Category Archives: Palestine

Over 70 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since midnight | Maan News Agency

At least 70 Palestinians have been killed and 110 injured in Israeli attacks since midnight Wednesday on the 23rd day of the Gaza offensive, according to the Ministry of Health.

In the most devastating attack, at least 16 people were killed when an Israeli artillery shell hit a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip.

via Over 70 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since midnight | Maan News Agency.

Gaza crisis: ‘Huge surge’ in displaced people after night of intensified violence – live | World | The Guardian

13:41 EST: 60 minutes ago: Israeli strikes on Gaza continued Tuesday evening after an all-out barrage the night before that was responsible for as many as 110 Palestinian deaths in a 24-hour period.

A strike or strikes in Jabalia camp north of Gaza City killed 10 Palestinians, medics said. Earlier strikes in Khan Younis in the south killed 15 members of three families, and 11 people were killed in a strike on a house in Bureij refugee camp in Gaza City.

The “night of intensified violence” created a “huge surge of displacement” in Gaza, the UN said, with 200,337 people now packed into 85 UNRWA shelters.

The Israeli military said it hit “over 70 terror sites throughout the Gaza Strip” overnight including a home belonging to former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, a finance ministry building, and the Gaza power plant.

53 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting, the army said, and three civilians including a Thai national have died. 2,612 rockets have been fired from Gaza in about three weeks, the IDF said.

1,175 Gazans have died in the conflict so far and an estimated 6,900 have been wounded, health officials estimated.

via Gaza crisis: ‘Huge surge’ in displaced people after night of intensified violence – live | World | The Guardian.

Analysis: “Mercy” of Israeli occupation at work in Gaza | Maan News Agency

In the midst of the ongoing onslaught against Gaza — which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 Palestinians and the wiping out of entire families — Israel has at times been accused of targeting civilians.

The Israeli armed forces, however, have made much of their “humanitarian” credentials and concern for civilian life, claims which have been most notably exemplified in the argument that they warn civilians of an impending attack through a “knock” — whether through the firing of a non-explosive projectile at the roof, or through a phone call or text message.

The notion that these warnings are somehow “humanitarian gestures” says much about the extent to which Palestinians have been subject to extensive dehumanization. On the basis of the military’s own proud proclamation of this policy you could be forgiven for forming the impression that the residents of Gaza should be grateful to Israel for giving them advance warning of the obliteration of their own homes.

But are these “warned” families even able to escape unharmed?

In order to grasp the extent to which the open celebration of this policy represents a fundamental perversion, we must engage with the most basic precondition of humanitarianism and imagine the position of Gazans.

For a minute, put

yourself in the shoes of the Gazans who receive these warnings.

You have just received notice that your home is to be obliterated in a matter of moments. Look around you — how would you react?

All around you there are things that you need and things which are essential to your life: Where can you go without a passport? What if your employer asks you for your birth certificate? And then there are things which are personal to you: your wedding photograph, a photograph from a now distant childhood, a gift from a friend, your child’s graduation pictures. How could you possibly choose? On what basis would you decide what is worth more to you?

You would want to be sure that you left nothing valuable behind, so you would run through the house, aware that you only have a few moments to find what is most valuable to you. You would perhaps tell yourself to focus on the task before you as you empty bags and hurl your clothes and personal belongings across the room; surely you will stop only to take the bare essentials?

It can all be replaced, you tell yourself.

But there is something that cannot be replaced — the personal significance of the objects which you leave behind: the small things you hoped to hand onto your own children, the heirlooms which your own parents had passed onto you. Perhaps your hands will pass over these objects in a fleeting moment, a final farewell to a past you must now leave behind. Only afterwards will you realize just how much of yourself has been left behind.

Even the closeness of the moment fails to fully concentrate your mind: who can be entirely practical at times like this? Your hands knock jars off the shelves, and stupidly clutch at useless cooking utensils. You enter the bathroom and grasp at a towel and toothbrush.

Momentarily your mind snaps back to reality: a holiday? Is that where you think you are going? Chiding yourself, you run back into the living room, stopping by a chair — again your senses snap you back, reprimanding your utter absurdity: do you really think you can take a chair with you?

Suddenly you awake, as if from a dream. Was it three minutes or 56 seconds? Who can be sure? It’s not as if you can ask the person with their finger on the trigger when you will die. You grab what is most valuable to you, what you could never imagine leaving behind.

In a split second you take your children’s hands and run from the house, leaving everything else behind you, knowing that you will never return and facing the unknown.

No wonder we hear the Gazans who survive talk about the slow death they experience.

via Analysis: Mercy of Israeli occupation at work in Gaza | Maan News Agency.

Israel orders residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate | Maan News Agency

Israel ordered residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate, adding to more than 400,000 people who have been issued evacuation orders in the last two days.

via Israel orders residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate | Maan News Agency.

Just hard to believe the callousness!

David Frum (former Bush speech writer) Accuses NYT and Reuters of Staging Gaza Hospital Photos (GRAPHIC) — BagNews

Defending Israel with the objectivity and intensity of the Bush speech writer he once was, David Frum, the Senior Editor at the Atlantic, alleged to his 100k Twitter followers on Thursday (not once, but eight times) that the NYT, Reuters (and AP, apparently in collusion, too) had staged a photo in a Gaza hospital.

via David Frum Accuses NYT and Reuters of Staging Gaza Hospital Photos (GRAPHIC) — BagNews.

Former Israeli ambassador calls for ‘crushing’ Hamas – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The civilian casualties in Gaza are disproportionate, with much higher fatalities and wounded among Palestinians, and Israel has violated the immunity of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shelters in Gaza. Netanyahu is impatient to continue the project of crushing Hamas, as described by Oren. Israel’s right-wing government is returning to the impulse that led to the “crushing” of the Palestinian people in Lydda in 1948.

via Former Israeli ambassador calls for ‘crushing’ Hamas – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Meshaal: We are ready to coexist with Jews, but not ‘occupiers’ | Maan News Agency

Hamas continued to insist that any lasting ceasefire must be based on an Israeli lifting of the blockade on Gaza, with leader Khaled Meshaal warning that Palestinians cannot coexist with their neighbors while their land is occupied in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

On Saturday, Meshaal was interviewed by US broadcaster PBS in the Qatari capital Doha while in Gaza the party was under assault from Israeli forces in renewed fighting.

A full version of the interview will be broadcast late on Monday, but excerpts were revealed on Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Asked by veteran interviewer Charlie Rose whether he could foresee living beside Israelis in peace, Meshaal said only a future Palestinian state could decide whether to recognize Israel.

“We are not fanatics, we are not fundamentalists. We are not actually fighting the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers,” he said.

“I’m ready to coexist with the Jews, with the Christians and the Arabs and non-Arabs,” he said. “However, I do not coexist with the occupiers.”

Pressed on whether Palestinians could recognize the state of Israel as a Jewish state, Meshaal reiterated Hamas’ position — the group does not recognize Israel.

“When we have a Palestinian state then the Palestinian state will decide on its policies. You cannot actually ask me about the future. I answered you,” he said.

“But Palestinian people can have their say when they have their own state without occupation.”

via Meshaal: We are ready to coexist with Jews, but not ‘occupiers’ | Maan News Agency.

And so goes the dance of words and few deeds other than hurling bombs and rockets at each other Mr. Meshaal speaks for his party and not for all Palestinians. Israel is pretending that everyone in Gaza – part of Palestine – is a Hamas member/supporter – not true. Everyone – quit dancing and start doing peace!

Obama speaks to Netanyahu, stresses need for ‘immediate’ ceasefire | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

27 SUNDAY

JULY 2014

Agence France Presse

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday, and stressed the need for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire.

In a statement, the White House said Obama “made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement.”

via Obama speaks to Netanyahu, stresses need for ‘immediate’ ceasefire | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.