A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

February 03, 2008 Gaza

Gaza is once again in the headlines, as the head of the Security Services warned that the Hamas and other terrorist groups had imported a large amount of weapons to the Gaza Strip through the open border with Egypt.  Diskin stated that among the weapons brought it were long-range missiles that have the ability to hit additional Israeli cities. Meanwhile Egypt claims to have closed the border.  Israeli observers are very skeptical about how much the border is going to be sealed.  Ismail Haneyah, the head of Hamas in Gaza today, disavowed the trial balloon yesterday by one of the leader of Hamas that they would like to disconnect from Israel and receive all their supplies from Egypt.  The reality is that Egypt is not capable of supplying Gaza’s needs anytime soon.

 Barak announced what many had expected, that he was not pulling Labor out of the coalition, as promised based on the Winograd Commission results. Baraks reasons are no doubt some combination of political, personal and national.  Clearly the labor party is in no place to run in an election at the moment.  He no doubt also feels that he is the best person at the moment to be the Defense Minister.  That part most Israelis probably agree.

 One of our readers in Israel wrote that he was physically sick hearing some members of Kadima saying that Israelis should apologize to Olmert since the report was not as devastating as some had expected.  Commentators on the Israeli's Friday night news shows shared our reader’s sentiments.  One of who said that it was comments like that and comments by former Defense Minister Amir Peretz that made him want to grab a banner and start demonstrating in the streets.

One of the recommendations of the report was a section suggesting that the military censor be strengthened, and that the lack of effective censorship had contributed to the failures of the war.  Interesting in discussion on London and Kirschbaum on the subject, one of the participants quoted from the Argannat Commission (after the Yom Kippur War), which said almost word for word the same things.  The members of the commission do not represent the youngest members of Israel’s society, may not fully grasp that in this Internet age the possibilities of stronger censorship are not very feasible.  Of course there is the further question that if there had been stronger censorship, would many of the failing of war been known?