The scenario for the next round is unfolding in front of our eyes and it resembles depressingly the same deterioration that preceded the massacre of Gaza two years ago: daily bombardment on the Strip and a policy that tries to provoke Hamas so that more expanded assaults would be justified. As one general explained, there is now a need to take into account the damaging effect of the Goldstone report: namely the next major attack should look more plausible than the 2009 one (but this concern may not be that crucial to this particular government; nor would it serve as an obstacle).
Today, on the anniversary of the commencement of Israel’s attack of the people of Gaza, many of us reflect on the events of two years ago in mourning and regret that its criminal progenitors have eluded justice, courtesy of the largesse and impunity lent by Israel’s blinkered, biased imperial benefactor, the US and its bevy of colonialist toadies, including Australia.
Israel’s attack upon Gaza was met with a curious indifference by most of the so-called leaders of Western nations. As acting Prime Minister of Australia at the time, the ill-informed Julia Gillard refused to criticise, let alone condemn the actions of Israel. Supposedly speaking on behalf of the Australian people, she said: “Australia recognises the right of Israel to defend itself.” That comment was made on the third of January 2009, by which time it was widely known that 430 Gazans had already been killed and 2,300 wounded in 750 individual strikes carried out by air and by sea over the previous five days.
The Cast Lead massacre was committed with malice aforethought on an imprisoned Gaza population of 1.5 million people, 55% of whom were under the age of 18 years. Israel broke its truce with Hamas on November 5th, 2008 although there had been no actual Hamas rockets during the ceasefire. Nor had Israel cooperated with the spirit if not actual terms of the truce by easing its illegal blockade. Israel automagically, conveniently blames Hamas for any rockets fired from the oppressed Gazan sliver of land. In revenge, Israel inflicts ongoing indiscriminate collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza, whom it has now incarcerated for 1,293 days.
Yet the truce was working, as during the final couple of months, there were practically no rockets fired from Gaza at all. After breaking the truce ,.Israel refused to renew it, even though Hamas expressed its willingness to renegotiate provided the siege was eased. Israel attacked on the 27th December, 2008. During the 22 infamous days of Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed 1417 Palestinian people, 352 of whom were children.
Flaunting the Geneva Conventions, Israel fiendishly, illegally targeted and destroyed ambulances, hospitals, schools, universities, the sole electric power and sewerage plants, chicken farms, dairy farms, crops, trees, police stations, homes and whole villages. Israel made around 50,000 Gazans homeless during winter, then for 18 months after the end of its 22 day attack, malevolently disallowed materials for rebuilding to enter Gaza. Two years later:
Israel has so far only approved the import of materials for 25 UNRWA[2] construction projects for schools and clinics, a mere seven per cent of UNRWA’s entire reconstruction plan for Gaza. Even for these approved projects, only a small fraction of the required construction materials have actually been permitted to enter Gaza so far.
More generally, says the report, the UN has estimated that Gaza needs 670,000 truckloads of construction materials for housing alone in Gaza. An average of only 715 truckloads of construction materials have entered the Gaza Strip per month since the ‘easing’ announcement, says the report. At this rate, it would take many decades to build the needed homes. And because UNRWA has been unable to get construction materials to build new schools, 40,000 eligible children could not be enrolled at UN schools at the start of the new academic year.
“Only a fraction of the aid needed has made it to the civilians trapped in Gaza by the blockade”, said Jeremy Hobbs, Director of Oxfam International. “Israel’s failure to live up to its commitments and the lack of international action to lift the blockade are depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to clean water, electricity, jobs and a peaceful future.”
Altogether in the Occupied Territories, between 29th September, 2000 and 30th November, 2010, around 1313 Palestinian children have been slaughtered by Israeli security forces, according to B’TSelem.
According to an Al Mezan report from December 2010, over 21,000 people remain displaced two years after the end of Operation Cast Lead. Israel has committed more grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 147) as
careful documentation indicates that the IOF destroyed at least 1,723 shelters after the end of hostilities when they had come under Israel’s effective control. These shelters could not be deemed military objectives. Nor were they near any other legitimate military targets. Their destruction was therefore illegal, violating fundamental international humanitarian law principles, and amounting to war crimes.
Thanks to rejection by the credulous zionist sycophants in the US congress of the painstaking research within the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report into Cast Lead war crimes, Israeli war criminals responsible for the planning and execution of the heinous Cast Lead massacre still walk free, with no justice attained for, nor compensation paid to Israel’s civilian victims.
‘Despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.’
Though the resistance of Palestinians who endure it is unflinching, and international boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and occupation are flourishing, Israel’s pitiless, illegal siege remains.
Israel’s harvest from its vindictive, cruel folly is bitter – as Nelson Mandela said, “A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he’s locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.” Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their freedom. How much hatred, prejudice and narrow-mindedness imprisons Israel?
Palestinians deserve long overdue justice to be brought to their oppressors, for the hideous illegal siege to be lifted completely and for Israel’s aggression and expansionism to end. Join the #Gaza2 Campaign on twitter and post on your blog to remind the people of Palestine that neither they nor the calamities and evils inflicted on them during Operation Cast Lead by Israel and its collaborators are forgotten.
The head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has told United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that the group supports any steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, according to the Palestinian news agency Ramattan.
The letter – written by Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday to coincide with a UN conference currently underway in New York – stated that, “We would never thwart efforts to create an independent Palestinian state with borders [from] June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.”
The missive also comes as Barack Obama prepared to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for his first Mideast summit as United States president.
Haniyeh’s message was only covered by Xinhua and was identical to the Haaretz story.
“AJ: .. to carry out their own independent investigations into their conduct during the war … a request Hamas told us they’d be happy to carry out if it means the international community will then take seriously claims in the report that Israeli soldiers committed warcrimes.
Ahmed Youssef (Deputy Foreign Minister, Hamas): Regarding Hamas firing rockets on the civilian areas, this is something easy to do the investigation by looking where these rockets hit and where is the target of these rockets if these rockets really intended to be targetting civilian areas or military bases in the neighbourhood.”
The closest approximation to Youssef’s position was in the NYTimes, where crucial parts of his statement presented on Al Jazeera were omitted. Youssef was reported substantially in the third person, unlike the plethora of howling Israeli apologists contained therein:
Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to the Hamas government in Gaza, said the local authorities would investigate the relevant cases in the report. But he reiterated his government’s position that Israeli civilians killed by rockets were victims of the fact that the Palestinians had only “primitive weapons, and with such weapons, mistakes are to be expected.” The rockets, he added, were fired in self-defense.”
Hamas is typically vilified and ignored by western media obsequious to the fascist Israeli cause – Ken Livingstone makes a stellar effort in illuminating facets of the democratically elected government of Gaza in his interview with leader-in-exile, Khaled Meshal, covering his life, the sadistic Gaza siege perpetrated by the Ziocolony and the hideous, illegal Occupation.
KL: What is the situation in Gaza today?
KM: Gaza today is under siege. Crossings are closed most of the time and for months victims of the Israeli war on Gaza have been denied access to construction materials to rebuild their destroyed homes. Schools, hospitals and homes in many parts of the Gaza Strip are in need of rebuilding. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. As winter approaches, the conditions of these victims will only get worse in the cold and rain. One and a half million people are held hostage in one of the biggest prisons in the history of humanity. They are unable to travel freely out of the Strip, whether for medical treatment, for education or for other needs. What we have in Gaza is a disaster and a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Israelis. The world community, through its silence and indifference, colludes in this crime.
KL: Why do you think Israel is still imposing the siege on Gaza?
KM: The Israelis claim that the siege is for security reasons. The real intention is to pressure Hamas by punishing the entire population. The sanctions were put in place soon after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. While security is one of their concerns, it is not the main motivation. The primary objective is to provoke a coup against the results of the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power. The Israelis and their allies seek to impose failure on Hamas by persecuting the people. This is a hideous and immoral endeavour. Today, the siege continues despite the fact that we have, for the past six months, observed a ceasefire. Last year, a truce was observed from June to December 2008. Yet the siege was never lifted, and the sanctions remained in place. Undermining Hamas is the main objective of the siege. The Israelis hope to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas by increasing the suffering of the entire population of the Strip.
Meshal points to the rightful remedies which could, if the US was an honest player, be applied:
KL: How do you think the blockade can be lifted?
KM: In order for the blockade to be lifted, the rule of international law must be respected. The basic human rights of the Palestinians and their right to live in dignity and free from persecution would have to be acknowledged. There has to be an international will to serve justice and uphold the basic principles of international human rights law. The international community would have to free itself from the shackles of Israeli pressure, speak the truth and act accordingly.
Meshal highlights accurately the chain of events which lead to the massacre of the people of Gaza earlier this year:
L: Israel says that the bombing and invasion of Gaza last year was in response to repeated breaking of the ceasefire by Hamas and the firing of rockets into southern Israel. Is this the case?
KM: The Israelis are not telling the truth. We entered into a truce deal with Israel from 19 June to 19 December 2008. Yet the blockade was not lifted. The deal entailed a bilateral ceasefire, lifting the blockade and opening the crossings. We fully abided by the ceasefire while Israel only partially observed it, and towards the end of the term it resumed hostilities. Throughout that period, Israel maintained the siege and only intermittently opened some of the crossings, allowing no more than 10 per cent of the basic needs of the Gazan population to get through.
Israel killed the potential for renewing the truce because it deliberately and repeatedly violated it.
I have always informed my western visitors, including the former US president Jimmy Carter, that the moment Hamas is offered a truce that includes lifting the blockade and opening the crossings, Hamas will adopt a positive stance. So far, no one has made us any such offer. As far as we are concerned, the blockade amounts to a declaration of war that warrants self-defence.
Significantly, Meshal declares his commitment to democratic processes and describes why the Islamic nature of Hamas is not an impediment for democracy in Palestine.
KL: Do you wish to establish an Islamic state in Palestine in which all other religions are subordinate?
KM: Our priority as a national liberation movement is to end the Israeli occupation of our homeland. Once our people are free in their land and enjoy the right to self-determination, they alone have the final say on what system of governance they wish to live under. It is our firm belief that Islam cannot be imposed on the people. We shall campaign, in a fully democratic process, for an Islamic agenda. If that is what the people opt for, then that is their choice. We believe that Islam is the best source of guidance and the best guarantor for the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
KL: Does Hamas impose Islamic dress in Gaza? For example, is it compulsory in Gaza for women to wear the hijab, niqab or burqa?
KM: No. Intellectually, Hamas derives its vision from the people’s culture and religion. Islam is our religion and is the basic constituent of our culture. We do not deny other Palestinians the right to have different visions. We do not impose on the people any aspects of religion or social conduct. Features of religion in Gaza society are genuine and spontaneous; they have not been imposed by any authority other than the faith and conviction of the observant.
Haaretz is running a story which contains a degree of hope that soon the horrendous blockade on Gaza by Israel may be lifted. Will the outcome truly be dependent on the views of Khaled Meshal?
The pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported Sunday that Israel has agreed to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti. But the London-based daily also said that Israel has refused to free Front for the Liberation of Palestine leader Ahmed Sa’ada.
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According to the report, Israel has agreed to release 350 of the 372 prisoners on a list presented by Hamas.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that “supreme efforts” are being made to secure Shalit’s release in the near future.
On Saturday night, Israel’s “troika” – composed of Prime Minister Olmert, Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – held an unusual meeting at the Defense Ministry to discuss the negotiations for a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, along the lines proposed by Egypt.
The meeting also included Minister Rafi Eitan, whom Olmert recently asked to join the meetings involving information on Shalit.
Eitan, an avid sculpture is ex Mossad and Shin Bet and once was Begin’s advisor on terrorism [irony] on which he is regarded as an expert. He has also liased with MI6 on terrorism in Northern Ireland which ended after the IRA put out orders for his assassination.
A senior political source said on Saturday that “there is still no decision on Shalit, mostly because of Hamas’ need to form a joint position on the matter.”
The same source also said that any reports that a deal may be at hand are exaggerated. “As soon as there is something to talk about, the political-security cabinet will meet,” the source added. “So far the matter has not reached the decision-making stage.”
On Thursday the prime minister held a series of meetings on Shalit. A senior political source said that during the talks a number of new ideas were introduced with regard to a potential deal. “In recent days, efforts on Shalit’s behalf have been accelerated,” the source said.
The breakthrough was achieved last week during talks in Cairo between Egypt’s chief of intelligence, Gen. Omar Suleiman, and Hamas representatives, and later in talks between the senior Egyptian mediator and Amos Gilad, the head of the Defense Ministry’s political-security bureau.
Gilad returned from Cairo Thursday with what appears to be a detailed agreement for a cease-fire and he is expected to go back to Egypt in a day or two.
On Saturday, a senior Hamas figure from the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud al-Zahar, traveled to Cairo, in what was his first public appearance since going underground during Operation Lead Cast. He was accompanied by Hamas parliamentarian Salah al-Bardawil as well as Nizar Awadalla, who handles the Shalit case for Hamas. Accompanying them was the spokesman for the Hamas government, Taher al-Nunu.
Zahar told the Arabic language satellite television station Al-Jazeera on Saturday that Hamas will evaluate the Israeli proposals and will offer its final response to it.
The senior Hamas official will also travel with his delegation to Damascus for talks with Meshal and his aides. Their meeting is considered crucial on whether a deal will be finalized.
At this point the following are believed to be the main points of the deal that is being formulated:
# A cease-fire for 18 months in the Gaza Strip (unrelated to the West Bank). Once the cease-fire comes to an end, it will be possible to extend it for another 18 months. Hamas has promised to prevent attacks from the Gaza Strip and the IDF will avoid attacks of its own.
# A full reopening of the crossings between Israel and the Strip, which means more than mere humanitarian assistance will be allowed to cross into Gaza. Israel has conditioned a full reopening of the crossings on the release of Gilad Shalit.
# Gilad Shalit will be returned to Israel in the near future, in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
# Reopening of the Rafah border crossing. Following Egyptian insistence, the crossing will be run by Palestinian Authority officials loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas. However, unlike a similar 2005 agreement, Hamas will be allowed to maintain a presence at the crossings.
This formula appears to be acceptable to Israel, Egypt and the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, under Ismail Haniyeh. The main obstacle at this point may lie in Damascus, since Meshal may block it. Also opposed to the formula under negotiation is the head of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Ja’abari.
In another Haaretz story, it’s reported that Turkey and Qatar are playing a large role in peace talks and the release of Shalit.
Turkish news channel CNN Turk reported Friday that Turkish officials were currently holding talks on the issue with Hamas officials in Damascus, the base of the Islamist militant group’s political leadership.
Reuters Friday quoted a Palestinian official as saying that Turkey and Qatar have taken a lead role in the negotiations over Shalit in recent months.
Other than the difference between the one year truce mooted by Hamas and the 18 month truce favoured by Israel, and a limiting in the numbers of political prisoners to be freed in exchange for Shalit, it is unclear to me why Meshaal would impede the latest proposed deal.
He said recently on Friday that “Hamas would reject a truce unless the deal included lifting the blockade”, and these terms appear to have been met, unless Israel is simply putting up smoke and mirrors.
The London-based Al Hayat quoted Palestinian sources as saying Israel has agreed to release 1,000 Hamas prisoners in exchange for Schalit, including Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti.
The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the report.
On Saturday, government officials told The Jerusalem Post that a change in the positions of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has created a window of opportunity to strike a deal with Hamas for a prisoner swap that would free Schalit before a new government is established.
Olmert and Livni are now willing to release more and “higher quality” security prisoners in a swap than they were before Operation Cast Lead, according to the officials.
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A top government official told the Post on Saturday night that a combination of the change in the stance of Olmert, Livni and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin to back a prisoner swap together with the outcome of last month’s Operation Cast Lead had created a “window of opportunity” to reach a deal with Hamas.
According to the official, Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin also supported a prisoner swap with Hamas.
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The official downplayed the significance of the Turkish involvement in the Schalit talks, saying that while dialogue was positive, the Egyptian mediation track was more likely to succeed.
Senior Hamas official Osama al-Muzaini yesterday denied Turkish media reports that a prisoner swap agreement could be clinched by Tuesday.
The reports of a breakthrough were “motivated by political considerations ahead of the elections in Israel,” Muzaini said.
News channel CNN Turk reported on Friday that Turkish officials were discussing a deal with Hamas leaders in Damascus.
Both the security cabinet and the full cabinet will convene to endorse a list of Palestinian security prisoners to be released if the details of a prisoner swap are finalized.
The names of the Palestinian detainees will then be posted on the Internet for 48 hours to allow those who object to their release to petition the High Court of Justice.
Israel has agreed to release approximately 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release captured Israeli soldier in Gaza Gilad Shalit, Palestinian sources told the London-based daily Al-Hayat newspaper on Saturday.
The list of those to be released likely includes 25 prisoners sentenced to long term imprisonments including all women, children, Palestinian lawmakers and ministers. The sources noted that Hamas insisted on the release of eight high-profile prisoners including Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Ahmad Sa’adat and Fatah strongman Marwan Barghouthi.
According to the sources quoted by Al-Hayat, Israel agreed to release Marwan Barghouthi, but refused to release Sa’adat. It appears that the current ruling coalition in Israel led by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni’s Kadima and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud are aiming at completing the prisoner swap before Tuesday’s elections.
Israel has “no other choice” than to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative set out in 2002 if it wants to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Saturday.
During a visit to Ankara in the wake of Israel’s 22-day war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Abbas pointed to the Arab League initiative — revived in March 2007 at a summit in Riyadh — as the best way forward in the Middle East.
“Israel has no other choice than to accept the Arab peace plan,” said Abbas during a meeting with Turkish President Koksal Toptan, the domestic Anatolia news agency reported.
The Arab Peace Initiative would see all Arab nations establish normal relations with Israel in return for an Israeli pullout from occupied lands and the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem.
While citing “positive aspects” in the initiative, Israel never formally accepted it, chiefly because it refers to a right of return for Palestinians made refugees by the 1948 founding of the Jewish state.
Promoted by Saudi Arabia, the initiative was embraced by all Arab League member nations at a summit in Beirut in March 2002. Abbas said Turkey — which is not a league member — supports it.
Emanuela at All Voices puts Israel’s existing so-called ‘unilateral’ truce, militant rockets and inflammatory killings by Israel in perspective.
The word ‘terrorist,’ among Israelis and their supporters, means ‘Palestinian’. Thus, all Palestinians are considered terrorists. The reason for that is that every Palestinian, even a child, strikes terror in the heart of Israelis. Israelis are terrorized by the fear that they might one day be held to account for the 100 years of crimes, of ethnic cleansing, land theft and murder. Israelis can forgive the German people the holocaust but they cannot forgive Palestinians for being their victims, and for being, simply by being, the incarnation of their fault. This is why they see the rebuilding the sewage system, letting kids go to school, drinking clean water, as an encouragement of “terrorism.” For these children will learn at school that their houses and their fields, the lives their parents could have had, the world that was theirs, were stolen from them. And what is more horrible, more instilling terror in the heart of the perpetrators than the thought of a day of reckoning and the knowledge of their guilt?
Your question, dear Marc Otto, should not be directed to Israelis. The truth terrorizes them so much they can barely speak coherently. Your question should be directed at the governments that sent you. Ask them this:
For how long are you going to support and defend the criminals instead of supporting bringing them to justice? For how long are you going to support the murder of children in defense of the dispossession of their parents?
Mr. Amjad Atallah Director, Middle East Task Force, New America Foundation.
Dr. Robert Pastor: Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of International Relations, American University; Senior Advisor on Conflict Resolution in the Middle East, The Carter Center.
Carter says Mitchell must negotiate with Hamas to enable peace.
[Carter] has said any future permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement has to include Hamas, the Palestinian movement that controls the Gaza Strip.
Carter also told Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan on Wednesday that US presidents were unable or unwilling to take on Israel’s supporters in the US, but said he had high hopes for George Mitchell, the new US Middle East envoy.
The former US leader said there was “no way to have a permanent peace in the Middle East without the inclusion of Hamas”.
“Hamas has got to be involved before peace can be concluded.”
Carter said reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the faction led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had been “objected to and obstructed by the US and Israel”.
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Carter said that US presidents had officially backed UN resolutions calling on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land, but that they had been unwilling to take on Israel’s political allies.
“The fact is that very few of the presidents have been willing to confront Israel’s forces in the United States, politically speaking,” Carter said in what appeared to be a reference to the powerful Israeli lobby.
Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1976 until 1980, praised Obama for signalling deeper US involvement in the quest for Middle East peace by appointing Mitchell.
“If you look at US Middle East envoys in the past, almost all of them have been closely associated with Israel, sometimes even working professionally for Israel. George Mitchell is a balanced and honest broker compared to the others.”
Carter feels confident that with the new administration there is potential for peace.
Hamas is remaining firm, refusing Israeli terms for peace, offering instead a year truce for border openings and release of Shalit for release of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas’s political leader Khalid Mashaal has rejected conditions set by Israel for a long-term truce with the Islamic movement.
“We were recently informed of (Israel’s) conditions for calm … We reject these Israeli conditions. We will not accept them,” Mashaal said in Doha on Wednesday.
The remarks were made after outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said Tel Aviv would open the crossings with Gaza only if Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was released.
Schalit was captured by Palestinian fighters in a cross border operation in June 2006.
“In response to the child killer, Olmert,” Mashaal said, “I say to you in the name of Hamas and in the name of the heroes who are holding Schalit, we will not accept that crossings be opened in return for Schalit.”
He reiterated that Schalit would only be released in exchange for the Palestinian prisoners whose names were given to Ofer Dekel, the former Israeli coordinator of the issue.
Salah el-Bardawil, a member of the Hamas delegation who is currently in Cairo for peace talks also rejected Israel’s demand.
“If they want to release Schalit, they have to pay a price in return… the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails waiting to be released,” he said.
The Hamas delegation has offered a year-long truce but demanded “guarantees that Israel shows commitment to lift the siege and completely reopen crossings.”
Prize for the most macabre story of 2009 so far goes to this horror show – where the murderers of children’s parents complain when Hamas refuses to let the children “vacation” in the state which orphaned them. Israel is officially insane.
Most of the children were orphaned as a result of the IDF bombing during Operation Cast Lead, The Kibbutz Movement had sponsored the vacation for 47 children, who are between the ages of four and 13. The children were to be accompanied by five adults from the Strip as well as Arabic-speaking youth movement members from Israel, and were to be hosted in Kafr Kasem, Haifa and Kibbutz Sasa.
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Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Mark Regev said he had not previously heard about the incident Wednesday, but told The Jerusalem Post that “Hamas, through its actions, continually demonstrates that the last thing on its mind is the well-being of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.”
Al Jazeera today offers a story on the mental health crisis amongst Palestinian men in Gaza as a consequence of Israel’s two year siege and massacres.
“I don’t sleep, very rarely, maybe a couple of hours per night. I am constantly worried. Even if I wanted to get out, to take a break and go somewhere to forget a little, I can’t because the crossings are closed.
“I can’t even take a walk along the shore because there are warships in the sea the whole time and they may aim at me,” he said.
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The GCMHP, Gaza’s largest mental health clinic, employs nearly 30 psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses.
Although its headquarters were hit during the war, doctors continue to work around the clock to treat the ever-increasing number of Palestinian patients living in the Gaza Strip.
Dr Eyad Sarraj, the director of the GCMHP, said: “Adults are the symbol of protection, providing and power for the children.
“Adults have already been lost as providers because of the economic siege. During this war, they were lost as protectors.
“Children were looking up to them to ask them, ‘Where is a safe place? How can you protect me?’
“Some felt defeated as men, defeated in the struggle because they could not defend their children.”
Saraj says that at least half of the people living in Gaza need professional help to cope with the war. Many of them have a constant feeling of insecurity.
Like Fouzan, they live with a sense of collective trauma, built up over years – and even generations.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and Hamoked, the Center for the Defense of the Individual, amongst 7 human rights groups, have gathered horrific testimonies on mistreatment from Palestinians kidnapped and detained by the IDF.
“The reports indicate that… many detainees – minors as well as adults – were held for many hours – sometimes for days – in pits dug in the ground, exposed to bitter cold and harsh weather, handcuffed and blindfolded,” the groups said in a statement.
“These pits lacked basic sanitary facilities… while food and shelter, when provided, were limited, and the detainees went hungry,” it said.
The groups accused the military of “gross violation of international humanitarian law” by holding some of the detainees close to tanks.
Incidents involving “extreme violence and humiliation by soldiers and interrogators” were also reported, the statement said, without giving details.
“We were handcuffed and blindfolded. They put us in a three-meter deep ditch with some 70 other people,” Majdi Muhammad Ayid al-Atar, 43, from northern Gaza described, in one of the testimonies.
“We spent two days there without any food, water or blankets. They also didn’t let us go to the toilet. Afterwards they moved us to another ditch. The soldiers kept beating anyone who dared ask for anything,” he was quoted as saying.
The groups have addressed a written complaint to the Military Judge Advocate General, and Israel’s Attorney General, Meni Mazuz.
Attorney Bana Shoughry-Badarne, Legal Director of PCATI, said the findings were “particularly objectionable” as the Israeli military had repeatedly stressed that it “prepared at length for the Gaza operation”.
“It seems that, during these lengthy preparations, the basic rights of the detainees and captives were completely forgotten,” she said.
She said the groups had the names of 29 people who had been detained, 25 of whom were still being held.
The other groups were the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Yesh Din and Adalah.
Ali Ajramy, 39, a tailor, thrust his hands forward to show the sores on his wrists caused by plastic cables
“I was taken into this prison,” he said. “And I was told to be quiet and kneel down.”
The three were among about 85 men who were moved into the sandpit area and gathered at the western end.
They said the Israeli troops then took position around perimeter of the sandpit area and began to engage with Palestinian resistance fighters. “We kept our heads down, we didn’t move for two days,” Mr Madhoun said. “There was lots of shooting over our heads but I don’t know where it was coming from. We were given blankets and food.”
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The deputy director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Jaber Jishah, said it appeared a textbook example of human shields.
“We are investigating this very thoroughly,” he said.
I continued touring farms in the area where the smell of death filled the air. Surviving chickens roamed around surrounded by thousands of their dead kin. It was an overwhelming scene leaving one to ask only: why?
If this question was directed to the Israeli army their response would be swift and predictable. They would likely contend that “rockets” were being fired from the farms, or that there were Palestinian resistance fighters in the area. However, unless the Israeli army is prepared to claim that these chickens were resistance fighters or were firing rockets nothing can explain why the self-proclaimed “world’s most moral army” would engage in the wholesale slaughter of civilians and chickens alike.
In a strange turn of events, “the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military arm of the Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, claimed responsibility for Wednesday night’s rocket attack from Gaza – the first since Palestinian factions declared their own ceasefire with Israel.”
At least nine people, seven of them school girls, have been injured by an Israeli air attack in the southern Gaza Strip, sources tell Al Jazeera.
The raid on Thursday in Khan Younis also injured a Hamas policeman, the AFP news agency reported quoting witnesses and medics.
The raid came several hours after Israeli jets attacked what witnesses said was a metal foundry in Gaza’s Rafah, a town near the Egyptian border.
“An aerial attack took place against a site used to manufacture weapons in an area of the city of Rafah following the firing of a rocket into southern Israel in [Wednesday] evening,” an Israeli army spokesman told AFP.
The military later said that a second missile was fired into southern Israel from Gaza early on Thursday, but that no damage or injuries were caused.
Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza City, said: “These kinds of attacks cause a lot of tension amongst the people, and there is apprehension that these tit-for-tat attacks could escalate and a full on war could resume.”
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has called for a security cabinet meeting to discuss expanding the military response to Gaza rocket fire, sources tell Al Jazeera.
The violence came as George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, prepared to head for talks with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, as part of a wider regional tour.
Will this disqualify Abbas from participating in peace talks with Mitchell or will Israel hold Hamas responsible for Fatah’s actions as well, as despite the devastating loss of infrastructure in Gaza due to Israel’s ruthless bombing, Israel is still holding Hamas responsible for all actions against the illegal Occupier?
McClatchy News has picked up on the bizarre targeting of the American School in Gaza – a target in the past for Palestinian anger at US support for the oppressor Israel, and more recently bombed as part of Israel’s collective punishment of the Gazan people.
As school officials search for a temporary campus for their 230 students, the loss has stunned many Gazans. If any place should have been safe from Israel’s war on Hamas, they say, it was the school, which for years flew an American flag over the main gate and whose graduates attend top universities in the United States, Canada and the Middle East.
Yet of the 25 schools and hospitals that Israeli forces hit during the 22-day war, according to a tally by Palestinian officials, only the American International School was destroyed. Days after the airstrike, Israeli bulldozers and tanks returned to the campus and plowed over the basketball court and the jungle gym, school officials and residents said.
Human rights experts are investigating whether Israel’s attacks on Gaza schools — which as civilian property are protected by international humanitarian law — constitute war crimes.
“It’s an iconic example of the disconnect between Israeli statements and the facts on the ground,” John Ging, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Gaza, said of the school strike. “Israel said it was striking against the institutions of terrorism, but this is a school that was teaching an American curriculum in English. There has to be an answer for this and all the other destruction and death.”
The school was closed for the Christmas break when Israel launched its air assault on Gaza on Dec. 27. After several days of strikes nearby, the night watchman asked whether he could bring his family to stay with him at the school, thinking that it would be safe from attack. Salem refused, citing school rules.
The next morning, at about 3 a.m., two Israeli warplanes bombarded the building, collapsing it “like a biscuit,” said Ramadan Sabah, a 23-year-old who lives in a shack 200 yards from the school.
“They had no reason to hit the school,” Sabah said. He and three other residents said militants hadn’t fired rockets from anywhere in the area.
The watchman was killed, and Salem’s decision probably saved the lives of the man’s family. The British-trained educator doesn’t feel much relief, however.
“It’s really very sad to see Israel target a place that Gaza needs to reach a common understanding between cultures and promotes openness and diversity,” Salem said. “We should have a hundred schools like ours in Gaza, not one.”
When they opened the door, they saw an Israeli tank parked in their garden about 10 yards away.
“We were waiting for them to give us an order,” Khaled said last week as he stood in the ruins of his home. “Then one came out of the tank and started to shoot.”
Souad Abed Rabbo said she was shot as she pushed her son back inside and her granddaughters fell on the stairs. When the shooting was over, she said, 2-year-old Amal and 7-year-old Souad were dead.
The allegation is one of at least five such white flag incidents that human rights investigators are looking into across the Gaza Strip. It’s part of a growing pattern of alleged abuses that have raised concerns that some Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes during their 22-day military campaign in Gaza.
“The evidence we’ve gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly strong,” said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch working in the Gaza Strip. “All the research so far suggests they shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags.”
Along with the white flag incidents, Human Rights Watch is calling for an international investigation into widespread charges that Israel prevented medical teams from helping wounded Palestinians trapped in their homes and needlessly demolished hundreds of houses, including dozens in Ezbt Abed Rabbo.
“This was not a rogue unit,” said Abrahams. “The needless civilian deaths resulted from concrete decisions made by the military.”
Arms smuggling into Gaza must end along with Israel’s blockade of the territory if ceasefires between the pair are to hold, George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, has said.
Mitchell’s comments on Wednesday followed talks in Israel and Egypt during his tour of the region aimed at promoting what he said would be a bid for “lasting peace” between Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaking after meeting Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, and Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, Mitchell told reporters in Jerusalem there needed to be “a cessation of hostilities, an end to smuggling and re-opening of the crossings based on 2005 agreements” in order to consolidate the ceasefires.
Olmert requires the release of Shalit for borders to open – Hamas is holding to its position of linking border openings to a truce, and Shalit’s release to release of 11000 Palestinian prisoners.
Abbas appears to be making a consolidated effort, yet states the bloomin’ obvious:
Mitchell is also due to head to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Thursday to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who has criticised Israel ahead of the talks.
“Today, we are convinced more than ever, especially after the aggression against Gaza, that Israel does not want peace and we are going to say so to all those who come to see us,” he said.
…
Ahmed Abul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, said the talks have “evolved positively” and a “permanent” truce could be agreed in the first week of February.
He said such a ceasefire would lead to the reopening of crossing points into Gaza, where most of the 1.5 million population depend on outside aid, but which has been closed to all but basic humanitarian goods by Israel since Hamas seized power.
Hamas wants the border crossings into Gaza reopened, including the Rafah checkpoint bordering Egypt, to end the Israeli blockade in the territory.
Israel wants to stop the rocket fire and prevent Hamas fighters from using smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt to rearm themselves with weapons.
“The Israelis’ position is extremely tough,” Phillips said.
“They are determined to show that the policy of deterrence – which they believed justified the recent attacks on Gaza – worked … It makes it a very difficult situation for Mr. Mitchell.”
Unfortunately, unless the US puts its foot down and begins withdrawing aid, it will be very easy for Israel to snub any counter offers made, create yet another pretext to resume bombing and continue with its inhuman, illegal blockade and occupation in its relentless pursuit of Palestinian expulsion and expropriation of Palestinian land.
Racist Israeli graffiti – anti-semitic because it is directed at the semitic Palestinian people.
Israeli IDF dolts fired warning shots at the French Consul General and his troupe as they were leaving Gaza – not amused, the Israeli Ambassador has been summoned.
“At the end of this visit, the convoy, which had planned to go back to Jerusalem (Al-Quds) in the evening, was blocked by the Israeli authorities for more than six hours at the Erez border crossing,” Chevallier told reporters.
“The convoy, which also included other European diplomats, had two warning shots fired at it from Israeli soldiers” he added.
Atheo News annotates an interview with ex CIA operative Robert Baer who is frank about the exigencies involved in discussing the pariah state of Israel.
RB: Well, he [Obama] needs the backing of the Democratic Party to get these things through politically, and that’s why he has brought in people like Dennis Ross and Denny Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, simply because he needs that political backing. He cannot bring in untried people and run them against the Democratic Party, because if there is an opening with Iran, there will be a connivance of Israel, maybe a silent one, simply because the Israelis have to go along.
In American politics, you can’t do anything in the Middle East without the approval of Tel Aviv, at least on some level. It’s impossible. I mean, I cannot think of a country that is so beholden to a small country like this, even a superpower, in all of history. I can’t even think of it.
IPS: And why is that?
RB: Look at New York City. Look at the major newspapers. They have a Zionist agenda. They do. I’m not Jewish. I’m not anything. I don’t care about the Israelis. And I’m not anti-Semitic. It’s just a fact. I suggested to my publisher writing a book on Israel, and he said forget it. You can’t talk about the reality of Israel. The only place you can talk about the reality of Israel is in Israel. They tell you things you will never hear in the United States.
IPS: Like what?
RB: For instance, why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? You would never get that in the New York Times. Look at the New York Times; it’s almost an extension of Israel.
IPS: What is the impact of the Gaza conflict on the future of Iran-Israel and United States relations? Have the recent attacks destroyed Hamas entirely?
RB: No, it’s impossible. Hamas is an idea. Hamas is not an organisation. Hamas is an idea, and unless the Israelis go in and force 1.5 million people into Egypt, they will never subdue Gaza. They can go in and they can slaughter the leadership and put 10,000 people in jail, and Hamas will come out stronger. The losers in this will be Fatah.
