Tuesday, January 22

Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines January 21, 2008 ~

Shadi Fadda
Click On The Headline For Full Story!

Oxfam International statement on
Gaza, 20 Jan 2008 -
Shutdown of Gaza and escalating violence



Israel kills nine Gazans,
injures 57 in three days

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have intensified
their war crimes in the Gaza Strip with total disregard
for civilian lives. During the last three days,
nine Palestinians, including four civilians,
have been killed by the IOF. Three of the
civilian victims were women. In addition,
57 other people were inured, the majority
of whom were also civilians. On 18 January
shrapnel from a bomb fired from an Israeli
fighter jet onto a governmental building hit
a nearby wedding celebration, killing one
woman and injuring dozens of others.

23 Palestinians killed, 55 blessed
(wounded) inside Gaza by IDF:
where is the EU strong condemnation
of these murders? BY LUISA MORGANTINI, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

"23 Palestinians killed and other 55 blessed
(wounded), children, women and men, by
Israeli raids in only two days: where is the
EU strong condemnation of these murders?"
-asked Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of
the European Parliament expressing a deep
concern regarding the escalation of violence
of these days in Palestine and Israel.

UNRWA's Operations Director
appeals for resolving ongoing Gaza crisis

Operations Director of United Nations Work
and Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA) in Gaza, Jhon Gang, appealed
Sunday night for resolving an ongoing
humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas to UN: Call on Israel
to lift siege from Gaza

(VIDEO) PA president pleads with
UN, Arab League to aid with Gaza
power crisis as Palestinian health
officials warn patients may die if
hospitals lose power. But Jerusalem is
accusing Hamas of creating an artificial
crisis 'to attract international sympathy'.

Al Jazeera Reports:
Gaza Power Shutdown



News / Gaza plunges into
darkness after plant shut down


Israeli blockade forces Gaza's
only power plant to shut

Gaza City was plunged into darkness last night
when the Strip's only power generation plant
was shut down in the aftermath of an Israeli
closure blocking fuel supplies across the border.

Security sources: Gaza's
power shortage worse than expected

Gaza City was dark last night after the
Hamas government shut down the
Palestinian power plant that supplies
some of the electricity in the Strip.

AP: Gaza power plant shuts down
because of fuel shortage, officials say

Gaza City was plunged into darkness Sunday
after Israel blocked the shipment of fuel that
powers its only electrical plant in retaliation for
persistent rocket attacks by Gaza militants. The
power cut sent already beleaguered Gazans to
stock up on food and batteries in anticipation of
dark, cold days ahead. Gaza officials warned the
move would cause a health catastrophe while a
UN agency and human rights groups
condemned Israel.

Jordan's Plan to Supply Jericho
with Power Delayed

Jordan's plan to supply electricity to the
Palestinian West Bank city of Jericho was
delayed after the Jordanian National Electric
Power Company (NEPCO) faced resistance
from Jordan Valley landowners who insisted
that the route of the power line should not
cross their land, the Jordan Times reported on Sunday.

European hospital in Gaza
halts surgeries after electricity blackout

The European Gaza hospital announced
on Sunday that it was forced to halt all
surgeries and warned of a health disaster
in Gaza if the electricity blackout persisted.
Kamal Abu Mousa, the hospital's public
relations manager, said that the hospital
administration was compelled to halt surgeries
until the situation improved.

Never against! European collusion
in Israel's slow genocide

The European Union, Israel's largest trade
partner in the world, is watching by as Israel
tightens its barbaric siege on Gaza, collectively
punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians,
condemning them to devastation, and visiting
imminent death upon hundreds of kidney dialysis
and heart patients, prematurely born babies,
and all others dependent on electric power for
their very survival.

Rights org: Gaza situation
potentially disastrous

At approximately 8:00pm on Sunday, 20 January,
the Gaza Strip power plant ran out of fuel and shut
down, plunging the Gaza Strip into darkness. The
closure of the Gaza power plant, in addition to
Israel's continued, tightened siege on the Gaza
Strip, will have a catastrophic effect on the 1.5
million residents of Gaza, who are already suffering
chronic shortages of fuel, medicine and some basic
food stuffs. The director of Gaza's main hospital,
al-Shifa, describes the current situation as
"potentially disastrous."

Israeli fuel blockade may halt food
handouts, UN warns

Food aid to residents in Gaza could be
suspended unless Israel reopens the border,
a UN agency said today. The warning came
amid a resurgence of violence between Israel
and Hamas Islamists, and the halting by Israel
of crucial fuel supplies to the coastal strip.

Gaza blockade creates new hurdles
for gravediggers

Even dying in Gaza is more complicated
these days. With no cement in stock due to
Israel's border blockade, some gravediggers
in Gaza have been chipping off pieces of marble
staircases and ripping up parts of the sidewalk
to buttress burial sites and keep animals out.

Economic warfare in Gaza

No more lies or twisted tongues. Israel is saying at last
what, in the past, it always refused to acknowledge
: its war is against the Palestinian population. Until
now, in discussions about the separation wall,
closures, blockades, house demolition, and other
sorts of collective punishment, the State Attorney's
Office lacked the gumption to admit in court that
the aim of such measures is to harm civilians. It
always came up with convoluted security claims
in order to present some vital military necessity
for the sake of the War against Terror. Harm to
the population was described as a regrettable
side effect.

The Lessons of Violence

The Gaza Strip is rapidly becoming one of the
worst humanitarian disasters in the world. Israel
has cordoned off the entire area, home to some
1.4 million Palestinians, blocking commercial
goods, food, fuel and even humanitarian aid.
At least 36 people have been killed in Israeli
strikes since Tuesday and many more wounded.
Hamas, which took control of Gaza in June, has
launched about 200 rockets into southern Israel
in the same period in retaliation, injuring more than
10 people. Israel announced the draconian closure
and collective punishment Thursday in order to
halt the rocket attacks, begun on Tuesday, when
18 Palestinians, including the son of a Hamas leader,
were killed by Israeli forces.

What Bush left behind
Since US President George W. Bush's visit to
this part of the world, at least 38 Gazans were
killed and another 1,500 were injured as a result
of Israeli military attacks. This escalation of violence
came right after Bush's trip to Israel and Ramallah
, as Israel enjoyed an obvious green light from the
US as the Arab and Islamic world sat by and watched.

Refugees in Lebanon protest Israel
Gaza lockdown

Thousands of Palestinian refugees held
demonstrations in several camps in Lebanon on
Sunday against Israel's lockdown on Gaza and
urged Arab states and human rights groups to take action.

Gaza demonstrates against
the Israeli siege

Thousands of Palestinians, including children,
public figures and medics, took out to the streets of
Gaza city on Monday, in protest of the crippling siege,
Gaza Strip has been going through since June2007,
with the siege is getting much more tightened recently.

Gaza's sick fear for their lives as blockade bites
Ready to act fast to save his life, Maher Al-Assali's
young siblings stand at his bedside, poised to pump
air through a hole in the 12-year-old's neck when
the ventilator that keeps him alive cuts out.

GAZA: AN ISRAELI CALL FOR
URGENT ACTION

We, the Israeli organizations signed below,
deplore the decision by the Israeli government to
cut off vital supplies of electricity and fuel (and therefore
water, since the pumps cannot work), as well as essential
foodstuffs, medicines and other humanitarian supplies to
the civilian population of Gaza. Such an action constitutes
a clear and unequivocal crime against humanity.

Fatah and PFLP plea to
countries for lifting Gaza siege

The largest parties of Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP), appealed to world countries
including the Arab ones to move immediately for lifting the Israel-imposed Gaza siege.

Death and Darkness in Gaza, People
are dying, Help us!


Gaza hours from water and sewage
crisis as fuel for pumps run dry

Gaza's water and sewage systems are a matter of hours from almost total shut down as stocks of fuel to run vital pumps runs out according to international agency Oxfam.

OPT: Gaza strip humanitarian fact sheet


UNRWA says will suspend aid
to Gaza if Israeli closure continues

UN aid agency says it will have to halt operations Thursday or Friday because it is running out of plastic bags and fuel needed to maintain aid efforts.

Gaza blockade sparks
international outcry

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union led mounting calls on Monday for Israel to end its crippling four-day-old blockade of Gaza as Egypt came under pressure to open the territory's only access to the outside world that bypasses the Jewish state.

Olmert: No fuel? Gazans can walk
(Video) Prime minister not losing any sleep over Gaza Strip crisis. 'There will be no humanitarian crisis,' he says, but vows, 'We won't allow the residents of Gaza to lead a comfortable and pleasant life'.

IDF official rejects claims of
humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Reports of crisis in Strip nothing but media spin created and promoted by Hamas, says military source.

Palestinian official: President
Abbas will not stop the negotiations with Israel

Yasser Abed Rabo, the secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as well as a member of the Palestinian negotiation team with Israelis, stated on Monday that the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not planning stop the negotiations with Israel or dissolve the current negotiation team.

Israeli forces kill Palestinian
man in Tulkarem during wide-scale attack

A young Palestinian man was killed by Israeli gunfire in the Thenaba neighborhood in eastern Tullkarem Monday morning, when Israeli forces invaded the neighborhood and besieged his home.

A Palestinian killed in northern
Gaza as Israeli aircrafts shell a home

Israeli aircrafts shelled overnight Sunday an occupied home in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza. The attack left one Palestinian killed another two injured, one critically and were moved to the hospital for receiving treatment.

Israeli attack in Beit Lahia kills Palestinian, injures two
A Palestinian citizens was killed Sunday while two others were injured during an Israel occupation force shelling of an area in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli settlers attack Palestinian
women and children in Hebron; seven injured

In the latest Israeli settler attack to take place in the Palestinian city of Hebron, a group of armed settlers attacked and beat a group of women and children, and a human rights worker who was accompanying them, on Saturday evening.

Siyam: "Security forces arrested a suicide bomber who intended to kill Haniyya"
Palestinian Legislator of the Hamas movement, previous Minister of Interior, Sa'id Siyam, stated on Friday that Hamas-controlled security forces in the Gaza Strip arrested a resident who intended to carry a suicide bombing in Gaza in order to kill Hamas leader Ismail Haniyya while he was praying in a Gaza mosque.

Army shoots man in the face with
tear gas cannister at Bil'in


Farmer arrested in continuing
harrasment of villagers of Bil'in

Over 2 years ago the people of Bilin have established
an "outpost" on their land, on the west side of the
current rout of the wall. The point was to establish
their presence on the ground to protect it from theft
by the Israeli authorities or their proxies. Recently
there has been a new wave of harassments of people
staying at the outpost or working the land around it.

Death Threats and Increased
Military Harassment for the Azzoun Region

The last week has seen a big increase in military operation undertaken by the Israeli army in the Azzoun region of the West Bank. Regular incursions into Azzoun, Izbat at Tabib and Jayyous has been justified by the hunt for young men who allegedly have been throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Road 55, although residents of the area strongly deny any such activity has taken place. The Israeli Army have yet to provide any evidence that this has occurred, there is not one photograph of rocks or Molotov cocktails on the road, nor a car that has been damaged by them.

Israelis kidnap the Governor's
consultant to religious affairs in Bethlehem

Israeli forces kidnapped, Mohammad Abu Alia, the Governor's consultant of religious affairs, and a senior leader of Fatah in Al Duhiesheh refugee camp in the southern West bank city of Bethlehem.

PMO: Construction in East
Jerusalem will continue

Olmert's office denies reports that construction
in capital's eastern Jewish neighborhoods has been halted.

West Bank settler population up 5pc
The number of Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, excluding annexed Arab east Jerusalem, rose by 5.1 per cent last year, figures released by the Israeli interior ministry show.

Settlements Continue to Fuel the
Conflict and Prevent any Possibility
of Real Peace Negotiations

Peace conferences and negotiations will not be able
to stop Israel's expansion policy in the West Bank.
Despite the request of the international community
at the Annapolis Conference to freeze settlement
activities, they continue today. Since Annapolis,
the Israeli government announced its plan to
expand some of the settlements in the south
of the Palestinian territories, such as Har Homa,
near Bethlehem, with the intention to construct
another 307 new housing units.

A.B. Yehoshua: Bush should recall
ambassador until outposts dismantled

Israeli novelist says Israel deceiving international
community into focusing solely on illegal outposts,
thus legitimizing settlement enterprise.

Nothing to sell and no place to travel

Halima Abdallah Abu Qamar from Jabalia camp
used her first UNRWA loan to start selling sweets
to students from a small cart outside schools. In
1999, she took out an additional loan to enable
her to travel to Egypt to buy products that she
could resell in Gaza. From Egypt, Halima brought
back cheese, women's and children's clothing, and
milk powder. As there is a high demand for these
commodities throughout the year, Halima was
always able to find a buyer in Gaza. With her
earnings, she supported her family and repaid
her loans.

Source: Israel won't free 2/3 of
prisoners Hamas wants released

Even after changing the criteria for releasing Palestinian prisoners, Israel will not agree to free 300 of the 450 prisoners whose release Hamas is seeking, sources in the Israeli defense establishment told Haaretz.

Is Fatah rocking chance
for national unity

The ongoing Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip
once again underscores the genocidal approach
the Israeli state is adopting toward the Palestinian
people. Israel, after all, has always behaved in this
manner toward our people. In fact, one can argue
without a bit of exaggeration that the Zionist
enterprise in Palestine was from the very inception
a project of liquidation and eradication. Just read
Israel's history and you will see that Israel is
actually an uninterrupted chain of atrocities
and massacres.

'Israel's sanctions strengthen Hamas'

As Gaza plunges into darkness due to power shortage,
locals warn of impending humanitarian crisis. One
resident says Israel's 'collective punishment'
increases solidarity among Palestinians.

Israeli integration program debated,
Arab activists say effort aims to win
over youths

KAFR KARA, Israel - Seated in the corner of a
bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan
Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of
first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is
teaching the children to add, as part of an
Israeli national service program created in
August. The volunteer program is an attempt
to provide avenues, other than mandatory
military service from which they are exempt,
for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more
fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

Strong in numbers

Here we have the yardstick for security
success: the number of Palestinians killed.
As in the most primeval wars, the heads of
the defense establishment are boasting about
the number of people Israel has killed. Their
job is to ensure protection for the residents of
the state. And, as we know, the residents of
the "Gaza perimeter" are not receiving this
protection. So the death toll has become the
measure of their success.

The Apartheid Paradigm in
Palestine/Israel

Chomsky says U.S. backing of continued
Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian
land is the biggest obstacle to peace. This is from
conference The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine/
Israel: Issues of Justice and Equality. The video
was broadcasted by Democracy Now! on
November 27, 2007

Photostory: As long as there
is life, there is hope

The year 1948 is the worst year in
Palestinian history. It is the year of the
destruction of Palestinian society and the
dispossession and expulsion of more than
700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their
villages and cities by Zionist forces.
Today, there are about five million
Palestinian refugees around the world,
still waiting to exercise their right of return.
Most refugees live in the surrounding Arab
countries Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; however
some of them live very close to their original
homes. In my case, I live only three
kilometers from my own village: Lifta.

Palestinian hip hop
featured at Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah (AFP) - Palestinian hip
hop group DAM, which has spawned a cult
following and a small army of imitators, was
featured here in a new film at the Sundance
Film Festival on the emerging Middle
East music scene.

Israel must bomb Iran for
Bush: US Rep. advisor

A senior Republican advisor says since
it is 'politically impossible' for Bush to
attack Iran, the job should be 'outsourced'
to Israel, PressTV reported.

Israeli ministers call for murder
of Hassan Nasrallah

A number of Israeli minister called Sunday
for the assassination of Hezbollah's Secretary
General Hassan Nasrallah after he stated that
his group was keeping the remains of slain
Israeli soldiers.

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