{"id":14096,"date":"2012-11-16T12:25:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T19:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14096"},"modified":"2012-11-16T12:25:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T19:25:45","slug":"israel-says-doesnt-want-war-as-it-masses-troops-for-gaza-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14096","title":{"rendered":"Israel says doesn&#8217;t want war as it masses troops for Gaza invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/nowar.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/nowar-e1353093728178.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\" \" width=\"425\" height=\"269\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14097\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Massing troops and tanks near Gaza, Israel says wants no war<\/strong><br \/>\n16 November, 2012 &#8211; By Dan Williams &#8211; Reuters<\/p>\n<p>JERUSALEM: Israeli tanks and troops massed outside Gaza and the military said on Friday it was calling up 16,000 reservists, signs of a possible imminent invasion of the Palestinian enclave after 48 hours of air strikes.<\/p>\n<p>Israel&#8217;s warplanes, drones and helicopters appeared to shift focus from suspected Palestinian rocket sites to the northern Gaza frontier, where their bombs created incursion corridors by clearing landmines or guerrilla gun nests.<\/p>\n<p>The mobilisation was anything but secret and details put on social media by the Israeli military appeared to be a clear warning to the Hamas Islamists that govern Gaza to push for a truce.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is not our intention to go to war, and we are hopeful that this operation will not take a minute more than required,&#8221; Israeli President Shimon Peres said.<\/p>\n<p>Since being fought to a standstill in its 2006 war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel has been honing the training of its regular troops and could mount a land invasion of Gaza at short notice.<\/p>\n<p>Public statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggest such an escalation has preliminary cabinet approval.<\/p>\n<p>Among units already garrisoned outside Gaza is Israel&#8217;s paratrooper brigade whose commander, Colonel Amir Baram, said last month that in planning tactics he had studied World War One skirmishes in Gaza between British forces and the Ottoman Turks.<\/p>\n<p>Should his troops be ordered in, Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Channel 2 television, &#8220;they will need to go house-to-house, and then we will need the lessons of the past&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Among those lessons learnt has been that Gaza&#8217;s impoverished population of 1.7 million is vulnerable to humanitarian crises, which could spell international controversy for Israel.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailystar.com.lb\/News\/Middle-East\/2012\/Nov-16\/195243-twenty-months-of-tension-in-and-around-gaza.ashx\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D14096&amp;text=Israel+says+doesn%27t+want+war+as+it+masses+troops+for+Gaza+invasion&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Massing troops and tanks near Gaza, Israel says wants no war 16 November, 2012 &#8211; By Dan Williams &#8211; Reuters JERUSALEM: Israeli tanks and troops massed outside Gaza and the military said on Friday it was calling up 16,000 reservists, signs of a possible imminent invasion of the Palestinian enclave after 48 hours of air <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14096#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2299],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14098,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096\/revisions\/14098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}