AMMAN -- On the 12th day of a relentless war on the Gaza Strip, Israel temporarily stopped the military attacks for three hours on Wednesday, announcing it would give the same lull every day to allow the passage of humanitarian aid, as international diplomatic efforts picked up pace to arrive at a permanent cease-fire following the Israeli bombardment of a U.N.-run school in a Gaza refugee camp.
Lebanese leaders have been eyeing the present conflict in the Gaza Strip with apprehension for fear it would spread to Lebanon.
EDITORIAL
Since the start of the recent clashes on Christmas Eve between Hamas and the Israeli military, spokespeople for the Israeli military have gone on record to stress that this war is not against the Palestinian people, but against what the Israelis call, "terrorists."
OPINION
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Watching the mind-numbing savagery unleashed on Gaza in utter helplessness with the rest of the world and listening to the statements of Israeli and Western leaders over the past few days, I've often wondered: 'Are we all on the same planet?'
It takes a bold writer to tackle a hackneyed theme and repackage it in fresh wrappings so that the most jaded reader finds the story imaginative. For the most part, Kira Salak is that writer, giving us a contemporary version of Joseph Conrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" (1903); engaging readers a hundred years after Conrad provoked his readers. Ironically, if Conrad's late Victorian readers didn't understand the attack on their own racist views, Salak's shouldn't miss the rebuke on their own narrow-minded ethnocentrism, assuming they read "The White Mary" to its bitter end.
