Category Archives: Palestinian Territories

Israel, Palestinians battle as Egyptian-proposed Gaza ceasefire collapses

Reuters reports: Israel resumed air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after agreeing to an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire deal that failed to get Hamas militants to halt rocket attacks.

The week-old conflict seemed to be at a turning point, with Hamas defying Arab and Western calls to cease fire and Israel threatening to step up a week-old offensive that could include an invasion of the densely populated enclave of 1.8 million.

Under a blueprint announced by Egypt – Gaza’s neighbour and whose military-backed government has been at odds with Islamist Hamas – a mutual “de-escalation” was to have begun at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT), with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.

Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the ceasefire deal, a proposal that addressed in only general terms some of its key demands, and said its battle with Israel would “increase in ferocity and intensity”.

But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas political official who was in Cairo, said the movement, which is seeking a deal that would ease Egyptian and Israeli border restrictions throttling Gaza’s economy, had made no final decision on Cairo’s proposal. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

A ‘quiet night’ in Gaza? Just five deaths and 25 sites bombed

Just imagine if in the space of 12 hours there were 25 bomb attacks in Israel and five people were killed.

In the United States, the cable news networks would devote round-the-clock coverage to the “terrorist bloodbath” (or whatever other sufficiently dramatic branding they chose) and this would go down as an important date in history.

But when the dead are Palestinians, it’s a completely different story.

The New York Times reports that last night was:

… a relatively quiet night, in which the Israeli military bombed 25 sites in Gaza, killing five Palestinians in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; about 1,400 others have been wounded.

Ashraf al-Qedra, the Health Ministry spokesman, and local journalists said that Ismail and Mohammed Najjar, relatives in their 40s who worked as guards on agricultural land in a former Israeli settlement in Khan Younis, were killed early Tuesday. In Rafah, drone strikes killed Atwa al-Amour, a 63-year-old farmer, and Bushra Zourob, 53, a woman who was near the target, a man on a motorbike, who was wounded.

Perhaps reporters Jodi Rudoren and Anne Barnard are employing Benjamin Netanyahu’s novel definition of quietness, that being: the silence that follows explosions.

The Israeli prime minister said:

[I]f Hamas does not accept the cease-fire proposal, as it looks now, Israel will have all the international legitimacy in order to achieve the desired quiet.

So far Israel has launched 1,609 air strikes, detonating hundreds of tons of explosives in order to create quietness.

Facebooktwittermail

Israeli excesses provoke Hamas

A short commentary by Fawaz A. Gerges is noteworthy mostly because it appears in USA Today. Whether we are witnessing the beginning of the Third Intifada seems like a pointless question to attempt to answer. Most likely, its beginning (if it occurs) will only become apparent after the fact.

Superficial observations in the Western news media that blame Hamas for the latest wave of violence ignore two important factors:

First, Israeli strangulation of Gaza through an air and land blockade in cooperation with Egypt have brought Palestinian frustrations to a boiling point.

The rocket attacks are a manifestation that Hamas feels cornered with its back to the wall. In fact, the attacks are probably the opening shots of a third Palestinian intifada.

Second, it is a fallacy to believe that the West Bank and Gaza are two separate entities. The bonds of Palestinian nationalism inextricably bind the two together, emotionally and politically.

Israeli excesses in the West Bank after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens, especially the targeting and arrest of Hamas former prisoners in the West Bank, were bound to produce a reaction from Gaza.

Facebooktwittermail

Thousands of families flee north Gaza

Al Jazeera reports: After more than 12 hours of work, the bulldozers were still clearing what was once the al-Batsh family’s three-story house in eastern Gaza City, reduced to rubble after Israeli warplanes hit it with two bombs.

The air strike took place just before midnight on Saturday, the fifth day of Israel’s aerial assault on Gaza. Eighteen people from the same extended family were killed, the highest death toll in a single attack so far in the offensive, which has claimed more than 165 Palestinian lives to date.

The bombing in the Shaaf neighbourhood was said to be targeting the local police commander, Tayseer al-Batsh, who survived the strike with serious injuries. Shortly after the house was destroyed, Israel also struck several police and security posts in Gaza City.

“There was no reason to hit the house,” said Mohammed al-Batsh, a lawyer in his 30s, as dozens of people gathered to inspect the home and examine the severe damage to nearby houses.

He added that the airstrike killed Majed al-Batsh, the police commander’s cousin, and 10 members of his family – parents, children, daughters-in-laws and grandchildren. “They posed no threat to Israel. They were not firing rockets. They were civilians, children and women.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Hamas lays out truce terms, says deal not close

AFP reports: The Palestinian Hamas movement said Monday that it would not end hostilities with Israel without concessions by the Jewish state and that no serious efforts towards a truce had been made.

“Talk of a ceasefire requires real and serious efforts, which we haven’t seen so far,” Hamas legislative member Mushir al-Masri told AFP in Gaza City.

Masri said Hamas would only negotiate on the basis of a set of concessions it wants to see Israel agree to.

Those include the lifting of Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip, the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the release of Palestinian prisoners Israel has rearrested after freeing them in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

“Any ceasefire must be based on the conditions we have outlined, nothing less than that will be accepted,” Masri said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

For Netanyahu, Gaza proves why Palestinians cannot be allowed to govern themselves

In a news conference held on Friday in which Benjamin Netanyahu spoke only in Hebrew, the Israeli prime minister spelled out why he believes a two-state solution is impossible:

The priority right now, Netanyahu stressed, was to “take care of Hamas.” But the wider lesson of the current escalation was that Israel had to ensure that “we don’t get another Gaza in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

Not relinquishing security control west of the Jordan, it should be emphasized, means not giving a Palestinian entity full sovereignty there. It means not acceding to Mahmoud Abbas’s demands, to Barack Obama’s demands, to the international community’s demands. This is not merely demanding a demilitarized Palestine; it is insisting upon ongoing Israeli security oversight inside and at the borders of the West Bank. That sentence, quite simply, spells the end to the notion of Netanyahu consenting to the establishment of a Palestinian state. A less-than-sovereign entity? Maybe, though this will never satisfy the Palestinians or the international community. A fully sovereign Palestine? Out of the question.

He wasn’t saying that he doesn’t support a two-state solution. He was saying that it’s impossible. This was not a new, dramatic change of stance by the prime minister. It was a new, dramatic exposition of his long-held stance. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Whatever Israel wants to call it, this is state terrorism

AFP reports: Twenty-year-old Palestinian Sally Saqr lies in a hospital bed in Gaza’s Shifa hospital with burns that have turned her cheeks an angry pink beneath her ventilation tube.

She survived an Israeli strike in the early hours of Saturday morning that hit a care home for Palestinians with special needs.

Two of her fellow residents were not so lucky.

Thirty-year-old Ola Washahi and 47-year-old Suha Abu Saada were killed when the rocket slammed into the home, destroying it.

The two women’s body parts were still being pulled from the rubble hours later, causing initial confusion over whether another person had been killed.

The facility’s director, Jamila Alaywa, is unable to contain her fury as she describes the tragedy that has befallen the centre she set up in 1994.

“Both Ola and Suha had severe mental and physical handicaps, and had been living at the centre since it was founded,” she told AFP.

The building in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya housed 13 residents, including some who were on weekend visits at their family homes when the strike hit.

Five residents and a helper were inside, screaming in terror as the building collapsed around them.

“They didn’t understand what was happening and they were so frightened,” Alaywa said.

Al Jazeera adds: Saturday was the bloodiest day since the conflict erupted on Tuesday, with at least 52 Palestinians killed.

With the Palestinian death toll reached at least 154, and with no Israelis killed, the UN Security Council unanimously urged Israel and Hamas to respect “international humanitarian laws” and stop the loss of life.

Facebooktwittermail

Amnesty: Israel/Gaza — U.N. must impose arms embargo and mandate an international investigation as civilian death toll rises

Amnesty International is calling for a UN-mandated international investigation into violations committed on all sides amidst ongoing Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip and continuing volleys of indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian armed groups into Israel.

Since Israel launched Operation “Protective Edge” in the early morning of 8 July, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians who were not directly participating in hostilities. This includes at least 24 children and 16 women as of Friday morning. More than 600 people have been wounded, many of them seriously. More than 340 homes in Gaza have been completely destroyed or left uninhabitable and at least five health facilities and three ambulances have been damaged. In Israel, at least 20 people have been wounded by rocket attacks and property has been damaged.

“As the violence intensifies there is an urgent need for the UN to mandate an international independent fact-finding mission to Gaza and Israel to investigate violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict. This is the first crucial step towards ensuring that those who have committed war crimes or other serious violations can be held accountable,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

‘We stay together, or we leave this world together’

Samer Badawi writes: From the rehabilitation hospital he heads, Dr. Basman Alashi can see where Gaza ends and Israel begins. If he needed a reminder of just how close the border is, it came early Friday morning, when Israel fired two “warning” rockets at the El Wafa Hospital, stoking fears that its 14 remaining patients – all elderly and all dependent on round-the-clock professional care to survive – would become the next victims of a bombing campaign that has so-far killed more than 120 people.

I spoke with Dr. Alashi moments ago, and he told me about one patient whose situation sums up the sense of dread – and determination – at the hospital.

“Her name is Hiba Kalli, and she is 85 years old. Every time a bomb explodes, she’s transported back to memories of the many wars she’s survived. You can see the panic in her face. When I hold her hand, she won’t let go, murmuring ‘please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I am not going to leave my patients. We either stay together, or we leave this world together.”

Hoping to dissuade Israel from attacking the facility, international solidarity activists “have planned a shift system to maintain a presence at the hospital,” according to one of the activists, American Joe Catron. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

On Gaza, the Security Council finally speaks, calls for cease-fire

The Jerusalem Post reports: The UN Security Council on Saturday called for a cease-fire in Gaza, and expressed their “serious concern” for the crisis in Gaza, particularly as pertains to the situation of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

In a short four-sentence statement, the Council called for a reinstitution of the November 2012 ceasefire put in place after Operation Pillar of Defense, and said they would support a resumption of peace negotiations toward a two-state solution. The statement also called for “immediate calm and ending the hostilities in Gaza including the launching of rocket attacks,” and for an “immediate, durable, and fully respected cease-fire.”

There was no word on the state of any Security Council draft resolution on the situation. The release of the statement was delayed by the Jordanians, who said on Friday that they wished to look over some “elements” with the American delegation.

After the Security Council president Eugène-Richard Gasana of Rwanda read the statement on Friday, Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour, alongside Saudi representative Abdullah Al-Mouallimi, spoke to the press and said that Israel had killed more than 130 civilians, injured more than 900 in the last week. “Israel must stop this aggression immediately,” he said. Mansour said he was privy to a slew of emergency meetings on Friday, in which much frustration was expressed over the “international community dragging its feet.”

“The immediate objective is to have a cease fire,” Mansour said, and then threatened: “If the Israreli side is not going to listen from this position from the UNSC, then there is the possibility of a draft resolution. All options are on the table.”

Israel’s UN envoy Ron Prosor on Thursday told reporters that Israel would not support a cease-fire, as Operation Protective Edge was intended to fully dismantle Hamas’s bases in Gaza. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Israel bombs home for the disabled in Gaza

The Telegraph reports: An Israeli air strike hit a home for disabled people on Saturday as the Operation Protective Edge in Gaza continued for a fifth day, with the death toll passing 120 Palestinians.

Two were killed in the strike that hit a charitable association for the disabled in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, while three others died in a second attack in western Gaza City, local health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

There were unconfirmed reports that a third body was later pulled from the rubble at the home for the disabled. A mosque was also hit by an air strike overnight.

Ma’an reports: Ongoing Israeli airstrikes across the besieged Gaza Strip have killed at least 20 Palestinians since midnight, bringing the total death toll to 128, Gaza medical sources said Saturday.

Facebooktwittermail

Arab foreign ministers slowly convene for ‘urgent’ meeting on Gaza

AFP reports: Arab foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on Monday to discuss the escalating conflict between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel which has already killed more than 120 Palestinians, a diplomat said.

Kuwait, which holds the rotating leadership of the Arab League headquartered in the Egyptian capital, had demanded the “urgent” meeting, the diplomat told AFP on Saturday.

There has been no coordinated Arab response to the conflict which erupted on Tuesday when Israel launched waves of air strikes against Gaza aimed at halting rocket fire across the border.

Facebooktwittermail

Israel accused of war crimes in Gaza

Asmaa al-Ghoul writes: Ashraf al-Qadra, the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, confirmed to Al-Monitor that the number of martyrs in the Israeli war on Gaza had risen to 101, in addition to more than 700 injured. He added that the martyrs included 21 children, 19 women and six senior citizens.

The Israeli occupation continued to target civilian houses in various areas of Gaza, and the number of homes completely destroyed by the occupation’s aircraft reached more than 120. Among these was the home of the Hajj family, located in the refugee camp in Khan Yunis. Eight members of the family died at dawn on July 10, in the strike that destroyed their home.

Mahmoud al-Hajj, 27, a relative of the martyrs, told Al-Monitor, “I heard a terrifying explosion. I never expected that [it had hit] my uncle’s home. They are a very normal family, none of the family members are involved in military activity. I ran to the area and found people in a state of hysteria, crying and screaming. I discovered that eight members of my uncle’s family had died under the rubble.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The United Nations human rights chief on Friday voiced serious doubts that Israeli’s military operation against Gaza complied with international law banning the targeting of civilians, and called on both sides to respect the rules of war.

International law requires Israel to take all measures to ensure that its attacks are proportional, distinguish between military and civilian objects, and avoid civilian casualties, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said.

“We have received deeply disturbing reports that many of the civilian casualties, including of children, occurred as a result of strikes on homes. Such reports raise serious doubt about whether the Israeli strikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” Pillay said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

Al Jazeera reports: With tearful eyes, the Al-Aqsa TV anchorman announced the death of Palestinian journalist Hamed Shehab on Wednesday evening, hit by an Israeli air strike while driving home on Omar al-Mukhtar street.

Shehab, 27, was working for local press company Media 24. He was driving a car that had the letters “TV” affixed to it in large, red stickers when it was struck by an Israeli missile. The bombing, carried out on one of Gaza City’s busiest streets, has triggered fear and rage among journalists in Gaza.

“Such [an] attack is meant to intimidate us. Israel has no bank of targets anymore, except civilians and journalists,” Abed Afifi, a cameraman for the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen TV channel, told Al Jazeera. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Israel’s failure to make the right choices

Noam Sheizaf writes from Tel Aviv: When Hamas or any other organization fires rockets on Be’er Sheva or Tel Aviv, it supposedly doesn’t leave Israel with much choice but to retaliate. At least that’s how the argument goes.

But things also have a certain context that the Israeli public simply ignores. Hamas is weaker than ever. The tunnels to Gaza were destroyed and Egypt closed the border. Israel is preventing Hamas government employees from receiving their salaries, and has even threatened to deport the UN official who tried to solve the latest crisis. In recent weeks, Hamas’ politicians in the West Bank were also arrested.

Hamas isn’t just a militant organization. It is also a movement that represents half of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories and runs the lives of 1.8 million people in Gaza. Leaving Hamas with its back to the wall gives the organization an interest for this kind of escalation, despite the fact that Hamas knows that Palestinians will pay a much greater price than Israelis.

Some questions need to be asked: maybe the months and years of relative calm before this escalation were a good time to lift the siege on Gaza? Perhaps Israel should have recognized the new Palestinian technocratic government? Maybe there was a way for Hamas to undergo a process of politicization, similar to that which Fatah went through?

All these issues were never discussed in Israel; raising them now, in the current atmosphere, is seen as “giving in to terror.”

“They left us no choice” is the ultimate Israeli argument. Yes, it makes sense that when Palestinians hurl stones on Israeli cars at night, in the West Bank or within the Green Line, Israeli security forces will be sent to make them stop, just as they are sent to treat any issue of law and order. When a protester throws a stone at a soldier near the West Bank village of Bil’in, the soldier is left with no choice but to respond. But what was this soldier doing on the village’s confiscated land in the first place?

The West Bank has been relatively calm for the past five years, yet Israel has never bothered to conduct a much-delayed national conversation on ending the occupation. Instead, it waged propaganda wars on the Palestinians, built settlements and confiscated more land.

Almost five years after Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s Gaza policy – from the naval blockade to the “no go zone” it maintains at the edges of the strip – has never been questioned. Five years in which people have been warning this government that things will eventually blow up, and when they finally did, the same government responds with military force, because “we are left with no choice.”

Facebooktwittermail