Post-Gaza thoughts

22 January
Good morning. Today the papers are flowing with Obamania as is to be expected and expectations grow. As many have pointed out it does not augur well that Barack has so said ought about the aberration of Gaza The Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook has a column in the Guardian in which he says that"the wave of hope that met your election was heavily dampened by your silence on the Gaza massacre" and in which he observes that Sderot, a target of Hamas rockets, was built on the ruins of Najd, a Palestinian village ransacked in May 1948 "by Zionist terrorist gangs" He ends the piece by telling Obama "Only if you decide to fairly address the issue of the 6 million refugees and the ending of occupation of Palestinian lands, including Jerusalem, will you be able to start a new relationship with the Muslim world". One does not have to subscribe to everything Marzook says to appreciate that it underlines the obvious necessities for a healing of the running sore that is Israel/Palestine, the issues I identified in my letter in the Guardian on 20 January (and which I reproduced in yesterday's blog)