“We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians," said President Barack Obama Sunday, Nov. 18 in Bangkok. "And we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
The US president said, “there is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”
Obama giveth ...... and Obama taketh away. And while Obama made some good, supportive statements yesterday about Israel's right to defend itself against a rain of rockets, you just knew there was a but coming.
Here it is. And BTW, Obama has no right to tell any sovereign nation how to best defend their citizens against jihadists and abject terror.
Israeli leaders re-examine Gaza ground operation under strong Obama pressure Debka, November 18, 2012 (thanks to Van)
Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman conferred urgently Sunday night, Nov. 18 – Day 5 of the Gaza offensive – on how to respond to US President Barack Obama’s insistent demand that they delay a major IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
debkafile’s sources disclose that when Obama spoke to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi Friday, Nov. 16 - after receiving an update from Netanyahu - he gave him a 48-hour window for talking Hamas around to a ceasefire.
Not only has the Egyptian president failed in this task, his bid made matters worse: Hamas understood the US president was leaning hard on Israel to refrain from sending troops into the Gaza Strip and took advantage of the respite to redouble its missile barrage on a dozen Israeli locations in the last three days, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Following his talks with Morsi and Netanyahu, Obama referred in Bangkok Sunday to “the next 24, 36, 48 hours as crucial; Israel responded to his request to send two senior envoys to Cairo – a high-ranking military officer and an intelligence official - take part in the ceasefire negotiations.However, Hamas turned down all the truce proposals on the table, leaving Israel with three options:
1. To delay the ground action until Wednesday although it was poised to go forward Sunday night - even though the US president may be expected to stand by his objections then too;
2. To go ahead and launch the ground stage of the military offensive over those objections; or
3. To conduct a series of ground sorties inside the Gaza Strip to test the ground there without delay.debkafile reported earlier Sunday:
“We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians," said President Barack Obama Sunday, Nov. 18 in Bangkok. "And we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Speaking at a joint conference with Thai Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the US president said, “there is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” If that can be stopped “without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable, not just for the people of Gaza. It’s preferable for the Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they are much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”
He went on to say after talking to would-mediators in Cairo, “if we’re serious about wanting to resolve this situation and create a genuine peace process, it starts with no more missiles being fired into Israel’s territory and that then gives us the space to try and deal with these long-standing conflicts that exist.”
“We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours, but what I’ve said to [Egyptian] President Morsi and [Turkish] Prime Minister Erdogan is that those who champion the cause of the Palestinians should recognize that if we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza than the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future.”
The US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro joined Defense Minister Ehud Barak on a visit to an Iron Dome battery Sunday shortly before he flies out to brief the White House on the Gaza crisis.Barak thanked President Obama and all those Americans who past and present contributed to the financing and development of the Iron Dome missile interception system. This defensive weapon has intercepted a total of 300 incoming Palestinian missiles, nearly 90 percent of the rockets threatening Israeli towns, he said. Its performance “made it possible for us to prepare the next stages of Operation Pillar of Cloud which may be even tougher. There is no better symbol of the close US-Israeli military cooperation.
debkafile reported earlier Sunday: Israeli air and naval forces launched heavy assaults in Gaza before dawn Sunday, Nov. 18 – Day 5 of the IDF’s Gaza operation - after daylong bargaining Saturday among Washington, Jerusalem, Cairo and Gaza, failed to produce an Israel-Hamas truce accord. When Egyptian and Turkish middlemen suggested a ceasefire was close, Israel accused them of pushing Hamas’s terms which were fashioned to present the Palestinian radicals as the victor in the contest. The trio leading the Israeli war, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, countered by intensifying the IDF’s Gaza offensive – though not as yet sending ground troops in.
A Western source said it would take some days to determine if a ceasefire was feasible.
Egyptian intelligence meanwhile smuggled Hamas Prime Minister Islmail Haniyeh out of Gaza and over to El Arish in northern Sinai in the convoy of visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafiq Abdessalem when he departed Gaza Saturday, debkafile reports.
