(via Reuters)

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel called off its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, saying Hamas was “badly beaten,” but the Islamist group vowed to fight on in a war that has killed 1,200 Palestinians in the coastal enclave.

Within minutes of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announcing that a unilateral ceasefire would start three hours later at 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Sunday, several missiles struck southern Israel.

“Conditions have been created whereby the goals set at the launch of the operation have been more than fully achieved,” Olmert said in a televised address from army headquarters.

He said Hamas’s ability to fire rockets at southern Israeli towns also had been severely limited.

Goals have been “fully achieved” as several rockets hit southern Israel? More like it’s almost January 20th, so they’d better stop. Israel knows blind support like this now moving out of the White House:

(via AFP)

JERUSALEM (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel’s main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said.

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”

So far 1,100 Palestinians and 13 Israelis have been killed. That 1,100 dead includes Hamas terrorists, as well as the occupants of the hospitals, schools, and UN headquarters that have been hit by Israeli shells.

Israel will always have the right to protect themselves from terrorism, as well it should. But this ceasefire is their acknowledgment that the idea of defending one’s self by this approach–an overwhelming and indiscriminate amount of bombing–will no longer be tolerated.

“I will have plenty to say on the Gaza War after January 20th,” said President-elect Obama cryptically  said ten days ago.

Change is coming and they know it.