Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boards a plane in Israel on Sunday ahead of his Washington visit.

Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an immediate resumption of peace talks with Palestinians Monday before meeting with President Barack Obama.

"My goal is to achieve a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians and soon," Netanyahu said in a speech to the Jewish Federations of North America. “I say to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority: Let us seize the moment to reach an historic agreement, let us begin talks immediately,”

Netanyahu said he would work for a lasting peace with the Palestinians, promising "great concessions" as long as they don't compromise Israel's security.

“With the support of the United States, peace can become a reality,” Netanyahu said, hours meeting with President Obama to discuss the peace process and Iran's nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just returned from the Middle East, where she failed to persuade President Abbas to resume talks with Israel until it agrees to a complete freeze of settlement construction.

Clinton angered Palestinians and Arabs when she praised Israel's agreement to limit settlement-building as "unprecedented." She later clarified that the United States "does not accept the legitimacy" of building Israeli housing on occupied Palestinian land.

In his remarks Netanyahu pledged more steps to improve economic conditions in the Palestinian areas, but made no new proposals on curbing settlement construction.

Netanyahu is also expected to discuss with President Obama as well as a United Nations report that accuses Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip, of committing possible war crimes during an Israeli offensive earlier this year.

Calling the report "twisted," Netanyahu thanked Obama for opposing the report, which he claimed deprives Israel “of our right to defend ourselves.”

During his remarks police removed a protester who stood up and shouted: “Shame on you! Peace for Israel and Gaza!” Netanyahu joked that he received a better reception at the United Nations, where he spoke in September.

Obama with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas two months ago.

Aaron David Miller
Special to CNN

When Barack Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize next month in Oslo, Norway, one thing seems clear: It won't be in recognition of his skill in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace.

For much of the past year, the administration has wandered around the not-so-Holy Land without clear direction, an accurate understanding of Israelis and Palestinians, or an effective strategy.

But all is not lost. The past 10 months could be, to use the president's words, a teachable moment, and with the right lessons learned, maybe, just maybe, the president could get back on track.

The lessons:

Keep your enthusiasm under control: In January, President Obama came out harder, faster and louder on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking than any of his predecessors. The speech in Cairo, Egypt, and his ultimatum to the Israelis on freezing settlements seemed to suggest that this president was going to be tough and fair. No more business as usual.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the political laws of gravity that make getting anything done on Arab-Israeli diplomacy very hard kicked in, dragging down the president's hopes and words.

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Benjamin Netanyahu, left, President Obama and Mahmoud Abbas.

Fawaz A. Gerges
CNN

Poor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas! He returned to Palestine empty-handed and politically weakened after the tripartite summit this week with President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The New York summit yielded no signs of a breakthrough either on freezing construction of Jewish settlements or restarting the long-stalled Palestinian-Israeli talks.

By laying equal blame on the Palestinians and Israelis for the diplomatic stalemate, Obama undermined Abbas' position at home and exposed his weakness and overdependence on the Americans.

It is important to understand the context of Abbas' initial reluctance to attend the tripartite summit in New York. He swallowed his pride and accepted Obama's invitation to meet with Netanyahu, even though he had set a precondition of a settlement freeze, as the U.S. demanded, before agreeing to meet Netanyahu.

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President Obama addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.

Bill Richardson
CNN

President Obama, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, announced the next phase in America's efforts to finally end the decades-long Israeli-Arab conflict and remove one of the greatest destabilizing elements to America's national security interests from the Middle East playing field.

Like health care reform, this is a daunting task, and in order for the president to be the last one confronting this, Congress and Americans of all stripes should be supporting him.

The president made it clear that the United States wants permanent status negotiations to begin without preconditions based on the parameters from past negotiations: security for Israel and Palestine, refugees, borders and Jerusalem. The president added that the United States seeks peace agreements on all fronts, including with Syria and Lebanon.

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Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer

Prodding Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart talks aimed at a permanent resolution of their decades-old conflict, President Barack Obama dropped a US demand for an Israeli settlement freeze, US, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

“Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward," Obama told reporters before a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that is necessary to achieve our goals."

Obama met first met separately with Netanyahu and Abbas on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in what he called "frank and productive" talks. The session was the first among the three leaders since Obama took office in January.

George Mitchell, Obama’s envoy for the Middle East, attended Tuesday’s talks. He said the talks were "at all times cordial," but "direct" and sometimes "blunt."

Obama told Abbas and Netanyahu that, "The only reason to hold public office is to get things done," and that everyone "must take risks for peace,"

Mitchell said.

Mitchell told reporters the US is “not identifying any issue as being a precondition or an impediment to negotiation.”

But the United States and Israel have publicly disagreed on Israeli plans to build more housing on land the Palestinians regard as theirs. Obama administration demands for a complete freeze have been ignored by the Netanyahu government.

Abbas has so far rejected resuming talks with Israel until the Jewish state halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank and in

Predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem. Arab states also have balked at the US request to take confidence building measures toward Israel until Israel freezes settlement construction.

Sitting with Netanyahu and Abbas, Obama softened his regular language on a settlement “freeze,” saying that Israel has had meaningful discussions about “restraining” settlement activity.

“But they need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues," he said.

“Obama told Abbas that he couldn’t get the settlement freeze and promised to keep trying, but that it shouldn’t be a condition for talks and it was time to move on,” one Palestinian aide to Abbas said.

Several US officials said that President Obama told Abbas that although the US believe a settlement freeze would create a better atmosphere for talks to begin, the lack of one should not be used an as excuse not to talk.

“Let’s not have the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Obama told Abbas, according to the officials.

“It’s been apparent for some time that the Israelis were going to fall short of what is necessary on the settlement freeze,” one senior US official said. “But our view is let’s get to negotiations and settlements will be addressed within those final status issues”

US and Israel have been negotiating a settlement freeze for several months. The Obama administration demanded a complete settlement freeze but Israel would only agree to a freeze limited in time and scope.

A senior Israeli diplomat said Israel agreed to not building any new settlements, no outward expansion of existing growth and to only build for “natural” growth within existing settlements. He said Israel also agreed not to encourage Israelis to move to settlements, which would increase the population.

“A complete settlement freeze wasn’t physically or politically possible, especially in the absence of any Arab or Palestinian concessions,” the Israeli diplomat said. “There was a time the gaps had significantly narrowed, but now they were starting to widen. The administration recognized, rather than have them widen further, we should start negotiating.”

The Palestinian aide to Abbas said President Obama’s failure to secure a settlement freeze has weakened him in the eyes of the Palestinian delegation, because it casts doubt on his ability to move Israel during final status negotiations. The aide said that while Abbas would continue to push for a complete freeze, the Palestinian leader understands it likely will not happen and will begin “climb down” from his insistence for one before talks can resume.

The Palestinians did win an important point, however, with Obama making clear that the peace talks would not start from scratch, which Netanyahu had favored. Rather the talks would take into account progress made in previous negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the sources said.

The Israeli diplomat said that Israel would “take into account” the previous negotiations, but stressed his country’s longstanding position that “nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

Obama also addressed Abbas' desire to have the terms for negotiations more clearly defined, asking Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to come to Washington next week for further talks.

Next week’s talks, to be led by George Mitchell, will center on what issues will be addressed at negotiations, which will present the US with its next big challenge. Palestinians want negotiations to resolve the “final status” issues of the conflict, such as borders, Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Israel wants to begin with talks on a “provisional” Palestinian state.

President Obama's is the latest in a long line of U.S. administrations to press for a settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian population in territories it has occupied since the 1967 Mideast war. Recent hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks have dimmed despite Mitchell's diplomatic efforts.

But Obama told reporters that talks on a permanent resolution of the conflict, including the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, "must begin and begin soon."

"My message to these two leaders is clear: Despite all the obstacles, despite all the history, despite all the mistrust, we have to find a way forward," he said. "We have to summon the will to break the deadlock that has trapped generations of Israelis and Palestinians in an endless cycle of conflict and suffering. We cannot continue the same pattern of taking tentative steps forward, and then stepping back."

Program Note: Watch Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish's interview TONIGHT on AC360° 11p ET

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish
Daughters for Life

Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish came to the world's attention during the recent offensive in the Gaza Strip, when the respected obstetrician, holed up with his family in their home, gave daily interviews from the battle zone on Israeli television and radio.

Then, on Jan. 16, the last day of the offensive, Israeli fire killed three of his daughters. "My God, my girls," Abuelaish wailed that night on Israeli television, decrying the loss of Bessan, 20, Mayar, 15, and Aya, 14, as well as his niece, Nur Abuelaish, 17. Now he is trying to use his fluent Hebrew and English - and his pain - to appeal for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. What follows is an edited transcript of an interview he did with The Times' Marjorie Miller.

I had returned home on Dec. 25 from Tel Hashomer, the hospital where I work in Israel. That day, they had opened the border for humanitarian aid for the first time in more than a month, which made me realize something bad would happen. At 10 a.m. on the 26th, the airstrikes started.

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Editor's Note: A foundation, with an international mandate, is being established to provide leadership development and educational access to women throughout the middle-east. The foundation honors the memory of Dr. Abuelaish's daughters and serve as a living legacy. For more, check  Daughters for Life 

Program Note: Tune in tomorrow for more on Izzeldin's story in 'Generation Islam,' as Christiane Amanpour reveals the struggle for hearts and minds of the next generation of Muslims. Tomorrow 9 p.m. ET.

A building damaged by an airstrike in the southern Gaza strip during the conflict in January.

Isabel Maxwell
Israel Insider

Back at the end of October last, I was in Tel Aviv at the international conference celebrating the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Peres Center for Peace activities, which I attended in my capacity as a member of the Board of Governors. There were 40 international guests including many Palestinians and Palestinian students too, who were highly participatory and I felt encouraged for the first time since the Lebanon War of the summer before.

Little did I know then that within three short months, Israel would plunge into Gaza, and that I would become a telephone witness to the unspeakable tragedy of one recently widowed Gazan doctor, whom I had befriended 10 years before when he was a resident at Soroka Hospital and I was receiving an award from there and getting involved with helping fundraise for the hospital.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish with the author, Isabel Maxwell, taken at UCLA in April earlier this year.

By now most of the readers of this column will know the public story: the doctor from Jabalaya who was trained by Israel and treated Israelis and Palestinians alike at Soroka Hospital. A peace activist, whose three daughters of his eight children, were horrifically killed last Friday when his house was bombed during an exchange of fire between an Israeli tank and Hamas. There was Bisan, aged 20 who had taken over her mother’s role and was also a student – she had been thrown from a bed to the floor. Mayar, 15, and Aya, 14, were also dead, along with Noor, a 17-year-old cousin. Shatha, 17, who was badly wounded in the eye, was a straight-A student, and another niece was badly wounded too.

I have decided to repeat here something of my private conversations with Izzeldin, to testify to the ‘WYSIWYG’ of the man – What You See IS What You Get – his outlook from the time of Soroka many years before, till now, had strengthened if anything. We talked at length about the special responsibility he had, as an international spokesperson for his country and as a bridge for peace through medicine. I would telephone him on his cell phone in Gaza and his streams of conversation and my questions and expressions were punctuated throughout by the heavy noises of gunfire and bombs and artillery – for me, a most surreal and uncomfortable experience.

Here I was, looking out at the blue Pacific Ocean with the little white sails of boats skimming along in the distance, and the sun beaming in the sky, while 10,000 miles away my friend has not left his home in 19 days and lives in total fear of it being reduced to rubble at any moment. At one particularly loud explosion, I said in alarm, “Izzeldin!!! I’m so worried for you! Please! What is happening?!”

“Isabel! The house is shaking! The whole house is shaking! So close!!”

“Izzeldin! I don’t think you should be speaking on the phone any more! Please go and be with your children!” He told me that his brother was there and it was OK and he wanted to go on talking. I got the impression it somehow helped him to be talking to the outside world…….and so I kept going….We talked about his children, about his poor dead wife, and how she had died….about his dreams for the future…..

His streams of consciousness were of this nature – he would say things like:

“Isabel, I know, I know so much I have the responsibility for building bridge to peace. All my life I have worked for peace I been all over the world, in Israel, in Canada, in Afghanistan, in in Germany, in England, all these places I have been and you know me, Isabel, I love my work, I love helping people for the peace, my children I want them to know a better world, I want my people to know a better world. The tunnels are no way for a people to live! It is disgusting. They are Mafia who control those tunnels. The Leadership is no good, no good! I stood for Parliament as an independent and you know I got 6,000 votes in my area. I was very popular in my area – the people they know me well, they know what I do. I love Gaza, I love my people. They deserve better” Come to Gaza, it’s nice here, when things are better, you come.” When the fighting has died down I am dying to take my camera outside and take pictures of my house….. “

But the last comment I heard before his life changed for ever, was one of such simplicity and so human -

Isabel. You know what I want most right now? I want to take a shower.

“Izzeldin, take good, good care, we are working so hard on getting you and your children out.”

“God willing, Isabel, we will make it through. “

“Yes, yes, I’ll talk to you tomorrow…”

When I woke up in the morning of the 16th, my thoughts turned immediately to Israel and my friend in Gaza…. I opened up my email anxiously as I have done for the past three weeks, and the worse news hit me. My friend Moshe emailed me from Jerusalem to inform me that he had seen the tragedy of Izzeldin played out on Israeli TV – HORRIFIED, I tried to call Izzeldin, hoping against hope it was a mistake. His phone answers and all hell breaks loose on the line. Sirens are blaring, his voice is horribly strained and different.

“Who’s this? Who’s this?”

“Izzeldin, I raise my voice into the phone speaker, “It’s me Isabel, ISABEL”–

“AAAARGH ALLAH ALLAH, THEY KILLED MY CHILDREN, MY CHILDREN!!!

Why? Why? What did my children do to deserve this? What did I do? ALL MY LIFE I WORK FOR PEACE Allah Allah . Isabel, tell me! What did I do, what did we do?? AH!!!

I’m devastated at this torrent of anguish and grief and shock that is pouring down the phone into my ear. I’m destroyed for him and to be speaking to him at such a traumatic moment, is beyond heart-breaking –

“Izzeldin! I’m sooooooo SORRRRRRRY, soooooooo SORRRRRY…..
I have to raise my voice – “WHERE ARE YOU ? WHERE ARE YOU ?
WHO IS WITH YOU ?

“I’m in the ambulance, ambulance, ah Sala!!!!!! My daughter my daughter.” “Where are the others? Where are your other children?!”

He does not answer, but cries out in great gasps and gags -

“THEY KNEW MY HOUSE THEY KNEW ME I AM GIVING INTERVIEWS ALL THE TIME TO THE ISRAELIS. OH MY GOD. ALLAH , ALLAH AAAAAAGH”

Suddenly, the ambulance sirens blare very, very loudly and Izzeldin starts: “I ahhh” . Then the phone clicks off.

One man’s life and his whole family, changed in the flash of a bomb, the blink of an eye, the horrors of war…… an unwanted symbol of all that is terrible in this enduring conflict – and yet, in his extreme grace since the tragedy, for I have spoken with him since, a beacon of hope for new leadership in Gaza.

Whether one is Israeli, Palestinian or an international citizen who believes that the only way out of such a conflict is to once and for all achieve a peaceful agreement between these two States – Israel and Palestine, one thing is clear to me: Israel and Hamas owe this man and all civilians who have lost dear ones in this war the deepest regrets and apologies for what this conflict has perpetrated on the innocent.

May the Obama administration actions enable the Cease Fire to hold in Gaza so that not one more child will die in vain and new seeds of hope can actually be planted and grow to maturity at last in the memory of Izzeldin’s dear children and all the children who have died so needlessly in this unspeakably sad conflict. AMEN.

Program Note: To learn more about Dr. Abuelaish and his foundation, visit http://www.daughtersforlife.com/. For more ways to make a difference, visit Impact Your World.

Editor's Note: Isabel Maxwell is a peace activist and international business consultant. Find more of the story here.

Julian E. Zelizer and Melissa Lerner
Special to CNN

At a time when the Obama administration is dealing with a barely stable economy while trying to address long-term health care, two wars, the environment and the threat of terrorism, many ask whether it is wise for President Obama to try to resolve a problem that has frustrated so many presidents before him.

With the latest events in Iran, there is even more reason for skepticism that progress towards Arab-Israeli peace is possible.

Despite conventional wisdom, when presidents have become personally active in shaping American policy in the region and resolved to make the Mideast conflict a top priority, they've often succeeded in improving Arab-Israeli relations.

Jimmy Carter oversaw the Camp David Accords, which resulted in the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty that secured calm between the two countries for three decades.

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Obama's address Thursday at Egypt's Cairo University has been highly anticipated.

Joe Klein
Time

About an hour after Barack Obama's excellent Cairo speech, I met with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, at his office here to talk about the speech and the Israel-Palestine conflict. We spoke for several hours and I will have a fuller accounting of our conversation in my print column next week. Meshal speaks some English, but he feels more comfortable using an interpreter. He listened to my questions in English, asking occasionally for translation of a word or phrase, and gave his answers in Arabic. He never raised his voice or used militant language, but he never yielded on his basic position either.

"Undoubtedly Obama speaks a new language," he told me. "His speech was cleverly designed... The essence of the speech was to improve the U.S. image and to placate the Muslims. We don't mind either objective, but we are looking for more than just mere words. If the United States wishes to open a new page, we definitely would welcome this. We are keen to contribute to this. But we [believe that can not happen] merely with words. It must be with deeds, by changing the policy on the ground."

Meshal went on: "A Palestinian listening to the speech would have a simple question: where are the true actual issues that touch our lives? A Palestinian listening didn't hear anything about the Israeli war in Gaza or about Israel's war crimes." He mentioned the alleged use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous. "A beautiful discourse lacks credibility if it doesn't address Gaza."

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, arrive in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Will President Barack Obama “throw Israel under the bus?”

Outlandish as that sounds, that’s the fear expressed by some ardent supporters of Israel in advance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit Monday to the White House.

While the leaders converse behind closed doors, there could be quite a show outside the White House if large numbers of people demonstrate on behalf of Israel or the Palestinians or on other Middle East issues.

Despite 60 years of support (to varying degrees) from the White House and Capitol Hill, despite tens of billions of dollars of economic and military aid (particularly since the 1967 and 1973 wars), despite the out-sized role of the Jewish community in American politics (especially in support of Democrats) and despite the feverish backing of Christian evangelicals, there are those who believe that the President Obama is prepared to sacrifice Israel to achieve other goals in the region.

To be sure, President Obama has supporters in the Jewish community for his Middle East policies. But a vocal segment that opposes the administration has been filling e-mail inboxes in recent days.

What’s going on here?

“Obama is changing the rules of Mideast pressure” was the headline atop an article by veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar in the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz. “President George W. Bush enjoyed the title "friend of Israel" because he made do with paying lip service to pressure on Israel and passed around documents that lacked teeth. He taught the Israelis that it is possible to behave contemptuously and make a laughingstock of the road map, all the while preserving a most important strategic asset – special ties with the United States. Obama has already managed to alter the rules of the game of the U.S. in the Middle East; everyone, with no exception, is welcome to choose between understandings and sanctions, between carrots and sticks,” Eldar wrote.

What constitutes being thrown under the bus, anyway?

Suggestions of U.S. leniency or accommodation toward Iran or Syria qualify, as does pressure on Israel to curtail settlement activity in the West Bank and ease restrictions on movement by Palestinians. And this recent statement by a State Dept. official: "Universal adherence to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Tready) itself – including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – also remains a fundamental objective of the United States” (in effect removing the curtain from in front of Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear weapons program) set off alarm bells.

Among the widely circulated items is a column by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. “Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days,” Glick forecast. “As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.”

Glick was referring, at least in part, to Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks this month’s AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference in Washington. Ironically, the theme of the AIPAC meeting was “Relationships Matter.”

Biden first offered the carrot: “But in the midst of change, with all the change you will hear about, there is one enduring, essential principle that will not change; and that is our commitment to the peace and security of the state of Israel. That is not negotiable. That is not a matter of change. That is something to be reinforced and made clear. It seems almost unnecessary to state it, but I want the word to go forth in here that no one should mistake it.”

Later came a stick, of sorts: "But Israel has to work towards a two-state solution. You're not going to like my saying this, but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement based on their first actions - its access to economic opportunity and increased security responsibility. This is a "show me" deal - not based on faith - show me.”

The Obama White House is hardly the first to seek a halt to expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Over the years officials representing previous administrations termed the settlements “a complicating factor,” “obstacles to peace” and “illegal.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the AIPAC meeting by satellite. He did not use the magic phrase “two-state solution” in discussing the future of the Palestinians, but did say, "We are prepared to resume negotiations without any preconditions." Israeli President Shimon Peres, who did speak in person, said that Netanyahu would abide by the decisions of previous Israeli governments, which included the two-state solution, though to what extent is not clear.

President Obama supports Palestinian aspirations. So did his predecessor. George W. Bush was the first President to call publicly for creation of a Palestinian state and he followed Bill Clinton, who as President said that ”there can be no genuine resolution to the conflict without a sovereign, viable, Palestinian state that accommodates Israeli's security requirements and the demographic realities.”

Another piece e-mailed in volume is a column by Melanie Phillips in the British newspaper The Spectator. To be accurate, what Phillips wrote was that “ . . . Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, . . .”

“It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that American is now choosing to beat up,” Phillips said. After referring to controversies about candidate Obama’s associations she then referred to “the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.” I’m not sure in which of those categories she places Vice President Biden.

Author Joel C. Rosenberg (“The Last Jihad” his best-known work) also was wary. “The mutually warm words of appreciation for 61 years of U.S.-Israel relations notwithstanding, a train wreck is coming between the Netanyahu administration and the Obama administration over Iran and the "peace process." I pray it can be avoided, but at this point Netanyahu and his team understand the apocalyptic death cult they are facing in Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and President Obama and his team do not. Netanyahu is preparing to take action to defend Israel and the world from the nightmare of a nuclear armed Iran, and Obama is not,” Rosenberg wrote on his blog after the AIPAC meeting.

Americans for Peace Now took a different tack in an open letter to the President: “As you face the opposition, please keep in mind that our support for your Mideast agenda represents a majority view both in Israel and among Israel's friends in the United States. American Jews voted for you overwhelmingly last November. Most American Jews and most Israeli citizens support the two-state solution that your administration is diligently pursuing. We are confident that Americans – Jews and non-Jews alike – increasingly recognize that Mideast peace is a key U.S. national security interest.”

J Street, a relatively new player in Washington, describes itself as “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” Its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, wrote in The Forward, a newspaper focusing on Jewish affairs, that, “American Jewish organizations and leaders can choose to act as if it’s still the 1960s, with Israel fighting for physical survival and struggling to make the desert bloom. Or we can appreciate that it’s now the 21st century and that Israel boasts the dominant military in the region and a European standard of living. In 2009, we don’t risk Israel’s survival when we question whether the decisions Israelis are making run counter to their own interests, or to America’s, or if we engage in debate here that is at least as open and broad as in Israel itself.”

Elliott Abrams, whose portfolio as a national security adviser during the George W. Bush administration included the Middle East, offered advice about how to read signals from the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. “It's unlikely that we'll know quickly whether they hit it off,” Abrams wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “The Israelis will almost certainly make this claim within seconds after the meeting ends, and will adduce every possible piece of evidence. Mr. Obama smiled; he put his arm on Mr. Netanyahu's shoulder; his body language was friendly; his tie had positive colors.”

Abrams also offered this guidance: “The White House leaks will be more interesting, for the staff may want to keep Mr. Netanyahu nervous; we'll have to watch what favored journalists are told about the chemistry in the days after the visit. We should not expect to hear the kind of crack that French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently made to journalists after meeting the president (that Mr. Obama was "not always at his best when it comes to decisions and efficiency"), as that does not appear to be the Obama style. If he makes an exception for Mr. Netanyahu and has the staff trash the prime minister to the media, we'll know the two men decided to loathe each other.”

Israeli Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman remarked earlier this month about the new Israeli government's view of the peace process.

Robert D. Kaplan
The Atlantic

The statelessness of Palestinian Arabs has been a principal feature of world politics for more than half a century. It is the signature issue of our time. The inability of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord of mutual recognition and land-for-peace has helped infect the globe with violence and radicalism—and has long been a bane of American foreign policy. While the problems of the Middle East cannot be substantially blamed on the injustice done to Palestinians, that injustice has nonetheless played a role in weakening America’s position in the region.

Obviously, part of the problem has been Israeli intransigence. Despite seeming to submit to territorial concessions, one Israeli government after another has quietly continued to bolster illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The new Israeli government may be the worst yet: Its foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, is so extreme in his anti-Arab views that he makes the right-wing Likud prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appear like the centrist he isn’t. The prospects for peace under this government are fundamentally bleak.

And yet this Israeli government faithfully represents the Israeli electorate, which is in utter despair over the impossibility of finding credible partners on the Palestinian side with which to negotiate. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. President Mahmoud Abbas’s more moderate Fatah movement may be willing to live in peace with Israel, but it has insufficient political legitimacy among Palestinians to negotiate such a deal. With Fatah and Hamas facing off against each other, the Palestinians are simply too divided to plausibly meet Israel across the table. And because the Palestinians are unable to cut a deal, a majority of Israelis, as shown by the recent election results, have apparently given up any hope for peace.

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An Israeli tank maneuvers during a deployment near the Israeli border with Gaza.

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Middle East Editor
AC360° Contributor

It was meant to be a private meeting in which Israeli soldiers talked with military school graduates about what it was like to fight in Gaza. They talked openly - more openly than anyone expected - about their frustrations and experiences that they compared to crimes. Some critics have now called them war crimes that should be prosecuted.

It was an extraordinary meeting.

"At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified – we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?

That's one of the statements from Israeli soldiers that that a leading Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, published under the headline “Shooting and Crying.”  The soldiers' names were changed to protect their identity. None claimed that they personally committed any excesses. But for many Israelis, their comments have been shocking.

One described an army commander ordering unarmed civilians "taken out" for no specific reason. Another story describes a woman and her two children being shot at when they took the wrong path.

Israel Defense Forces Chief Gabi Ashkenazi categorically denied that soldiers harmed Palestinians in cold blood. But the soldiers' testimonies made headlines in Israel and around the Arab world.

The response from the Israeli press varied. An article in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth by Daniel Edelson provided accounts from other soldiers rebutting the claims generally- but not addressing the specific allegations. He quotes one soldier saying, “It is true that in war morality can be interpreted in many different ways, and there are always a few idiots who act inappropriately, but most of the troops represented Israel honorably.”

“It’s time to believe the war crimes allegations.” That's the headline of an edtiorial by Amira Hass, a prominent Palestinian affairs reporter for Ha’aretz. Hass questions why most Israelis reacted to the published allegations as if they’re hearing them for the first time. IDF Chief “Ashkenazi, like other Israelis, could have read the Red Cross' protest during the offensive, that the IDF prevented medical teams from reaching wounded Palestinians by shooting at them. He or his aides could have gone to the website set up by Israeli human rights organizations, which was full of reports and testimonies.”

Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem, known for their criticism of Israel’s activities in the Palestinian territories, called on the Israeli Attorney General to “Stop whitewashing suspected crimes in Gaza.”

Hersch Goodman is an Israeli military affairs analyst. He told CNN he didn’t consider the testimonies reliable and didn’t think they would harm Israel’s image. He told us, "There is a huge difference between a soldier misbehaving or three soldiers misbehaving or even a company of soldiers misbehaving because they are in an environment of killing and shooting and […] a State misbehaving.”

“If soldiers misbehave as per the newspaper article, you put them on trial," Goodman said. "But if the army as an institution used forbidden weapons, if the army as an institution targeted medical personnel, if the army as an institution targeted medical facilities, these are charges or these are things that really Israel will have to work on defending.” It is unclear from the transcript Ha’aretz published whether the soldiers were alleging misconduct just by specific soldiers or also by the army itself.

In the view of Arab media, this is a case of we told so. Complaints of major human rights abuses during the Gaza offensive were a daily part of reporting by Arab networks such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Both networks deployed local reporters inside Gaza as well as in Israel and provided their audiences with daily reports from both sides of the conflict. Although they brought in Israeli officials as guests, their reporting was emotional and focused mainly on the suffering of Palestinians as a result of the incursion.

Now the focus is on the latest developments – Al-Jazeera hosted yesterday an official from the international organization Human Rights Watch to discuss his group’s latest report, which accuses Israel of “repeatedly firing white phosphorous shells over densely populated areas.”

The Israeli army says it will investigate, but says it only used phosphorous as a smokescreen – not a weapon.

On the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper, an editorial by legal analyst Mahmoud Mubarak condemns both Israel and Arab governments: “Israel should be condemned for its crimes in Gaza,” Mubarak wrote. “Arab governments should also be condemned for being silent.”

And then there are the political cartoons. On the Saudi-owned London-based Asharq Alawsat, a cartoon of an Israeli soldier pointing his finger to his head as if shooting himself in the head. The testimony of Israeli soldiers, it suggests, will prove most harmful to Israel.

An Israeli soldier confronts Palestinian protesters during a demonstration Friday in the West Bank village of Jayyus.

Ben Wedeman
CNN International Correspondent

My eyes stung, I was coughing, my nose was running. Along with cameraman David Hawley and freelance producer Kareem Khadder, I had just been tear-gassed—not for the first time last Friday—during a day-long clash between Palestinian kids and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Na’alin, on the West Bank.

We had gone there to gauge the Palestinian view of next Tuesday’s Israeli elections. Na’alin, and many other towns and villages like it in the West Bank, are in the forefront of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Here, it all comes down to the most basic element in the century-old conflict: control of the land.

Na’alin is an old town, with factories and workshops, surrounded by olive groves. But in recent years neighbouring Israeli settlements, built since the June 1967 war, have increasingly encroached on Na’alin’s farmland, and Israel, under the pretext of security, has built its security barrier around the town. As a result, Na’alin residents say that have lost access to much of their land, their water sources, in short their livelihood. Beginning two years ago, every Friday they hold protests against Israel’s settlement expansion and barrier building.

Most Na’alin residents are not ideological hotheads—before the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in September 2000, many worked in Israel, are still fluent in Hebrew and do business with Israelis looking for a good deal on car repairs and other services.

For that reason I thought Na’alin would be a good place to see what Palestinians are thinking. What I heard was universal pessimism. No one I spoke with expressed the slightest hope that any of the leading candidates—Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, Israel Beitenu’s Avigdor Lieberman and Labour’s Ehud Barak—would do anything to remove the settlements that are slowly strangling Na’alin.

As we sheltered from the tear gas behind a house, Na’alin resident Hani Khawaja told me, “I don’t expect anything to come out of the elections that will please the Palestinians. Just killings, expulsions and land confiscations.”

Another man, Ayub Srour, had a slightly different approach. He prefers Israeli leaders to be honest about their intentions, and not raise hopes only then to dash them. He wants Likud leader and long-time hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to win. “At least he’s honest. He says he’ll expel us, and he will expel us. He says he’s slaughter us, and he will slaughter us.”

I’ve covered almost every Israeli election since 1996. With each election, the Palestinian feeling of despair and hopelessness only deepens.

Since the last election in the spring of 2006, Palestinians have seen Israel and Hizballah go to war, West Bank settlements continue to expand, Hamas and Fatah fight it out in the Gaza Strip—with Hamas taking control in June 2007. They’ve also seen a series of Israeli incursions into Gaza, culminating recently in the 22-day Israeli offensive that left large parts of the strip in ruins.

Meanwhile many Palestinians say their leadership—often described as moderate and pro-western—in Ramallah is incapable of reversing the trend of settlement expansion. The same leadership has been unable to convince Israel to remove few of the hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints that make travelling around the West Bank a test of patience and endurance.

In short, when Palestinians look back over the last 15 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, they’ve seen their lot only go from bad to worse.

As a result, more and more Palestinians are convinced the only way to beat the Israelis is to join them, to discard heretofore failed attempts at creating a Palestinian state in an ever smaller, ever more economically unviable territory, and go for what is known as the one-state solution, whereby Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza should relinquish their dream of an independent Palestinian state, and instead insist on equal rights in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, an area that is, for all intents and purposes, under Israel’s control anyway.

The one state solution is an anathema to many Israelis, who are well aware that, with their higher birth-rate, Palestinians (those living within Israel proper, plus Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) could well become a majority within a generation.

Israelis increasingly worry the national struggle between Israel and the Palestinians will be transformed into an internal struggle, for equal rights for all those living within historical Palestine. Those fears prompted Israel’s current caretaker prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to warn as far back as November 2007 that if Israel doesn’t move quickly to achieve a two state solution, it will be in a position not unlike South Africa during the apartheid area, whereby a minority—in this case Israeli Jews—rules over a restive majority—the Palestinians—by means of brute force, repression and discriminatory laws.

Many Palestinians argue that is already the case, that Israeli restrictions on movement, residence, and work amount to apartheid in all but name.

The bedrock of Israeli antipathy toward the Palestinians is part of the reason for the growing strength of the Israel Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) Party, led by Avigdor Leiberman. He argues that Israel’s Palestinian minority (they make up about 20 percent of the population) as a potential fifth column working against the aims of the Jewish majority.

Leiberman has focused much of his fire on Palestinian Knesset members such as Ahmed Tibi, accusing him and others of sympathising with Israel’s enemies, Hamas and Hizballah. His solution is to compel all of Knesset members—and possibly all Israeli citizens—to make an oath of loyalty to the state. Another of Leiberman’s proposals is to redraw Israel’s boundaries to exclude as many of its Palestinians as possible.

Tibi responds that Leiberman’s growing clout is symptomatic of “an obvious fascist phenomena invading Israeli society. During the last years, racism became mainstream.”

Back in the town of Na’alin, the kids throwing stones at Israeli troops do have some odd companions. Young Israelis—some of them self-described anarchists—also take part in the protests.

They don’t throw stones, but they do offer useful advice. “Laththam! Laththam!” one Israeli with black tattoos on his arms tells a young boy—he couldn’t be more than 12 years old–hurling rocks with a home-made sling. “Laththam” is Arabic for “cover your face,” the advice imparted because if Israeli troops can identify stone throwers, they arrest them.

There still is cooperation of sorts between Palestinians and Israelis, but it’s an increasingly rare commodity. And this election probably won’t do anything to bridge the growing gap between the two—the curious friendship in Na’alin notwithstanding.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, right, greets Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday.

Fawaz A. Gerges
The Los Angeles Times

Now that the guns have fallen silent and the dust is settling over Gaza, it is time to revisit the received wisdom in Israel, the United States and some European quarters that Hamas is a monolithic, Al Qaeda-like terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction and that, therefore, Israel has no choice but to isolate Hamas and use overwhelming force to overcome it.

In fact, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Far from a monolith, there are multiple clashing viewpoints and narratives within Hamas. Over the years, I have interviewed more than a dozen Hamas leaders inside and outside the Palestinian territories. Although, on the whole, Hamas' public rhetoric calls for the liberation of all historic Palestine, not only the territories occupied in 1967, a healthier debate occurs within.

Read More...

A family sleeps outside their destroyed house in Jabalia's Ezbet Abed Rabbo district in northern Gaza.

Karl Penhaul
CNN Correspondent

Huge freshly-printed posters were beginning to appear on billboards around Gaza City. The banners depicted masked fighters firing heavy machine guns or red-tipped rockets.

The war had ended just three or four days before. These were signs Gaza's fighting factions were still very much in business and keen to portray their campaign of the last three weeks as a victory against Israel.

CNN's producer in Gaza had been working his contacts. He's well acquainted with Gaza's underbelly.

For several days now he had got word that the fighting factions he was reaching out to were too busy to meet. They were regrouping and retooling just in case the ceasefire didn't hold.

Then after hours of waiting one morning, Abu Rahma got a call. The northern Gaza commander of the Salaheddin Brigades was ready to meet.

We picked our way through Gaza's backstreets, still strewn with rubble.

Young men in civilian clothes stood on street corners on the lookout. Gazans call these spotters "Weierweis" (pronounced "warweers"), after a popular make of walkie-talkie they use to relay messages up the chain of command.

At the city limits, a contact meets us and leads us into an orange grove, like the many that stretch from here up to the Israeli border.

We're told to turn off cell phones and take out the batteries, an attempt to avoid what they fear could be electronic surveillance by the Israeli military. Under the low hanging branches, six militants have taken up positions and camouflaged themselves with foliage.

The Salaheddin Brigades are part-funded by Hamas and fight in close coordination with them. In fact they're the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) – a mix of Islamic factions.

Since they were created in 2000, they've gained a reputation as hardcore fighters. They've frequently launched rockets into Israel. In 2003 they were blamed for ambushing a U.S. diplomatic convoy, killing three security guards and wounding a diplomat. And in June 2006 the Brigades claimed joint responsibility for burrowing under the Gaza-Israeli border and capturing an Israeli army corporal, Gilad Shalit, who is still missing.

With a red and white keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his neck and sporting a close-cut beard I'm introduced to Abu Jamal, the northern Gaza commander for the Salaheddin Brigades. He's clutching an American-made M4 assault rifle.

His comrades are armed with AK-47s, two with rocket-propelled grenades.

This isn't exactly a show of strength. This is a small cell, I counted seven men including the area commander. But they display a certain bravado about their exploits against the Israelis.

The group talks how they fought guerrilla-style against the Israelis using sniper fire and ambushes to try and stall the Israeli advance and on occasion getting in behind Israeli lines to continue firing rockets at southern Israeli towns. They say they survived for three weeks moving quickly and eating little more than a handful of dates and drinking water.

The full facts of the militant campaign are difficult to independently verify. The Israeli Defense Forces say they faced hit-and-run attacks but fewer pitched battles than expected.

Abu Jamal said 17 brigade fighters were killed in the conflict. For its part Hamas says it lost fewer than 50 fighters.

The Israeli Defense Forces puts the number of dead militants as high as "several hundred" and said 10 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Abu Jamal and his comrades say they believe they could have bogged the Israelis down in hand-to-hand urban warfare if they had pushed deeper into the cities. The Israelis say they halted the advance of the ground incursion when they did because they had achieved their main objectives.

Among the Israeli targets was the home of Abu Jamal. He briefly took me there as family members picked through the ruins. The IDF clearly had pinpoint intelligence on where he lived but he figured he was on their hit-list and had left along with his family. Now he was joking that having no home to return to would force him to spend more time with his "resistance" comrades.

When talk turned to the political reaction to the war, Abu Jamal and his fighters were clearly disgusted with what they saw as a lack of "brotherhood" from Arab neighbors but they did say they felt they'd discovered a new champion in an unexpected place: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador to Caracas and was forthright in condemning the Israeli offensive.

From that encounter with this cell of the Salaheddin Brigades it was clear their fighting resolve remained intact. For a guerrilla unit every day it survives is a victory of sorts in the face of the overwhelming firepower the Israelis had in their arsenal.

It's clear too the Salaheddin Brigades see their fight as a religious mission and that the recent conflict was just the prelude to a bigger fight they believe they will one day wage.

"In the past we threw stones and then had small guns," said Abu Jamal. "Now we will move forward until we finally bring all Muslims to pray in Jerusalem."

A Palestinian man Monday prays in the rubble of his home, destroyed during Israel's offensive in Gaza.

Morgan Meis
The Smart Set

Say what you like about Israelis, they know how to play the game. I'm speaking of the humanity game. It's a game with specific rules and expectations in Western civilization. Its centerpiece, the very core of the game, is self-reflection. Demonstrating your humanity (since the Enlightenment, at least, but the roots go back to the beginning) is less about doing and more about reflecting on what you've done. The basic formula is already there at the Delphic Oracle: Know thyself. The trick of it, the reason that the humanity game is hard to play, is that the quest for self-knowledge does not lead to clarity, but down ever deeper into the muck. Knowledge, in the Western tradition, is very much about its limits. Knowing ourselves is thus partly about knowing the infinity of an enigma.

Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir is a “know thyself” kind of movie. It is obsessed with memory, and memory is the thread around which a self is built. You can't know yourself without memory. The problem is that Folman doesn't remember. Crucially, he doesn't remember anything from his youthful days in the Israeli army when he was part of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. He decides that he needs to remember, and tracks down a number of his fellow soldiers in order to reconstruct that past. The story is told in animated form. It's a nice move. It creates a distance from the reality of lived experience. It is like drifting through someone else's dream.

Read More...

Israeli tanks prepare to leave Gaza on Monday.

Paula Hancocks
CNN International Correspondent

Amongst the devastation in Gaza and horrific pictures of dead bodies being pulled from destroyed buildings, the argument of "who won the war" has already begun.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists his country’s military objective was achieved and more. Israeli soldiers are filmed leaving the Gaza strip smiling and giving the victory sign. The Israeli casualty figure was lower than feared and public support was strong throughout.

No Palestinian civilian in Gaza won anything. Even if they survived, their loved ones survived and their house is intact, they have been through 22 days of absolute hell.

But Hamas claimed victory on behalf of the Palsetinian people. Former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says "this is not a victory for one faction, party or region. It is a victory for all the nation. The whole nation contributed..."

Hamas' military wing went one step further, claiming fewer than 50 of its fighters were killed... hundreds less than Israel claims. And militants fired around twenty rockets into Israel after the Jewish state's ceasefire came into effect Sunday morning, just to prove they still could.

Israel has claimed a victory in securing an agreement with the United States, a memorandum of understanding to prevent future smuggling of arms to Hamas and Israel's military believes it has destroyed the majority of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.

But the bar of success was low for Israel this time around following a perceived failed war against Hezbollah in Lebanon two and a half years ago. The official view, shared by many on the streets of Israel, is the power of deterrence has been restored.

Ari Shavit, Haaretz newspaper journalist believes there is another winner, "In the war between Israel and Hamas the winner is Egypt, the real winners in this war are the arab moderates." He says, " The Middle East is no longer about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as such... there is a greater conflict now between the moderates and the extremists."

Only a part of wars today are fought on the battlefield, or in this case in the crowded streets of Gaza, the rest is won or lost on television screens and through public perception. The vast majority of Israelis see this as a military success, but public approval of Israel's operation – even among its strongest allies – could be undermined by a disturbingly high Palestinian civilian death toll and misery inflicted on a far wider target than Hamas.

Gaza residents return to find their homes crushed. CNN's Ben Wedeman reports.

Program Note: Be sure to tune in for the latest on the situation in Gaza tonight on AC360° at 10pm ET.

A Mercy Corp worker delivers aid to a family in Gaza.

Children in Gaza receive humanitarian aid from a Mercy Corps delivery.

Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps

January 15

It is noon and things have really started to deteriorate. I just found out some bad news about our staff in Gaza and the events that are unfolding there now.

We just heard from the director of the Mercy Corps office in Gaza City. She told us that Hazar, one of our field coordinators, and her family are stuck in their apartment in Gaza City. Their building is surrounded by Israeli tanks and there is plenty of shooting going on in their area. They are seeking cover in their corridor from the bullets; the shelling of nearby targets blew out the windows in their apartment.

They are anxiously waiting for the cease-fire to take effect which was announced for today from 11:00 to 15:00 to seek refuge elsewhere. It is just past noon and the shooting has not stopped.

The home of one our drivers, who has been transporting food items from the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and delivering them to our warehouse in Khan Younis, was completely destroyed last night. He spent the night in his truck in Rafah.

Right now we are tracking the status of the three trucks that we are expecting from Rafah filled with medical supplies to be delivered to the Red Crescent hospital in Khan Younis.

Also, an UNRWA compound in Gaza city appears to have been hit. UNRWA has suspended their operations for today.

I am in Ashkelon on the border and can hear and feel the bombardments every couple minutes. It is making the glass in my windows shake here and I cannot imagine the terror the people in Gaza are feeling now.

January 14th

The conflict has been raging for nearly three weeks but it seems much longer here. Everyone is exhausted and shocked that the fighting has been allowed to go on for so long, despite the staggering death tolls. More than 1000 dead. More than 300 children dead. Where has humanity gone?

Mercy Corps has managed to get two trucks of food aid into Gaza since the Israeli military operation started, but it has been a frustrating and extremely slow process to get the permissions from the Israeli authorities. The number of humanitarian supply trucks allowed to enter Gaza is entirely insufficient given the extraordinary need created by the conflict.

We have resorted to buying whatever items possible within Gaza to supplement our truck deliveries and meet the emergency needs of the families in Gaza more quickly. We have a team of 25 Mercy Corps staff who live and work in Gaza and they have been scouring the local market for any stock available. They have managed to procure blankets, mattresses, baby formula and other basic essentials, but we don’t expect that this is going to be possible for much longer. The availability of goods is rapidly decreasing and the prices are going through the roof.

The other problem we have is that there is simply no cash in Gaza. The banks are all closed; there are no ATMs and no way to get cash into our staff to buy the goods—or to pay their salaries. Even if we could send them checks there is nowhere to cash them. For the time being, everything is being done on credit, but that won’t last much longer either.

Now we are out distributing relief goods in the major areas of Gaza – Gaza City, Jabalia, Khan Younis and Rafah—our team is facing extremely dangerous conditions. Since the Israeli military action in Gaza began, four United Nations staff, plus four UN contractors in Gaza have been killed. One international humanitarian aid medical clinic was destroyed and several of their compounds have been damaged. At least four incidents have been reported of shooting near aid convoys. Not a minute passes that we are not concerned for the safety of our team.

Last week, the Israeli authorities instituted a daily temporary three-hour “lull” in fighting to provide humanitarian workers a chance to distribute aid, but this has not really helped. The slim window of time each day is not nearly enough to address the dire humanitarian situation on the ground and to transport aid deliveries from warehouses in the south of Gaza up to the north or other areas that need supplies.

Also, the time of the “lull” is constantly changing at the whim of the Israeli military—one day it starts at 9:00 am, the next day it is at 1:00 pm, and so on. We are only notified of the new timings moments before it begins, so we can’t organize our staff and distributions quickly enough to take advantage of the break in fighting.

Our distributions are very time consuming. In many cases our team goes door-to-door to ensure the most needy families are receiving aid. Many families are too afraid to venture out to distribution sites. This takes much longer than three hours, so our staff is usually out working well after the break in fighting has ended and the shelling and bombing have resumed.

Even with an increase in the number of workers packing and distributing, the vast needs of the people can't be met in this short time frame. 
Moreover, some fighting usually continues during the ‘lulls’ so humanitarian workers and the civilian population risk their lives moving around the Gaza Strip.

Working on the other side of the border where we take security, water, electricity and place to sleep and food for granted, I am overcome with admiration at the courage and strength of the Mercy Corps staff working inside Gaza. I hope that the Israeli authorities will respect the call of the United Nations and the international community to allow humanitarian aid workers to access Gaza so I can join my team.

Click here for more of Cassandra Nelson’s earlier blog posts.

Editor’s Note: Cassandra Nelson joined Mercy Corps in Afghanistan in 2002. She spends most of her time deployed in hotspots and hostile areas in need of humanitarian assistance. She has worked in Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Banda Aceh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

The U.N. says Israeli artillery hit its aid headquarters compound in Gaza City, setting their buildings on fire.