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    Kerry visits Gaza, shuns House delegation

    By acanuck on Fri, 02/20/2009 - 6:23pm |

    The actual headline was "Kerry visits Gaza, shuns Hamas." But nobody expected him to meet up with Ismail Haniyeh, did they?

    What's more puzzling is the elaborate Kabuki that saw the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee touring Gaza on the same day as two fellow Democrats from the House of Representatives, and seemingly never crossing paths.

    Here at TPM, MJ Rosenberg writes that Kerry toured Gaza "with" Reps. Ellison and Baird, but the New York Times says:

    Separately, two other congressmen visited Gaza: Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Their trip was arranged independently of Kerry's but included similar tours of destroyed areas and meetings with U.N. officials.

    Let me get this straight: UN officials gave two separate guided tours, providing security for both, and nobody suggested co-ordinating them? Then there's this from AP:

    Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Kerry met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert early Thursday, but made no mention of his plans to go to Gaza.

    Does anybody -- ANYBODY -- buy that? If Israel could deny ex-president Jimmy Carter's request to enter Gaza, there sure as hell is no way ex-presidential candidate Kerry simply flashed his passport and strolled through the Erez border crossing.

    Then there's the image of three congressmen, in two separate groups, touring -- seemingly without incident -- an area under the control of what the U.S. government has labeled a terrorist organization.

    Security was ostensibly provided by the UN. Funny, I don't recall the UN having any armed forces in Gaza; most weapons belong to the Hamas-run police. What's being left unreported is this: UN officials in Gaza negotiated the logistics of the tours with Hamas, and it signed off on providing security for them. Indirect talks.

    Kerry went out of his way to stress that his visit signaled no change in U.S. policy, though of course it does. Maintaining that illusion perhaps explains the pretense of two separate tours. Baird and Ellison were left free to issue a joint statement calling the destruction inflicted on Gaza appalling and beyond description. Kerry doesn't have to say anything. 

    Comments

    So why did Kerry bother to go at all? Can't this man step up to the plate about anything? What is wrong with speaking about his observations? Is that against US policy?


    by CVille Dem (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 12:43pm

    He's the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is of the same party as the president and obviously fully behind the new president.

    In Obama's Feb. 9 press conference, Obama clearly reiterated the official stance that Hamas is a terrorist organization. The day before, in the administration's first major foreign policy speech, given by Joe Biden in Munich on Feb. 7, Biden said In the near term, we must consolidate the cease-fire in Gaza by working with Egypt and others to stop smuggling, and developing an international relief and reconstruction effort that strengthens the Palestinian Authority, and not Hamas.

    Even if Kerry wanted to act independently, to publicly say too much would be stepping on Obama's plans, whatever they are. But from what we know of how supportive he is of Obama, chances are very high that he had full instructions from the president's office on how much he should say and what he should do, and whether he should go at all.

    Seems obvious to me that speaking up more would be against Obama's policy, not U.S. policy, that's what's going on here.


    by artappraiser (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 6:59pm

    The above was meant as a reply to CVille Dem's comment, and not the original post.

    -----
    And a P.S.:

    This is an example of how things have to be done when dealing with an area governed by what the U.S. officially calls a terrorist organization: In a Letter, a Leader of Hamas Makes an Appeal to Obama. The letter was first given to U.N. officials who gave it to Kerry, as Kerry could not accept something directly from someone representing Hamas.


    by artappraiser (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 7:03pm

    For the first time since Bill Clinton was in office, U.S. legislators are asserting their right to set foot in Gaza and judge for themselves what's going on. That in itself is a sea change.
    The claim that Olmert was unaware of Kerry's plan sounds to me like a veiled admission he couldn't talk him out of it.
    That it's a powerful senator, with access to Obama's ear as well as his own forum, has to worry Israeli leaders.
    Not what he'll say publicly (he has routinely backed Israel's right to self-defense) but what he might say privately to the president.
    Stay tuned for more on this breaking story.


    by acanuck (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 7:19pm

    I wouldn't read so much into it.

    But I guess we'll see.


    by Armchair Guerrilla (not verified) on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 12:37am

    Yeah, there's a lot of guesswork on my part here. And there's an extra layer of smoke-and-mirrors here on top of the usual amount you can expect in the Mideast.


    by acanuck (not verified) on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 3:15am