Quote: "According to Israel Radio, Egypt was busy preparing plans to absorb thousands of Palestinians attempting to flee the clashes in Gaza. In Israel, defense officials said talking with Hamas might become unavoidable, as closing all crossings from the Gaza Strip into Israel to avoid intra-Palestinian violence leaking into Israel would soon cause an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Israeli sources were quoted as saying that following the developments in the strip, Israel was now viewing the Gaza Strip as a "separate enemy state."

What a change from 40 years ago. What a change from even 2 years ago. As Israel was disengaging from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, Hamas was already declaring it a victory for Islam. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that without Israeli security forces on the Philadelphi corridor the region would become a haven for terrorism, and that is exactly what has taken place. On the backdrop of all this chaos, Javier Solana, the High Representative for the European Common, Foreign and Security Policy, has stated that Europe is willing to police Gaza but that the EU hadn't yet been asked to help, and it is doubtful the EU would intervene in the near future. Both Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abbas have raised the idea of an international peacekeeping force in Gaza with UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon. But both the Organization of Islamic Conference and Hamas rejected the notion of foreign peacekeepers on "Islamic soil".

Quote: "Hamas said Thursday that it would refuse to accept a multinational force along the Gaza-Egypt border and would treat it as an occupying power. "Hamas rejects any dispatch of foreign forces to the Gaza Strip," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said. "The movement would regard those forces as occupation forces no different to the Israeli occupation, regardless of their nationality."

Clearly Prime Minister Olmert cannot afford to let Hamas consolidate power in the Gaza Strip. If it were up to me I would be launching an operation to retake the Strip as soon as possible. But according to Scripture, we know that this present situation will grow worse to the point that Europe will have to intervene. The EU has launched a new military operations centre in Brussels, and is currently conducting its first exercise - albeit through computer simulation at present. Javier Solana has an extensive military background, being a former head of NATO. He is presently Secretary General of the EU's military arm, the Western European Union, and he is also chief of the European Defence Agency, an organization that aims to promote co-operation between member states on civilian and crisis-management operations. As our friend Herb Peters had been reporting, the EU is increasing its military strength, recently being granted the use of NATO resources for European missions.

Quote: ""It's a question of a good and serious division of labour, which is necessary with the number of crises we are trying to handle," Mr Solana told journalists on Wednesday (14 June), AP reported. He rejected the suggestion that the centre - set up earlier this year in Brussels to enable the bloc to plan and run an autonomous operation at the military strategic level - could be seen as competition undermining links with the North Atlantic pact.

Now as Europe casts its eyes eastward, and continues to increase its political and military influence in the region, as the Scriptures state the question may soon be asked, "Who can make war with the beast?"

Daniel 7:7-8
After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it [was] diverse from all the beasts that [were] before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn [were] eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

Source Jerusalem Post, Reuters, Haaretz, EU Observer