January 18: Ceasefire in Gaza

Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week invasion of Gaza to suppress rocket fire and halt arms smuggling, was suspended on this date in 2009. The war, a tight, intense conflict with more than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed, was condemned by a United Nations mission, headed by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, which accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes. (After two years of intense pressure, Goldstone renounced his earlier belief that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians in Gaza, but the other authors of the report stood by their assessment.) The war followed three years of rocket and artillery fire back and forth between Gaza and southern Israel, brought to a lull in 2008 by an Egypt-brokered ceasefire. Israel withdrew its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but has maintained tight control over the territory’s borders (with Egypt controlling the southern border) and a virtual economic state of siege since Hamas took power there in 2007. Hamas has refused to honor the agreements of mutual recognition and non-aggression that the Palestinian Authority signed in prior years — a stance that has suited those elements of the Israeli political establishment that prefer to postpone a two-state solution and consolidate Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands.

“I am telling them now, it may be the last minute, I’m telling them stop it. We are stronger.” —Prime Minister Ehud Olmert