign policy is now being driven substantially by health to protect national security, free trade and economic advancement.
he United Kingdom is attempting to establish policy coherence with the development of a central governmental global health strategy based on health as a human right and global public good.
Switzerland has prioritized health in foreign policy by emphasizing policy coherence through mapping global health across all government sectors.3 Through the Departments of Interior (Public Health) and Foreign Affairs, an agreement on the objectives of international health policy was submitted to the Swiss Federal Council to assure coordinated development assistance, trade policies and national health policies that serve global health.
Today, Brazilian diplomats serve key roles in health and other ministries to assure policy coherence across the government; they have also provided leadership in key multinational health negotiations such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) is an international partnership to strengthen health preparedness and response globally to biological, chemical, radio-nuclear and pandemic influenza threats.
he interface between trade and health is, in fact, on the cutting edge of health diplomacy. Health professionals need to understand this interaction to assure rational trade agreements, informed by health needs and supported through progressive foreign policy.6
It may not matter which takes preference, but it is clear that the growing concern for multilateral cooperation on critical global health problems requires purposeful engagement in learning across these two sectors. In addition, there is a need to include nongovernmental actors, philanthropy and the private sector in this exciting new field of study.
Global health diplomacy brings together the disciplines of public health, international affairs, management, law and economics and focuses on negotiations that shape and manage the global policy environment for health. The relationship between health, foreign policy and trade is at the cutting edge of global health diplomacy.