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Has he said a word about this? Does he have a secret plan that will be enacted on January 20?

Israel did not seek approval from Washington before waging a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip ruled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), said U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday. "They didn't seek clearance or approval from us, certainly," the vice president said on CBS' Face The Nation on Sunday, his first public remark on Israel's military strikes targeted Hamas. Israel's ground troops, backed by gunships and tanks, on Saturday night launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip. Reports here quoted Palestinian security sources as saying that the troops have gained control of the eastern section of the northern...

The IDF is prepared to deepen and escalate its ground operations in the Gaza Strip, defense officials warned on Sunday, as the IDF split the Palestinian territory in half and began surrounding Gaza City. Hamas, the officials said, was encountering difficulties in commanding and delivering orders to its forces. St.- Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof, 22, from Givat Ze'ev and of the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion, was killed on Sunday from wounds he sustained in a mortar shell attack during clashes with Hamas terrorists near Jabalya. Another soldier was critically wounded in the attack. Earlier in the morning, 30 soldiers from Battalion 51...

President George W Bush, in his last fortnight in office, is providing Israel with the diplomatic support the country needs to continue its offensive in the Gaza Strip. Late on Saturday, America prevented the United Nations Security Council from passing a statement urging an immediate ceasefire on both sides and expressing deep concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas. Britain has moved away from America and joined the consensus of European governments, who favour a ceasefire. Deprived of Britain's support, America was isolated on the 15-member Council. Alejandro Wolff, the deputy US Ambassador at the UN, said...

IDF Soldiers In Gaza

(JTA) -- The United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. The Security Council met in a four-hour emergency session Saturday night just hours after Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza. It was the council's third meeting since the Gaza operation, dubbed Operation Cast Lead, began Dec. 27. The United States and Britain rejected a draft statement that had been submitted earlier by Libya, representing the Arab League, calling for an immediate cease-fire and expressing concern about Israel's operation. It made no mention of Hamas rocket attacks on...

Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighbouring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialists bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for America to mobilise a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond. But the kind of response matters. Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,000 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas's indiscriminate bombing of population...

For pacifists who believe that all wars are immoral, Israel's self-defense operation against Hamas in Gaza is necessarily wrong. To such people we invoke the 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Confronted by a movement that amalgamates fascism with religious extremism and a genocidal platform, our moral imperative demands Jewish self-defense. Few of the voices slamming Israel for conducting an "immoral" war in Gaza are those of pacifists. Take Riyad Mansour, Mahmoud Abbas's man at the UN. He claimed on CNN that "3,000 Palestinians had been killed...

Undoubtedly, Operation Cast Lead entails loss of life — as has every other military operation since the dawn of history. The United States itself has been engaged for almost six years in military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan that have surely taken their toll in blood. President Bush has not been amenable to ceasefires and “monitoring mechanisms” as ways of dealing with Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. The latest on Hamas, no less vicious than those groups, is that it spent the weekend murdering 35 Palestinians after breaking the legs or hands of 75 others over the course of...

BEIRUT — President-elect Barack Obama's silence on the weeklong conflict in Gaza is drawing criticism among Arabs who have grown skeptical about hopes that his administration will break with the Mideast policies of the Bush era. Obama has made no statements, either about Israel's bombing of Gaza or Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel. Arab commentators maintain that Obama did comment on foreign affairs when he condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. They suggest that his refusal to speak out on Gaza — where more than 400 Palestinians have died in the Israeli airstrikes, compared to four Israeli deaths from the...

A week of aerial bombardment of Gaza left no doubt about Israel's ability to inflict serious physical damage to the Hamas leadership and its arsenals of weaponry. On Thursday, militant Hamas leader Nizar Rayan - who reportedly once sent his own son on a suicide mission that left two Israelis dead - was killed when a one-ton bomb crashed into his home, also claiming the lives of four of his wives and 11 of his children. On Friday, Israel bombed the homes of a dozen more Hamas operatives and leveled a mosque that was believed to be a weapons storage...

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Israel did not seek U.S. approval before a ground invasion against Hamas, the bloodiest Mideast clash in years now escalating into urban warfare. From the White House to Capitol Hill, U.S. officials remained firmly behind Israel. They urged a cease-fire, but put the onus on Hamas, as Israeli troops and tanks cut through the coastal Gaza strip. U.S. lawmakers defended Israel's ground incursion as a justifiable response to Hamas rocket fire on Israel. Cheney said Israel "didn't seek clearance or approval from us, certainly" before thousands of soldiers pushed into Gaza...

Israel has confirmed the first death of a soldier in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. The army says the soldier was killed by mortar fire earlier today in northern Gaza. The confirmation comes as explosions continue to pound the Strip as Israeli forces push further into the Hamas-run territory after launching a ground assault overnight.

The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a Security Council statement calling for an immediate Israeli-Hamas cease-fire in Gaza and southern Israel and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence. US deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States saw no prospect of Hamas abiding by last week's council call for an immediate end to the violence. Therefore, he said, a new statement at this time "would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council." France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the current council president, announced that there was...

The government's decision on Friday to approve a major ground incursion into the Gaza Strip came as diplomatic efforts aimed at putting together a cease-fire that would end the rocket fire on Israel and arms smuggling into Gaza failed to come to fruition. Intensive diplomatic efforts led by US President George W. Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Egypt did not succeed in putting a proposal on the table that Israel was satisfied with. The cabinet on Sunday will hear both security and diplomatic briefings regarding Operation Cast Lead, as Saturday...

Israel entered the second week of its offensive against rockets from Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday evening by launching a much-expected ground operation into the coastal strip.

The U.S. has been engaged in intensive efforts with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to formulate a framework for an agreement to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and to reach a stable and long-term ceasefire. However, according to senior diplomats, the American initiative has not yet reached a formula that addresses Israel's terms, and which Hamas is also ready to accept. Diplomats in Jerusalem did say the existing draft includes components that would probably also feature in a future agreement if such an agreement is reached. On Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to visit Israel. Paris...

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Ban telephoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council Saturday night and said he was disappointed that Israel launched a ground offensive and "alarmed that this escalation will inevitably increase the already heavy suffering" of Palestinian civilians, the UN spokesman's office said in a statement.

Jan 03, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- GAZA, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Israeli ground troops forged into Gaza with bulldozers, tanks and armored vehicles Saturday evening, as the military vowed to destroy Hamas' infrastructure. Defense Minister Ehud Barak predicted a long conflict as he announced the ground campaign, CNN reported. But he said the country could not abandon Israelis living in areas bordering Gaza. "This will not be short, this will not be easy," he said. "I don't wish to delude anyone. And the coming days will be difficult also for the residents of the south. We have bitten our...

More than a thousand people demonstrated against the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Saturday evening. In response, about 600 activists gathered in the same place to show support for the army and for residents of the South. Witnesses told The Jerusalem Post that many of those demonstrating against the operation wore keffiyehs and waved combined Israeli and Palestinian flags.