Among the noise of the bombs and rockets, the silence of Obama

The silence of President-elect Barack Obama on the subject of Israel’s war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip is only partly out of deference to Bush who still is the country’s president for two more weeks. Whenever Obama does not want to respond to something the mantra of his advisers is always “the fact is that there is only one president …” and yet on December 26, 2008. Obama did not hesitate to state his opinions about the attacks in Mumbai. His team put out the following statement : “President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India. These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians…”
Sure the situations are vastly different. In India they were terrorists attacks. In Gaza the attacks are between two countries. But even when one does not condone the Hamas rocket attacks against Israelis, it does not take too much to see the ferocity of the Israeli attacks against the Palestinians. They could well be described as “coordinated attacks on innocent civilians”, the same words Obama’s team used describing the Mumbai attack.
Even if just the fatalities on both sides speak for themselves- more than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 100 civilians, according to United Nations figures. Nine Israelis have died since the operation began-the US government is still putting the blame squarely on Hamas and doing little to stop the carnage. It has been up to the EU, and mostly up to France, under the intense involvement of its president Sarkozy that a truce might materialize. According to an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, “Late on Tuesday, France and Egypt proposed an initiative to stop the conflict in Gaza with an immediate ceasefire. Details were not released, but the plan would begin with an immediate halt to the fighting to allow in aid followed by talks involving both Israel and Hamas”. Back in Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that both Israel and the Palestinian leadership in charge of the West Bank had accepted the truce proposal. Unclear in that statement is the response of Hamas. The world, after the images received from Gaza, is expecting this truce which could not wait until the 20th of January, after Obama’s inauguration. The US with its acceptance of Bush total support of Israel has made its image even worse if possible in the whole world, not just the Arab world.