On or around November 17th (17/11/12) it became apparent that the US is simply beyond reason on the Rihanna/Contra Mundum issue making it incredibly difficult for anything else to get done. As a result Israel decided to shut down their Pillars of Cloud operation against Gaza and were just ready to hand Hamas a ceasefire. However because there are things going on internally within Israel such as the upcoming election they needed Hamas to make some small concessions in order to sell the ceasefire to the Israeli public. The main problem though was Egyptain President Morsi who being horrifically out of his depth wouldn't allow the ceasefire to take effect until he'd proved himself to be a world statesman by being seen to have meetings with the United Nations Secretary General and the US Secretary of State. As a result the ceasefire was delayed until November 21st (21/11/12) and around 100 people were killed needlessly as Israel attempted to increase the pressure on Morsi by intensifying the levels of violence involved. The US were of course happy to have this happen in the hope that Hamas would reveal the extent of their weapons stores because the US is still trying to calculate the volume of weaponry that fell into the hands of terror groups far worse then Hamas following the Libya conflict.
In order to keep busy while Morsi fiddled Israel twice bombed a media building used by Al-Asqua TV and foreign media outlets. This was a direct reference to an incident during the 1999 bombing campaign of Serbia in which the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed by US forces killing three journalists amid allegations that the building was being used as a spy base. It was also during this conflict often wrongly dubbed the "Kosovo War" that a US F117 Nighthawk stealth fighter was shot down by Serb forces and the wreckage was passed to China to help them develop their own stealth aircraft program. Therefore the Israeli bombing of the TV station was an attempt to promote discussion about the issue of Intellectual Property Rights as it relates to the Green Climate Fund set up through COP/CMP negotiations. It was actually the Chinese who brought the issue up initially with the unveiling of their J-31 stealth fighter on November 8th (8/11/12) which looks suspiciously like the US' own F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. However as the US' reaction to this discussion - the crash of an F-22 Raptor in Florida - was the diplomatic equivalent of a vacant stare it needed restating not once but twice.
On a related note tomorrow the United Nations General Assembly will vote on allowing Palestine full UN observer status. This looks like it will pass off without out too much trouble because there seems to be a general consensus that it is the right thing to do because while it stops short of statehood which the PLO are not ready for it is an important step in getting them ready.
16:20 on 28/11/12.
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