Negotiations with the Occupation.

Hamas awaits Israeli reply on truce

Once again, we see a clear example of how negotiations with Israel work. Hamas, the supposed "terrorists", engage in multilateral diplomacy:

A Hamas delegation met Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Cairo late on Monday as Egypt continued bids to broker an extended truce with Israel over Gaza, the state MENA news agency reported.

It said the Islamist delegation was preparing to return to the Gaza Strip and Syria to await Israel's final say on a long-term truce.

 while Israel continues its collective punishment of an entire people.

Israeli warplanes targeted smuggling tunnels on Gaza's border with Egypt on Monday after two rockets were fired from the Palestinian territory, witnessessaid. Israel says armed groups use the tunnels around the border town of Rafah to smuggle weapons into the Hamas-run enclave.

Anyone with any logic knows these accusations, reported without question here in the West, are patently false. Gaza has been under a blockade since the supposed Israeli "withdrawl" of 2005. (A withdrawl which has left Gaza a wall-less prison of 1.5 million people, as Israel still controls the airspace, ports, and all but one border crossing). These tunnels, crude as they may be, by and large used to smuggle in not weapons, but desperately needed food and medical supplies, which Israel has cruelly denied the 1.5 million Palestinians access to.

Hamas has accused Israel of backtracking on a deal after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday ruled out lifting the blockade of Gaza, a key Hamas demand, until the Islamists release captured soldier Gilad Shalit.

And what of the tens of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, Mr. Olmert? When will they be released? People who have been arrested and jailed for years, without charge or trial, a violation of the most basic legal principles?

 I suppose that those lives are trivial, while the life of one occupying soldier must have the highest of considerations in any negotiatons between oppressor and oppressed.