Vows of revenge and liberation

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency Sunday morning highlights the latest Israeli air strikes in various neighborhoods and refugee camps in Gaza. The agency quotes the Palestinian Head of Rescue Services: “The death toll of the attacks ever since Friday has risen to 15 after the last wave of Israeli bombings; the casualties were mostly people in their 20s.”

The agency then gives its account from the Saturday funeral of Friday’s casualties: “The bodies of the members of the Islamic Jihad were moved from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, and were brought to the street via a funeral precession, during which calls for retribution were heard amongst the bereaved.”

The agency reports on the Arab League’s response to the attacks via a press release issued after a Saturday meeting: “The league denounces this escalation in Israeli hostilities toward the besieged Gaza, and calls upon the international community to exert pressure over Israel to bring an end to this recent rise in aggression.”

Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the London-based Palestinian daily, on its part, offers a more in-depth account of the reactions to the current escalation.

First, the publication highlights a press release issued by Islamic Jihad’s military wing: “The blood of the saints will not be shed in vein; a curse will follow the occupier wherever it goes… This attack will only serve to galvanize the resistance until we achieve complete liberation of the Palestinian grounds from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan.”

The paper then offers an Israeli response, presented to indicate a disproportionality in Israel’s exercise of power: “A speaker on behalf of the Israeli military explained that the attack (in which the Islamic Jihad members were killed) came in response to two missile launchings from Gaza which fell in an open field in southern Israel without resulting in any deaths, injuries, or property damage.”

Al-Quds Al-Arabi finishes with its own analysis of the current situation in Gaza: “Despite the fact that Hamas still maintains a tactical truce with Israel, there are still other Palestinian factions that are adamant to launch missiles towards Israel, and the Israeli response to these launches mostly seems to be these air strikes on the Gaza Strip.”

Why an Israeli attack right now?

Al-Quds, the East-Jerusalem daily, features an article on the front page in which it speculates about the rationale for the timing of the Israeli attack in Gaza. “Sporadic rocket launches from the Gaza Strip (at Israel) were not a thing out of the norm,” comments the publication, “and yet Israel was always measured in its response until the last few days when it launched a series of extensive strikes on multiple targets in the Strip.”

Rather than Israel’s stated reason for striking at Popular Resistance Committees head Zuhair al-Qaissi, because he was ostensibly about to orchestrate a repeat of the August infiltration north of Eilat in which eight Israelis were killed, the paper asserts that the attack was linked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to the States: “It is clear that Netanyahu got a rejection from the American government on the matter of his plea for American support of a military strike in Iran.”

This rejection, the paper claims, led to two results: “To offset the failure, Netanyahu opted to operate in the area where he knew he would not incur major opposition from the Americans – the Gaza Strip.”

The rationale, Al-Quds claims, can also be traced to an inner-Israeli consideration: “Since Netanyahu didn’t want to be painted as weak due to his defeat abroad, he had to exert power back home to keep his popularity in Israel intact.”

Al-Hayat reviews diplomatic strategy in Syria

The London-based pan-Arab publication Al-Hayat offers in its Sunday edition a review of diplomatic efforts in Syria and within the Arab League.

On the Syrian front, the paper covers the first in a series of meetings between Assad and UN envoy and former secretary-general Kofi Annan: “Annan stressed the importance of bringing forth a peaceful solution as well as a swift end to the acts of violence. In the discussion, Annan offered a few suggestions – most notably allowing entry to the Red Cross, simultaneously to embarking upon direct negotiations with members of the opposition to end the clashes.”

But Assad remained resistant to Annan’s suggestions and suspicious of foreign influences, arguing that “It is quite impossible to sit down for direct negotiations with the members of the opposition so long as terrorist organizations continue to roam free on Syrian grounds.” He added: “I am interested in a solution that will allow us to solve this conflict internally without external foreign intervention.”

As far as the Arab League goes, Al-Hayat reports on the results of the joint meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “Lavrov defended his country’s position on the Syrian strife, much to the chagrin of the Arab League, represented by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Faisal, who was looking for a more proactive approach.”

The paper comments that Faisal did find a silver lining in a concrete agreement which was struck with Lavrov specifying that “both parties will call for Assad to hand over power to his deputy – a major development in Faisal’s eyes.”