Sarcastically dismissing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as a 'noble ambition,' this week President George W. Bush blamed Hamas exclusively for the violence committed by the Israeli military that has left hundreds of noncombatants, including children, killed or wounded since Dec. 27th.
Further, Bush claimed that there could be no ceasefire unless Hamas stopped first and committed to an enduring ceasefire.
While other politicians and right-wing media sources like FOX News have echoed similar sentiments, this position seems to be shared less and less across the political spectrum.
Much media output about the Israeli invasion of Gaza has focused on the humanitarian crisis it has provoked there as well as the civilian death toll in balance with commentary on Israel's right's to self-defense. Humanitarian groups from within Gaza and Israel as well as around the world, such as Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Oxfam, have actually seen their voices paid attention to.
More and more, there is growing support for an immediate ceasefire and negotiated settlement. More and more media coverage has started to contextualize the actions of both sides. For example, numerous accounts of the events have reported that Gaza had been blockaded by Israeli forces with no one allowed to enter or leave for some time prior to the Dec. 27th attacks, a condition that has left Gazans without medical care, fuel sources, and in some cases food. That desperate situation has only deteriorated since the Israeli attacks began.
In a segment on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, for example, Hillary Mann Leverett, a former career State Department diplomat, reported that the Bush administration had effectively given the Israelis a 'green light' to launch these attacks.
After the ceasefire ended on Dec. 19th, 'The Bush administration actively discouraged the parties, particularly Israel, from renewing the ceasefire, because they didn't want to legitimate Hamas in any way,' she told Olbermann.
The Bush administration encouraged Israel to avoid negotiating a new ceasefire with Hamas that 'might become more lasting or enduring,' Mann Leverett argued.
Mann Leverett accused Bush of 'word trickery' for now, after international alarm at the numbers of civilian deaths, pretending to care about a ceasefire.
'A ceasefire was needed immediately,' she added. 'An immediate ceasefire was what was needed to get monitors in, to get peacekeepers in, to ease the blockade, to get humanitarian goods into the people of Gaza.'
But Mann Leverett didn't stop there. She called for a 'more lasting' effort as well.
'Something more lasting would not be a ceasefire,' she stated. 'That would be maybe an armistice or negotiations that lead to a resolution and settlement of the conflict. That would be enduring and lasting.'
Mann Leverett also pointed to the political difficulties Obama faces diplomatically in the Middle East as a result of this crisis green-lighted by the Bush administration.
She noted that when Obama takes office, in order to depart from Bush administration Middle East policies and boost US credibility in the region, he should signal support for Palestinian reconciliation. She argued that the US should accept a 'national unity government' in Palestine that includes Hamas.
Currently, the Bush administration has sought to play the two main factions in Palestine – Hamas and Fatah – against each other.
The analysis offered by Mann Leverett, imperfect as it may be, probably would not have made it into prime time cable news in another context. While the new sense of balance brought to the Middle East conflict story by the US media discourse will not immediately please supporters of the Palestinians as sufficient to tell the whole story or fully condemn Israel's actions, it is noticeably different than past media coverage of Israeli incursions in Palestinian territories which almost universally expressed unquestioning support for Israel's actions and downplayed Palestinian casualties.
What is the difference? Mainly, the extent of the humanitarian crisis as well as the disproportionate response by Israel to Hamas rockets have alarmed many people and governments around the world and caused them to pause before lending Israel their usual support.
There may, however, be another reason also. What about Oabma's silence? If he had spoken up earlier, it is quite likely that he would have been forced into the position of making knee-jerk statements that gave an unwarranted seal of approval on Bush's failed policies.
Isn't it possible that Obama's refusal to release a statement on the crisis has created a political space in which people who emphasize the humanitarian crisis caused by the blockade of Gaza prior to Dec. 27th and the subsequent invasion and the need for a more lasting settlement can speak up? Often these voices are sidelined as too critical of Israel and thus not objective.
Obama will be president on Jan. 20th and is certainly preparing to address the problems directly. And it will be, in part, up to the people in this country who are tired of a Middle East policy that puts Israel's security in perpetual jeopardy and that ignores the rights and interests of the Palestinian people to speak up and demand a change.
