Tag: Hamas

Truce Comes To Gaza–Day 3

A tenuous ceasefire held Monday in Gaza, where Palestinians dug out from the rubble and Hamas put on a show of defiance vowing to fight on after the Jewish state’s deadliest war on the territory.

No air strikes, rockets or fighting was reported by either side for the first time since Israel’s massive assault was launched on December 27.

The guns had fallen silent around Gaza after Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire from Sunday, and Hamas and other militant groups called a week-long truce of their own.

On the ground, the lull saw early efforts at a return to some sort of daily life amid the desolation, AFP reporters said.

Some stores raised their metal shutters and banks opened doors. Hamas police reappeared on the streets and directed traffic.

Now the war of words starts…all over again.

Arab divisions over the Gaza crisis have re-emerged at a summit in Kuwait.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Hamas had invited the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip by refusing to extend a truce that expired in December.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Arab leaders should adopt a resolution declaring Israel a terrorist entity, and support Palestinian resistance.

They included the Qatari and Syrian leaders, among the sternest Arab critics of Israel’s military campaign, and Egypt and Jordan, who have long-standing alliances with Israel.

Arab nations accused Israel on Monday of blasting Gaza with ammunition containing depleted uranium and urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate reports that traces of it had been found in victims of the shelling.

In a letter on behalf of Arab ambassadors accredited in Austria, Prince Mansour Al-Saoud, the Saudi Ambassador, expressed “our deep concern regarding the information … that traces of depleted uranium have been found in Palestinian victims.”

A final draft of the letter was made available to The Associated Press on Monday. It urgently requested IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to “carry out a radiological and physical assessment in order to verify the presence of depleted uranium in the weaponry used by Israel … in the Gaza Strip.”

On another front.

The Saudi king says his country will donate $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after Israel‘s devastating three-week offensive in the Palestinian territory.

King Abdullah criticizes Israel for using excessive force in Gaza and says “one drop of Palestinian blood” is more valuable than all the money in the world.

The king spoke Monday in Kuwait City at a summit focused on boosting economic growth and development in the Arab world.

Truce Comes To Gaza–Day 2

But now that the battle is over — or has paused, after Hamas agreed Sunday to a one-week cease-fire with Israel — what has been accomplished is unclear. Have three weeks of overpowering war by Israel here weakened Hamas as Israel had hoped, or simply caused acute human suffering? Israel knew it could not destroy every rocket or kill every Hamas militant. Israel said its central aim was deterrence, to make Hamas lose the will to keep shooting at Israel’s cities. Did it succeed?

Israeli officials themselves said Sunday in briefings to the cabinet that even though Hamas institutions had been badly damaged, its militants might well keep shooting rockets just to prove otherwise. The chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, asserted that even Hamas had to figure out how badly it had been harmed.

What is clear is that, despite vague Israeli hopes that Hamas could be completely removed, that has not happened. Much of the group’s manpower remains, mostly because it made a point of fighting at a distance — or not at all — whenever possible despite the fury of the Israeli advance and bombardment.

Yes the Palestinians need to put Hamas on a short leash.  If they would just look at what Hamas has given them, they might could find a better way.  Rockets, ain’t doing it!

War Comes To Gaza–Day 22–A Truce?

Though both sides continued fighting right up until the official start of the Gaza ceasefire, which took effect at 7:00 PM Eastern, calm has prevailed in the first few hours, neither side his reportedly attacked the other, and there is hope, however fleeting, that the fighting in the Gaza Strip may finally be over.

The Israeli government has touted its three week war which killed 1,100, the vast majority of which were civilians, as a great success, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claiming all of the military’s goals had been met (though its only stated goal was stopping the rocket attacks, which continued right up until the Israeli attacks stopped).

A volley of rockets has been fired into southern Israel from Gaza, hours after a unilateral Israeli ceasefire began.

At least four out of five rockets landed near the town of Sderot, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

It puts a strain on the ceasefire, which came into effect at 0200 (0000 GMT) after three weeks of fighting.

Shortly before the rockets fell, Israeli troops briefly exchanged fire with Hamas militants in the north of the Gaza Strip after coming under attack, Israeli military officials said.

International leaders are due in Egypt on Sunday for a summit aimed at shoring up the ceasefire.

Heads of state from across Europe will join Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and UN chief Ban Ki-moon at Sharm El-Shiekh to give their backing to a permanent peace.

We all should pray that this will hod and both sides truly want to end this thing once and for all.

War Comes To Gaza–Day 20

So I lied!  After a tongue lashing from one of my readers (I guess it was deserved) I have decided to retain my daily posts on the War in the Gaza Strip–may the force be with you!

Israeli forces shelled areas deep inside Gaza City on Thursday, hitting the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and wounding at least three people among the hundreds taking shelter in the compound, UN officials and witnesses said.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel expressed regret for the strike but said that Israeli forces were fired on by Hamas militants from just outside the UN compound and that the militants then ran inside to take cover, according to Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, said that Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel had told him the strike on the UN compound was a “grave mistake.” Ban, who was in Israel on Thursday to press for a cease-fire, said that he expressed “strong protest and outrage” to Israel. Relations between Israel and the UN offices in Palestinian territory, long strained, have worsened during the Israeli campaign.

Top Israeli diplomats were heading for Egypt and the United States Friday in what appeared to be a final push toward a cease-fire to end Israel’s punishing Gaza offensive against Hamas militants.

Following a day in which Israeli forces killed a senior Hamas official and shelled a U.N. compound, the Israeli military kept up its pressure on Hamas.

War Comes To Gaza–Day 19

As with everything, the American reader is just not that interested in what is now happening in the Gaza Strip…..the hits on the reports have dwindled down to about one a day….for that reason this will be my last daily report on the “War”….I will report on anything major that comes out of the area.

Diplomats said Wednesday they were closer to bringing about a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, but fighting in the coastal territory persisted as the Palestinian death toll in the 19-day war passed 1,000.

Delegates from Hamas, meeting in Cairo with Egyptian mediators, said that the Islamist movement was willing to agree to a truce with Israel but that obstacles remained. Points of contention included whether a cease-fire would be temporary, when Israel would reopen checkpoints and who might patrol Gaza’s border with Egypt to prevent smugglers from resupplying Hamas with weapons, officials involved in the talks said.

Details remained under wraps, but diplomats in the region said they were pushing for an immediate cease-fire, to be followed by further talks on border security and other issues.

Israel said it would send an emissary to Cairo on Thursday to hear details of a truce proposal that Egypt and Hamas have hammered out in recent days. Egyptian officials expressed optimism that a deal was near.

War Comes To Gaza–Day 18

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters traded fierce gunfire on the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday as Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas accused the Jewish state of trying to “wipe out” his people.

Israeli special forces backed by tanks and air strikes barrelled their way ever deeper into Gaza’s largest city, advancing several hundred metres (yards) into several neighbourhoods in the south, witnesses and correspondents said.

The Gaza fighting has raised tensions around the region and galvanized anger toward Israel throughout the Arab world. On Tuesday, at least one gunman opened fire at an Israeli army patrol along the desert border between Israel and Jordan, the military said. There were no casualties, and Jordan said the claim was “baseless.”

In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli military said, a Palestinian was shot and injured after he tried to grab a gun from an Israeli soldier whose patrol stopped him for questioning. The man later died, according to an Associated Press reporter who saw his body.

Israelis remain overwhelmingly supportive of the military operation in Gaza, according to the latest poll. With few casualties among soldiers and civilians, and the government keeping the focus on stopping rocket attacks, more than 91 percent of Israel’s Jewish population support the operation, and less than 4 percent oppose it, according to a Ma’ariv/Teleseker survey published on Jan. 9. The poll was based on a sample of 500 respondents and had a margin of error of 4.4 percent.

International aid groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis, with shortages of food, water and medicines in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where about 1.5 million people live in an area of 360 square kilometers (144 square miles).

And the bombs go on and on…….

War Comes To Gaza–Day 17

Same Sh!t, Different Day!  Bombs go boom……bodies break….blood runs downhill…..Rockets still fly.

Somethings that need to be reported and analyzed.

As a popular party with Israel’s large Arab minority, the Balad Party has been seen as a prime mover behind the nation’s domestic antiwar movement. Though officials have repeatedly warned them that “there is a limit to democracy” in Israel, this opposition party never seems to have fully learned its lesson.

Balad was barred from the 2003 elections amid claims that it was secretly involved in terrorism, though this ban was later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court citing insufficient evidence. Lieberman hopes to see the ban renewed in time for next month’s elections, and in a war-time Israel where censorship is rampant and antiwar protesters are traitors to the state, he may just get his wish.

The Central Elections Committee is expected to vote on Balad’s ban tomorrow, and with the ruling Kadima Party on board it seems likely to pass. Kadima says that though it supports giving the Arab minority “due representation,” the Israeli government has an obligation to defend itself from Balad who “is trying to undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”

Banning a party for calling for equal rights may fit with some Israeli politicians’ ideals of what a “Jewish state” should be, but with at least one journalist already arrested for violating the growing wartime censorship regime and minorities under growing threat from Israeli police for protesting government policies the ban of an opposition party for demanding equal rights for its constituents is likely to add to the growing concerns about Israel’s claims to be anything resembling a bastion of freedom in the Middle East.

There is more.

Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip is boosting the popularity of Hamas and other Islamic groups in the Arab world where people are dismayed by the passiveness of their regimes, analysts said on Sunday.

“Hamas appears to be scoring points. So far, Israel has not achieved all its military and political objectives and has lost the media battle,” said Dhia Rashwan, an Egyptian specialist in Islamist movements

Israel’s military offensive on the Hamas-controlled territory has killed at least 875 Palestinians, including 275 children, and left 3,620 wounded, since it began on December 27.

Media coverage shows an imbalance between a modern force, armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons, and a militia equipped only for guerrilla warfare, analysts said.

Wait!  Someone called this weeks ago.  Who was that guy?

Joe, Oh Joe!

As reported in CNN:

‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher told a group of journalists covering the conflict in Israel and Gaza that he didn’t think the media should be allowed to report on war.

“I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” Wurzelbacher said. “You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘well, look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

Wurzelbacher arrived in Israel on Sunday to start a 10-day assignment for pjtv.com, a Web site run by the conservative media outlet Pajamas Media. The plumber-turned-foreign correspondent said he wanted to cover Israel’s side of the conflict, because he thought the media was slanting the story to make it look like “Israel’s being bad.”

He got a first-hand taste of reality in Sderot, when his group heard sirens warning of a rocket attack. With cameras rolling, Wurzelbacher and his group ran into a shelter.

“I’m in the bunker, I’m sitting there angry, outright furious, that I’m letting this terrorist dictate what I’m going to do because they’re firing missiles,” Wurzelbacher said. “It was fear at first, then outright anger, and then me wanting some kind of retribution. I’m not a person that runs from things, but when it’s a missile, you run.”

Gee, and I thought reporters were observers, not cheerleaders.  My bad!

War Comes Gaza–Day 14

Israel will not win the media war as long as they keep killing civilians and especially not if they keep killing aid workers.

It has now been two weeks since the Israeli military began its attacks on the Gaza Strip, and one week since they began their ground invasion. In that time, over 800 people have been killed in Gaza, and around 3,300 others have been wounded.

Both the United Nations Security Council’s resolution supporting a ceasefire and an unrelated Egyptian-brokered attempt seem to have stalled at this point, with Israel dismissing the former out of hand and little result from the first two days of talks on the later. Israeli attacks continued to escalate in the strip, and Hamas fired more rockets deep into Israel, with one targeting an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.

The United Nations also announced that they will resume their humanitarian shipments into the Gaza Strip as soon as possible, having suspended them yesterday after the Israeli military inexplicably attacked one of their aid trucks. The UN insists that it has received credible assurances that future aid deliveries will not be attacked.

On the home front:

Responding to last night’s report from The Guardian, Barack Obama’s chief national security spokeswoman Brooke Anderson has denied that the Obama Administration would ever participate in secret low level talks with the Hamas government.

“The President-elect has repeatedly stated that he believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and that we should not deal with them,” Anderson insisted, adding “the President-elect’s repeated statements are accurate, this unsourced story is not.”

The Guardian article actually cites several sources including Obama appointee Richard Haass, though most of them are left unnamed and described as “sources close to the transition team,” or a “potential contender for a foreign policy role.”

In Israel:

Before the recent days – which saw additional IDF casualties, and many casualties among the Palestinian and UN workers – the operation was supported by a sweeping majority of the Jewish public: 94% of the Jewish public said they support or very much support the operation, 92% said they believe it benefits Israel in terms of security, and a clear but smaller majority believes the operation helps Israel diplomatically as well.

War Comes To Gaza–Day 13

At least three rockets have been fired into northern Israel from Lebanon, raising fears the Israeli offensive against militants in Gaza may spread.

Israel replied with artillery, but called the attack an “isolated event”.

The incident followed Israel’s heaviest bombardment so far on Gaza, with 60 air strikes targeting Hamas facilities.

Efforts have continued to broker a ceasefire, as a senior Israeli official travelled to Cairo to hear details of a plan put forward by Egypt and France.

A Hamas delegation is expected in the Egyptian capital at some stage for parallel “technical” talks, Egyptian diplomats said.

Meanwhile, Israel has begun a three-hour pause in fighting to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The first of what is promised to be a daily ceasefire – on Wednesday – allowed aid agencies into the territory for the first time in days.

The International Committee of the Red Cross accused Israel of failing in its international obligations after its staff were met with “shocking” scenes.

One medical team found 12 bodies in a shelled house, and alongside them four very young children, too weak to stand, waiting by their dead mothers, the ICRC said.

About 700 Palestinian and 11 Israeli lives are said to have been lost since the offensive began.