Israel har gått starkt ut de senaste veckorna för att markera att man inte tänker låta Barack Obamas inkommande regering ändra på status quo i Mellanöstern.

Att Obama inte har några som helst sympatier för Palestinierna blev klart under valkampanjen och Justin Elliot har skrivit i Mother Jones om Obamas fientliga inställning till palestinierna: Obama’s Israel Shuffle

Last week, when Barack Obama became the first major candidate to break the silence on the situation in Gaza, he didn’t criticize Israel, whose blockade of a civilian population has been roundly condemned by human rights organizations, nor did he call for restraint from the United States’ top ally in the Mideast. Instead, he fired off a letter to U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad with a resounding message—one that could have been mistaken for words straight from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) website. “The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel.… If it cannot…I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all,” Obama wrote, adding he understood why Israel was “forced” to shut down Gaza’s border crossings

Det verkar som om Obama inte kommer att lägga några som helst hinder i vägen för vad som ser ut att bli en ny Israelisk storoffensiv mot Gaza.

Sara Roy skriver i om LRB · Sara Roy: If Gaza falls . . .

The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah “ which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures.

On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade. How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children “ more than 50 per cent of the population “ benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.

Knappast en positiv början för vad som skulle bli “change we can believe in”.