The Free Gaza Movement, an international organization made up of volunteers from 17 nations, has assembled two vessels laden with humanitarian aid and has announced its intention to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip by sailing into Gaza Harbor.  The two ships, The S.S. Free Gaza and S.S. Liberty have been moving across the Mediterranean since July and are currently docked in Cyprus awaiting their final departure for the estranged Gaza Strip.  Following last year’s Hamas takeover, Israel has imposed a siege and embargo on the Palestinian territory, and multiple human rights groups have attested that the situation in Gaza is desperate.

The latter ship is named after the U.S.S. Liberty, an intelligence gathering U.S. Navy vessel which Israel napalmed, strafed and torpedoed in the 1967 War.  34 American sailors were killed and 170 wounded.  Israel has maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, while survivors of the incident insist that it was intentional and have campaigned for a more thorough investigation of what took place.

From the Free Gaza Movement website:

Mission Statement
We want to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation. We want to uphold Palestine’s right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, or otherwise.

Who are we?
We are these human rights observers, aid workers, and journalists. We have years of experience volunteering in Gaza and the West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians. But now, because of the increasing stranglehold of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, many of us find it almost impossible to enter Gaza, and an increasing number have been refused entry to Israel and the West Bank as well. Despite the great need for our work, the Israeli Government will not allow us in to do it.

Several days ago, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted the Free Gaza movement and ordered them to turn over the aid to Israeli forces for distribution rather than deliver it to Gaza directly.  The organization shot back that Israel’s “abysmal” record of human rights abuses and failure to adequately distribute food and humanitarian necessities to the Gazans are the very reason for their voyage.

Last week’s Russian invasion of Georgia has played out as a major embarrassment for the United States. As a member of the “Coalition of the Willing”, Saakashvili’s Georgia has not only been a steadfast ally of the West, but a personal friend to the Bush Administration.  As best as I can tell from the vague picture emerging from the Caucasus, it appears that the Russians easily put to flight Georgia’s partially U.S. trained and equipped armed forces.  The U.S. response has begun.

Buried beneath the news in a month filled with plenty of it, the United States has spent the past several weeks attempting to integrate Poland into its emerging missile defense system.  It appears to have succeeded. The American plan calls for the placement on Polish territory of 10 interceptor missiles which the United States asserts are part of a global shield against a nuclear armed “Iran and  “rogue elements”.  Russia views the system as a threat to its security and was outraged when the United States announced the opening of radar facilities linked to the missile defense system in the former Warsaw Pact nation of the Czech Republic.

The Polish government has followed a hard line pro-U.S. foreign policy since its admittance to NATO in 1999 and, like Saakashvili’s Georgia,  went so far as to deploy combat troops to Iraq.  Although the missile defense shield is extremely unpopular with the Polish public, the Polish government has been in favor of the plan…with some conditions.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland finally agreed on Thursday to host elements of U.S. global anti-missile system on its territory after Washington improved the terms of the deal amid the Georgia crisis.

The preliminary deal was signed by deputy Polish Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and U.S. chief negotiator John Rood. It still needs to be endorsed by the Polish parliament.

The signing comes after Prime Minister Donald Tusk had been holding out for enhanced military cooperation with the United States in return for consent to host 10 interceptor rockets at a base in northern Poland.

Despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s impending resignation, Israel and Syria appear to be continuing their Turkish mediated talks over the Golan Heights. The two countries have received widespread encouragement from the international community for their negotiations, which would presumably involve Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights in exchange for Syrian recognition of the Jewish State and an end for its support of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Israel captured the Golan in the 1967 War and controversially annexed it in 1981.

Are we approaching the long awaited little brother of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty? It’s extremely dubious at best, and that may be a good thing. Let’s look at the history.

Rather than usher in a new era of peace and cooperation between the Arabs and Israelis, the agreement, brokered by President Carter under noble pretenses, enabled and catalyzed three of the most salient obstacles to peace which confront regional actors today: Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, Palestinian resistance against them and the political situation in Lebanon in the aftermath of Israel’s two-decade occupation.