On Thursday night Jawad Harb, a CARE aid worker, cranked up the his generator to get on the Internet to describe to his friends the terrifying Israeli air raids on his neighborhood along Gaza's border with Egypt. His personal chronicles from the Gaza, with their raw eloquence, are now gaining wider circulation in the West Bank and the Arab world.
Here's Jawad's story:

"Two days ago, Israel warned residents in my neighborhood to flee their houses near the border with Egypt ahead of planned bombardments of cross-border tunnels.

Yesterday, January 13th, at 3:15 p.m., it was relatively quiet. The air strikes have been every 30-45 minutes at the border, about 500 meters away from our neighborhood. A group of 20 children were playing downstairs together, including three of my kids. I was on the balcony of my house on the 2nd floor, watching the children playing hide and seek.

At 3:30 p.m., suddenly and violently, non-stop air strikes started. The border with Egypt and the nearby neighbourhood was heavily bombed. There was an air strike every five minutes, and thick black smoke 150m away from us.

After the attack started, there was an uncontrollable panic, everybody was trying to escape the chaos. People were running downstairs with whatever they managed to grab from their houses. More than 90 children of all ages were running toward the north, to nowhere, and their parents were running after them.

In the middle of this horror, I was thinking about my 86-year-old paralyzed father, who was unable to run like others.

My wife quickly gathered my children, and my older brother collected some blankets with his oldest sons. I rushed very quickly to the ground floor where my father lives. With the help of my other brother, we carried my father and quickly left the house.

“I was afraid I would be left alone to die under the bombing,” said my father, with his eyes full of tears. “Thank God, I have my sons living with me.”

There, in the road 100 metres away from the neighborhood to the north, about 50 families – 350-400 people – were gathering in panic, including about 120 children. The air strikes continued shaking the ground under us, hiding the voices of the kids screaming and crying.

We all knew that the UN schools were full and can't accommodate any more people.

“This evokes the old memories of Nakba,” said Abu Muhammad Shakshak, a 66-year-old retired teacher (note: Nakba in Arabic means “Catastrophe” which is how Palestinians refer to Israel's “War of Independence” in 1948 which displaced over 600,000 Palestinians.) “I was six years old when I first experienced a similar event like this. We ran along the beach and the bombing was chasing us faster than the winds.”

It was about 5:15 pm when I received a call from CARE International's office in Ramallah. All eyes were fixed at me; people thought I had a magic solution for them while I was on phone. During the call, there were two strong air strikes, and I was shouting into the phone.

“It is getting colder here, the children will die from the cold weather,” said a crying mother to me.

I talked with the UN emergency coordinator, who promised to make a shelter camp for people if the air strikes continued and people could not go back home. I was surrounded by the homeless frightened people from my neighbourhood.

It started to get windy and colder now in the street. People started to get more worried and frightened. The bombing had not stopped, and with each air strike, many children threw themselves onto the ground, hiding their faces against the sand like ostriches, thinking if they don't see the missiles falling, they will not get hurt.

“Are we going to be burned by the bombs like the children we watch on TV?” asked a 14-year-old child from the neighborhood, horror in her eyes.

Parents - including myself - were hugging the children. Everyone knew I am an aid worker with CARE International, and I was trying to calm people down and letting them know that I was doing everything I could to ensure better humanitarian conditions for them.

“They destroyed everything. They only left one thing - the air to breathe, and now they are contaminating it with black smoke,” said Abu Muhammad Shakshak.

The air strikes ended at 5:45 p.m. We waited outside until 6 p.m., and then people started to move closer to their houses. An hour later, we entered our houses again, and we all packed go-bags of necessary items so we would be ready to run if the bombings started again.

The air strikes commenced again last night at about 10 p.m. and continued through the night, but further away and less intensive than what it was like in the evening. We finally slept at 5 in the morning, and were awake again at 8 am, waiting for another war day.”

by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

 Is the world reacting with sufficient outrage and urgency to the horrendous humanitarian toll in Gaza? When, in just 20 days, the Palestinian people have lost more than 1,000 dead-- in per capita terms the equivalent of 30,000 American lives, 10 times the number who died on 9/11? That kind of extrapolation, by the way, is a favorite debate tool of former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He uses it to drive home how a few hundred Israelis killed in terrorist attacks is a national catastrophe for Israel. Few Palestinians are in doubt that they, too, have unjustly fallen victim to a staggering loss of life.

 The U.S., other Western governments, pro-Western Arab regimes and Israeli public opinion have been relatively mute about the moral issues like the proportionality of Israel's attacks and Israel's obligation to protect civilians. By and large, they've been eager to show solidarity with the Israeli government's accepted right of self defense against Hamas's rockets, or to cast Hamas as a radical threat to moderate Arab regimes and regional stability. 

 Yet, stopping there certainly ignores or blames the victims here—the ordinary, long suffering, people of Gaza. Does the relative silence need ignore the fact that a war against Hamas in the densely populated Strip would inevitably be fought with 1.5 million civilians arrayed from one end of the battlefield to the other and therefore caught squarely in the cross fire? Are we so inured to killing in the Middle East that such a huge death toll can be shrugged off in yet another war whose goals are as ambiguous as they are likely to remain elusive?

 Actually, there has been an impressively large number of public protests around the world. As far as public officials are concerned, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has notably rushed to the defense of Gaza's defenseless. By coincidence, he was arriving for meetings in Israel with PM Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday, just after Israeli shellfire struck the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency--which has distributed aid to Palestinians since the birth of the refugee problem in 1948. 

 UNRWA officials said the attack destroyed all of the agency's food and medicine supplies, daily necessities for more than 1 million people who, currently, are under siege. They strongly disputed Israel's contention that Israel had been responding to attacks by Hamas fighters using UNRWA as a protective shelter. "I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation," Ban said after meeting Barak and Livni. For his part, Barak acknowledged that the Israeli attack was a "grave mistake." Olmert defended Israeli forces but said "the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it. I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."

 One of the strong statements of support for Gazans came  from current UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, former Sandinista foreign minister in Nicaragua:

 We here in United Nations headquarters have remained too passive for too long as the carnage continues.... Every day, we receive messages from Gaza and from around the world asking, indeed pleading, for the UN to stop the violence, protect civilians and attend to the humanitarian needs.  Our business here today is urgent.

 During this assault, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, one-third of them children. More bodies remain buried under the rubble, out of reach of humanitarian workers because the shelling is too intense – the living would be killed trying to reach the dead.  If this onslaught in Gaza is indeed a war, it is a war against a helpless, defenseless, imprisoned population.

 As easy as it is for many to turn their eyes from the death toll, you can be certain that Gaza will be added as another source of frustration, hurt and anger experienced by Palestinians and Arabs everywhere—adding more fuel to the fire of political extremism, too. President-elect Obama, arguing there's only one president at a time, has been getting a pass for his own relative silence on Gaza so far. But many in the Middle East will be watching closely after the Inauguration next week, to see if Gaza inspired any sense of outrage or urgency in the new "leader of the free world."

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Update on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

“We have a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and enduring ceasefire. In the name of humanity and international law, this resolution must be observed.”

 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, starting a Middle East tour today,   “to demonstrate my deep concern and empathy for the innocents caught in these terrible circumstances, both in Israel and the Occupied Territory”:

 My message is simple, direct and to the point: the fighting must stop. To both sides, I say: Just stop, now. Too many people have died. There has been too much civilian suffering. Too many people, Israelis and Palestinians, live in daily fear of their lives. And in Gaza, the very foundation of society is being destroyed: people's homes, civic infrastructure, public health facilities and schools. We have a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and enduring ceasefire. In the name of humanity and international law, this resolution must be observed. I expect the parties now meeting in Cairo to do what is required. They must agree to the elements of an immediate ceasefire. At a minimum, that means a halt to rocket attacks by Hamas militants and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. It is time to stop. It is time to stop the killing and the destruction.

 “At least 900 killed.”

 B'Tselem Israeli human rights group on casualties:

 Gaza: at least 900 killed, of them at least 270 children and 95 women. Over 4,200 injured, of them over 400 severely injured (Palestinian Ministry of Health figures).

 Israel: 3 civilians and 7 soldiers killed. Over 82 civilians injured, of them 4 severely injured, not including those treated for shock, and 61 soldiers injured, of them one in critical condition.

 “What I saw today was shocking.”

 Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, visiting Shifa hospital in Gaza, Tuesday:

 It is really very sad and it hurts a lot when you see what I have just seen. Both parties must ensure that all victims are cared for rapidly, at all times of day. In particular, the wounded must be evacuated and receive treatment. Injured people cannot wait for days, or even for hours, before being treated. The work of medical personnel must be respected – and this is not negotiable. What I saw today was shocking. It is unacceptable to see so many wounded people. Their lives must be spared and the security of those who care for them guaranteed.

 “Gaza's 1.5 million people are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis.”

 Report on Gaza by Human Rights Watch issued Tuesday: Deprived and Endangered: Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip:

 Gaza's 1.5 million people are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis brought on by more than two weeks of major military operations that have magnified the impact of 19 months of a highly restrictive Israeli blockade, reinforced by Egypt.

 The Israeli government has repeatedly denied that a humanitarian crisis exists. Information from international humanitarian organizations, United Nations agencies and Gaza's residents themselves starkly refute that claim. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the fighting, a large percentage of them children. Many wounded and sick have been trapped in their homes, unable to get medical care. Corpses have been left among rubble and in destroyed homes because Israeli forces have at times denied access to medical crews. Increasing numbers are displaced or are trapped in their homes. They have nowhere to flee, caught in a warzone where no place is truly safe.

 Gaza's civilians are facing dire shortages of food, water, cooking gas, fuel and medical care due to insecurity, the enforced closure of all of Gaza's borders, and alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law. Electricity is sharply down, and in some places open sewage is spilling into the streets.

 Children, who make up 56 percent of Gaza's residents, are especially vulnerable. Those in hospitals are getting only rudimentary care from facilities that lack equipment, material and personnel. Many of those whose medical needs cannot be met by Gaza hospitals - including cardiovascular surgery and neurosurgery - have been unable to access medical care in Israel or Egypt.

 Israel has permitted only a limited number of critically injured patients to enter Israel since the start of the current military operations. Egypt is also preventing timely evacuations of severely wounded from Gaza, despite pledges from Turkey and Qatar, among others, to receive the wounded at Egypt's Rafah border crossings and evacuate them to hospitals in third countries. The water, sewage and electricity infrastructure - already severely debilitated by the blockade - is now stretched to a breaking point. The World Bank and the World Health Organization have warned of the dire consequences of epidemics from the discontinuation of vaccinations, lack of garbage collection and contaminated water.

 An unknown number of Gazans have been traumatized by two weeks of air, sea and ground-based attacks in a small, confined area that lacks safe areas and from which escape is nearly impossible. Israeli military strikes have hit on or near at least two UN buildings operating as emergency shelters, in one case killing 40 people.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 At her confirmation hearing today  to become secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had some sensible things, although nothing unexpected, to say about the Obama administration's Middle East policy. It was pretty general and cautious but indicates a healthy approach and direction. What is as valuable as what she said is what she didn't say--there was no breast-beating about Iran, Hamas, terrorists, etc. The overall impression is of a stateswoman who will deal with problems seriously, cooperatively and calmly.

 On Obama's foreign policy approach:

 The President-Elect and I believe that foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology. On facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice. Our security, our vitality, and our ability to lead in today's world oblige us to recognize the overwhelming fact of our interdependence.

 I believe that American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted. We must use what has been called “smart power,” the full range of tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural -- picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy. 

 The President-Elect has made it clear that in the Obama Administration there will be no doubt about the leading role of diplomacy. One need only look to North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, and the Balkans to appreciate the absolute necessity of tough-minded, intelligent diplomacy – and the failures that result when that kind of diplomatic effort is absent. And one need only consider the assortment of problems we must tackle in 2009 – from fighting terrorism to climate change to global financial crises – to understand the importance of cooperative engagement.

 --On Iraq and Afghanistan:

 President-Elect Obama is committed to responsibly ending the war in Iraq and employing a broad strategy in Afghanistan that reduces threats to our safety and enhances the prospect of stability and peace...

 Terrorism remains a serious threat and we must have a comprehensive strategy, leveraging intelligence, diplomacy, and military assets to defeat al-Qaeda and like-minded terrorists by rooting out their networks and drying up support for their violent and nihilistic extremism. The gravest threat that America faces is the danger that weapons of mass destruction will fall into the hands of terrorists. To ensure our future security, we must curb the biological, chemical, or cyber – while we take the lead in working with others to reduce current nuclear stockpiles and prevent the development and use of dangerous new weaponry.

 --On Middle East problems:

 We must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that addresses the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the Palestinians; that effectively challenges Iran to end its nuclear weapons program and sponsorship of terror, and persuades both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior and become constructive regional actors; that strengthens our relationships with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab states, with Turkey, and with our partners in the Gulf to involve them in securing a lasting peace in the region.

 --On the Gaza war and negotiating Arab-Israeli peace:

 As intractable as the Middle East's problems may seem – and many Presidents, including my husband, have spent years trying to help work out a resolution – we cannot give up on peace. 

 The President-Elect and I understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel's desire to defend itself under the current conditions, and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets. However, we have also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians. This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel; normal and positive relations with its neighbors; and independence, economic progress, and security to the Palestinians in their own state.

 We will exert every effort to support the work of Israelis and Palestinianswho seek that result. It is critical not only to the parties involved but to our profound interests in undermining the forces of alienation and violent extremism across our world.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images

It was inevitable that the media circus covering the Gaza war would attract a real clown. With his shiny red nose and his  white face,  a clown from Tel Aviv came striding up “Hack Hill”, a bump in the green landscape that overlooks the fighting going on miles away in Gaza. Hack Hill is as close as the Israeli officials will allow us to the war in Gaza, which is to say not close at all.

Eldad the clown was fairly annoying. He could bellow in four languages, he poked his nose into cameras and tried to cage a kiss off an attractive woman photographer in exchange for a lollipop. Every time a bomb landed in Gaza, kicking up billows of ashen dust, the clown would shout something with mock bellicosity that usually ended with the word ‘M__________rs !” Satire, I guess. He snatched a pair of binoculars and gazed at Gaza, harrumphing with satisfaction, even though the lens caps were still on.

He was annoying because he was lampooning the rumpled cool of us so-called war correspondents. The last time I ventured up Hack Hill, I noticed that whenever TV journalists did a piece-to-camera, with Gaza burning splendidly on the horizon, they'd always wriggle into their flak jackets even though the fighting is miles and miles away. It's embarrassing for the TV correspondents; all their print colleagues snigger at such pretense. But when Eldad the clown was there mocking everybody, none of the TV journos  put on their flak jackets. I suppose they were worried that the clown would come bounding over and ridicule them, live, on air, in the middle of a very serious war.

Wars attract journalists of all stripes. I wandered up the hill and met a Canadian friend who is a connoisseur of weaponry. He really knows his stuff. He could tell that the fighter-jet whizzing by the treetops was an F-15 by its twin tails (hope I got that right.) He was complaining that the noise of the Israeli pilotless drones overhead kept him from discerning the progress of battle, as though he were a lover of Beethoven irritated by whispers during his favorite symphony.

The foreign media is starting to feel marooned up here on Hack Hill, with few new stories to show and tell. Israeli officials don't want reporters traipsing into Gaza because: a) they don't want them getting killed in the crossfire (I'm putting the lesser reason first here), b) they don't want the media whining on and on about the plight of suffering Palestinians, leading to an even noisier international outcry.

But the media is starting to get restless. When Israeli Government spokesman Mark Regev (seen earlier escorting around the latest Friend of Israel, Joe the Plumber) attempted to lecture the media on the innermost feelings of Palestinians in Gaza –ie they're sick of Hamas-- the hack pack pounced on him ferociously. This can only get worse. Maybe it's time for a few more hi-jinks by Eldad the Clown up on Hack Hill.

By Tim McGirk/Gaza Borders

 Can an Israeli prime minister phone the president of the United States, get him yanked out of a speech and persuade him to order his secretary of state to change an imminent U.S. vote at the United States? According to Israel's prime minister, yes.

 Here's what AFP and others reported from Israel yesterday:

 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

 The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

 The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

 "I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

 "I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

 The White House called the story inaccurate. AFP quoted a U.S. official insisting that the abstention was the plan all along. "The government of Israel does not make US policy," the official told AFP. Reuters and AP, meanwhile, quoted Arab officials at the U.N. saying that Rice had promised them the United States would support the resolution.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 Kudos to NY Times reporter David Sanger, who has a very important story in Sunday's paper, detailing recent Israeli and American moves to use overt and covert force against Iran. The revelations, including one about Israeli plans to launch an air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities in Natanz, were published the same day that Barack Obama was confirming his intention of adopting a much more conciliatory, diplomatic approach in dealing with the challenges posed by Iran's nuclear program and its support of radical groups like Hizballah and Hamas.

 Sanger's story thus comes at the right moment. It shows how completely confused and bankrupt America's coercion-based policy toward Iran has become after 30 years of refusing, either because of political cowardice or ignorance, to have diplomatic dealings with the Islamic Republic. After all the anti-Iran rhetoric and propaganda, after a handful of half-hearted olive branches, after three decades of systematically losing strategic  ground to Tehran throughout the Middle East, it's come down to this, if I read Sanger's report correctly:

 --Bush near the end of his terms in office concluded that a U.S. military strike on Iran, a topic of intense speculation for years, would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and thus drive Iran's uranium-enrichment program deeper underground, and possibly ignite a broad Middle East war further endangering America's 140,000 troops in Iraq. Of course this is a welcome conclusion on Bush's part, but one cringes that such a no-brainer was apparently such a difficult thing to figure out.

 --Despite the great diplomatic fuss to get the United Nations to impose escalating sanctions on Iran, Bush also concluded that the sanctions were "failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts.... Bush realized that the sanctions he had pressed for were inadequate and his military options untenable." Again, a sensible conclusion, but it also reveals the emptiness of the sanctions effort from the start. It wasn't a policy, it was a reaction.

 --What's a policy-lacking president to do? Start a dialogue with Iran that will isolate hard-liners, encourage moderates and generally give Iranians a bigger stake in a peaceful Middle East. Well, no. Bush's brainstorm--again, a pathetic reaction rather than a policy--was to ask the CIA to come up with a "major covert program" aimed at sabotaging Iran's nuclear activities at Natanz. Although Sanger says other officials strongly disagree, he quotes one official mocking the covert activities as "science experiments" and another saying,  "None of these are game-changers."

 --Enter the Israelis. Apparently stunned and disappointed that Bush had become too chicken to launch a third Middle East war during his presidency, PM Ehud Olmert's government signaled that if the U.S. wasn't going to blow Natanz to smithereens, then Israelis would have to do that, or at least try to goad Bush into reconsidering.  According to Sanger, in early 2008 the Israelis effectively notified Washington of their intention to bomb Natanz--a repeat of the Israeli strike on a Saddam Hussein nuclear facility way back in 1981--when it made three requests in a series of meetings. They wanted a new generation of powerful bunker-busting bombs designed for destroying deep underground facilities; refueling equipment that would enable Israeli attack aircraft to reach Natanz and return to Israel; and permission to fly over Iraq en route to executing the attack. To its credit, the Bush administration seems to have rejected Israel's requests. According to Sanger, Israeli officials appear to have concluded that with Washington's help, they were not capable of achieving a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear program.

 Good grief, where are the adults?  That's where things stand now, President Obama. Over to you.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 He's almost president now, and Obama is still talking a lot of sense about the Middle East. Despite the enormous attention he needs to give the financial crisis, Obama is making it clear the Middle East will be a top priority from day one. A big question remains who he's going to tap to be his most trusted Middle East advisor/envoy/whatever. Here's what he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on a broadcast earlier today:

 On the Gaza crisis:

 What I am doing right now is putting together the team so that on January 20th, starting on day one, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole.

That are going to be engaging with all of the actors there. That will work to create a strategic approach that ensures that both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations.

 I think I said this a couple of days back, that when you see civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, harmed, under hardship, it's heartbreaking. And obviously what that does is it makes me much more determined to try to break a deadlock that has gone on for decades now.

 On Obama's Middle East policy:

 Well, you know, I think that if you look not just at the Bush administration, but also what happened under the Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach.

And I think that players in the region understand the compromises that are going to need to be made. But the politics of it are hard. And the reason it's so important for the United States to be engaged and involved immediately, not waiting until the end of their term, is because working through the politics of this requires a third party that everybody has confidence, wants to see a fair and just outcome.

 On talking to Iran:

 I think that Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges. And as I said during the campaign, you know, we have a situation in which not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah, but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

And we are going to have to take a new approach. And I've outlined my belief that engagement is the place to start. That the international community is going to be taking cues from us in how we want to approach Iran.

And I think that sending a signal that we respect the aspirations of the Iranian people, but that we also have certain expectations in terms of how a international actor behaves… a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk, but also a clarity about what our bottom lines are. And we are in preparations for that. We anticipate that we're going to have to move swiftly in that area.

 On Obama's differences with Dick Cheney:

 Vice President Cheney I think continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture. I have said that under my administration we will not torture… although John McCain and I had a lot of differences on a lot of issues, this is one where we didn't have a difference, which is that it is possible for us to keep the American people safe while still adhering to our core values and ideals and that's what I intend to carry forward in my administration.

 On closing Guantanamo Bay:

 I think it's going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do. But I don't want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Young men gathered in Ramallah for Friday prayers and a demonstration against the Israeli operation in Gaza

I went out to an anti-Israeli demonstration in Ramallah on Friday that turned into an a brawl between the Palestinian security services and Hamas supporters, and then got caught in a tear gas/rock throwing crossfire at the checkpoint getting back into Israel. After a month of vacation, my reaction time (and writing speed) is mush. You'd think that as I was planning a day trip to the West Bank in the midst of a war in Gaza, I might have planned on seeing a little civil disobedience, no? But my reporting back-pack -- which is full of useful little gadgets for when things get uncomfortable, such a fabric face mask with charcoal filter to keep out smog and tear gas --  was sitting back at the hotel.

That short trip to the West Bank was more than just a wake up call for myself. What's happening there should serve as a warning to Israel. Each day of the operation in Gaza brings us closer to some kind of new intifada-like scenario. As I wrote in my article for Time.com, the rising death toll in Gaza is destroying the credibility of Palestinians moderates, who seem unable or unwilling to get their Israeli and American partners to stop the violence.

Every day these demonstrations are occurring all over the West Bank, in all the major cities and even some towns, with the largest crowds on Fridays after prayers. (Though in general the crowds appear to be getting larger and larger.) The Fatah leadership that controls the Palestinian government is using the state security services to crack down on anyone who appears to be a Hamas supporter. But increasingly the security services are seen by average Palestinians as doing Israel's work for it. In particular, the the Palestinian Authority has been deploying its forces to keep demonstrations away from Israeli settlements close to towns such as Bethlehem, Nablus, and Hebron. What the PA seems to be afraid of is any incident that would spark a cycle of violence.

Palestinian leaders will only be too aware that the First Intifada was a spontaneous uprising by young people chaffing under Israeli occupation and frustrated by the failures of the elders in the PLO. It was the stone throwing children in the occupied territories who rescued Yasser Arafat from exile and obscurity in Tunis. But a popular uprising in the West Bank this time won't be so kind to the Palestinian leadership. Mustapha Barghouti, an independent Palestinian parliamentarian whom I bumped into at the Ramallah demonstration, said that the Israeli operation in Gaza was already uniting Palestinians against both the Israelis and the Palestinian leadership. "Those in authority must understand that they have no authority while their people are under full occupation," he said. The solution he offered was non-violent demonstration, freedom and coexistence. But a more likely scenario is rage, rejection, and revolt.

--Andrew Lee Butters in Ramallah with reporting by Jamil Hamad in Hebron

 It was a sign of how the Israeli and American governments lacked interest in the Middle East peace process that when the Arab League adopted a historic, comprehensive peace plan in Beirut in 2002, the offer was completely ignored if not scoffed at. To be fair, President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did eventually express some interest in the Arab gesture, especially when the Arabs formally re-launched it in 2007. To this day, it sits collecting dust.

 Next week when Barack Obama succeeds George Bush, he'll do well to start dusting it off. The plan as a vehicle for negotiations leaves a lot to be desired. The content seems simple; the Arabs offer Israel peace with all 22 Arab states in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Palestinian and Syrian territories and the Shabaa Farms area claimed by Lebanon. But a clean, full  Israeli withdrawal will not be easy, especially in the West Bank, where dense Israeli suburbs have been built on the occupied territory. And a true peace deal is not just about a trade of land for peace, but entails a genuine readiness to build a new future together through political, economic and cultural cooperation. 

 Still, considering the state of war between Israel and most Arab countries for 61 years, the 2002 Arab initiative is significant and must be used as a basis for a serious effort to finally bring peace to the Middle East. As Obama prepares to take office, Israeli and American hard-liners would have been only too pleased if the Israeli attacks on Gaza had sunk the Arab peace plan. 

 But that's not going to happen. The Arabs offered the peace initiative as a sincere effort to end a conflict that has caused needless destruction throughout the region for decades. In effect, the Arabs are saying, "OK, we've failed to eliminate Israel, enough already. We accept Israel now, so let's get on with life." In the Arab world, only Hamas and Hizballah, with the backing of Tehran, reject the Arab peace initiative. 

 Despite the Arab outrage over Gaza, and especially the horrendous civilian casualties, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, whose king first launched the peace plan seven years ago, has made it clear that the Arabs are hardly going to abandon the search for peace just to give some empty support for a Palestinian Islamist faction that gets much of its money from Iran. Pity that Arab efforts on behalf of peace don't generate as much excitement as the Hamas and Hizballah rockets and bombs. Here's what Saud al-Faisal had to say at the U.N. yesterday:

 The Arab Peace Initiative calls for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and the just settlement of the refugee situation in exchange for peace and normal relations with all Arab countries.

 The initiative provides for a formal end to the conflict. All Arab countries have committed themselves to it, and it has garnered the support of more than 60 countries, including the United States. The initiative is still on the table.

 The Arab Peace Initiative has become a major reference point for all attempts to solve the Arab/Israeli conflict and it is time we turn it into a mechanism to end this longstanding conflict.

 --By Scott MacLeod