Ukraine and Gaza: a round up of coverage
Posted by Sappho on July 19th, 2014 filed in News and Commentary
I’ve been stuck inside most of today, due to a combination of needing to take it easy after giving plasma and the fact that we’ve been trying to avoid coming and going while they paint our condo. So I took the opportunity to check papers from different countries on the events of this week.
Who’s leading with the latest on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, shot down over the Ukraine earlier this week: Nearly everyone.
Australian papers have been reporting profiles of the dead as names were released: the two retired teachers, the nun, the grandfather taking his three grandchildren on the trip of a lifetime. Now the New York Times has a full list of the dead, along with profiles of some of the victims.
Earlier reports said that as many as 108 AIDS researchers and activists headed for a conference in Australia had been among the 298 on the flight, but that particular part of the death toll may be lower, as the latest statement posted on AIDS 2014 reports six delegates confirmed among the dead. These include Joep Lange, former president of the International AIDS Society, AIDS researcher for decades, and early outspoken proponent of triple antiretroviral therapy.
Der Spiegel reports on the Moscow connections of the Russian separatists who shot down MH17. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the separatists have returned dozens of corpses from the crash.
The Greek paper Eleftherotypia reports on Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s statement that Putin has a last chance to show that he’s willing to help, by exerting his influence on the rebels to get them to allow full access to the crash site. Ezra Klein’s Vox reports reasons for Rutte’s frustration, as “the untrained rebels are carting away evidence and refusing entry to actual investigators.”
The Pakistani paper Dawn sees the two disasters this year to Malaysian Airlines flight as harming Malaysia’s national pride. Meanwhile, India Times tracks the impact of the crash on flyers and aviation, as flight times increase to avoid Ukrainian airspace, air insurance rates go up, and airlines reevaluate safety margins in air space near other conflict zones.
Global Voices has several posts of coverage of the MH17 disaster, from the renewed grief of Chinese families still waiting for answers on MH370 to Russian state TV attempts to edit Wikipedia coverage of the event.
Mark Galeotti, at Foreign Policy, sees the downing of MH17 as the beginning of the end for the rebels.
But Shaun Walker, at the Guardian, thinks that Putin is not yet ready to abandon the rebels.
… Much will depend on what exactly can be ascertained by any investigation. At the moment, plenty of circumstantial evidence points to MH17 being downed by the rebels, possibly using a weapon provided by Russia. But if a “smoking gun” is not found – and with every hour that the crash site is contaminated and not handed over to proper investigators, the chances of a thorough investigation seem to diminish – the Russians may be able to mount a plausible deniability defence.
This, after all, has been a conflict where plausible deniability has been stretched beyond belief….
Cheryl at Nuclear Diner has a good round up of links of analysis by people with background on Ukraine, Russia, airline flights, etc.
Who’s leading with the latest on Israel’s troops in Gaza: Israeli and Turkish papers. Also Le Monde, which leads with a report that a big demonstration in Paris protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza went ahead despite an effort to ban it as posing a risk of public unrest.
The Jerusalem Post live blogs Israel’s Operation Protective Edge: thirteen tunnels discovered by Israeli troops, air raid sirens in the Ashkelon and Beersheba areas, Gaza-based militants have used up about half their rockets, two IDF soldiers dead.
So does Haaretz: 22 tunnels unearthed, dueling attempts by Israeli and Palestinian UN envoys, diplomatic maneuvering around an Egyptian ceasefire proposal, and a travel warning for Israelis to avoid travel to Turkey.
You may remember that Israeli-Turkish relations, once friendly, soured four years ago in the wake of the Gaza flotilla raid. As recently as two months ago, there was speculation that Israel and Turkey might mend relations as they found a common enemy in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
It doesn’t look, now, as if that mending of fences is happening any time soon.
The Daily Sabah, a Turkish paper friendly to Turkey’s ruling AKP party, reports that Turkish government officials are united in their condemnation of Israeli aggression, and that Erdogan condemns Egypt’s ceasefire proposal as overly friendly to Israel.
The Hurriyet Daily News, a Turkish paper that leans more toward Turkey’s secular opposition party CHP, reports that all three Turkish presidential candidates have come out against Israel’s actions.
The Ottomans and Zionists blog judges Israeli-Turkish rapprochement dead, and reports on why a Gaza ceasefire is so difficult: no good brokers for a truce, fractured Hamas leadership, pressure on Bibi from his right flank, and
the balancing act that Israel is trying to play with the eventual outcome regarding Hamas itself. Israel’s goals are delicately balanced between weakening Hamas and taking out its capabilities to launch long-range missiles at Israeli cities while still keeping Hamas alive and viable to the point of it maintaining its rule over Gaza.
Daniel Levy at Al Jazeera sees Israel’s goals as
another round of what is known in the Israeli security establishment as “mowing of the lawn” — a periodic degrading of Hamas’ military capacity. Netanyahu’s other strategic goal is to disrupt the fledgling effort at Palestinian reconciliation between the key rival national organizations, Fatah and Hamas.
An article in the Economist reports that Hamas wants two concessions that it probably won’t get.
Among its key demands were a lifting of the siege of Gaza and the release of prisoners. Gaza’s seaport and airport would be reopened and monitored by the UN.
Juan Cole suggests that
The Israeli security establishment was almost certainly encouraged to launch its military assault on little Gaza by the current divisions over political Islam in the Middle East.
… The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt last summer has positioned the Egyptian government as almost as big an enemy of Hamas as Israel itself….