Meanwhile in the real world.......

All the principal players have spoken, the platitudes have been flowing, the photos taken, and some might feel some sort of warm glow from the Annapolis Middle East one-day meeting, but as everyone at the meeting heads back home, the reality on the ground in Gaza is clearly highlighted in this piece on The Independent:

"Big Israeli armoured bulldozers, guarded by a stationary escort of tanks and armoured personnel carriers half-hidden in the adjacent sandbanks, were operating all along the exposed walk south on the Palestinian side of the hi-tech Erez terminal separating Gaza from Israel yesterday.

As the great and good of the Western and Arab worlds were gathering in Annapolis, this no-man's land crossed on foot by the small privileged minority of Palestinians allowed to enter and leave since Hamas's enforced takeover in June, has been extended to almost two kilometres.

Yesterday the road seemed like a metaphor for the ever- deepening isolation of Gaza. Much of it is now rutted by the bulldozers seemingly working to destroy the cover afforded to mortar and Qassam rocket-launching crews by the eerie, bombed-out wreckage of what was once a clatteringly busy Palestinian-Israeli industrial zone. The core of women from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, brandishing familiar Palestinian flags, demonstrating against what is universally called here the "siege" of Gaza, had to do so separated even from the forbidding border fence by almost a mile-wide sterile zone controlled by the Israeli military, their remote-controlled drones buzzing overhead."

It is worth bearing in mind that a principal player in the Middle East, Hamas - remember, the duly democratically elected authority governing Gaza - wasn't even invited to the Annapolis meeting. Not really very smart excluding them!

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