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41 dead in Gaza brings toll to 75 since Wednesday
Sanah's brother was wailing and screaming for his
sister as ambulance staff gathered up parts of her
dismembered body, asking "Where are the rest?" 17-year-old
Jacqueline Mohammed Abu Shbak saw her 14-year-old brother
Iyad struck down by an Israeli artillery shell. As she rushed
towards him Israeli soldiers shot her in the heart. 19 children
have been killed since Wednesday, including a 2-day-old baby.
Seven children were killed on Saturday alone. Medical sources
also confirmed that more than 200 citizens have been injured
since Wednesday, 120 of whom were wounded in the ongoing
Israeli aggression on Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip that began
early on Saturday morning.
Al Mezan: Israel kills at least 31
Gazans today, including eight children
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) escalated the attacks and
ground incursions against Gaza today. Many attacks hit
civilian homes and other objects, killing 31 Palestinians,
including eight children. Among the civilian casualties are 13
civilians (six children) who were killed inside their homes. In
the early morning hours today, IOF troops entered the eastern
suburbs of Jabalia under the cover of helicopters. Helicopters
opened heavy machine gun fire at ambulances as they tried
to collect the injured.
Israel kills some more children
GAZA CITY, 1 March (IPS) - Tamer was nine, and no child
soldier. He did not live in the area from where homemade rockets
are launched into Israeli territory. The day he was killed, he was
at least two kilometers from the place Israeli troops had entered
Gaza, and met with return fire by Palestinian resistance. His tragedy
was that the family home was near Deir al-Balah in the middle of the
Gaza Strip, close to the area the Israelis have set up as their Kussfim
base. "We were all inside the house when shooting started," Tamer's
aunt Etaf tells IPS. Members of the family decided to crawl out into
the rain after a bullet hit a gas cylinder, Etaf said. "But Israeli soldiers
continued to fire on us from a tank and Hummer military jeep."
2 IDF soldiers, 50 Palestinians
die in Gaza clashes on Saturday
in an ongoing IDF ground incursion near the northern
Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya. Sergeants Eran Dangor, 20, of
Jerusalem, and Doron Asulin, 20, of Be'er Sheva, were killed
by Palestinian gunfire in two separate incidents early Saturday
morning. Five other IDF soldiers were wounded during the
fighting. Palestinians say that 10 civilians, including five
children and three women, were among the dead in the raid
that began before dawn Saturday. IAF planes launched
missiles at groups of armed Palestinians during the clashes.
The dead Palestinian civilians are believed to include a 17-year-
old girl and her 16-year-old brother, a 45-year-old man and his
20-year-old son, and two sisters thought to be in their early 20s.
An IDF spokesperson said the army would look into reports of
tank shells hitting houses. "Ambulances tried to come,
but they came under fire. ... We are in a real war," said Tareq Dardouna.
Direct from Mohammed Omer in Rafah
I had a long day, an awful day, taking photos and writing
from on the ground in Gaza City and northern Gaza. I met
with two children who survived Wednesday's Jabalyia
soccer bombing: the other 4 kids were, as you likely know,
killed. One of the children I saw had no flesh on their legs,
had burns all over their bodies from the tank's shelling.
This was one of the scariest things I have seen yet, and I have
seen a lot more than that. . . .
Hamas: 91 killed in Israeli raids in February
including eight from the West Bank and 83 from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas told Ma'an that 35 of the 91 martyrs belonged to the
Al-Qassam Brigades, 20 were from the resistance factions and
the other 36 were Palestinian citizens. They also said that 427
Palestinians were arrested in February, 94 from the Gaza Strip
and 332 from the West Bank. A Palestinian woman was also
arrested in Jerusalem.
Nearly 70 Palestinians dead as 'shoah' imminent
[MIFTAH's summary of the past week's events in
Gaza/Israel, day by day]
Al-Haq: Wilful killing, not collateral damage –
Israel's war crimes in the Gaza Strip must be prosecuted
As a Palestinian organisation dedicated to the promotion
and protection of human rights and international humanitarian
law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Al-Haq is
extremely concerned about the constant escalation of Israeli
attacks in the Gaza Strip, which are exacting a heavy toll on the
civilian population, in particular amongst children. The use of
unrestrained force against a civilian population in response to
the unlawful rocket attacks carried out by Palestinian armed
groups is a blatant violation of the laws of war
Abbas: What is happening in Gaza is
worse than a holocaust
"It's inconceivable that the Israeli reaction to missiles, which we
condemn, should be so huge and terrible," he added. "I'm sorry
that Israel is now using the word that has been a pariah word for
more than 60 years. The word is Holocaust. We call on the world
to respond," Abbas said. "We need the world to see what is
going on and who is committing international terrorism,"
he went on. . . The United States has urged Israel to "consider
the consequences" of its actions
Bishara accuses Abbas of involvement in
the IOF aggression in Gaza
"DOHA, (PIC)- Dr. Azmi Bishara, the prominent Palestinian
leader in the 1948 occupied lands, told Al-Jazeera TV
network on Saturday that the one (Abbas) who affirms to
the world that Al-Qaeda is present in Gaza is considered a
participant in the Gaza bloodbath and is providing a cover
up for the spate of murders launched by the IOF troops
against the Palestinian people.
Abu Marzouk: Gaza genocide carried out
in coordination with Washington
"DAMASCUS, (PIC)-- Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, the
deputy political chairman of Hamas, has charged that
the IOF massacres in Gaza were carried out in
coordination with the American administration and
regional forces that brought back to memory the
Lebanon war in 2006.
Analysis: Gaza raids met by loud silence
from Arab world – by Zvi Bar'el
As the death toll in Israel Defense Forces raids against miltiants
firing rockets from Gaza climbed to more than 50 Saturday,
Palestinian Information Minister Riad al-Malki responded by
saying "Hamas gave Israel an excuse to start a war in Gaza."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also responded along
these lines by saying that the "operation in Gaza is not just a
reaction to the rocket barrage." Both comments can be interpreted
as Palestinian backing of the Israel Defense Forces ground
incursion in the Strip. The very mild Egyptian reaction and the
conspicuous absence of a convicting Arab voice also indicate
that the IDF raid is perceived by the Arab world to be first and
foremost a war against Hamas, not the "real Holocaust" of the
Palestinian people - as Khaled Mesh'al claimed on Saturday.
The fact that Al Jazeera devoted a whole episode of a popular
debate show to the question "Why are the Palestinians keeping
silent about the situation in Gaza?" also serves to prove this point.
Five hurt in Ashkelon as close to
50 rockets hit southern Israel
On Saturday afternoon, three people were wounded when
rockets hit the marina in Ashkelon, some 15 kilometers from
the Gaza Strip. One of the three sustained moderate wounds,
while the other two were lightly hurt. A number of people at
the scene of the attack were treated for shock. Earlier, four
rockets slammed into the town, one of which scored a direct
hit on a house. The three other rockets hit a residential
neighborhood. Two people were wounded while two more
were treated for shock. "There's growing rage among the
residents which is understandable and we will allow them to
express it within the rule of law," Haim Blumenfeld, the
commander of the Ashkelon police station, said.
Sleepless in Palestine – by Nidal Sakr
One "unlawful" settler killed in over 9 months, and
we never hear the end of it. But with over thirty
indigenous women and children murdered, we only
read about the new one hundred F-35 Joint Strike
Fighters US is supplying Israel, as if thirty dead in a
day is just not enough. It seems we ought to find a
solution. One solution is that we all find a rehab
program to enroll in. A rehab so we may one day be
able to fit back into a species called "human."
Israeli minister threatens 'holocaust'
as public demands ceasefire – by Ali Abunimah
Israeli officials began damage limitation efforts after
the country's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai
threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip
with a 'holocaust'. The comments came a day after
Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine
of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a
series of air raids across the Gaza Strip. The BBC
later reported that "many of Mr. Vilnai's colleagues
have quickly distanced themselves from his comments
and also tried to downplay them saying he did not
mean genocide." An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman,
Arye Mekel, claimed that Vilnai used the word "in the
sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the
sense of a holocaust."
Jews and the Gaza holocaust – by Khalid Amayreh
In June, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of the
Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, the Germans carried
out a murderous rampage of murder and terror throughout
Czechoslovakia. The small Czech village of Lidice bore the
brunt of the German revenge, with the SS killing all the men,
deported all women and children and razed the village to the
ground. . . . Now what is the difference between these
Nazi atrocities and what Israel, the "only democracy in
the Middle East" is doing in the Gaza Strip, where "the
most moral army in the world" is slaughtering babies
as young as six months' old?
Far from glow of Annapolis, Rice heads to Mideast
with U.S. credibility at stake and peace talks stymied by
escalating violence in Hamas-run Gaza. Three months ago,
Israelis and Palestinians pledged at a peace conference in
Annapolis, Maryland, that they would seek a deal by the
end of the Bush administration in January 2009. Rice's
goal on this trip would be to keep talks moving between
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and pro-Western
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She also will try
to get both sides to take immediate steps to improve security
on the ground, particularly in Gaza
The pledge of 'never again' doesn't apply to Palestinians
The Palestinians are being systematically destroyed and shown no mercy. And, most of the world continues to remain silent.The United States has, as was only to be expected, quickly placed the blame on the Palestinians. This seems to be the de facto justification for the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. It also falls into the familiar pattern of highlighting Palestinian violence, keeping silence about the Israeli violence and the reasons for the Palestinian violence in the first place.
Analysis: Uncompromising Hamas is in trouble –
by Amos Harel
The decision to put Ashkelon, and its 120,000 residents,
within permanent range of their rockets from Gaza may
turn out to have been a mistake on their part. Hamas is
in trouble. This stems not only from the losses it is
suffering, but also from a decline in its level of support
among the Gazan public. A., who lives in Gaza, blames
Hamas for ruining ties with every country in the world,
except two: Syria and Iran. "They led us to isaster, and
the price is being paid by the ordinary citizens.
We have no dreams of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem or
the right of return. All we want is a few hours without the
electricity being cut and gasoline for our car." M. added
a caveat: "You need to understand that however angry
people are with Hamas, their anger at Israel is greater."
Grandmother: 'Could they really kill a baby in his bed?'
Five-month-old Muhammad Nasser Al-Bur'i was asleep in
his parent's bed in the family's home when the Israeli missile
aimed at the ministry of interior building in Gaza City struck
on Wednesday evening. His mother had only just left the
room when the tin roof collapsed and Muhammad was
suffocated by the dust which filled the house as the Israeli
planes shelled the nearby ministry. Muhammad was Eman
and Nasser Al-Bur'i's only child. They had been married for
five years before their longed-for child was born. His
incredulous grandmother Um Nasser said, "Could they
really kill a baby in his bed? May God give us enough
patience to cope with the Zionists' oppression and
the world's silence."
Gaza buries its dead
Overwhelmed with sadness and anger, Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip held funeral processions of a number
of victims killed in the ongoing Israeli raids on the
Gaza Strip on Thursday and Friday. One funeral was
of four children from the Darduna and Hammuda families,
who were killed in an Israeli air raid on Jabalia on
Thursday afternoon.
An explosive, dangerous balance –
by Meron Benvenisti
It is hard to say who was responsible for fueling the
recent uproar over warnings that Palestinian protesters
would try to break through the borders and checkpoints
of the Gaza Strip. Was it the defense establishment, or
perhaps the media? In any case, the hysteria-mongers
succeeded all too well, for the mountain became a molehill.
The artillery batteries and thousands of Israeli soldiers who
stood before a few thousand Palestinian children turned
the Israeli response into a fiasco. Of course, it was
impossible to admit afterward that the defense minister
and military chiefs had panicked.
The harsh truth about Gaza – by Eitan Haber
Politicians and military officers, mostly retired, will spread
across all television screens and radio stations in the coming
days and attempt to present the recipe for Israel's salvation:
Occupy Gaza, attack a neighborhood, destroy a district, kill
Hamas leaders. Yet the cruel, harsh, difficult-to-digest truth
is as follows: At this time there is no suitable solution to the
Qassam problem. Yet the even harsher truth is that there is no
other way: Ultimately, the IDF will apparently have to
reoccupy Gaza, or a large part of it.
FACTBOX: Israel's options on Gaza
[None of those listed, of course, include stopping the
killing of Palestinians, ending the blockade, negotiating
with Hamas, allowing passage between Gaza and the
West Bank, having normal borders between Gaza and
Egypt and between Gaza and Israel, allowing Palestinians
to control the population registry, or giving any measure
of justice to Palestinians. How surprising that none of their
options will work.]
Listen to the shunned – by Joharah Baker
Palestinians have been screaming it from the rooftops
for several decades; human rights groups have
highlighted it time and time again and global voices
of conscience have held demonstrations, sit-ins,
solidarity rallies and have written books espousing it.
We are talking about the foundations of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, the core of all the subsequent ills it has produced.
The Israeli occupation – illegal, belligerent and all-oppressing –
is the source of almost all that has gone wrong. Remove it and
the rest will naturally fall into place.
Egypt plans to provide all of Gaza's electricity
Egypt is working on a plan with the Palestinians to supply
all the besieged Gaza Strip's electricity needs and wean it
off its reliance on Israel for power, an Egyptian energy
official said Thursday. Under the plan, Egypt - which already
supplies a small part of Gaza's electricity - would increase the
number of power lines linking it to Gaza and provide
Palestinians with some 250 megawatts, said Izzat Ibrahim, a
senior official of Sinai's National Electricity Power Company.
Al Mezan report: Israeli siege creates
drinking water crisis in Gaza
Israel's restrictions on movement, which were tightened
since 14 June 2007, caused a shortage in hypochlorite, a
substance that is commonly used to clean drinking water.
As a result, the 52 out of 140 water wells had to stop
pumping. Water from these wells is too polluted and
cannot be safe for human consumption, even after boiling it.
Settlers dig tunnels under Muslim areas of Jerusalem
Jewish settler groups are digging an extensive tunnel
network under Muslim areas of Jerusalem's Old City while
building a ring of settlements around it to bolster their
claim to the disputed city in any future peace deal,
anti-settlement campaigners have told The Times. One
group, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
said that settler tunnels could one day extend under the
al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, and claimed that
extremists could use the access route to attack the structure
in an attempt to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
Settler groups flatly deny such allegations.
ISM: Villagers of Bil'in hold funeral march
for the children killed in Gaza
(includes video) The demonstration was small but creative,
with different organizations taking part in a funeral march
towards the wall. A small coffin and a bundle were used to
represent the 6-month old baby recently killed in Gaza. The
flags of Hamas and Fatah were flown next to each other, and
next to Palestinian flags, while the villagers sang songs of
national unity. Activists also unfurled a meters-long banner
of black, giving the march its proper solemnity
Arab-Israelis protest in Nazareth
after Israel bans memorial
After the Israeli government banned a memorial service
to honor recently deceased Palestinian leader George
Habash, Arab-Israelis in Nazareth held a protest on Friday
afternoon. Friday's protest came after a petition was filed
with the Israeli High Court asking that the court overturn a
decision by the Nazareth police to ban a memorial service for
George Habash. The petition was denied
Fuel prices to rise in Palestinian territories
Fuel prices in the Palestinian territories will rise by
3.5% starting on Sunday. Ma'an's reporter said that
one litre of unleaded benzine (95 octane) will be 6.32 NIS
[about US$1.73] and a litre of benzene (96 octane) will be
6.34 NIS. These prices are for self-service, and for regular
service 12 NIS should be added per litre.
Israeli forces prevent farmers near Bethlehem
from reaching their vineyards Friday
The vineyards are under threat of confiscation once
the separation wall is completed. Ma'an's reporter
said that the Israeli forces closed the entrance to
Al-Ma'sara with barbed wire, preventing dozens of people
from reaching their land. The Israeli soldiers attacked
Palestinians and foreign solidarity activists and expelled
them from the area.
Hebron police destroy 300 illegal cars
Palestinian police affiliated to the Ramallah-based caretaker
government on Thursday destroyed more than 300 unregistered
cars seized in the West Bank town of Hebron. Hebron governor
Hussain Al-A'raj said he was pleased that the Palestinian police
had resumed its role in keeping law and order.
Twilight Zone / 'My wife will die in the car'
– by Gideon Levy
They wanted to spend their old age together. An elderly couple,
Fauziyah al-Darek, 66, and her husband, Mahmoud Qab, 70. They
wanted to continue to enjoy their only daughter and their three
young grandchildren in their modest home in Dir al-Ghusun. But
now Mahmoud, a widower, sits on a white plastic chair in the center
of the guest room in his house, a kaffiyeh wrapped around his bony
face, alone Fauziyah died because of the insensitivity of soldiers
who would not allow her to be rushed to the hospital in
Tul Karm after she suffered a serious heart attack.. "Get out of here,
we don't care if your wife dies," one of them said.
Reading the tea leaves – by Seth Freedman
The differing aspirations of Israeli and Palestinian
children attending the same charity highlight the
dangers of equating their suffering – The Arad students
chose to focus on themselves when it came to discussing
their aspirations and dreams. They wrote of their desire to
become footballers, actors, models and singers, with several
of them poignantly expressing their wish that their parents
will come into money and be able to raise themselves out of
destitution. The Palestinian children, on the other hand,
eschewed their own personal dreams in place of writing how
desperately they wished for their country to be freed from the
yoke of occupation. They spoke of their desire to return to
their ancestral villages and their wish to see their family's
expropriated fields and olive groves handed back to their
rightful owners.
Palestinian priest's views spur criticism
The Rev. Naim Ateek is a white-haired, American-trained
Anglican priest who supports nonviolent solutions to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often speaks of his dream of
a world in which Israeli and Palestinian states exist peacefully,
side by side. Ateek is also the founder of Sabeel, a Palestinian
liberation theology movement based in Jerusalem. Critics say
Ateek uses imagery, such as references to the crucifixion,
that vilifies Israel and they contend that the conferences
he is associated with present speakers and material that
are biased against the Jewish state.
Academic freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
– by Jonathan Cook
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college
lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused
to declare his "respect for the uniform of the Israeli army".
The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of
several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish
student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College
in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
In another recent incident at Sapir, lecturer Shlomit Tamari
told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering, telling
her it was a sign of her oppression.
The comfortable occupation – by Neri Livneh
But in Jerusalem there is no need for a personal
encounter to feel that with every move you are
stepping not only on history, but also on the rights
of the previous inhabitants. This feeling is particularly
acute if you live in Mamila, or when you go to the
Income Tax Authority office located where the village
of Deir Yassin once stood. . . And that's how [Tel Aviv]
stayed in my mind - a city where the only time is the present
perfect continuous, devoid of the oppressiveness of the past
but also of roots, a somewhat synthetic place. That is, until I
read Alon Hilu's new and extraordinary "Ahuzat Dajani"
("The House of Dajani").
The gardens of the devil – by Robert Fisk
The first time I saw one, my first instinct was to pick it
up. It shone in the sunlight, bright green, something
new and fresh amid the dry grass of the south Lebanon
hills. The little cluster bomblet seemed to have been
made to hold in the hand. No wonder the little children
died. Israel rained more than a million bomblets into the
orchards and fields of southern Lebanon in 2006 –
after the ceasefire to the 34-day Israel-Hizbollah conflict
had been announced. So far, post-war, they have killed more
than 40 men, women and children.
Bush administration won't take sides in
terrorism case against Palestinians
The Bush administration said yesterday it is concerned
that lawsuits by victims of terrorism could harm the
"financial and political viability" of the Palestinian
Authority, and asserted its interest in continuing to monitor
such lawsuits. But it told a federal judge it will not offer an
opinion on whether he should nullify a $174 million judgment.
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