“Our concern is to have a legitimate ceasefire and see if we can find a way to stop the conflict and killing so we can get to the real issues that are underlying it,” Kerry said Wednesday.
Haaretz reported Wednesday night that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was secretly involved in ceasefire talks as far back as Saturday, when he reportedly spoke with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.
Quartet special envoy Tony Blair was said to have flown to Israel Saturday night to speak with Netanyahu after meeting with al-Sisi, and he is scheduled to talk with the Egyptian leader again al-Sisi tonight .
Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas also is in Egypt and has offered to deploy PA soldiers along the smuggling region from Rafah eastward, known as the Philadelphia Corridor. Israel gave up control of the area under the Sharon government, a move that has been widely considered a gift to terrorism.
Leaving PA forces in charge of area would give the regime in Ramallah de facto recognition as having an army, in violation of the Oslo Accords that don’t mean anything anymore and anyway, unless Israel violates them.
If the PA were to get away with “guarding” the border, Kerry would be able to stake claims that there is no reason that it should not patrol the Jordan Valley.
If that is not enough to turn the current clash into the theater of the absurd, Hamas also is demanding that one condition of a ceasefire be that Israel release terrorists who were re-arrested after previously freed in the deal to let 1,000 of them loose in return for the safe return of one soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Many of the terrorists were-rearrested for returning to their favorite hobby of killing or trying to kill Israelis.
Alice in Wonderland is beginning to pale as this current war story gets weirder and weirder.