What will Israel’s recent ‘shock and awe’ campaign in Gaza do to President-Elect Obama’s potential to live up to the world’s expectations? According to Swiss newspaper Le Temps, the prognosis is not good.
The Le Temps editorial says in part:
“We dreamed of a Barack Obama who would achieve in the coming months what his predecessor had failed to accomplish in two terms. But the ‘peace process’ between Israelis and Palestinians will have to wait. Hope and optimism can be forgotten. At this stage, the best one can expect of him is a stoppage of the downward spiral poised to engulf the entire region and with it, all of its more reasonable actors.”
By Luis Lema
Translated By Molly Smith
December 29, 2008
Switzerland – Le Temps – Original Article (French)
There were some who feared (or hoped) for an attack against Iran. But the period of transition during which power is handed off between U.S. presidents has in the end resulted in an almost unprecedented military operation in Gaza. Nearly 300 [now over 350] killed on a fringe of land already near ruin, the inhabitants of which lack nearly everything. Before the departure George Bush, it was time for some housecleaning.
Failing to resolve the fate of the nuclear sorcerer’s apprentices in Tehran, the Israelis decided to destroy as much of Hamas as possible, Hamas being the other “mortal danger” that keeps a quarter of a million inhabitants of the Hebrew State living in fear of the potential threat of rocket attack.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated and English-language foreign press coverage of how the Gaza crisis impinges on our nation.
