Gaza Siege: News and Analysis

The War on Gaza: In the Company of Stories and Images

2009-04-26T09:39:00.001-04:00

By Tania Tamari Nasir
December 27, 2008-February 17, 2009

It is the 27th of December 2008 and the dreaded war on Gaza has just begun. Horrified, we are glued to the TV watching. I have to admit that I have always felt something a bit immoral in the act, in sitting comfortably in one's room eavesdropping, peeping, an uninvited spectator on what is screened in front of one. How much more so now when I am exposed to the intimate, almost private scenes of life and death, to pain and suffering, spread out for all to see. How much more so, now, when your own flesh and blood are in the battlefield? With oscillating emotions I watch; I cannot help it. It is the least I can do, regardless of the acute feeling of almost betrayal that permeates my being. I am here, in the West Bank, they are there, in Gaza. We should be together. We are Palestinians. We share the same fate. The unfairness is shattering, the reality cruel. In a state akin to a survivor guilt syndrome I decide to write, to find meaning, seeking solace, seeking forgiveness from Gaza, from myself, from all who are there, dying for Palestine.

* * * *

The early morning ritual of making coffee brings some sanity to my heart. I stir the sweet heavy coffee in the pot and my thoughts wander to a woman in Gaza. Is she making coffee too? I desperately want to believe that there is still a semblance of the ordinary in Gaza. That the normality of every day, is still possible. How dare I even think of that? Embarrassed, this morning's coffee tastes of pain.

* * * *

The War is raging. “Operation Cast Lead" they name it, product of a diabolic mind, a demented psychopath that has to sugarcoat his crime with civilized words, a selling ploy, for infected merchandise. Does a camouflage make the murder any less murderous, the terror any less terrorizing, the immoral act a rightful one?

* * * *

I live in the company of images. I sit spellbound in front of the TV screen: live from the skies of the Gaza Strip unravels what could have been the grand extravaganza of an Olympic Games opening celebrations, the fireworks for the New Year, the Cirque du Soleil in a brand-new show choreographed in the skies or a sound-and-light spectacle like never before. But it is none of these things at all; it is the living inferno of the war on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. It is the bombs, the missiles, from land, air, and sea, pouring down their wrath on everything: on men, women, children, on orange groves, on olive and palm orchards, on animals, birds, and fish. The highlight, the crème de la crème of this Neronic feast, is the display of the white phosphorus bomb explosions; images that will probably haunt me forever, not only because of the horrors embedded in them but because of how I find myself victimized by their bewitching formations. Daringly I succumb to the artistic streak in me and I see, mangled with the ugliness of the lethal weapon, dazzling images that shamelessly rise from its monstrosity: tumbling from the belly of a war plane there came a giant dandelion, a sea-anemone, an octopus, all ablaze, like wedding tiaras, exploding into cascading petals and tentacles of effervescent gossamer ribbon, bridal veils that would soon enshroud the landscape below, annihilating everything in its wake. I shudder at the thought and yearn to pluck out the insane images from my mind, but they ferociously linger, kneaded with images of burnt flesh, gaping smoldering wounds still fuming where the shrapnels of white phosphorus continue digging, tortuously reaching down, to the bone, to the marrow, to the essence. Yes, they want to destroy the essence.

First Hamas-Affiliated Bank Opens in Gaza

2009-04-21T20:10:00.003-04:00

Agence France Press. April 21, 2009 - The first bank affiliated with the Hamas movement running Gaza opened on Tuesday in the Israeli-blockaded coastal strip which lies outside the Palestinian Authority's control.

"We are opening the bank today and are beginning to offer our services to the public," Alaa al-Rafati, head of the National Islamic Bank, told AFP.

The National Islamic Bank has 20 million dollars in start-up capital and will operate under Islamic finance rules, he said.

With offices on four floors of a building in central Gaza City, the bank will hold the accounts of 6,000 Hamas employees whose salaries are to be deposited in the bank.

Rafati did not say how the Islamist movement acquired the start-up capital in a territory under Israeli embargo since Hamas, which is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, violently seized power in 2007.

Because of the blockade, which has prevented all but essential humanitarian goods from entering the territory, Gaza's banks have faced a virtually constant liquidity crisis.

Rafati said no such problems would plague the new bank.

"We have absolutely no crisis of liquidity, be it shekels or dollars. This will allow us to win the confidence of customers."

Although the vast majority of the board of directors are members of Hamas, including Rafati, he said the bank was "a private enterprise aimed at making profit and is not associated to Hamas or to the government in Gaza."

The Palestinian Authority -- which Hamas loyalists booted out of Gaza in a week of deadly street fighting in June 2007 -- has refused to issue the bank a licence and called for it to be boycotted.

The Gaza Strip has been outside the control of the PA and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas since the Hamas takeover.

Opinion: America's Jews Must Speak Up Over Gaza - Richard Silverstein

2009-04-21T19:55:00.002-04:00

The Guardian, April 20, 2009 - ....There can be no doubt that horrors such as Gaza serve as moral ice-breakers in the psyche of diaspora Jews. Ideas that hitherto might have been taboo or "anti-Israel" become suddenly legitimate. As Israel drifts farther to the right, American Jews are challenged to respond morally. In this context, the forbidden becomes acceptable. Boycotts, divestment, sactions and war crimes investigations now appear tools through which to try to draw Israel back from the brink.

No major American-Jewish peace group has called for a Gaza war crimes investigation. It is a sensitive subject among diaspora Jews. But if Israeli human rights organisations can make such a call, there is no reason why Americans should be

My motivation in writing this is not to avenge the deaths of innocent Palestinians. Nor is it for pure justice. It is rather to bring Israel back from the brink. Like one of the slogans of the Israeli military during the Gaza war – "baal habayit hishtageya" ("the boss has lost it") – Israel's policy has verged on madness. Nor has it achieved its objective of pacifying Gaza or toppling Hamas. And isn't one of the definitions of madness to repeat a behaviour even after it has failed, with the conviction that it will succeed the next time? When you see a loved one or family member descending into self-destruction, you reach out and help. My goal is to turn Israel away from the path of madness.

Richard Silverstein writes Tikun Olam, a blog dedicated to resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. He also contributed to the Independent Jewish Voices essay collection A Time to Speak Out.

Prisoner's Day Demonstrations in Gaza

2009-04-20T17:08:00.003-04:00

International Solidarity Movement blog, April 16, 2009 -

Human Rights Watch Releases New Report Charging That Hamas Engaged in Political Killings, Torture During and After Gaza War

2009-04-20T08:23:00.006-04:00

Human Rights Watch press release, April 20, 2009 - Hamas should end its attacks on political opponents and suspected collaborators in Gaza, which have killed at least 32 Palestinians and maimed several dozen more during and since the recent Israeli military offensive, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called on Hamas authorities in Gaza to hold those responsible accountable.

The 26-page report, "Under Cover of War: Hamas Political Violence in Gaza," documents a pattern since late December 2008 of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, maimings by shooting, and extrajudicial executions by alleged members of Hamas security forces. The report is based on interviews with victims and witnesses in Gaza and case reports by Palestinian human rights groups.

The spate of attacks began during Israel's military operation, from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009, including the summary execution of 18 men in Gaza, most of them suspected collaborators with Israel.It has continued in the three months since, with 14 more killings, at least four of them of people in detention.

"During Israel's attack on Gaza, Hamas moved violently against its political opponents and those deemed collaborators with Israeli forces," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "The unlawful arrests, torture, and killings in detention continued even after the fighting stopped, mocking Hamas's claims to uphold the law."....

Human Rights Watch urged the Hamas authorities to prosecute vigorously any security force member found to have violated the law. "Four investigations into 32 deaths are not enough," Stork said.

Most of the 18 Palestinians executed during Israel's military operations were men accused of collaboration with Israel, Human Rights Watch said. Along with others, they had escaped from Gaza's main prison after Israeli aircraft bombed parts of the facility on December 28. Gunmen believed to be from Hamas then tracked down and shot the men.

During the Israeli operations, Hamas security forces also physically attacked known Fatah members, especially those who had worked in the Fatah-run security services of the Palestinian Authority prior to June 2007. The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern.

According to the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the human rights ombudsman organization of the Palestinian Authority, masked gunmen shot at least 49 people in the legs between December 28 and January 31....

Abductions and severe beatings are another major concern, Human Rights Watch said. According to the ICHR, unidentified perpetrators broke the legs and arms of 73 Gazan men from December 28 to January 31. Human Rights Watch interviewed three Fatah supporters, all men, who were violently assaulted by men believed to be from Hamas....

On the other side of the internal Palestinian divide, the Fatah-run authorities in the West Bank have increased repressive measures against Hamas members and supporters there, Human Rights Watch said. From December 28 to February 28, Palestinian human rights groups recorded 31 complaints of residents who said they had been tortured by Fatah-led security forces. They also recorded one known death in custody and the arbitrary detention of two journalists from a private television station considered pro-Hamas.

United States and European Union donors who finance and train Fatah-run forces in the West Bank have expressed no public criticism of these serious human rights violations....

The abuses committed in both Gaza and the West Bank violate Palestinian law. The Palestinian Basic Law, considered to be the interim constitution, guarantees the right to equal treatment before the law, freedom of expression and association, and fundamental due process rights. It prohibits torture and other mistreatment....

Norwegian Lawyers File Charges Against Israel in Geneva Over Gaza Attack

2009-04-20T08:19:00.002-04:00

Kuwait News Agency, April 20 (Geneva) - A group of Norwegian lawyers has submitted a complaint to The National Authority for Prosecution of Organised and Other Serious Crime against a number of Israeli officials among them Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Former Minister of Foreign affairs Tzipi Livni, Former Minister of Defence Ehud Barak in the Olmert former government and leading generals of the army. The complaint is submitted pursuant to the Norwegian Penal Code Articles 102 to 109 and concerns crimes of war and gross violation of international humanitarian law and is directed against Israel's attack on Gaza in the period from 27th December 2008 till 25th January 2009.

The Norwegian lawyers said that it is clear that Israel, during the course of the actions have contravened basic regulations of international law, pertaining to warfare, hereunder the duty to discriminate between military and civil targets. It is also obvious that, to the extent Israel has engaged military targets, the civil damages are of such a magnitude that they cannot be defended by the military advantages gained.

The Norwegians lawyers are requesting that the subjects of this complaint be arrested, should they come to Norway, alternatively that they be searched for and arrested through the international police collaboration in which Norway participates. Moreover, it is requested that they be indicted and punished. Norway has both a duty and a right to see to it that such prosecution be made.

The Norwegian lawyers are attorneys Loai Deeb, Pal Hadler, Bent Endresen, Geir Hoin, Harald Stabellog, Kjell M. Brygfjeld.

Iran Convenes Conference of Legal Experts from Muslim Countries to Discuss Accountability for Gaza

2009-04-20T08:16:00.002-04:00

PressTV (Iran), April 20, 2009 - Tehran steps up efforts to bring Israeli authorities to justice by opening an international conference on their war crimes against Gazans.

While the horrors of Israel's 22-day assault on Gaza sink into oblivion in the international community, some 200 legal experts from various Muslim countries will convene in Iran to put forward a case against the Israeli leadership.

The two-day summit--which will open in Tehran on Tuesday--is slated to explore legal and judicial ways to prosecute Israeli political and military officials for resorting to acts of genocide and crimes against humanity in the war against Palestinians.

As a signatory to the Geneva Convention, the Islamic Republic reserves the right to prosecute Israel as culpable for war crimes.

Meanwhile, the victims of Tel Aviv's three-week offensive on Gaza have taken to the Iranian Judiciary a criminal lawsuit against the Israeli leadership.

“The Gazan victims have lodged a complaint with Iran's Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and have compiled detailed evidence of Israeli war crimes to defend their case,” said Iranian Prosecutor General, Saeed Mortazavi, on Monday.

Mortazavi asserted that Tehran would pursue a request for the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO or Interpol) to issue an international Red Notice security alert for the 25 Israeli leaders who were involved in the 22-day Israeli offensive on Gaza.

Commemorating Palestinian Prisoners - Reham Alhelsi

2009-04-19T22:35:00.006-04:00

Palestine Think Tank, April 18, 2009 - Every year, on April 17, Palestinians commemorate the Palestinian Political Prisoners Day. On 17.4.1974 the first Palestinian political prisoner, Mahmoud Baker Hijazi, was released from Israeli prisons in the first prisoner exchange deal with Israel. That same year, the Palestinian National Council declared the 17th of April a day of solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, to be commemorated every year. In Occupied Palestine prison and imprisonment are as common as sunrise and sunset. There is almost no family that had not been subjected to Israeli imprisonment one way or the other. Palestinians are being detained on a daily basis, making them the most imprisoned people on earth. It is difficult to estimate their number, but several sources put the number of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel since 1967 at over 750,000 Palestinians, making 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, and approximately 40% of the total Palestinian male population. With the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada in September 2000 until September 2008 some 65,000 men, 750 women and 7,500 children were arrested by Israel. According to the ICRC, in October 2008 there were 10,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Addammeer puts the number at 9,493, 750 of which are administrative detainees, 349 aged 18 and under, and 75 are females. Among those detained are political figures and some 47 Palestinians parliamentarians.

The IOF [acronym to denote "Israeli Offense Forces," a popular Palestinian adaptation from the usual IDF, which stands for "Israeli Defense Forces." - Ed.] can arrest anyone and anywhere, without giving a reason. Palestinians are arrested at home, on the way to school or work, at universities, in hospitals, at checkpoints. Mass arrests, as form of collective punishment, are also very common. Curfews would be imposed on villages, towns or refugees camps, houses would be raided and Palestinians arrested. I have witnesses a number of these mass arrests, but never did the IOF bother to tell the residents why they were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night and stand in the cold and the darkness for long hours. Under the cover of darkness and the curfew, the IOF would demand with loudspeakers that all men, usually those between 16 and 45, gather in the school yard or on the main street. We used to sit in the darkness at the windows and try and recognize the men standing in line and questioned by the IOF; relatives, friends and neighbours. Sometimes the men are blindfolded and handcuffed. They would wait for this to end, while being harassed, shouted at and kicked by the Israeli soldiers. We would wait with them, behind windows, hoping that they would all be released soon and come home safe. Sometimes, they are all sent back home after a night of harassment, but often this ends with mass arrest for no given reason..... [Much more information on Palestinian prisoners can be found at the link.]

Opinion: A Step Toward Ending Israel's Impunity - George Bisharat

2009-04-19T22:20:00.002-04:00

The Baltimore Sun, April 17, 2009 - The appointment of Richard Goldstone to head a United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip represents an important first step toward ending Israel's impunity from international law. Mr. Goldstone - a former supreme court justice in South Africa and chief prosecutor in the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia - and three other esteemed experts will investigate both Israel and Hamas for possible offenses before, during, and after Israel's invasion of Gaza.

Evidence, indeed, suggests that Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity before, during, and after its winter assault on the Gaza Strip. Long before the attack, Israel had imposed a ruinous siege on Gaza, collectively punishing its residents for choosing Hamas in democratic elections in January 2006. During the December-January invasion, Israeli troops apparently killed civilians without justification, wantonly destroyed civilian infrastructure and private property, used weapons illegally, and abused Palestinian detainees. Since a January cease-fire, Israel has blocked relief supplies to Gaza, and it continues to attack and kill Palestinians.

Individual misconduct does not explain Israel's offenses during the invasion; lax rules of engagement were the root problem. Israeli military lawyers classified any Palestinian who remained in an area after a warning of an impending attack as a "voluntary human shield" and therefore a combatant subject to attack. Warnings were issued via leaflets, cell phone calls, and in some cases, bombing of a building's corners (before the roof was collapsed by additional fire). Yet Gaza Palestinians were barred refuge outside of the tiny strip, and thus were denied effective flight. Israeli jurists also approved the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony; in total, some 250 civilian Palestinian policemen lost their lives during the invasion. Military rabbis exacerbated matters, counseling that Israeli soldiers show no mercy to Palestinians.

Such elastic definitions of "combatants" defy well-settled international law. Yet Daniel Reisner, the former head of the International Law Division of the Israeli Military Advocate General, recently claimed: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries ... International law progresses through violations."....

George Galloway, in CA, Challenges Americans to Send a 500-truck Convoy to Gaza, ala Viva Palestina

2009-04-19T21:11:00.010-04:00

Al Ahram English Weekly, April 9-15, 2009 - As part of the Siege-Buster Tour of America 2009, long-time supporter of the Palestinian cause, veteran British MP George Galloway spoke in San Diego, California on "Resisting War From Gaza to Kandahar". Galloway, the leader of the recent successful Viva Palestina Aid Convoy to Gaza, author and talk show host, spoke to a crowd of 400 at one of two events hosted by Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

"I came here to recruit you to the next stage in the saving of Gaza, which is dying. And to forward the liberation of all Palestine and the right of all Palestinians to return to it," said Galloway to loud applause

Galloway passionately spoke about the "injury" of Palestinians having lost their homeland, their country "wiped off the map", scattered as refugees worldwide and forbidden to return, while "foreigners play with their houses and their gardens". This is made worse by "the insult that they -- the victims of terrorism -- are the 'terrorists'. And that the terrorists, the perpetrators of terrorism, are called the victims of terrorism," he said.

Galloway praised the Palestinian resistance and condemned Israel's 22-day offensive launched in December, in which more than 1,400 Palestinians died. Galloway characterised the firing of rockets by Palestinians as a "cry of despair" and a "cry of rage" over decades of Israeli apartheid.

"The wonder is not of why some people are sending rockets but of why all people are not firing rockets everyday because they've been locked up for the last 60 years in refuge camps that are no more than open air concentration camps," Galloway said, "the entrances of which are guarded by the very same people who on 27 December rained down death's destruction on the million and a half living on this tiny piece of land."....

Action Alert to Americans: "Viva Palestina US" - Send a Bigger Convoy to Gaza: "We aim for $10 million in aid and 500 vehicles"

Viva Palestina blog, April 14, 2009 - Fresh from the success of the Viva Palestina aid convoy which took over 100 vehicles to Gaza from Britain , George Galloway MP has linked up on his US tour with the Vietnam veteran and peace campaigner Ron Kovic to launch a similar, but bigger venture from the States.

Galloway announced the initiative at a 1000-strong meeting in Anaheim, South California, rounding off a packed-out, coast to coast speaking tour highlighting the Palestinian cause.

“There's a new atmosphere in the US over Palestine,” says Galloway, “the phenomenal response to this tour demonstrates that.”

Ron Kovic, whose story was immortalised in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, will be the co-leader of the convoy, which will form up in Egypt and make its way to the Rafah crossing and into Gaza.

Organisers are aiming for 500 vehicles and $10 million of aid.

“And what better day to head off,” says Galloway , “Than July 4 – Independence Day!"

Israel Won't Work with UN's Gaza War Crimes Probe

2009-04-19T20:52:00.003-04:00

The Jerusalem Post, April 15, 2009 - Israel will not cooperate with a UN Human Rights Council investigation into whether war crimes were committed during Operation Cast Lead earlier this year, a Foreign Ministry source said Wednesday evening....

Jerusalem views the Geneva-based UN Council as badly biased against Israel. For instance, in its three years of existence, the council has passed 32 resolutions, 26 of them against Israel. The Foreign Ministry official said the move not to cooperate was made after it was determined that the Human Rights Council's decision to set up the investigation was "one-sided" against Israel. The official pointed out that Israel had cooperated earlier with a UN team set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon investigating allegations that the IDF had shelled UNRWA facilities in the Gaza Strip.

In New York, Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged both sides to cooperate with the investigation because it will be led by Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge and former chief UN prosecutor of war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Human Rights Watch noted that it had criticized the UN Rights Council in the past "for its exclusive focus on Israeli rights violations."

However, Goldstone has the "experience and proven commitment to ensure that this inquiry will demonstrate the highest standards of impartiality," the group wrote to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 27 European foreign ministers....

Israel's Attack on Gaza: An Unjust War? - Henny Ziai and Nabeel Qureishi

2009-04-19T11:13:00.003-04:00

Open Democracy, April 17, 2009 - Israel's attack on Gaza on December 27, 2008 has evoked strong emotions that frequently obscure rational discussion of the situation. With such a high human cost, objective and factual analysis is vital. In this article, we explore whether Israel's attack was justified under the principles of just war theory, as codified in international law. International law makes a distinction between the justness of a state's decision to go to war (jus ad bellum) and the justness of a state's conduct during war (jus in bello). We have chosen to focus on Israel's case for going to war. There are at least four necessary conditions for a just war: i) just cause; ii) last resort; iii) effectiveness in achieving aims; and iv) proportionality.

Did Israel have just cause?

Legally, there are two just reasons for war: self-defence (Article 51 of the UN Charter) or with a UN Security Council mandate (Article 42). Israel did not have a mandate to go to war.

We will therefore focus on whether Israel's attack was defensive. To understand why Israel's war cannot be deemed defensive some context is required. This means we must look at both the immediate context of the ceasefire, as well as the broader context of the conflict.

There was a 6-month ceasefire declared on June 19, 2008 and broken by Israel on November 4, 2008. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel was expected to ease its blockade on Gaza and there were to be negotiations on the release of prisoners, such as the one Israeli, Gilad Shalit, and the roughly 11,000 Palestinians. Negotiations on the latter took place; however, Israel has not lifted its blockade at any point. All evidence shows that this was a successful ceasefire with respect to the primary condition: that both sides stop firing. Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, confirmed that there were no rockets fired by Hamas during the ceasefire. The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Centre stated in a report that "Hamas has been careful to maintain the ceasefire". Hamas also made a number of arrests of violators during this period.

Israel broke the ceasefire 4½ months in when the IDF raided a tunnel and killed 6 people alleged to be members of Hamas. Though widely reported (e.g. The Guardian, Reuters, New York Times) this was largely ignored in light of the US presidential elections, which took place on the same day.

As well as breaking the ceasefire, Israel's lack of interest in sustaining it was evident in their decision to attack in spite of Hamas's calls for a renewal of the ceasefire. A delegation to Egypt on December 14 said that Hamas was prepared to stop all renewed rocket attacks. Furthermore, at an Israeli cabinet meeting on 21st December the head of Israel's Internal Security Agency, Yuval Diskin, told the cabinet that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce conditional on (a) an end to the blockade and (b) a ceasefire in the West Bank. Despite this, Israel invaded Gaza six days later.

It makes little sense to see Israel as a state on the defensive. Israel is currently occupying large swathes of Palestinian land; it also actively encouraged the 2007 civil war between Hamas and Fatah. First, Israel is currently occupying territory and building settlements on land that does not belong to it under international law. This is any territory outside its pre-1967 borders. 75% of these settlements are even against Israeli law. In 2008, Israeli settlement construction increased by 60%; by the end of 2008 there were a total of 479,500 settlers in the West Bank.

Second, Israel has built a wall that cuts through the West Bank, annexing the most fertile Palestinian land - such as the Jordan Valley - and using it for settlement expansion. In 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) called construction of the wall "contrary to international law".

Third, the economic blockade: since June 2007, Israel has allowed little basic humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip, meaning that food, fuel and medical aid were largely unable to reach the population. For example, a quarter of children in Gaza suffered from malnutrition. This illegal (under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33) collective punishment of a civilian population has been condemned by human rights organizations from both within and without Israel.

Israel has also been on the offensive by interfering in Palestinian politics. In January 2006, Hamas won a democratic victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections over the ruling party, Fatah. Fatah and Hamas formed a unity government in March 2007 and began pushing for a long-term cease-fire. Israel rejected that offer and, with American backing, supplied Fatah with both money and weapons and encouraged the coup that led to a brutal civil war....

Gaza's Policewomen Back to Work

2009-04-19T10:43:00.003-04:00

Photo: The Palestine Telegraph

The Palestine Telegraph, April 19, 2009 - Every morning Mariam Al-Bursh prepares a bottle of milk for her 1-year-old baby. Then she gets her badge and gun.In the Gaza strip, which is controlled by the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, a female police officer's day begins, in several ways, like that of many of her counterparts around the world.

But there are key differences.

There's the uniform, for instance, in a society where ultra-modest dress codes mean the typical female apparel is a long wide gown, or Jilbab, and head scarf. Sometimes it's even a face-covering veil with only a slit for the eyes.

The new female police force in Gaza--formed a year and a half ago, with about 1,000 police officers and growing--adapts by wearing a long, dark blue skirt, a blue tunic and a head scarf.

They also have their own special routine.

In addition to processing office paperwork, they undergo physical training to help police handle girls and women during raids and to break up altercations between women and female teens.

Thrust Into New Roles

But the new female forces in Gaza only had a year on the job before catastrophe struck. On December 27, 2008, more than 60 police stations and compounds were hit by Israeli missiles as part of the 23-day-long war. Many policewomen were thrust into the role of evacuating civilians from dangerous buildings.

One of them was Mariam Al-Bursh.

At one point during the concerted late-December attacks on the police facilities she was helping lead people from a police compound, Eman Hasan, a colleague of hers, said in a recent phone interview.

Hasan said Al-Bursh had to guide people past the dead body of her own husband, who had been killed in one of the air raids on the building.

"Mariam was the top leader among us," Hasan told Women's eNews. "Everything went crazy and hundreds of our policemen colleagues were killed, including her husband, but she held it together and evacuated us all." Ghada Hassan, 30, a member of the police's legal division, helps to prepare cases for court.

"We are well trained on dealing with dangerous situations and defending ourselves and others, especially women," she said. "It's this sense of duty that keeps us going. Even when the attacks started we were able to handle it well, although no one had seen it coming since we are policewomen and policemen, not terrorists."

Little Family Support

Many of the policewomen say they get little encouragement or support for the path-breaking line of work they have chosen.

"My mother and brother didn't agree with the idea of a girl working as a police officer, or anything of that kind," Hanady Karso, 26, a recruit in the investigation division, said.

But she added that her mother and brother will probably understand one day. "I believe that my colleagues and I are doing a big favor for people in Gaza by protecting women and giving them more privacy. We also help our male colleagues when raiding houses of suspected drug dealers or criminals."....

23 Prominent International NGOs Slam Governments for Failure to Help Gaza

2009-04-19T10:32:00.001-04:00

Maan News, April 17, 2009 - Twenty-three high-profile international NGOs accused much of the world of “standing by” as “Gazans sift through the rubble,” noting that thousands “are still homeless and without basic services such as piped drinking water three months after the 18 January ceasefire.”

Released three months after the end of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, the statement, signed by CARE, Oxfam, Defense for Children International and more than a dozen other organizations, the statement offered scathing criticism to the international community.

More than “lip service to the needs of the people of Gaza” is required, the statement said. IT had particularly harsh words for the European Union, set to review its trade and economic relations with Israel in the coming weeks.

“If the EU does not put the brakes on the process to strengthen ties with Israel, it will be sending a dangerous signal to the world that maintaining a destructive policy of closure is acceptable,” said Martha Myers, country director of CARE West Bank and Gaza.

“Gaza’s industry, including the agricultural sector, has almost completely collapsed and reconstruction has proved a near impossible task. Operation Cast Lead destroyed Gaza’s economy which was already severely weakened after months of blockade. It makes no sense to continue depriving ordinary people the opportunity to earn a living and support their families. The crossings must be opened now to allow the normal flow of commerce. If they are not, the people of Gaza simply will not recover,” added Myers.

Reconstruction in Gaza is severely constrained. Materials such as cement and reinforced steel rods are still being denied entry by Israel, the statement said.

Highlighting the ramifications of the decision the joint statement said, “This means that the 20,000 families – or at least 140,000 people – whose homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable as a result of the conflict are unable to rebuild their lives. Many are living in tents and in makeshift shelters constructed with salvaged bricks and plastic sheeting, with no end in sight.”

Country Director for Oxfam Great Britain in Jerusalem John Prideaux-Brune said bluntly that “There has been zero progress in allowing construction materials in to help people rebuild their lives. This is unacceptable, full stop.”

He called on world leaders to “take practical steps to fully open the crossings and exert as much pressure on Israel and all parties to ensure that families can finally see a light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel. A drip-feed of food aid and medicines is simply not enough.”

The NGO coalition responsible for the statement includes:

CARE West Bank and Gaza
Oxfam International
War Child Holland
Medical Aid for Palestinians-UK
Action Against Hunger
Norwegian Refugee Council
Caritas Jerusalem
Lutheran World Federation
Diakonia
Austcare
Gruppo Volontariato Civile
The Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief
Defense for Children International/ Palestine Section
Norwegian Church Aid
ACSUR-Las Segovias
Medico International
Campaign for the Children of Palestine: CCP-JAPAN
Paz con Dignidad
Mennonite Central Committee
CISS - Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud
Japan International Volunteer Center
ACTED
MPDL: Movimiento por la Paz, el Desarme y la Libertad

Gaza, Remember? - Gideon Levy

2009-04-19T10:21:00.003-04:00

Haaretz, April 19, 2009 - ....It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.

Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?

From the ruins of the Abu-Aun family sprouts a new desperation. It will be more bitter than its predecessor. A decent family of eight has been destroyed, physically and psychologically, and the world stands aloof. We should not expect Israel to compensate its victims or rebuild the ruins it caused, even though this would clearly be in its interest, not to mention its moral obligation, a topic not even talked about.

The world once again has to clean up Israel's mess. But Israel is setting more and more political conditions for providing emergency humanitarian aid ? empty excuses to leave Gaza in ruins and not offer aid that Gaza deserves and desperately needs. [Question mark in the original - Ed.] Gaza has once again been left to its own devices, the Abu-Aun family has been left in its tent, and when the hostilities resume we will be told once again about the cruelty and brutality of ... the Palestinians.

Gideon Levy is a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper in Israel.

Gaza Changed Everything, But Its People Still Suffer - Helena Cobban

2009-04-18T08:32:00.003-04:00

Inter Press Service, April 17, 2009 - Three months after the end of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and nearly four months after former prime minister Ehud Olmert started it, the standoff between Israel and Hamas is as unresolved as ever.

Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, nearly all of them civilians, are still in a very tough situation, since Israel still prohibits the shipment into Gaza of many requirements for a decent life - including the building materials needed to repair or rebuild the thousands of homes and other structures the Israeli military destroyed during the war.

But it is already clear that the war has changed many aspects of the complex political dynamics both between and inside the Israeli and Palestinian communities.

Hamas, simply by surviving, has become stronger both within Palestinian politics and throughout the broader Middle East.

In the Israeli elections of early February Olmert’s party was defeated - by representatives of an even more militarist trend in Israel whose rise was fueled, in good part, by the war-fever unleashed among Jewish Israelis by Olmert’s own war.

Meanwhile, the ferocity with which Israel fought the war caused significant damage to the country’s image around the world. In the U.S., unprecedented numbers of civil society groups - including Jewish groups - expressed open criticism of Olmert’s decision to launch the war, even from the war’s very earliest days.

All these developments have been evident during Sen. George Mitchell’s latest visit to the region, which started Wednesday. This was Mitchell’s third visit since he was named U.S. special envoy on Jan. 21. Some of the post-Gaza developments seem to make Mitchell’s peacemaking effort harder. But others, especially the new estrangement between the government of Israel and some of its former strong supporters around the world, open up new possibilities for his mission....

John Prideaux-Brune, Oxfam’s country director for the West Bank and Gaza, has described Israel’s policy toward Gaza as being one of "intentionally inflicted de-development."

He told IPS recently, "Israel went on a rampage in Gaza during the war. You can see whole villages flattened, the cows and other livestock killed. They seem to have gone in and removed anything that could have been used for economic development - farms, factories, you name it." (Israeli sources have said that during the war, the military trucked in 100 heavy-duty bulldozers, especially to undertake this destruction.)

"It seems a mind-numbingly stupid thing for Israel to do," Prideaux-Brune said. "Where states have succeeded in suppressing terrorism, they have done so through negotiations and fostering economic development."

He said he hoped western governments would act quickly to persuade Israel to lift the siege. That, he said, would allow Gaza’s people to move back onto a path of economic development rather than continuing to live on handouts.

Many of the humanitarian aid organisations that have been providing ‘emergency’ aid to Gaza (and the West Bank) for many years are now, like Oxfam, becoming more vocal in arguing that the only thing that can really stabilise the very vulnerable situation of the Palestinians of these occupied areas is to find a speedy end to the Israel’s military occupation of their home territories.

Prideaux-Brune said that the Gaza Palestinians are currently suffering from a deliberately inflicted "dignity crisis."

"So long as Israel controls everything in these people’s lives, they will remain vulnerable," he said. "Emergency relief aid is no substitute for successful peacemaking, and that is the only way to get to real economic development."

Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at Just World News.

Aid Rots Outside Gaza

2009-04-17T02:18:00.002-04:00

Photo: Matthew Cassel

Electronic Intifada (reporting from El Arish, Egypt), April 16, 2009 - Hundreds of thousands of tons of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt's North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Israel's 22-day assault.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza's 1.5 million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums and on airport runways across Egypt's North Sinai governorate.

Egypt shares a 14-kilometer border with Gaza that has been closed more or less permanently since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the territory in June 2007.

Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian-based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around al-Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometers from Gaza's border.

Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah crossing.

"To be honest, most of this aid will never make it to Gaza," a local government official told IPS on condition of anonymity. "A lot of the food here will have to be thrown away."....

Penetrating the Laws of War - Amira Hass

2009-04-17T01:58:00.002-04:00

Haaretz, April 16, 2009 - The tall young man walked into the room slowly and sat down slowly. Two nails that have penetrated his body force him to walk rigidly and carefully; one is in the upper-right part of his chest, the other in his right thigh. The man is Nahaz Abdel Daym, 25, who was wounded by two flechette shells fired by the Israel Defense Forces on January 5 during Operation Cast Lead.

When a flechette projectile explodes, it scatters between 5,000 and 8,000 nails or small darts, each about four centimeters long. They stick into anything they hit: people, trees, cement, metal. Two of Abdel Daym's brothers and three cousins were killed by darts from those two shells. About another 20 people were wounded, including one of his brothers.

The doctors decided not to operate to remove the nails, fearing they would cause irreversible damage. "I feel all the time as though needles are stuck in my body," he says. He has difficulty breathing, wakes up many times during the night and feels constant pain, which worsens on cold days. The wound suffered by his brother Mazen is not as serious: A dart hit his arm near the elbow. The doctors say that after rehabilitation, he will regain full function....

[Abd al Dayam]... is one of about 5,600 people wounded during the IDF's most recent attack on the Gaza Strip. According to the health authorities there, about 2,000 are children and 800 are women. Of the wounded, 520 have been sent for treatment abroad - most of them to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, others to Turkey and Belgium. Six died while being treated abroad. Only a few patients remain in Gaza's hospitals. In thousands of homes families are coping with the effects of their injuries: disability, pain, extra expenses and a lack of confidence in the medical care they receive. For them, the offensive did not end on January 18....

Ten Organizations Launch International Campaign of Solidarity with Gaza's Fishermen

2009-04-17T00:42:00.005-04:00

Fishing Under Fire blog, April 14, 2009 - Ten civil and humanitarian institutions in cooperation with the Palestinian international campaign to break the siege said Monday that they embarked on preparing an international campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian fishermen to pressure all official parties around the world into stopping Israeli violations in Gaza waters.

In a news conference, the institutions called for taking actions at all levels to stop Israel from violating the rights of Palestinian fishermen in Gaza and for organizing campaigns all over the world to expose these infringements.

The institutions stressed the need for making laws regulating fishing operations and securing fish resources and the marine environment in Gaza.

They also pointed to the importance of updating fishing boats and ports in Gaza, calling for the establishment of specialized workshops to repair and maintain fishing equipment and finding a mechanism to support the fishermen financially.

In another context, the ministry of agriculture said Tuesday in a press release that the story of the fishing boat explosion near the Gaza coast is an Israeli fabrication to redouble and justify attacks on Palestinian fishermen.

The ministry added that Palestinian eyewitness reported that the boat was not booby-trapped, but it was targeted by an Israeli gunboat leading to its explosion.

It noted that the Israeli military navy stepped up recently its attacks on Gaza fishermen at sea, where they kidnapped many of them and threatened to target their fishing boats if they did not cooperate and work as agents for Israel.

The ministry pointed out that the Israeli occupation also aims, through such trumped-up story, to shrink the fishing zone which became only two miles after it had reduced it to three miles after the war.

It hailed the civil and humanitarian institutions for organizing an international campaign to support the Gaza fishermen against the Israeli violations, expressing its willingness to provide them with all information that can be utilized in this solidarity campaign.

Related stories:

Gaza boat explodes near Israeli navy vessel (April 13, 2009)

Israel abducts Gaza fishermen; ISM takes their testimonies (April 13, 2009)

Palestinian Agriculture Ministry: Boat was not booby trapped (April 14, 2009)

Al Jazeera English Television profiled the industry in a February report:

Watch ISM's video of a recent demonstration on behalf of Gaza's fishermen:

For background on Gaza's fishing industry, see:

Gaza Strips Fishing Industry of Potential (March 2009)

Gaza's Fishing Industry Reeling (March 2009)

Israel Imposes Further Restrictions on Gaza Fishing Industry, Ordering It to Keep Close to Shore (March 2009)

Geopolitical Time Line: War, Natural Gas, and Gaza's Marine Zone (January 2009)

Too Quiet in the Harbor: Gaza Siege Largely Destroys Commercial Fishing Industry (May 2008)

Gaza's Fishing Industry Under Siege (March 2007)

OCHA Special Report on Gaza's Fishing Industry (April 2007) (available at:
www.ochaopt.org/documents/OCHA_Special_report_gaza_fisheries_April2007.pdf ) (Note: Report includes a useful map of the progressive shrinkage of the allowed fishing area off the Gaza coast)

Hip Hop for Gaza

2009-04-16T00:01:00.003-04:00

Electronic Intifada, April 14. 2009 - In the aftermath of Israel's three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, a group of young students, activists, artists and professionals from Chicago formed the Gaza Aid Project (GAP) to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

On 12 April 2009 GAP brought together world-renowned hip-hop artists to Chicago's Logan Square Auditorium to perform in solidarity with Gaza. The event -- titled Roots of Resistance -- aimed to raise funds and gather support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, brought out a diverse crowd of hundreds from around the city.

The night began with performances by local Chicago artists, before the Gaza Strip's first rapper, Mohammed al-Farra took the stage. He rapped about the Gaza Strip and talked to the audience about the struggles that Palestinians in Gaza face on a daily basis under siege and occupation.

Tamer Nafar of DAM (the first Palestinian rap group, comprised of Palestinian citizens of Israel) then took the stage before he was joined by his band members Mahmood Jrere and Suhell Nafar. The group rapped about the situation in Palestine and performed their hit "Who is the terrorist." The group spoke about the influence hip-hop that originated in the African-American community has had on them as Palestinians facing Israeli oppression.

DAM also joined UK-based Palestinian hip-hop artist Shadia Mansour as she performed her song "They all have tanks." Wearing her trademark Palestinian traditional embroidered dress, she spoke to the crowd in both English and Arabic about Palestinian culture and the attacks on Gaza.

The hip-hop trio from Chicago, Rebel Diaz, now based in New York City, rapped about issues ranging from immigration and the prison system in the US to the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the occupation in Palestine.

The five-hour-long event concluded with the night's headliner, M1 of Dead Prez. Wrapped in a scarf with the traditional Palestinian checkered design and images of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, M1 spoke out about the struggle that black people face in the US. He related it to that of Palestinians in Gaza, identifying imperialism as the common enemy. The evening concluded with M1 inviting all the evening's performers on stage to take part in the song "Hip Hop," which brought Dead Prez to fame....

British Lawmakers Meet Hamas in Syria

2009-04-15T23:25:00.002-04:00

Haaretz, April 15, 2009 - A British parliamentary delegation on a visit to Syria has met Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal as part of European efforts to communicate with the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas said on Wednesday.

The meeting with Meshal, who lives in Syria, took place in Damascus on Tuesday.

The British Embassy confirmed the meeting but denied a Syrian media report that Ambassador Simon Collis attended....

Calls have mounted in Britain and major European powers to engage with Hamas after Israel's offensive against the Islamist group in Gaza, which ended in January.

"I Was Born Palestinian" - Laila el-Haddad

2009-04-15T22:48:00.004-04:00

Raising Yousef and Noor blog, April 14, 2009 - "Its not very comfortable in there is it?" said the stony faced official, cigarette smoke forming a haze around his gleaming oval head.

"Its OK. We're fine," I replied wearily, delirious after being awake for a straight period of 30 hours.

"You could be in there for days, you know. For weeks. Indefinitely. "So, tell me, you are taking a plane tomorrow morning to the US?"

****

It was our journey home that began with the standard packing frenzy: squeezing everything precious and dear and useful into two suitcases that would be our sustenance for the course of 3 months.

The trips to the outdoor recreation store- in preparation for what I anticipated to be a long and tortuous journey across Rafah Crossing to Gaza. The inspect repellent; the mosquito netting; the water purifier; the potty toppers for my kids and the dried fruit and granola bars and portion sized peanut butter cups. This time, I wanted to be ready, I thought to myself-just in case I got stuck at the Crossing. The Crossing. My presumptuousness is like a dull hit to the back of my head now.

In addition to all the packing of suitcases, we were also packing up our house- my husband was finishing up his residency at duke University and set to start a medical fellowship at Johns Hopkins in July. In the meantime, we were "closing shop", putting our things in storage, selling the rest, and heading overseas: me to Gaza, he to Lebanon to visit his family.

Eventually I was too meet him there (assuming i could get into Gaza, and the, assuming I could get out). Yassine is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the village of Waarit al-Siris in nothern historic Palestine; he was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and holds a laissez passer for Palestinian refugees. Israel denies him return to his own home- or even to the home of his spouse in Gaza. So when we go overseas, we often go our separate ways; we cannot live legally, as a unit, as a family, in our own homes.

I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the "temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents" that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid '90s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation....

Laila el-Haddad, a Gazan journalist who is living in the United States, recently traveled to Egypt to try and enter Gaza and see her parents, who were stuck there during the war. She blogs at Raising Yousef and Noor.

Unemployed in Gaza

2009-04-12T19:37:00.004-04:00

Al Jazeera English TV, April 11, 2009 - "More than 70% of Gaza residents are jobless. But Gaza's economic problems stem more from Israel's brutal assault on the territory earlier in the year than from the global recession. Besides destroying more than 20,000 homes, the Israeli offensive left hundreds of factories and businesses in ruins, with devastating consequences. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports."

Interview with Karen Abu Zayd, UNRWA Commissioner General

2009-04-12T19:33:00.002-04:00

Al Ahram English Weekly, April 9-15, 2009 - ....For Abu Zayd the issue is not about this or that Israeli government. It is rather about an international position -- with an Arab stance at the core of it -- that could secure the facilitation of UNRWA's job. UNRWA, Abu Zayd argued, was promised a considerably generous budget for its work, especially in Gaza after the recent Israeli war. However, if the crossings which link Israel to Gaza (and those linking Gaza to Egyptian territories) remain blocked to the passage of goods there is not much use for the money that has been pledged for the reconstruction of Gaza.

"If you have the money to buy construction material and if you cannot get this material inside Gaza then what use is this money if it cannot get citizens made homeless by the destruction of their houses during the war a roof over their heads?" Abu Zayd asked....

The UN versus Israel: The Gaza Fallout

2009-04-12T18:59:00.003-04:00

The Nation Magazine, April 2009 - The appointments of universally respected human rights experts to lead two separate, independent United Nations investigations into Israeli attacks on Gaza in December and January may have put Israel on a new collision course with the UN just as the United States is moving to resume cooperation with the organization on human rights issues.

In February, Ian Martin, a former head of Amnesty International and most recently the UN's special envoy in Nepal as it was transitioning with difficulty to an elected Maoist-led government, was chosen by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take charge of an inquiry into "incidents involving death and damage at UN premises in Gaza." The UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides food, education and medical care to Palestinians in Gaza, reported in January that more than fifty UN buildings were damaged during the Israeli air and ground offensive.

Last week, Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who was chief prosecutor for war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was selected by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate allegations that Israel violated international laws in its assault on Gaza. The Human Rights Council is a body of nations not controlled by either the UN secretary general or the UN's high commissioner for human rights. The secretary general, the first high-ranking international official to visit Gaza after the attacks, has not tried to block what is essentially a war crimes investigation....

"Gaza is Still an Open Air Prison" - Gerry Adams

2009-04-12T18:49:00.003-04:00

The Guardian, April 9, 2009 - Gaza is still an open-air prison, Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams said during a visit to the Middle East.

The West Belfast MP called for an end to the Israeli blockade on building materials and urged the state to enter into negotiations with Hamas, which rules Gaza.

Adams held talks in the region with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, and is due to travel to the West Bank to meet the Palestinian Authority.

"This is a total denial of the rights of the people of Palestine. This is an open-air prison," the Sinn Féin president said. "People can't travel out of here, they can't travel in."....

A number of European politicians and commentators have urged dialogue with Hamas. But Britain and the United States say that cannot happen until the group recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts interim peace agreements.

Adams said the border crossing from Israel into Gaza "was distinctly like being back in prison ... You had to go through airlocked areas and so on".

"It is the human problem because when you speak to ordinary decent working people on the Israeli side hit by the rocket attacks ... the ordinary people of Israel didn't cause the problem."

The Northern Irish republican leader described a scene of devastation, ruined hospitals, schools and homes, and said he urged peace on the Hamas leadership.

"There should be a complete cessation of hostilities by all sides and I stressed our opinion that dialogue is central to what's required and that is the only way forward," he added.

"The refusal to recognise the outcome of the ballot box in the Palestinian territories is also bizarre, that they challenge people to go into elections and then when they go into elections they don't recognise it."

New Documentary, "One Of..." Wins Documentary Competition in Gaza

2009-04-12T01:54:00.004-04:00

Art work by Majed Shala - "this makes me think of the martyred medical workers"

In Gaza blog, April 11, 2009 - Tuesday April 7 was World Health Day, an annual recognition of global health issues, sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). In honour of the day, Palestinians in Gaza hosted a short-documentary competition highlighting health issues Gazans face, with specific attention to medical care in Gaza during attacks or emergencies. The 2009 theme of the WHO is “Save lives: Making hospitals safe in emergencies”. This seems like hindsight, after Gaza endured Israel’s 3 week war in which Israeli forces actively targeted over 70 hospitals and medical clinics, along with 10s of ambulances damaged or destroyed.

16 medics were killed while in the line of duty, and another 36 medical workers, including ambulance drivers, paramedics, doctors and volunteer medical workers were injured. Israeli forces targeted the medics under the pretext of security reasons, an excuse which has been repeatedly contradicted by the testimonies of medical and emergency workers, as well as patients themselves.

Emad Badwan, a young Palestinian film-maker, decided to highlight such Israeli attacks. His documentary, “One of…” took first prize in the competition held in Gaza’s burnt-out al Quds hospital, one of the hospitals greatly-damaged after repeated Israeli shelling, including with white phosphorous. On display on the 2nd floor of al Quds are a number of vivid photographs testifying to the blaze and Israel’s attacks. Artwork in the shelled and charred cultural centre further depicts life under, and the aftermath of, Israel’s war on Gaza. [see: Art in the Ruins]

As his theme, Emad chose the sniper-shooting of Hassan al Attal, a paramedic whose ambulance I was riding in at the time. The event occurred on January 7th, the first day when Israel declared a ‘cease-fire’ period (during which, in theory, Palestinians could move, buy groceries, leave their homes without fear of attack. In reality, these ‘ceasefire’ periods meant nothing, and many were injured and killed by the IOF during these ‘ceasefires’)....

Read the full article at the link. Watch "One of..." below. View other films by Emad Badwan here.

Gaza Women's Football Team Plays Against All Odds

2009-04-12T01:47:00.003-04:00

Middle East Online, April 10, 2009 - Palestinian sportswomen determined to represent country internationally despite Israeli restrictions

Gaza is full of stories of brave women, under the Israeli-caused rubble there are many stories of women with hopes and great expectations, pioneers in every field.

Being a Palestinian journalist in exile, there was no other way to interview my people and interact with my colleagues in Palestine but through the internet. I have started a feature by interviewing the Palestinian journalist Nelly Ismail Yassin Almasry through the net because Israel’s enforced laws made it difficult for us to meet in person. Our discussions took longer than expected because electricity blackouts happened many times in Gaza where she lives and the internet connection died with it, but I was determined to write about the other side of Gaza, the side that keeps rising from under the ashes like a bird with a thousand wings because its people refuse to surrender to defeat. Nelly is the daughter of Ismail Almasry, the Football Coach of the National Football Team in Gaza and a colleague working as a sport journalist and a member of the first women’s soccer team in Gaza.

The first Palestinian all women’s football team was established in 2003. Even though they had very limited resources, the women kept practicing and playing against other Arab women’s leagues whenever they were allowed to leave Gaza. The Gaza women’s soccer team suffered many difficulties and faced many obstacles because of the limited resources, the absence of properly built stadiums, the absence of security and the continuous closures of checkpoints by the Israeli occupation forces thus hindering them from practicing or travelling to play against other teams, even though the team wanted badly to represent Palestine on an international, level they were deprived of this dream as they were of many other dreams....

Report from Human Rights Organizations: Who Is Really Closing the Rafah Crossing?

2009-04-11T20:35:00.002-04:00

Gisha News Release,March 25, 2009 - A New Report from Gisha and Physicians For Human Rights-Israel Reveals: Who is Really Closing Rafah Crossing?

The report reveals that all parties – Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – are preventing passage between Gaza and Egypt for political reasons. All the parties are denying their own accountability, while pointing an accusatory finger at the others. The responsibility falls first and foremost on Israel; however, all parties involved are contributing to the systematic violation of the rights of Gaza residents. The right of 1.5 million people to enter and exit the Gaza Strip is not a political issue but a fundamental human right.

A new report on Rafah Crossing and the parties involved in its closure was published today by Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel). The report "Rafah Crossing: Who Holds the Keys?" dispels the fog concerning responsibility for Rafah Crossing, answering the question, who is really responsible for the closure of Rafah Crossing – and therefore for the violation of the rights of Gaza residents.

After almost two years of a nearly hermetic closure and following a military operation which left behind thousands of victims and caused immense destruction, all parties involved continue to deny responsibility and claim that the opening of Rafah Crossing will be resolved through political negotiations. In light of the current political deadlock, Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel demand that all the parties controlling Rafah Crossing – Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Egypt – end this futile political game and take immediate and concrete action to open the crossing. All the parties concerned bear an obligation to rise above their narrow interests and to respect the rights of 1.5 million people being used as pawns in political negotiations....

Hamas-Fatah Rift Leaves Gaza Patients Stranded

2009-04-11T20:32:00.001-04:00

IRIN April 9, 2009 - The rift between the two main Palestinian movements - Fatah which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas which controls Gaza - has impeded the availability of health care in Gaza, say officials.

“The health ministry in Ramallah [West Bank] has refused contact with the health ministry in Gaza since Hamas took control in June 2007,” said Gaza health ministry spokesperson Hamam Nasman: “Only 24 percent of the medicine and medical supplies allotted to Gaza under the 2008 PA budget were received.”

All referrals abroad for medical patients in Gaza were halted after Hamas took control of the PA’s Referral Abroad Department in Gaza on 22 March, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). As a result, thousands of patients with serious and complicated conditions have been affected, said sources in the Gaza health ministry....

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Max Gaylord and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a joint statement on 30 March expressing serious concern, while the WHO in Gaza has been mediating between the Gaza and Ramallah health ministries to resolve the crisis....

More than 150,000 Gazans Still Without Tap Water

2009-04-11T20:23:00.002-04:00

IRIN April 7, 2009 - Over 150,000 Palestinians in Gaza (around 10 percent of the population) are struggling without tap water as a result of the damage caused to wells, pipes and waste water facilities during the recent 23-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January.

"Our requests via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the Israeli military during the conflict to allow shipments of construction materials and spare parts to repair wells and facilities damaged during the war were denied," Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) director-general Monther Shoblak told IRIN.

Shoblak estimates that 50,000 people lack tap water after losing their homes, while a further 100,000 have dry taps because of damage to the water supply network.

Eleven of Gaza’s 150 wells, the only source of drinking water for Gaza’s 1.4 million people (apart from expensive bottled water and water trucked in by aid agencies), are not functioning. Six were completely destroyed, according to CMWU.

Many residents in the north and in Rafah have water from their taps only every 4-7 days. CMWU is working to rectify the situation, Shoblak said, but is hampered by lack of supplies....

Awni al-Heteni School, North Gaza

2009-04-06T23:21:00.003-04:00

Free Gaza blog, April 7, 2009 - A day in the life of ordinary Socio-Psychological Support Workers in a recent war zone:

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Israeli Navy Abducts 8 Gaza Fishermen 100 Meters Off Gaza Coast

2009-04-06T23:17:00.002-04:00

Free Gaza blog, April 7, 2009 - Israeli Naval forces have abducted eight Palestinian fishermen (including two minors) from the Salateen area in north of the Gaza Strip. Additionally, the fishermen's four hassakas (small fishing boats) have been taken by the Israeli Navy. According to eyewitnesses, the fishermen were only about 100 meters from the coast at the time of their abduction.

Initial information received regarding the fishermen's details are as follows:

- Esshaq Mohammed Zayed, 45
- Rassam Mohammed Zayed, 25
- Hafez Assad Al Sultan, 25
- Ahmed Assad Al Sultan, 17
- Safwat Zayed Zayed, 35
- Nashaat Zayed Zayed, 10
- Hammada Joma Zayed, 22
- Joma Mollok Zayed, 50

During the last month the Israeli Navy has escalated its attacks against Gazan fishermen by injuring at least three of them, abducting a further 24 fishermen, and stealing 10 hassakas and one shansula fishing boat.

Last week dozens of Salateen fishermen, joined by the Director of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, Palestinian activists from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative and International Solidarity Movement activists, demonstrated against the Israeli attacks, demanding the release of the stolen boats....

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and Palestine Medical Relief Society Jointly Issue Report on Medical Impact of Israel's Gaza Attack

2009-04-06T23:07:00.004-04:00

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, April 6, 2009 - An independent fact-finding mission of medical experts commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) published today its special report on the Israeli attack on Gaza.

In their report, the experts detail 44 testimonies by civilians who came under attack and by medical staff who were prevented from evacuating the wounded. The report provides first-hand evidence regarding the broader effects of the attacks on a civilian population that was already vulnerable on the eve of the offensive.

The experts collected samples of human tissue earth, water, grass and mud suspected to be contaminated by unidentified chemicals. These were sent by the team to laboratories in the UK and South Africa for analysis.

During the military operation in January, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel called for an external independent investigation into the events, for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip and for the opening of the Crossings.

Five independent experts in the fields of forensic medicine, burns, medical response to crises and public health, from Germany, Denmark, South Africa and Spain, immediately answered the call and traveled to Gaza between 29 January and 5 February 2009 for their first fact-finding investigation, and then to hospitals in Egypt, where some of the most seriously wounded were being treated.

The medical experts are: Professor Jorgen Thomsen from Denmark, expert in Forensic pathology; Dr. Ralf Syring from Germany, an expert in Public Health in crisis regions; Professor Shabbir Ahmed Wadee from South Africa, an expert in Forensic pathology; Professor Sebastian Van As from South Africa, an expert in Trauma surgery and Ms. Alicia Vacas Moro from Spain, an expert in International health.

From the conclusion of the report:

"...Besides the large-scale, largely impersonal destruction that the team witnessed and heard of, it was especially distressing to hear of individual cases in which soldiers had been within seeing, hearing and speaking distance of their victims for significant stretches of time, but despite the opportunity for 'humanisation', had denied wounded people access to lifesaving medical care, or even shot at civilians at short range..."

A PDF of the full report is available at the link.

National Lawyers Guild: New Findings That Israel Violated Intn'l Law; Domestic Law Implicated

2009-04-06T22:53:00.002-04:00

National Lawyers Guild Press release, April 2, 2009 - Israel violated international law by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, misusing weapons, deliberately denying medical care to the wounded and attacking medical personnel, the National Lawyers Guild Delegation to Gaza said today upon releasing a 37 page report containing new evidence on the facts surrounding Israel’s 22 day military offensive in Gaza. The full report can be viewed at www.nlg.org. Photos are also available upon request.

“Our findings join a growing chorus of voices—which include Israeli soldiers themselves—asserting that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive,” said Radhika Sainath, one of the attorneys who initiated the seven-day fact-finding delegation to Gaza. “On a number of occasions, Israeli soldiers shot and killed young children as well as unarmed civilians holding white flags—both violations of the laws of war.”

The Delegation also uncovered evidence of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields, acts that constitute war crimes, as well as evidence that the Israeli military targeted civilian infrastructure and grossly misused weapons. Further, Israel denied the wounded access to medical care and routinely fired on emergency medical teams attempting to reach those in need of help. Paramedics and doctors reported to the Delegation that many civilians could have been saved if the Israeli army allowed Palestinian medical services access to the wounded. “On one occasion, when Israeli forces did allow Palestinian medical services to enter an area after four days, soldiers prohibited their ambulances from approaching and paramedics were forced to pile the injured on donkey carts,” reported Reem Salahi, a California-based civil rights attorney. “Medical workers were then forced to pull the carts to their ambulances two kilometers away.”

The Delegation is calling on the Obama Administration and Congress to investigate the possible misuse of U.S. defense articles by Israel during the Gaza offensive. The Delegation is also calling for the Obama Administration to immediately suspend military aid to Israel until protocols are in place to assure compliance with international humanitarian law. “The United States must take action to ensure that its U.S. foreign assistance is not used in violation of international law,” said Thomas Nelson, an Oregon-based attorney specializing in national security law.

A National Lawyers Guild delegation of seven attorneys and one law student traveled to the Gaza Strip from February 2-8, 2009, to investigate the 22 day Israeli military offensive into Gaza that began on December 27, 2009. The objective of the Delegation was to investigate the circumstances that led to the massive Palestinian casualties, to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred, and whether U.S. domestic law was implicated as a consequence.

Founded in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York, and it has chapters in every state.

Land of Ruins: Special Report on Gaza's Economy

2009-04-06T22:33:00.004-04:00

Democracy Now, April 6, 2009 - Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat files a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel’s assault the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip. [includes rush transcript]

Big Powers Moving in on Gaza

2009-04-06T22:03:00.003-04:00

Inter Press Service (Reporting from Cairo), April 3, 2009 - Nine NATO member states agreed last month to utilise naval, intelligence and diplomatic resources to combat the alleged flow of arms into the Gaza Strip. Some Egyptian commentators see the move as a surreptitious means of cementing foreign control over the region.

"These new protocols aren't really about halting arms smuggling," Tarek Fahmi, political science professor at Cairo University and head of the Israel desk at the Cairo-based National Centre for Middle East Studies, told IPS. "Rather, they aim to establish foreign control over the region's strategic border crossings and maritime ports."

On Mar. 13, a major conference was held in London aimed at "coordinating efforts" to stop alleged arms smuggling - by land or sea - into the Gaza Strip, governed by Palestinian resistance faction Hamas. Participants at the conference included high-level representatives from nine member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), including the U.S., Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Norway.

At the close of the event, participants signed an agreement "to develop an effective framework for international cooperation, supplementary to measures taken by regional states, to prevent and interdict the illicit flow of arms, ammunition and weapons components to Gaza."

According to a final statement, participant governments hope to accomplish these objectives with the use of a series of measures, including "maritime interception, information sharing and diplomatic pressure." The international community "has a responsibility to support prevention and interdiction efforts," the statement reads, noting that such efforts may involve "diplomatic, military, intelligence and law enforcement components."

The London conference follows an earlier meeting devoted to the same issue held in Denmark in early February. A third, follow-up meeting is expected to be held in Canada in April to "work out details" of the pact, according to diplomats close to the talks.

Although Egypt reportedly received an invitation to attend the London gathering, it disdained to send a delegate. Palestinian representation, too - from either Hamas or the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority - was conspicuously absent. Israeli officials, meanwhile, reportedly attended the meeting as "observers".

Shortly afterwards, Mark Regev, spokesman for outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, lauded the agreement. "The principle is clear - the international community will act to prevent the transfer of weapons," he was quoted as saying.

But Egyptian analysts say the agreement represents a furtive attempt to "internationalise" the longstanding siege of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip....

According to diplomats close to the talks, only "non-coercive" methods will be brought to bear against arms smuggling. Under the terms of the agreement, for example, maritime vessels suspected of carrying contraband can only be boarded for inspection with express permission from the vessel's captain.

Mazloum, however, was not reassured by the ostensibly "non-coercive" nature of the agreement. "These voluntary, supposedly non-coercive inspections will no doubt, over time, become compulsory," he said.

"The West, along with Israel, is attempting to establish regional domination on multiple fronts," said Fahmi. "The plan to redraw the map of the Middle East - from Sudan and Somalia to Palestine and Iraq - is progressing apace, and the hopelessly divided Arabs appear unable to do anything about it."

Abbas to Dispatch Aides to Gaza; Hamas Welcomes Step

2009-04-06T22:00:00.002-04:00

International Middle East Media Center, April 7, 2009 - Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, instructed on Monday two Fateh officials to visit the Gaza Strip in order to observe the destruction caused by the Israeli offensive, and to hold talks with different factions, including Hamas. Hamas movement welcomed the decision of Abbas.

The two Fateh officials who will be heading to Gaza are Marwan Abdul-Hamid, Abbas’ advisor on development and construction, and Abdullah Al Efranji, in charge of Fateh’s External Relations.

Al Efranji stated that this visit aims at listening to all factions in the Gaza Strip, to observe the destruction caused by the Israeli offensive, and to observe the effects of this assault on Fateh’s institutions, educational facilities and different institutions in Gaza.

Al Efranji added that this visit is not a replacement to unity talks, but it comes to advance internal dialogue.

“We want to listen to our brothers in Gaza, “he stated, “We do not want to be isolated from what is happening in the Gaza Strip”.

“We will observe the damage caused by the Israeli offensive,” AL Efranji state, “This is very important since we have talks and relations with different parties, institutions and countries abroad, we need to give them a clear idea on what happened there”.

He added that talks with Hamas and other factions aim at achieving unity, and would resume in Cairo.

On his part, Abdul-Hamid said that this visit is also related to the internal talks held in Cairo, and was made under instructions from president Abbas.

“This visit is a message to all Palestinians; we are one nation”, Abdul-Hamid stated, “What happened in Gaza holds a top priority is the president’s agenda, that’s why he sent us to Gaza”.

Meanwhile, Hamas movement stated that the Gaza Strip is opened to every person and every side, except to the occupation.

Ismail Radwan of Hamas said that his movement agreed with Fateh to hold further talks and meetings in Gaza and elsewhere, and welcomed all efforts that aim at resuming internal dialogue.

Radwan added that although the last internal talks session could not resolve the remaining points of conflict, yet Hamas is determined to achieve a unity deal, and instructed its negotiators to be open-minded in the talks and to facilitate a deal.

Palestinian Factions, Meeting in Cairo, Report Resolution of Many Issues in Unity Talks

2009-04-06T21:47:00.003-04:00

International Middle East Media Center (reporting from Cairo), April 4, 2009 - Khalid Al Batsh, representative of the Islamic Jihad movement at the Cairo internal talks, stated on Friday that Palestinian negotiators from the different factions managed to resolve 15 out of 18 main points obstructing a unity deal.

Al Batsh stated that the 15 issues were resolved through five committees discussing; the unity government, elections, reconciliation, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and security.

He added that the talks were positive with good intentions being shown by both Hamas and Fateh, and that the movements showed real willingness to end the internal conflict and move towards achieving national reconciliation.

Al Batsh also said that his movement does not accept the need recognize the previously signed peace deals between Israel and the PLO, nor Fateh’s position which demands that Hamas them.

Furthermore, Al Batsh said that the new Israeli government headed by Netanyahu and his coalition partners, especially the extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party, headed by Avigdor Lieberman, is another factor that pushes the Palestinians towards unity....

Gaza Wears a Face of Misery - Interview with Philip Risk

2009-04-06T21:35:00.006-04:00

Al Jazeera English TV, April 6, 2009 -

....Q: What doesn't the media report on [in Gaza]?

More than 1400 people died in Israel's latest war on Gaza. But on a regular basis, Gazans die because of all sorts of causes that we don't hear sufficiently about in the media. The sewage system is horrible, water is polluted and diseases are becoming an increasing phenomenon in Gaza.

Hospitals can't cope because they face electricity shortages; a lot of Palestinians are in desperate need of kidney dialysis, the kinds of diseases that are out there are getting worse, it's simply not a livable space.

The line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin. As a student, you can spend your whole life trying to do well in school, get good grades - but all that effort goes to waste because there is no future for the class valedictorian.

Everyone alike is left completely powerless without hope and potential future. I'm even shocked at how well kids can even perform in these schools, considering how they live in a constant state of war....

One thing I've noticed in the media is that the theme of violence is always associated with stories coming out of Gaza.

Why not focus on stories of non-violent resistance? While some Palestinians return Israeli violence with further violence, the vast majority does not, and the Arabic word for such everyday acts of non-violent protest is sumoud, which means steadfastness, perseverance.

No matter what Israelis do to the people I met, they continued fighting for their right to remain on their land, their right to stay alive. Many of the people I filmed aren't affiliated with political parties, they are normal people like you and I....

Philip Risk is a writer and filmmaker. He blogs at Tabula Gaza and just completed a film about non-violent resistance in Gaza called This Palestinian Life. He was recently held by the Egyptian authorities for four days.

Israeli Exporters Hit by European Boycott After Gaza Attacks

2009-04-04T14:29:00.001-04:00

The Guardian April 2, 2009 - A fifth of Israeli exporters report drop in demand as footage of Gaza attacks changes behaviour of consumers and investors

Israeli companies are feeling the impact of boycott moves in Europe, according to surveys, amid growing concern within the Israeli business sector over organised campaigns following the recent attack on Gaza.

Last week, the Israel Manufacturers' Association reported that 21% of 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. Last month, a report from the Israel Export Institute reported that 10% of 400 polled exporters received order cancellation notices this year, because of Israel's assault on Gaza.

"There is no doubt that a red light has been switched on," Dan Katrivas, head of the foreign trade department at the Israel Manufacturers Association, told Maariv newspaper this week. "We are closely following what's happening with exporters who are running into problems with boycotts." He added that in Britain there exists "a special problem regarding the export of agricultural produce from Israel"....

UN to Israel: End Devastating Gaza Blockade

2009-04-04T14:23:00.001-04:00

Haaretz, April 3, 2009 - The top United Nations aid official in the Gaza Strip urged Israel on Friday to ease restrictions on the flow of goods into the conflict-torn territory, saying they were "devastating" for the people.

"It's wholly and totally inadequate," John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said about the amount of goods Israel permits into the territory, where some 1.5 million Palestinians live.

"It's having a very devastating impact on the physical circumstances and also the mindset of people on the ground," he said.

Ging said access to goods was still a severe problem.

"We need access," he said. "It's the number one issue. It's the number two issue. It's the number three issue, and so on. Until we get it, there's nothing as important as solving the access issue."

Israel fears opening the borders would allow Hamas to smuggle more weapons and ammunition into the territory.

Ging said that all the crossing points from Israel into the Gaza Strip should be opened, and those that were currently opened in a limited way to only elected people or goods should be fully opened.

In addition to restrictions on what it deems luxury goods, such as cigarettes and chocolates, Israel has blocked entry of materials such as cement and steel for rebuilding because it says they could be used for bunkers and rearming....

Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo? - John Goekler

2009-04-04T14:18:00.002-04:00

Counterpunch, April 3-5, 2009 - ....It was the January 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza, however, that shifted the issue from intellectual to visceral. Whereas previous AIPAC moves had stirred discussion, its blind support of Israeli actions in Gaza spurred disgust. Not only did Israel destroy the meager remnants of its David versus Goliath mystique by using fighter bombers, tanks and helicopter gunships against a minor militia equipped only with small arms, it also surrendered forever what remained of its “good guy” image by intentionally leveling hospitals, clinics, schools and mosques.

The effect of this on American Jews was chilling. In recent decades, American Jews have comprised the core of the American liberal movement. They were a persistent voice of conscience through the civil rights era, Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iraq 1 and 2, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They remain among the most passionate advocates for social justice in the world. That they were largely unable to apply that advocacy to Israeli excesses was a bitter, but often unspoken schism that separated the Holocaust generations from their activist children and grandchildren.

Now, the denial many American Jews have maintained around Israel’s immoral and illegal behaviors is evaporating. True change, after all, occurs when the inconsistencies between actual and desired realities become too great – when the resulting tension compels action. The Israeli mugging of Gaza, and AIPAC’s unexamined and unfettered support for it, has clashed with the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam – “repairing the world”....

John Goekler is a trainer and consultant specializing in applying emerging scientific understandings to organizational effectiveness, transformative policy and global security. He is the founder of Change Factors, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Personal Testimonies from Gaza by PCHR

2009-04-04T10:59:00.001-04:00

Palestinian Center for Human Rights, March 30, 2009

In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.

As farmer Jamal al-Bassyuni plucked a stalk of ripening wheat, a posse of young men danced in his field. The dancers were flanked by a lively crowd, many of them women wearing the traditional Palestinian embroidered thob dress. Despite the nearby rubble of destroyed houses, and tracts of land laid to waste by bulldozers and tanks, the mood was defiantly sunny. Local farmers and their supporters were celebrating Palestinian Land Day.

Land Day was launched in 1976, as a commemoration of the deaths of six Palestinian citizens of northern Israel killed by the Israeli military as they demonstrated against expropriation of their land. It has become an important symbolic day of action across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, highlighting the plight faced by farmers like Jamal Bassyuni and his family, who live in Izbat Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.

‘I have worked on this land with my brothers for sixteen years’ says Jamal. His family owns 360 donumms of land that stretch right up to the infamous Erez border crossing.

‘If you had visited here even ten years ago you would have seen why we love this land so much. There were trees everywhere: we had apple, orange and lemon trees, and we grew olives, grapes, pears, almonds, pomegranates, dates and mirabella plums. Beit Hanoun was a garden.’

Local farmers across Izbat Beit Hanoun were renowned for their citrus fruits, especially the orange trees whose blossom famously perfumed the air. But these days there is only a smattering of fruit trees left. Since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, Israeli bulldozers and tanks have destroyed more than 42,000 donumms of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of it in border areas like Izbat Beit Hanoun and the farmland in the eastern Gaza Strip.

Jamal says his land has been bulldozed many times. ‘When our trees were first destroyed in 2002 we replanted them’ he says. ‘But our land was bulldozed again in 2003, then 2004, and the following years as well. Every time we replanted, the bulldozers would come back and destroy our work again. We had been living here for a long time, but the Israelis finally drove us off our own land.’

After years of Israeli incursions onto their land, the al-Bassyuni family eventually left their farmhouse and moved to a house on the edge of nearby Beit Hanoun town. They worked on their land during daylight hours, and employed a local man, thirty six year old Mousa Mohamed al-Jeraitli, to guard the farmhouse at night. On 5 January, Mousa Jeraitli and his family were inside the farmhouse when it was struck by an Israeli projectile. Mousa was killed and one of his sons was injured in the attack. The farmhouse was also destroyed.

During the recent military offensive in Gaza more than 14,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and several thousand more donumms of land were ravaged by tanks and bulldozers. The scale of destruction of land and civilian property across Gaza indicates Israel’s intention to systematically destroy Palestinian homes and their livelihoods.

Israel on Trial - NYTimes Op-ed by George Bisharat

2009-04-04T10:45:00.003-04:00

By George Bisharat, Op-ed Contributor, New York Times, April 3, 2009

CHILLING testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses:

• Violating its duty to protect the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Despite Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, the territory remains occupied. Israel unleashed military firepower against a people it is legally bound to protect.

• Imposing collective punishment in the form of a blockade, in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In June 2007, after Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed suffocating restrictions on trade and movement. The blockade — an act of war in customary international law — has helped plunge families into poverty, children into malnutrition, and patients denied access to medical treatment into their graves. People in Gaza thus faced Israel’s winter onslaught in particularly weakened conditions.

• Deliberately attacking civilian targets. The laws of war permit attacking a civilian object only when it is making an effective contribution to military action and a definite military advantage is gained by its destruction. Yet an Israeli general, Dan Harel, said, “We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings.” An Israeli military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, avowed that “anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.”

Israeli fire destroyed or damaged mosques, hospitals, factories, schools, a key sewage plant, institutions like the parliament, the main ministries, the central prison and police stations, and thousands of houses.

• Willfully killing civilians without military justification. When civilian institutions are struck, civilians — persons who are not members of the armed forces of a warring party, and are not taking direct part in hostilities — are killed.

International law authorizes killings of civilians if the objective of the attack is military, and the means are proportional to the advantage gained. Yet proportionality is irrelevant if the targets of attack were not military to begin with. Gaza government employees — traffic policemen, court clerks, secretaries and others — are not combatants merely because Israel considers Hamas, the governing party, a terrorist organization. Many countries do not regard violence against foreign military occupation as terrorism.

Of 1,434 Palestinians killed in the Gaza invasion, 960 were civilians, including 121 women and 288 children, according to a United Nations special rapporteur, Richard Falk. Israeli military lawyers instructed army commanders that Palestinians who remained in a targeted building after having been warned to leave were “voluntary human shields,” and thus combatants. Israeli gunners “knocked on roofs” — that is, fired first at corners of buildings, before hitting more vulnerable points — to “warn” Palestinian residents to flee.

With nearly all exits from the densely populated Gaza Strip blocked by Israel, and chaos reigning within it, this was a particularly cruel flaunting of international law. Willful killings of civilians that are not required by military necessity are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the Nuremberg principles.

• Deliberately employing disproportionate force. Last year, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, head of Israel’s northern command, speaking on possible future conflicts with neighbors, stated, “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction.” Such a frank admission of illegal intent can constitute evidence in a criminal prosecution.

• Illegal use of weapons, including white phosphorus. Israel was finally forced to admit, after initial denials, that it employed white phosphorous in the Gaza Strip, though Israel defended its use as legal. White phosphorous may be legally used as an obscurant, not as a weapon, as it burns deeply and is extremely difficult to extinguish.

Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution. The appointment of Richard Goldstone, the former war crimes prosecutor from South Africa, to head a fact-finding team into possible war crimes by both parties to the Gaza conflict is an important step in the right direction. The stature of international law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity.

George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Access to buffer zone key to agricultural recovery

2009-04-03T20:51:00.003-04:00

IRIN, April 2, 2009 - Gaza’s battered agricultural sector has the capacity to recover but only if there is access to the buffer zone, and only if Gaza’s commercial crossings are fully opened, according to a recent UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on Gaza.

FAO says the area inside the buffer zone along the northern and eastern borders with Israel contains nearly a third of Gaza’s arable land, but it has been inaccessible to farmers, residents and UN agencies since 27 December 2008 (when Israel launched a 23-day assault on Gaza in retaliation for continued Hamas rocket-fire from Gaza into Israel).

The width of the buffer zone is 0.5-1km along the eastern border and 1.8-2km along the northern border, according to FAO. The buffer zone extends about 55km along the length of Strip from northwest of Beit Lahiya to southeast of Rafah, but the area is not clearly marked.

“In different areas there is a certain ambiguity regarding the exact border between Israel and the Strip,” according to an Israeli military source, who added that the fence that delineated the Gaza Strip today did not necessarily reflect the final border that would be determined by the two sides in a final status agreement.

Severely affected

Gaza’s agricultural sector has been severely affected by the recent Israeli military operation: Cultivated land, livestock, poultry farms and agricultural infrastructure have been destroyed.

The use of weaponry and the movement of tanks and military bulldozers during the Israeli offensive destroyed 14.6% of Gaza’s total agricultural land, according to the Palestinian National Early Recovery and Reconstruction Plan for Gaza.

Before 27 December there were about 16,997 hectares of agricultural land in Gaza, including about 1,214 hectares of greenhouses.

The Plan estimates direct agricultural losses caused by the operation at about US$181 million and $88 in indirect losses.

Buffer zone resources

The buffer zone contains rain-fed crops including wheat, barley, beans and various vegetables, as well as olives, almonds and citrus trees, according to Gaza-based Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) officer, Ahmed Sourani.

Most of Gaza’s animal production is concentrated in the zone, which also contains important infrastructure such as wells and roads, according to FAO....

Opinion: Israel's Most Moral Army - Rachel Shabi

2009-04-02T02:14:00.002-04:00

The Guardian, April 1, 2009 - You could all but hear the leftwing jaws thudding to the ground. Shortly after opening an investigation of war crimes in Gaza, the Israeli military police has just snapped it shut.

Those soldiers who described unlawful practices in the Palestinian strip were just relaying "hearsay" and rumours, was the swift conclusion. And just as fast came the stunned reaction from those who wondered if the investigation was, well, just a bit too swift. Amos Harel of Ha'aretz newspaper pointed out that it took just 11 days, including two non-work days. Israeli human rights groups deemed it suspicious and called for an independent investigation. Others pointed out that the review focused only on the veracity of soldier testimonials – without examining copious evidence from other quarters.

Now, some Israelis are questioning the purpose of the inquiry. "It doesn't seem like they were trying to find out the truth, but more that it's an attempt to silence the debate," says Yehuda Shaul of Breaking the Silence, a group of army veterans that collates the experiences of soldiers who serve in the occupied West Bank. The fact that the military police knew about those soldier testimonials but did not activate an inquiry until there was a public furore over them seems to back Shaul's observation....

Gaza Orphans in the Spotlight

2009-04-02T02:05:00.002-04:00

IRIN April 1, 2009 - An estimated 1,346 children were left without one or more of their parents as a result of the recent 23-day Israeli assault on Gaza, according to Islamic Relief in Gaza.

An orphan is defined by Islamic Relief as a child under 18 who has lost the parent considered the head of the household, most often the father, according to a child welfare programme manager for Islamic Relief Mahmoud in Gaza, Abudraz. The official UNICEF definition of an orphan is a child who has lost one or both parents.

There are currently about 5,200 orphans under Islamic Relief’s definition in Gaza.

“There has been a dramatic increase in [the number of] requests for sponsorship [of such children] in Gaza,” Abudraz said.

Over 500 such requests have been made recently and Islamic Relief has responded positively to 200 of them. Eligible orphans must be under 14 and in the care of a low-income family (earning 1,000 shekels - US$240 - per month or less) with more than four members.

Extended families in Gaza cannot support the orphans in the long term, said Abudraz....

Opinion: Disposable Justice - Gideon Levy

2009-04-02T01:58:00.002-04:00

Haaretz, April 2, 2009 - Anyone who cares about the rule of law and Israel's moral image, and is worried that its soldiers may have carried out war crimes in the Gaza Strip, can now sigh with relief. The military advocate general, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, ordered that the investigation into soldiers' testimonies on their experiences in Operation Cast Lead be closed. A flash operation of instant justice buried a story that had rocked worlds. There are judges in Jerusalem, and a military advocate general in Tel Aviv. All he needed was a day or two - no Palestinian testimonies were deemed necessary. There was no real investigation whatsoever - the case was instantly disposed of.

Mendelblit's effective and scandalously quick conduct proved beyond doubt what everyone already knew: His office is a propaganda machine, part of the Israel Defense Forces' information activities. It has the same relation to justice as military marches do to music, to borrow a phrase from French statesman Georges Clemenceau.

It is inconceivable that the IDF would investigate itself. It doesn't have the slightest intention to do so....

Gideon Levy is a columnist for Haaretz daily newspaper in Israel.

See also: IDF: Case Closed on Gaza Testimonies - Jerusalem Post, March 30, 2009, and

Haaretz Editorial, Repression Campaign: ....The defense establishment was quick to rejoice at the closure of the case and the conclusion that [IDF] soldiers had told tall tales or embellished unfounded rumors that they had heard elsewhere. The defense minister and the chief of staff repeated the cliched statement that the IDF is "the most moral army in the world."

It is difficult to accept this. If the ranks of the combat units are filled with liars and exaggerators, then the IDF has a serious discipline, if not moral, problem.

One cannot shake the impression that the swift probe and its findings are part and parcel of the IDF's and Israeli society's campaign of psychological repression. This repression is palpable in the wholesale rationalizations made in explaining away the harm to Palestinian civilians and their property as an unassailable, operational necessity in the fight against terrorism; in ignoring the grave accounts from Palestinians in Gaza, which were revealed by Amira Hass in Haaretz and presented by foreign journalists and human rights organizations, all of which is viewed as the product of hostile propaganda; and in the tendency to automatically deny every claim of illegal behavior by the IDF and its troops.

If the IDF aspires to be the most moral army in the world, it must "look the truth in the eye," in the words of Ehud Barak's election campaign, and genuinely and courageously probe the reasons for the killing of many "noncombatants" during the fighting in Gaza. It ought to punish those who deviated from their superior's commands and it must define rules of engagement that, above all, will ensure the protection of innocent individuals and their property.

Cynthia McKinney Reports from London on Gaza Conference There

2009-04-02T01:31:00.005-04:00

London, March 31, 2009 - What an impressive Conference put on by the Government of Malaysia and the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW). Absolutely incredible. And the audience was packed with information....

The Malaysian Foreign Minister, Dr. Rais Yatim, spoke passionately this morning about the need for accountability in the face of war crimes. And so too, did the founder of the KLFCW, Tun Dr. Mahathir. Dr. Mahathir spoke of the long history of Zionism, starting with the Balfour Declaration, and explained that we were in London because there had been a request from a British citizen in Malaysia attending our Forum for Palestine there, to take this information to the source of the problem--England. Dr. Mahathir recommended that we remember the Balfour Declaration and all the events leading up to the creation of the state of Israel for a better understanding of the challenges we face on our road to peace....

See also Arab News: Malaysia Calls for 'Genocide in Gaza' Tribunal at London Conference, March 2, 2009 - The main speakers [at the London conference] comprised an interesting motley. Apart from [Former Malaysian Prime Minister] Mahathir and [current Malaysian Foreign Minister] Yatim, there were Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Tony Blair and a prominent human rights activist; Cynthia McKinney, former US congresswoman and 2008 US presidential candidate for the Green Party; Tony Benn, former Labour minister and veteran anti-war campaigner; Sir Gerald Kaufman, veteran Labour MP and former aide to Harold Wilson; and Rabbi Aharon Cohen, leader of the Neturei Karta, an international body of Orthodox Jews united against Zionism.

They all had one thing in common -— they are united by their abhorrence of the savagery and injustice of the wanton Israeli attack on Gaza and the hapless Palestinian population there last December and January, and their effort to criminalize war.

Mahathir revealed that Malaysia would go ahead in starting the process to convene an Israeli War Crimes Tribunal in Brussels under due international legal process....

Witness to Israel's War Crimes - Interview with James Leas

2009-04-02T01:23:00.002-04:00

Socialist Worker.org, March 27, 2009 - James Leas is a lawyer and longtime activist in Burlington, Vt. He works with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel, and he recently traveled to Gaza with a National Lawyers Guild (NLG) delegation to investigate the impact of Israel's 22-day offensive against Gaza. He spoke with Leah Linder Siegel about what he witnessed there.

Did observations and experiences on the ground in Gaza confirm that Israel committed war crimes during its attack?

WE SAW an enormous amount--with our own eyes. We saw the aftermath of the war, but there were a few bombs that went off during the time we were there, because Israel was bombing the tunnels. When we were crossing into Gaza from Egypt, we heard an explosion.

Most of what we actually saw was the destruction of buildings and rubble--in residential areas as well as government buildings and humanitarian supplies. We also saw the aftermath of the bombing of the UN compound, where we saw residue of white phosphorous [weapons] on the floor. These buildings had been gutted--they had been destroyed by fire.

We saw the rubble of schools and medical facilities that had been attacked. We saw a number of ambulances and United Nations vehicles that had been destroyed.

We also interviewed people who had been victims or whose families had been victims of attacks. In one neighborhood, where many of the houses included people from the same extended family, we interviewed a woman whose two daughters had been killed and whose two sons and husband were wounded severely.

The sons and husband are now receiving medical care in Saudi Arabia. She told us how the Israelis fired tank shells at her house after telling people in all the neighboring houses to come to her house. There were over 100 people in her house, and they stayed there all night.

Then, in the morning, the Israelis fired tank shells at the house. They must have known there were civilians in there because they weren't getting any resistance; they had control of the neighborhood. And then, when people tried to escape from the house, after the tank started shelling, the Israelis shot at the people running away. Many of them did get away.

There were some left in the house who were too wounded to escape. The Israelis didn't allow humanitarian aid workers or ambulances to come get them for days. One of her sons was left with the dead and wounded for four days until the Israelis finally allowed aid workers to come get him.

The Israelis didn't even allow the ambulance to come close; the aid workers had to actually walk a couple of kilometers and remove the wounded on donkey carts. And they couldn't use the donkeys; they had to actually pull the carts themselves. So it was humiliation on top of interference with humanitarian aid. It was just one violation of international law after another....

Seymour Hersh on Obama's Role in Ending Israeli Bombing of Gaza

2009-04-02T01:14:00.004-04:00

Syria Calling: The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace.
By Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, April 6, 2009

When the Israelis’ controversial twenty-two-day military campaign in Gaza ended, on January 18th, it also seemed to end the promising peace talks between Israel and Syria. The two countries had been engaged for almost a year in negotiations through intermediaries in Istanbul. Many complicated technical matters had been resolved, and there were agreements in principle on the normalization of diplomatic relations. The consensus, as an ambassador now serving in Tel Aviv put it, was that the two sides had been “a lot closer than you might think.”

At an Arab summit in Qatar in mid-January, however, Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, angrily declared that Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the resulting civilian deaths showed that the Israelis spoke only “the language of blood.” He called on the Arab world to boycott Israel, close any Israeli embassies in the region, and sever all “direct or indirect ties with Israel.” Syria, Assad said, had ended its talks over the Golan Heights.

Nonetheless, a few days after the Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, Assad said in an e-mail to me that although Israel was “doing everything possible to undermine the prospects for peace,” he was still very interested in closing the deal. “We have to wait a little while to see how things will evolve and how the situation will change,” Assad said. “We still believe that we need to conclude a serious dialogue to lead us to peace.”

...

The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”). But the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of “smart bombs” and other high-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel. “It was Jones”—retired Marine General James Jones, at the time designated to be the President’s national-security adviser—“who came up with the solution and told Obama, ‘You just can’t tell the Israelis to get out.’ ” (General Jones said that he could not verify this account; Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

After Israel's Invasion: An Eyewitness Account from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel

2009-04-02T00:53:00.003-04:00

By Marie Kennedy, Grassroots International, March 27th, 2009

After 3 weeks in the West Bank, Israel and Gaza, I returned to Los Angeles in a state of stunned disbelief. I had last been in Palestine in 1995, a time when many were hopeful of a peaceful transition to two-states, as outlined in the Oslo accords. Even at that time I was pessimistic about a solution to the conflict-already Palestinians were prevented from freedom of movement, subject to arbitrary detention by the Israeli military, and land seizures for new and ever expanding settlements were rampant. Now, things are immeasurably worse, not only in Gaza (although that is the most extreme), but also in the West Bank and for Palestinian citizens of Israel. I will share a few brief impressions and some facts, starting with Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison-a 140 square mile strip of land in which 1.5 million people are crowded together. Even before the recent Israeli offensive, the people of Gaza had been subjected to a punitive blockade for 18 months.

Massive destruction was evident the moment we cleared the border from Al Arish in Egypt to Rafah in Palestine, on March 9, 2009. The further north we went, the worse it got. Houses, apartment buildings were shot or bulldozed down; mosques, all police stations, all government buildings, including parliament were destroyed; huge sections of the walls of schools were blasted away, the American International School was obliterated, the United Nations Refugee School was bombed, as was the Islamic University of Gaza; the walls of hospitals were pocked with bullets; lone houses stood in plains of rubble. What little Gaza had of economic infrastructure was re-engineered into swaths of upturned concrete and twisted metal. Olive trees were uprooted and crops bulldozed under. Thousands of people were living in tents, hastily constructed hovels, or in the ruins themselves. These were the things I saw with my own eyes. The stories I heard were even more devastating.

Even though we were there during the "ceasefire", the war continued by non-explosive means. Nothing in-food, fuel, medicines, people with essential emergency skills; nothing out, including people in need of critical medical care not available in Gaza. Of course, it wasn't a total ceasefire-every night we heard loud explosions-we were told that the Israelis were continuing to bomb the tunnels and to fire artillery at fishing boats.

Israel carpet-bombed the 140 square miles of the Gaza strip. The attack was supposedly to teach Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israeli villages. Of course, wars are never about only one thing and the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so long and complex that it almost defies sorting out.

Boston Globe: Gaza conference chides US policy

2009-04-02T00:22:00.007-04:00

By James F. Smith, Boston Globe, March 30, 2009

CAMBRIDGE -- Several academics at a Harvard-MIT symposium on Gaza today were fiercely critical of US policy -- including that of the Obama Administration -- for not putting serious pressure on Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.

The two-day event includes a number of academics who have long criticized the United States for coddling Israel. Several cited the recent Israeli invasion into the Gaza Strip, which left an estimated 1,300 people dead, as fresh evidence of what they described as Israel's willingness to punish all Gazans to achieve its strategic objectives. Israel contends it had no choice but to act militarily to stop constant barrages of rockets from Hamas fighters within Gaza aimed at civilians in Sderot and other Israeli communities.

Congressman Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington state, described the widespread destruction he saw in Gaza in February when he visited there with two other legislators, including Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry and Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat. Baird said that while he absolutely condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza, they did not justify the full-scale Israeli military response. He called it "collective punishment" of Gazans.

He said that while walking through Gaza, little children came up and said, "Barack Obama, Barack Obama," suggesting the hopes people are placing in Obama. He said the new administration needs to move urgently to pressure Israel as well as the Palestinians for concessions to unlock the negotiating process.

Baird also said that Obama's message to the new Israeli government, expected to be led by right-wing politician Benjamin Netanyahu, should push Israel to start meeting longstanding conditions on settlements and other issues. If it doesn't, he said, then the US should consider imposing constraints on US military support of some $3 billion per year.

Other speakers, including some who have long track records of attacking Israel and US policy toward Israel, were less conciliatory.

Irene Gendzier, a Boston University professor, said of the Obama administration's response to Israel's incursion into Gaza: "The silence has been overwhelming." She said the new administration is preoccupied with Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is considering openings to Syria and Iran only with an eye toward undermining Hezollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Gabriel Piterburg, a history professor at UCLA, described Israelis as settler-colonialists who set out to destroy the indigenous people in their way. He said what distinguished Palestinians from native peoples in countries such as his native Argentina, Australia and the United States was that the Palestinians escaped political extinction.

The resulting frustration of Israelis, he said, prompts exponential levels of violence. "They cannot resign themselves to accept [Palestinians] as an equal partner. Somehow there needs to be a recognition of the indigenous population as equal partners," he said, whether that be in a single state, in two states side by side or some other negotiated solution.

The conference concludes on Tuesday with a session at Austin Hall at Harvard Law School, with sessions on human rights and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israel's choke-hold in America loosens - Rami Khouri

2009-04-01T23:41:00.003-04:00

By Rami G. Khouri, The Daily Star, April 1, 2009

One of the important, even historic, changes taking place in the United States these days is the slow but steady erosion of the once absolute taboo to speak about the excessive influence of pro-Israeli groups in the United States. Pro-Israeli forces in politics and the mass media can still destroy a public career, especially for a politician, but the stranglehold on discussing this phenomenon is slowly loosening.

I witnessed one example of this earlier this week when I participated in the second annual symposium on Gaza, jointly organized by and hosted at two outstanding universities, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Equally noteworthy was that it was sponsored by mainstream units at the universities, including MIT's Center for International Studies and the Program on Human Rights and Justice, and Harvard's Middle East Initiative at the Kennedy School, the Center for Middle East Studies, and the Human Rights Program at the Harvard Law School.

A respected member of Congress who had recently visited Gaza, Brian Baird from Washington State, made the opening comments, which were strongly critical of Israeli actions in Gaza - especially the excessive and disproportionate use of force - and of the American position supporting Israel.

Most of the speakers criticized Israel and supported Palestinian rights, pointing out the importance of the "resistance" of the Palestinians in Gaza who refused to be removed from history or from their land by the force of Israeli settler-colonialist violence. Boston University Political Science professor Irene Grendzier suggested that two phenomena have defined events in the Middle East in recent years - the problem of weapons of mass destruction, but also the problem of "weapons of mass deception" in the United States public arena.

The deliberate deception of the American people about realities on the ground in Israel and Palestine was one reason the US government and public could take a position of "overwhelming silence" on the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, and its continuing strangulation of that society.

"The deception is breaking down slowly, however" she said, because of the availability of alternative sources of news available to anyone who sought it out on the internet or non-American television services. This meant that "we are witnessing the public beheading of Israeli myths on events in Palestine."

Other speakers - Arabs, Americans, Israelis, Europeans - made similar points that emphasized how the gravity and often the criminality of Israeli actions in Gaza were at once facilitated and exacerbated by American and other foreign policies. Oxford University lecturer Karma Nabulsi said that a consistent aim of American-Israeli policies was to deny the Palestinians the right to represent themselves, and then also to deny them the right to resist when faced with occupation and assault.

Aftermath: Violence Against Women in Gaza is Rising

2009-03-30T00:53:00.002-04:00

IRIN, March 24, 2009 - The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Gaza, local Palestinian NGOs and mental health professionals are reporting increased incidents of domestic violence and sexual assault against women in Gaza since the beginning of 2009.

An unpublished UNIFEM survey of male and female heads of 1,100 Gaza households conducted between 28 February and 3 March indicates there was an increase in violence against women during and after the 23-day war which ended on 18 January.

“According to our staff, and through clinical observation, there was increased violence against women and children during and after the war,” said public relations coordinator for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), Husam al-Nounou.

“We can attribute this to the fact that most people were exposed to traumatic incidents during the war, and one way people react to stress is to become violent.”

GCMHP, which runs six clinics and treats an estimated 2,000 mental health patients a year, carried out a post-war assessment, interviewing about 3,500 Gaza residents, said al-Nounou.

“This war was extremely harsh, people felt insecure, vulnerable and unable to protect themselves, their children and their families; when people were trapped at home this increased the stress and anxiety,” said al-Nounou.

Testimonies

Sahar (who wanted her family name omitted), aged 36, divorced her husband in February due to the physical and psychological abuse she endured leading up to and during the war.

“He beat me severely and I was fainting from the stress,” said Sahar. “He forced me to engage in sexual intercourse against my will.”

Sahar brings her two-year-old daughter to the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution (PCDCR) to visit the daughter’s father. The court ordered supervised visits after Sahar’s ex-husband and his brothers tried to take her daughter away by force.

“Before the war the centre was facilitating supervised visits for 30 families, but now it is doing this for 60 families,” said Bakr Turkmani, an attorney at the PCDCR....

Aftermath: "The Only BMW Store in Gaza"

2009-03-30T00:16:00.003-04:00

Nasser Al Amoudi outside the symbolic tent erected on the site of his destroyed BMW spare parts shop
Photo: Malian/PCHR.

Palestinian Center for Human Rights, March 29, 2009 - In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.

Nasser Al ‘Amoudi, with his biker’s jacket and sunglasses, embodies the of a car enthusiast. For years he has been the owner of the only BMW spare parts shop in the Strip. People would travel from every corner to purchase secondhand parts from his shop. Now Nasser’s and garage, which were worth $300,000 before the Israeli army destroyed them during their latest offensive, lie in tatters, and his financial security has gone.

Al ‘Amoudi BMW Spare Parts is situated on a main street running through the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. This area was one of the worst affected during Israel’s ground offensive – hundreds of houses and greenhouses were completely destroyed in Salateen, thousands of trees were uprooted, and there are still 100 families living in a tent camp just a few metres away. This predominantly fishing community has sustained many Israeli incursions over the years but the scars of the latest one are all pervasive and have made the area almost unrecognisable to its residents. Even the cemetery with its cracked gravestones and deep tank tracks, was not spared.

“This land belongs to me and my family and we have had this business for 22 years,” says 38-year-old Nasser, his hand leaning on the edge of the tent he has erected on the site of his shop. “I worked in the garage when I was a small boy, and I took over from my brother when I was old enough. We had customers from Gaza City, from Khan Yunis, and Rafah. This was the only place to find good used spare parts for BMW cars. All of Gaza knew this shop.”

Nasser used to have friends in Germany whom he did business with to secure the spare parts, but everything collapsed with the closure of Gaza’s borders two years ago: “People were still coming here before the war, but business had slowed down, almost to a standstill. Gaza has been closed off from the outside world for two years, and it’s impossible for businesses like mine to function under those conditions.”

The economic blockade and closure of Gaza’s borders since June 2007 has had a devastating impact on the Strip’s economic sectors. Most production facilities have ceased operations and the import and export of goods are severely limited. Israel’s policy of collective punishment has left the territory unable to secure basic foods, medicines, or other supplies and the result has been a skyrocketing of poverty rates and unemployment.....

Over 120 industrial and commercial workshops were completely by Israeli Occupation Forces between 27 December and 18 January 2009, and at least 200 others damaged, as well as some of Gaza’s largest producing soft drinks, concrete, and other basic items.

The high civilian death toll and the extensive destruction to public and private property indicate that one of the objectives of the Israeli political and military establishments was to cause the maximum possible damage in Gaza. As Nasser Al ‘Amoudi, rearranges the metal sign hanging from his tent, it is apparent that the Israeli army achieved that objective....

Aftermath: Gazans Share War Experiences

2009-03-29T19:28:00.005-04:00

Live from Gaza blog, March 26, 2009 - Blogger Lina al-Sharif, a 20-year old student of English literature at Islamic University in Gaza, produced some home videos called Remember the War (Parts 1 and 2) so she could shared her experiences during the Gaza War with her readers. The videos were posted on her blog, Live from Gaza, and are accessible below:

New Poll of US Jews: Although 75% Supported Gaza Op, 69% Thought Response was "Disproportionate" - Richard Silverstein

2009-03-29T19:16:00.005-04:00

The Guardian, March 29, 2009 - J Street has just released its latest poll (full results, analysis) about American Jewish attitudes toward the Israeli-Arab conflict. As usual, it contains some heartening results and some worrisome ones. Perhaps the most important trend noted is that American Jews support a muscular US policy that actively encourages the warring parties to resolve their differences through negotiation....

Sixty-nine percent would support Israeli and American engagement with a Palestinian unity government, even if it included Hamas. This is an especially important finding – both because Palestinians are right now earnestly negotiating towards this goal in Egypt, and because the recent budget bill passed by Congress contains some truly bizarre, draconian provisions that would outlaw any US involvement with a Palestinian government that did include Hamas....What is important to note here is how completely off the reservation congressional Democrats have gone in accommodating the Aipac holy warriors.

Sixty-nine percent of Jews reject Avigdor Lieberman's call for loyalty oaths for Israeli Arabs, as well as his more bellicose anti-Arab positions like support for killing Knesset members who back Hamas. But surprisingly only 29% had an unfavourable view of him, while 27% had a favourable view.

American Jews reject the contention of many pro-Israel hard-liners that public disagreement with Israeli policy is not acceptable for Jews. Fifty-eight percent disagree....

Seventy-five percent of Jews supported Israel and its invasion of Gaza. An earlier Pew study found that 55% of Democrats opposed the Gaza war – which means there is a real split between Jews and Americans when it comes to such matters. The difference in levels of Israeli and diaspora war support is significant, though I am disappointed there wasn't more opposition here and in Israel....

Forty-one percent of Jews believe the Gaza war did nothing to increase Israel's security and 18% believe it harmed it. Forty-one percent believe it made Israel more secure....

Despite my disappointment at the numbers supporting the Gaza war, 69% believe Israel's response to Hamas rockets was "disproportionate". Fifty-six percent believe Israeli military actions that involve killing civilians "create more terrorism". Sixty-five percent believe that Israel's siege against Gaza and the notion of collective punishment is wrong....

Richard Silverstein writes Tikun Olam, a blog dedicated to resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. He also contributed to the Independent Jewish Voices essay collection A Time to Speak Out.

Analysis: Are Religious Soldiers to Blame for Alleged Abuse?

2009-03-28T22:23:00.001-04:00

The Jewish Forward, March 25, 2009 - Two months after the cease-fire that ended the recent fighting in Gaza, Israel finds itself bombarded with war crimes accusations. They come from a wide spectrum of critics, but none has drawn a more emotional reaction in Israel than the graphic descriptions by a group of Israeli combat troops of abuses they saw during the war.

As widely reported, the soldiers’ accounts — including wanton vandalism and two alleged killings of civilians — emerged during a private discussion February 13 at a pre-military academy in the Galilee, named after Yitzhak Rabin. The academy’s director, Dany Zamir, is reported to have transcribed the alarming stories and sent them to army headquarters, where they were treated dismissively. Zamir then published the transcript in the academy’s newsletter, which ended up in the hands of two senior military correspondents: Amos Harel of the left-leaning Haaretz, and Ofer Shelah (a former Forward correspondent) of the right-leaning Ma’ariv. Their reports, published March 19, spawned a worldwide blizzard of breathless news coverage of alleged Israeli brutality — and furious denials that Israelis would do such things.

That much is common knowledge. Less familiar are the quiet discussions among some army insiders and close observers — reserve officers, military correspondents, politicians — who insist the abuse reports are substantially true and think they know the reasons for the abuse. One key reason, many say, is the “special character” of the infantry units that carried the brunt of the fighting in Gaza: the Golani and Givati brigades. They talk about the units’ religious character — the high proportion in these brigades, especially Golani, of militant reli-gious nationalists motivated by a messianic sense of mission to save the Land of Israel.

“Golani has a great many religious soldiers, and many of them are Jewish fundamentalists,” said former Knesset member Avshalom Vilan, a Meretz party leader who served with Benjamin Netanyahu in the commandos and remains close to him. “It’s important not to generalize — I’m talking about a minority among religious soldiers. But there is a phenomenon of officers from a certain group of fundamentalist yeshivas and academies who are trying to change the basic values of the army.”

It’s widely believed in the senior ranks and reserves, Vilan said, that these “fundamentalist” soldiers, many of whom serve in special religious platoons with their own religious officers, were the source of much of the abuse. “I’m not talking about the woman who turned left instead of right and got shot,” he said, referring to one of the allegations highlighted by Zamir. “Those things are terrible, but they happen in every war. I’m talking abusive attitudes — soldiers trashing Arab homes, threatening women and children, that sort of thing. That’s something new, and it doesn’t appear magically out of nowhere.”....

Al Jazeera Reports: Gazans Tell of Being Targeted with White Phosphorus During War

2009-03-28T22:12:00.002-04:00

Al Jazeera English TV, March 26, 2009 - "According to Human Rights Watch, Israel's use of white phosphorus in their offensive on the Gaza Strip constitutes a war crime, which Israel strenuously denies. Phosphorus ignites in oxygen in temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius and daily temperatures were much hotter than that when the war was carried out in Gaza in January. It is almost impossible to put out, and if it comes into contact with human flesh it can burn to the bone. Sabah Abu Halima, who lost her husband and four of her children in the war tells her story."

New IAF Analysis: 99% of Gaza Aerial Attacks Hit Targets Accurately

2009-03-28T22:07:00.004-04:00

Israel Defense Forces blog, March 23, 2009 - The Israel Air Force has expressed its satisfaction with its operations during Operation Cast Lead, after the completion of an internal evaluation of the operation in the last few days. The data compiled by the IAF determined that 99% of aerial attacks hit their target precisely. The evaluation also showed that 80% of the bombs and missiles used by the IAF were precision munitions which significantly decrease the chance of hitting uninvolved civilians. During the second Lebanon war only 36% of the munitions used were precision munitions.

In addition, for the first time during an IDF operation of this scale, no IDF ground forces were injured by the IAF, despite the fact that more than 2000 bombs and missiles were fired close to ground forces and in a dense and complex urban territory.

The IAF was also pleased with its ability to minimize the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israeli territory, by destroying weaponry launchers and storage facilities. Throughout the operation 650 rockets were fired onto Israeli territory, killing three Israelis, injuring hundreds and causing significant damage to property. However, at the start of the operation the IDF had estimated that the Hamas would be able to fire a much larger number.

Another outstanding aspect of the operation was the close cooperation between the IAF and the ground forces during the operation, especially with regard to the use of UAVs. Each brigade was constantly accompanied by a number of UAVs, flying at a lower altitude than fighter jets. The main function of the UAVs was to collect information, to direct the ground forces and to direct IAF aircraft to attack targets that were designated by the ground forces....

Opinion: Egypt Errs in Playing Rough at Rafah Border - Daanish Faruqi

2009-03-28T21:54:00.003-04:00

Daily Star, March 29, 2009 - Abdullah al-Ghoul was assured a safe voyage into Gaza, his homeland, from Egypt's Rafah border crossing. In order to see his family after three years of involuntarily exile in Egypt, where he is currently completing a degree in film studies, on March 6 Abdullah joined a 60-person delegation into Gaza sponsored by Codepink, in solidarity with Gazan women on International Women's Day. Miraculously, Egyptian authorities deviated from standard protocol and opened the border crossing to our delegates. Abdullah was casually allowed passage into Gaza, after paying an additional 250 Egyptian pounds, with a promise that he'd be granted a safe return to Egypt after completing his visit.

Unfortunately, upon Abdullah's return Egyptian authorities had reneged on their agreement, citing issues with his paperwork. Instructed to seek assistance from Ramallah to straighten out his file, Abdullah was flatly denied entry back into Egypt. His ability to complete his studies, consequently, is currently on hold.

Abdullah's case is frustrating and heartbreaking. After all, it seems spectacularly unfair to be forced to choose between completing one's studies and seeing one's loved ones after years of separation based on border policies. But his denial of entry into Egypt is far more than an isolated personal anecdote. Indeed, it elucidates the utter arbitrariness of Egypt's policy at the Rafah border, and ultimately Egypt's complicity in the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

The official policy of the Egyptian government at present is that Rafah must remain hermetically sealed, for reasons beyond Egypt's control--notably, the threat of "insurrectionary spillover" from Palestinians pouring into Egypt and radicalizing the Muslim Brotherhood there. But if this were a legitimate concern, and if the Egyptian regime's hands are genuinely tied, then why was our delegation allowed free entry through Rafah without so much as an official peep from the authorities? Sadly, our entrance was allowed primarily in the name of public relations....

Daanish Faruqi, senior Egypt liaison to the Washington-based Voices for a Democratic Egypt (www.democraticegypt.org), recently returned from a fact-finding delegation to the Gaza Strip sponsored by Code Pink: Women for Peace. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

Arab Leaders Seek Show of Unity at Annual Summit This Week

2009-03-28T21:48:00.001-04:00

Kuwait Times, March 29, 2009 - Arab ministers met yesterday ahead of an annual summit, seeking to put on a show of unity as a rightwing government prepares for power in Israel in what is seen as a threat to Middle East peace. But a Qatari official said only 16 leaders from the 22-member Arab League would be attending the summit in the Qatari capital which opens tomorrow, highlighting their lingering differences. Arab states are trying to overcome rifts which emerged largely over the response to Israel's three-week onslaught on the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and discuss the growing influence of Shiite Iran in the region.

We have to live up to our responsibilities and work towards closing ranks," Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani said at yesterday's meeting of foreign ministers. But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak - whose country is mediating Palestinian reconciliation talks and efforts to forge a sustainable Hamas-Israel truce for Gaza -will be among the heads of state staying away....

Egypt Releases Detained Blogger After 7 Weeks

2009-03-28T21:43:00.002-04:00

Reuters (via Kuwait Times, reporting from Cairo), March 28, 2009 - Egyptian authorities have released a 22-year-old blogger and activist after holding him for nearly seven weeks, a human rights group said yesterday. Police detained Diaa Eddin Gad on Feb. 6 outside his home in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya. London-based rights group Amnesty International said in February that his incommunicado detention at an unknown location put him in danger of torture.

Dia was released at dawn (on Friday) ... He was ill-treated in the period where we did not know where he was being held," said Gamal Eid, director of the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Eid said police beat the Egyptian blogger in a car immediately after picking him up and during his detention in State Security offices. Police beat and kicked Gad, threatened to electrocute him, and electrocuted others in front of him, according to Eid. The government says it prosecutes torturers. Gad's blog Sawt Ghadib or "An Angry Voice" (http://soutgadeb.blogspot.com) contained pro-Gaza slogans and news and commentary on Gaza during the three-week Israeli offensive on the coastal strip, as well as strident denunciations of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and the security services.

Eid said police interrogation of Gad focused on such criticism, and on his references to Mubarak as "Ehud Mubarak", an apparent reference to Israeli Defence Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The government has faced rising public anger over its enforcement of a blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, especially since the Israeli offensive in Gaza on January.

Egypt has been less tolerant of criticism of its Gaza policy since the Israeli offensive. This increased Egyptian public opposition to Cairo's participation in an Israeli-led blockade of the Hamas-run territory. Egyptian authorities have stepped up measures against bloggers and web activists in recent weeks....

Amidst the Ruins: The Grief

2009-03-28T21:35:00.001-04:00

The Gaza Blog (via the New Internationalist Blog), March 20, 2009 - For the last few days the sun has been shining and Gaza has been bright and warm. It makes you feel better, everyone says; more optimistic about the day ahead. But when it comes, the rain in Gaza is ferocious; it lashes down in torrents, soaking the streets, flooding the roads and chilling the bones.

The rain is particularly miserable for people whose homes were destroyed in the recent military offensive, many of whom have nowhere to go except tents or the overcrowded houses of their relatives, some of whom are hosting 30 or 40 people in their homes. At the end of last week I took two British lawyers to Izbat Abed Rabbo in the northern Gaza Strip. As we drove north from Gaza City the sky got darker and cloudier, and then just as we arrived, the rain began to lash down.

Izbat Abed Rabbo lies about one kilometre from the border with Israel. During the recent offensive it was decimated by the Israeli military, who drove their bulldozers over some houses, dynamited others and occupied many more. The soldiers trashed the homes they occupied; tearing the furniture apart, writing obscenities on the walls, shooting bulletholes into the beds, and sometimes even leaving bags of shit for the Palestinians to clear up afterwards. The area is now in ruins....

Louisa Waugh is a writer who is currently living in Gaza. She is the author of Hearing Birds Fly: a nomadic year in Mongolia, which won the 2004 Ondaatje Literary Prize, and Selling Olga: stories of human trafficking and resistance. She blogs weekly at The Gaza Blog.

No Option Left

2009-03-28T21:23:00.001-04:00

Al Ahram Weekly, March 28, 2009 - The shops owned by Mohamed Abu Kirsh and Sobhi Khalil in Al-Ramal area of Gaza City are only 50 metres away from the mosque they pray in. Despite this, it takes them 20 minutes to make it back to their shops following the noonday prayer due to their debating the likelihood of success for Palestinian national dialogue. Both optimistic Abu Kirsh and pessimistic Khalil fervently hope that the next dialogue session will close with a final agreement that will put an end to the state of division in Palestinian politics.

"If the faction leaders don't succeed in reaching an agreement, they'd better not come back to us, for in my view that would clearly show a lack of responsibility," Abu Kirsh told Al-Ahram Weekly. Khalil holds that all of the points of difference preventing an agreement are marginal in comparison to the threats facing the Palestinian national cause.

The likelihood of the dialogue's success is currently the focal point of burning debate on the Palestinian street, where people are keeping their fingers crossed for an agreement. Although a date has not been set for resuming national dialogue sessions, they are expected to reconvene soon.

An informed Palestinian source told the Weekly that the impressions of Egyptian General Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman during his meetings with American officials were extremely important and would indicate whether the American administration would recognise the new national accord government or not. This source suggested that should Egypt not obtain guarantees that the world would recognise the new government, then Cairo's attempts would be reduced to mere leaps into the air. As the faction leaders prepare to return to Cairo again, they realise that this will be their last chance.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) politburo member Ramzi Ribah says that the faction representatives are expected to reach agreements on three primary points of difference they had been unable to concur on during the dialogue sessions that ended late last week. In a statement to the Weekly, Ribah said that the first point of difference concerned the powers of the national body that would run Palestinian affairs until elections are held for the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Ribah said that Hamas insists that this temporary entity has sole responsibility for making important national decisions related to Palestinian affairs. In contrast, Fatah and some other factions hold that this body's powers should not conflict with those of the agencies of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Ribah says that the second point of difference is related to the electoral system, whereby Hamas wants to continue with the current system that combines proportional and district systems, while Fatah and the other factions want to use only the proportional system. The third point of difference, Ribah says, concerns the programme of the national accord government. Hamas holds that it must be based upon the programme of the national unity government that was formed following the Mecca Agreement, whereby it includes reference to the government "respecting" the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. Fatah, however, insists that the programme text makes reference to the new government's "commitment" to the signed agreements....

Incriminating Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

2009-03-28T21:18:00.001-04:00

Centre for Research on Globalization, March 25, 2009 - Stephen Lendman reviews a variety of sources that have come out in recent weeks about this issue, synthesizing a fair amount of evidence. He then concludes:

Planned months in advance, Israel's attack was premeditated, and under Article 8(2)(a)(1) and Article 8(2)(b)(1) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) constitutes a war crime. It's also a crime against humanity under the statute's Article 7(1) relating to the deliberate killing of civilians or deliberately attacking non-combatant ones.

Further, attacking government buildings and institutions is also a war crime under Article 8(2)(a)(1), Article 8(2)(b)(8), and Article 8(2)(b)(13) of the Rome Statute that prohibits the destruction of property and civilian objects for non-military necessity reasons.

Even though Israel is not party to the Statute, its Articles 7 and 8, relating to crimes of war and against humanity, reflect customary international law under which Israel, its officials, and military commanders at all levels may and should be held accountable.

Under international law, responsibility relates to perpetration, planning, inciting, and/or ordering a crime to be committed as well as "vicarious" (indirect) responsibility of civilian leaders and commanders for crimes committed by their subordinates. These conditions apply in the case of the 22 day Gaza attack - planned well in advance by high-level government and military officials and launched with overwhelming force against multiple targets on December 27.

Again, the evidence is clear, unequivocal, overwhelming, and conclusive that high-level Israeli government and military officials planned and willfully committed systematic crimes of war and against humanity of such gravity that justice demands they be held to account in an international court of law - either the ICC in the Hague or a special International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).

Doing so will warn future Israeli governments and all others that no one is exempt from the law and they, too, will be prosecuted if evidence provides justification. The rule of law is sacrosanct, especially for wanton killing that when ongoing for sustained periods satisfies the definition of genocide. Israel long ago passed that threshold. No longer can its lawlessness go unpunished.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He blogs at SteveLendmanBlog and hosts The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 AM US Central time.

In Gaza, Mothers Are at a Loss - Jawad Harb

2009-03-28T13:01:00.002-04:00

Photo: Reuters (Ibrahim Abu Mustafa)

Reuters AlertNet, March 25, 2009 - It is three months since the first bombs began to fall on Gaza, and I see that this war left much more damaged than just houses. For the past two months, I have been meeting with communities, hearing their experiences, their fears. I realized that it left very deep injuries for these women and families. It changed their life styles, the way they think and live together, where they sleep, how they cope. Everything is changed.

At the meetings, the women started to tell stories. You would be amazed by what the women say how their children behave after the war, their attitudes and behaviour change at home and school. Most women say their children refuse to move alone. They refuse to sleep alone in their own rooms. Children do not go to play outside like they used to do, play football or traditional games, because somebody told them that other children were killed out in an airstrike. So now the children are afraid.

There is anxiety, fear, sleep disorders, bed-wetting, even for 14-15 year olds. Some children became violent and aggressive, and want to watch the news, want to know if there's going to be another war.

They are watching the news instead of watching cartoons, or children's movies.

This has put new burdens and responsibility on the mothers, and they're not equipped with the skills to cope with this. CARE is working together with women in community groups across Gaza to help them access psychosocial support for themselves and learn how to counsel their own children.

Before the war, most action plans of the women's groups we work with weren't focused on psychosocial support; most were talking about income-generating projects for women such as rabbit-raising, supporting female farmers, sewing. But after the war, the priorities changed. People need an immediate response to the psychological trauma....

Jawad Harb is a Palestinian living in Rafah, Gaza, with his wife and six children. Harb has worked with CARE since 2002, managing a program supporting women's centres in Gaza.

More Fallout from Gaza Op: B'Tselem Reports Sharp Rise in Israeli Security Forces' Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank

2009-03-28T10:18:00.003-04:00

B'Tselem-Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, March 24, 2009 - Since the beginning of Operation “Cast Lead” at the end of 2008, there has been a sharp rise in reports of violence perpetrated by security forces against Palestinians in the West Bank. During this nearly three-month period, B'Tselem documented 24 cases in which police officers and soldiers beat Palestinians, using rifle butts, clubs and other means of injury. 16 of the cases were especially serious and their victims suffered heavier injuries.

As it is impossible for B'Tselem to document each and every case of violence by security forces in the West Bank, the above figures necessarily reflect only a portion of the violent incidents that actually occurred, and it is likely that other attacks went unreported.

The documented cases took place throughout the West Bank – some at checkpoints, others in Palestinian homes, and some on roadways. In one case, testimonies given to B'Tselem indicate that soldiers stopped Na’im ‘Awad at the Huwara checkpoint and beat him. His brother, Muhammad, arrived at the checkpoint by chance and asked the soldiers why they were beating his brother. An argument ensued between him and one of the soldiers, who then slammed him hard in the head with his rifle butt, causing him irreparable speech damage and weakness on the right side of his body.

In another case, soldiers encountered a Palestinian by the side of the road next to Tuqu’ and beat him for several minutes. The victim, Majed Hajahjeh, related in his testimony:

They beat me all over my body, especially my head. I covered my head with my hands to protect myself. My hands were bloody from the blood from my head. I went down onto my knees and cried out in pain. The soldiers continued to beat me with clubs and to kick me in the neck, back, and hands. My right hand hurt in particular. It hurt so much, I thought I was going to die. (to read the full testimony click here)

Later in his testimony, Hajahjeh stated that the soldiers had left him lying by the road, bleeding, his arm broken.

B'Tselem referred all the documented cases to the law-enforcement authorities – the Judge Advocate General’s Office and the Department for the Investigation of Police, in the Ministry of Justice. Although some of the cases occurred more than two months ago, the authorities have yet to complete the investigation in even one case....

Gaza's Children Need Your Help

2009-03-28T01:00:00.002-04:00

Reliefweb, March 27, 2009 - Tens of thousands of children in Gaza remain at serious risk of physical and psychological harm more than two months after a cease-fire ended the 22-day conflict that began on Dec. 27, 2008, Save the Children reported today.

"Many children in Gaza are trying to survive in neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble," said Annie Foster, who is leading Save the Children's humanitarian response in Gaza.

"Children are going to sleep hungry every night, often with no bed to sleep on. Many are not able to get a decent meal or bathe properly or even have access to clean drinking water. The plight of these children is drifting off the world's radar screen at a time when they need our help now more than ever.

"The biggest obstacle to helping these children is our limited access to provide critical materials for relief and reconstruction," said Foster. "During the past month, there has been virtually no progress in improving access for humanitarian agencies.

"We are calling for full access and an end to the 19-month embargo so that the recovery and reconstruction efforts can proceed," Foster said.

Despite enormous obstacles, Save the Children continues to work in Gaza, assisting more than 100,000 individuals, including 56,000 children. The agency has provided tens of thousands of children with food and water, basic hygiene materials such as soap, tooth paste and tooth brushes, as well as diapers, baby cribs, clothes and shoes....

Tough Times for University Students in Gaza

2009-03-28T00:48:00.003-04:00

IRIN, March 26, 2009 - Many university students who lost relatives or whose homes were destroyed during the recent 23-day Israeli offensive are finding it difficult to cope, according to university officials and students.

Some have been unable to register for the new semester due to lack of funds; others are still traumatised.

Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza said 14 of the 15 higher education institutions in the Strip (most are in and around Gaza City) were damaged by Israeli forces. Six came under direct attack.

Three colleges - Al-Da’wa College for Humanities in Rafah, Gaza College for Security Sciences in Gaza City, and the Agricultural College in Beit Hanoun (part of Al-Azhar University) - were destroyed, according to Al-Mezan communications officer Mahmoud AbuRahma.

Six university buildings in Gaza were razed to the ground and 16 damaged. The total damage is estimated at US$21.1 million, according to the Palestinian National Early Recovery and Reconstruction Plan for Gaza....

Interviews Back IDF Misconduct in Gaza

2009-03-28T00:29:00.004-04:00

Photo: Abir Hijeh with her children (AP)

Ynetnews.com, March 27, 2009 - Resident's account of a sniper firing on civilians, along with soldiers' graffiti and destruction seen by Associated Press in homes they commandeered, lend support to allegations of Israeli army misconduct during Gaza offensive.

When Israeli soldiers expelled Abir Hijeh, her five children and their neighbors from homes in a Gaza war zone, she said they warned her in broken Arabic: Go south or you might get shot.

The group went the wrong way and came under fire from Israeli soldiers. Hijeh was wounded and her two-year-old daughter was killed.'

Hijeh's account of a sniper firing on civilians, along with soldiers' graffiti and destruction seen by The Associated Press in homes they commandeered, lend support to allegations of Israeli army misconduct during the onslaught in Gaza.

In recent testimony, Israeli soldiers told of vandalizing homes they seized to use as army posts, as well as relaxed rules of engagement, including hasty shooting at civilians. The soldiers, who spoke to a military prep school in a closed-door session, described an incident with similarities to the shooting of the Hijeh family....

Return to Gaza - Sherine Tadros

2009-03-28T00:23:00.001-04:00

Al Jazeera English, March 27, 2009 - Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reported from the Gaza Strip during Israel's 23-day offensive that ended via unilateral ceasefires in the middle of January. Here she describes what the territory is like on her return.

A porter gives me my first greeting as I cross to the Gazan side of the Erez border with Israel.

"You said you'd be back in a couple of weeks, it's been more than a month!"

It's nice to know I have been missed. Strangely, it felt like I was coming home.

In fact, it's been almost two months since I left Gaza, shortly after the end of Israel's offensive on the territory.

Everything looks exactly the same. Everyone looks exactly the same and, worst of all, as I quickly discover, everyone still feels exactly the same - frustrated and isolated.

In two months, there has been no reconstruction, the siege has tightened and Israel has kept its crossings with Gaza almost permanently closed.

Subtle changes

However, Israel has made subtle changes in the last few weeks.....

Dancing in the Ruins

2009-03-28T00:18:00.003-04:00

Tales to Tell, March 26, 2009 - The building in the shelled Telal Howa Red Crescent complex (which includes Al Quds Hospital, burned with phosphorous) that was worst hit during the attacks was the Red Crescent Theatre, which I believe also had a music school in it. It pretty much burnt down, and its ruins will be demolished. But this afternoon the Palestinian Brotherhood of Tunisia sponsored cultural groups, including the Watar Band, in a performance “at the scene of the broken Red Crescent“, and it was inspiring....

Gaza Witness: IDF Troops Told Us "Go South or You'll Be Shot"

2009-03-27T23:49:00.003-04:00

Haaretz, March 28, 209 - When Israel Defense Forces soldiers expelled Abir Hijeh, her five children and their neighbors from homes in a Gaza war zone, she said they warned her in broken Arabic: Go south or you might get shot.

The group went the wrong way and came under fire from Israeli soldiers. Hijeh was wounded and her 2-year-old daughter was killed.

Hijeh's account of a sniper firing on civilians, along with soldiers' graffiti and destruction seen by The Associated Press in homes they commandeered, lend support to allegations of IDF misconduct during the onslaught in Gaza.

In recent testimony, Israeli soldiers told of vandalizing homes they seized to use as army posts, as well as relaxed rules of engagement, including hasty shooting at civilians. The soldiers, who spoke to a military prep school in a closed-door session, described an incident with similarities to the shooting of the Hijeh family.

The accounts, exposed in Haaretz last week, further fueled international outrage over the Gaza offensive ....

Cast Lead Expose: What Did the IDF Think Would Happen in Gaza? - Haaretz

2009-03-27T23:43:00.002-04:00

Haaretz, March 28, 2009 - GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant's meticulous planning for Operation Cast Lead was mapped out to the last detail. The information gathered by the Shin Bet security service over the preceding two years provided excellent intelligence. But the General Staff also knew that hovering above was a conflicted political triumvirate, one member of which (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) was eager to amend the dubious legacy he left behind in Lebanon, while the other two (Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni) were preoccupied with the impending election. In the backdrop was a fickle public and an impatient and demanding media. The General Staff expected that Israelis would have trouble accepting heavy Israel Defense Forces losses.

The army chose to overcome this problem with an aggressive plan that included overwhelming firepower. The forces, it was decided, would advance into the urban areas behind a "rolling curtain" of aerial and artillery fire, backed up by intelligence from unmanned aircraft and the Shin Bet. The lives of our soldiers take precedence, the commanders were told in briefings. Before the operation, Galant and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi painted a bleak picture for the cabinet ministers. "Unlike in Lebanon, the civilians in Gaza won't have many places to escape to," Ashkenazi warned. "When an armored force enters the city, shells will fly, because we'll have to protect our people."

The politicians promised backing. Two weeks before the incursion, a member of the General Staff, talking to a journalist, predicted that 600-800 Palestinians civilians would be killed in an Israeli operation....

A large part of the operation was conducted by remote control. "The Palestinians are completely transparent to us," says A., a reservist whose brigade was posted in the Gaza Strip. "The Shin Bet has people everywhere. We observe the whole area from the air and usually the Shin Bet coordinator can also tell you who lives in what house." The Shin Bet defines the enemy and, for the most part, someone who belongs to Hamas' civilian welfare organizations (the da'awa) is treated the same way as a member of its military wing, the Iz al-Din al-Qassam.

Essentially, a person only needs to be in a "problematic" location, in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be "incriminated" and in effect sentenced to death. Often, there is no need for him to be identified as carrying a weapon. Three people in the home of a known Hamas operative, someone out on a roof at 2 A.M. about a kilometer away from an Israeli post, a person walking down the wrong street before dawn - all are legitimate targets for attack.

"It feels like hunting season has begun," says A. "Sometimes it reminds me of a Play Station [computer] game. You hear cheers in the war room after you see on the screens that the missile hit a target, as if it were a soccer game."

The one who makes the final decision of whether to fire is usually not the brigade commander (who is with the forward forces in the field), but the "director" of combat, stationed at a command center in the rear: the deputy brigade commander, the headquarters' chiefs or majors who are studying and return to the brigade in times of combat. Another change in operational methods involved reducing reliance on the independent judgment of Israel Air Force personnel, who are located relatively far from the field.

'Little racists'

After the intense firepower employed at the outset, the forces were surprised to discover that they were not fighting in a "sterile," civilian-free environment as they had in Lebanon, 2006. Soldiers' testimonies, from graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, and also from the watered-down descriptions supplied by the army's Bamahaneh weekly magazine, make this crystal clear. There were civilians who were too frightened to flee or who didn't read the leaflets dropped by the IAF, and remained in their homes. As in every war, prolonged time in the field led to brutish behavior in some of the units.

"The impact of the long confrontation with the Palestinians cannot be ignored," says a senior reserve officer, "and one should also bear in mind what sort of values inductees have when they come to us these days. Every year, the education system produces a significant number of little racists." ....

NYTimes reports on Bipartisan Statement for U.S. Middle East Peacemaking

2009-03-26T11:23:00.004-04:00

New York Times, March 26, 2009 - Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects.

Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the president, these foreign policy mandarins have concluded a “Bipartisan Statement on U.S. Middle East Peacemaking” that should become an essential template.

Deploring “seven years of absenteeism” under the Bush administration, they call for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state solution, “a more pragmatic approach toward Hamas,” and eventual U.S. leadership of a multinational force to police transitional security between Israel and Palestine.

The 10 signatories — of both the four-page letter and the report — include Volcker himself, former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Senator Chuck Hagel, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering.

My understanding is their thinking coincides in significant degree with that of both George Mitchell, Obama’s Middle East envoy, and Gen. James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser who worked on security issues with Israelis and Palestinians in the last year of the Bush administration, an often frustrating experience.

This overlap gives the report particular significance.

Of Hamas, the target of Israel’s futile pounding of Gaza, the eminent Group of 10 writes that, “Shutting out the movement and isolating Gaza has only made it stronger and Fatah weaker.” They urge a fundamental change: “Shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might clarify the movement’s view and test its behavior.”

Although this falls short of my own recommendation that the United States itself — rather than European allies — engage with moderate elements of Hamas, such a shift is critical. Without Hamas’s involvement, there can be no Middle East peace. Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian Authority, is a beleaguered figure.

The report goes further: “Cease discouraging Palestinian national reconciliation and make clear that a government that agrees to a cease-fire with Israel, accepts President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief negotiator and commits to abiding by the results of a national referendum on a future peace agreement would not be boycotted or sanctioned.” In other words, stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel and watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of, and remains part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace deal with Israel, that’s workable.

Henry Siegman, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, whose chairman is Scowcroft and board includes all 10 signatories, told me that he met recently with Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas in Damascus. Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel. De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a constructive relationship, as Israel knows from the mutual benefits of its shah-era dealings with Iran.

Israeli governments have negotiated a two-state solution although they included religious parties that do not recognize Palestinians’ right to statehood. “But,” Siegman said, “if moderates within Hamas are to prevail, a payoff is needed for their moderation. And until the U.S. provides one, there will be no Palestinian unity government.”

Rain of Fire: Human Rights Watch Report Details Israel's Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza Op

2009-03-25T23:01:00.005-04:00

Human Rights Watch, March 24, 2009 - This newly released 71-page report, "Rain of Fire: Israel's Illegal Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza" provides witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza. Human Rights Watch researchers in Gaza immediately after hostilities ended found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school. The report also presents ballistics evidence, photographs, and satellite imagery, as well as documents from the Israeli military and government.

A PDF of the full report is available at the link.

Israeli Army Rabbis Criticized for Stance on Gaza Op

2009-03-25T22:42:00.004-04:00

Los Angeles Times (reporting from Jerusalem), March 25, 2009 - The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel.

"This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness," a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter. "His message was clear: 'This is a war against an entire people, not against specific terrorists.' The whole thing was turned into something very religious and messianic."

As armies elsewhere use chaplains, the Israeli military inducts rabbis to serve religious soldiers. Their traditional tasks include ensuring that kitchens are kosher and religious services are available.

But soldiers now going public with allegations of misconduct in Gaza portray the military rabbinate as a corps of self-appointed holy warriors whose sermons and writings demonized Palestinians....

Waiting to Enter Gaza - Kris Peterson

2009-03-25T22:26:00.005-04:00

The Israeli-controlled Erez crossing terminal, through which most foreigners
who wish to enter the Gaza Strip must pass. August 2007.
Photo: Kris Peterson

Electronic Intifada, March 25, 2009 - If there is a single act that characterizes the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, it is waiting: waiting in lines to pass through the hundreds of checkpoints scattered across the West Bank, waiting for Israel to issue an identification card, waiting for permission to travel to the next village or out of the country, waiting for loved ones languishing in Israeli prisons to be released -- waiting for peace, waiting for justice.

And for nearly two months, I found myself sharing the experience of waiting -- for Israel to allow me into Gaza....Applying for entry into Gaza through the Israeli military authorities is a Kafkaesque and constantly evolving process. One is not allowed to even approach the Erez military checkpoint on the boundary between Gaza and Israel without prior security clearance and already within a year's time, the application for such clearance had changed dramatically.

Because I had been approved without difficulty in the past, I felt confident that my application would be successful this time as well. The process should have taken no more than five working days, but assuming the situation might be unpredictable, I applied for clearance nearly one month in advance of my arrival in the region. How naive I was....

Kris Petersen is a graduate student who worked for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the Gaza Strip between September 2007-January 2008.

Guardian Investigation - Videotaped Testimonies

2009-03-25T21:51:00.003-04:00

The Guardian (UK), March 21, 2009 - The Guardian newspaper conducted an investigation of war crimes charges against Israel in Gaza. The videotaped testimony is now available via YouTube. If you have not yet seen these videos, please take a moment to watch them.

A family was blown to bits while drinking tea in their back yard:

Three Palestinian brothers described how they were abducted by the IDF and forced to serve as human shields for days while their parents were unaware of their fate:

The high rate of death of medical personnel in the Gaza War is investigated and Palestinian medics share their hair-raising experiences.

UN: Situation in Gaza One of 'Impasse and Uncertainty'

2009-03-25T16:45:00.001-04:00

By Margaret Besheer, Voice of America, March 25, 2009

The United Nations top political official says that in the two months since unilateral cease-fires ended a 22-day Israeli offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, the situation remains fraught with "impasse and uncertainty."

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that little progress has been made on key issues between the Palestinians and Israelis, including on establishing a proper cease-fire, free access for humanitarian aid, opening crossing points, prevention of arms smuggling and intra-Palestinian reconciliation.

Pascoe told the Security Council that the situation at the crossing points into Gaza is "intolerable." He said it remains the key obstacle to bringing help and hope to people there.

He said that between February 15 and March 21, more than 3,600 truckloads of supplies entered Gaza. But while there has been an increase in the amount of goods getting in, Pascoe said the quantity and quality are insufficient compared to what is needed.

"Roughly 85 percent of all imports consisted of foodstuffs and medical supplies, whereas construction materials, spare parts and other industrial goods remain almost totally banned," he said.

Pascoe said there also continue to be severe shortages of industrial and cooking fuel, as well as cash.

He urged Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law and open the crossings for emergency supplies and reconstruction materials, saying that without those supplies there would be no way to rebuild Gaza.

Human Rights Watch: Israel's illegal use of phosphorus shells in Gaza

2009-03-25T12:01:00.002-04:00

Reuters, March 25, 2009 - The Israeli army unlawfully fired white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip during its recent military offensive, needlessly killing and injuring civilians, U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Citing Israel's use of white phosphorus as evidence of war crimes, the group said the army knew the munitions threatened the civilian population but "deliberately or recklessly" continued to use them until the final days of the Dec. 27 - Jan. 18 operation "in violation of the laws of war."

It called on senior Israeli military commanders to be held to account, and urged the United States, which supplied the shells, to conduct its own investigation.

The Israel Defense Forces have announced an internal probe, the results of which have yet to be made public.

White phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen and continues burning at up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius) until none is left or the oxygen supply is cut. It is often used to produce smoke screens, but can also be used as a weapon, producing extreme burns if it makes contact with skin.

When used in open areas, white phosphorus munitions are permissible under international law.

But Human Rights Watch said Israel "unlawfully" fired them over populated neighborhoods, killing and wounding civilians and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.

In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops," said senior Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrahams. "It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died."

The group gave no precise casualty figures, citing the difficulty of determining in every case which burn injuries were caused by white phosphorous.

Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards and at a United Nations school.

The report documented several attacks involving white phosphorus, including one on January 4 that killed five members of Ahmad Abu Halima's family in northern Gaza, saying it found remnants of the substance at their home.

Remote Control Death: Israeli Drones in Gaza

2009-03-25T11:56:00.002-04:00

by MARC GARLASCO & DARRYL LI, The Nation

March 20, 2009

"It buzzed like bees around me." Muhammad Allaw, 13, was describing the sound made by an Israeli unmanned drone overhead moments before it fired a rocket that killed his 10-year-old brother Mo'men, crushing his legs and scattering tiny identical cubes of shrapnel throughout his chest. The family had been sitting on the roof of their home at noontime in the al-Shaaf area of Gaza City on January 5. No Israeli ground forces or Palestinian fighters were nearby when the drone struck, literally out of the blue.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become ubiquitous in Gaza's skies in recent years and are key to the notion that Israel can use high-tech precision weaponry to distinguish between combatants and civilians. The facts, however, suggest that any weapon is only as discriminating as the people using it.

Israel is the world's leader in drone technology. It has modified US designs for its own use and even for export (despite the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and Turkey, a drone purchase deal between the two countries appears to be on track). Israel's primary armed model, the Hermes, is the Israel Defense Force's answer to the Predator, which is used extensively by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Hermes can hover at 18,000 feet for up to twenty hours at a time. Its sensors can discern people on the ground--they can even distinguish between adults and children. Drones can carry a variety of munitions; those used in Gaza appear to rely primarily on a variant of the US-made Spike anti-tank missile, with a lethal blast radius of ten to twenty meters.

Little wonder, then, that drones were the IDF's weapon of choice when Israel launched its military campaign on December 27 with an attack on the Gaza City police headquarters, which killed at least forty cadets during a police academy graduation ceremony. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the proposal to attack this event was hotly debated within the IDF for months. IDF lawyers knew that these policemen were presumptively civilians under international law, which would consider them legitimate targets only if they were directly participating in hostilities against Israel. At the site of this attack Human Rights Watch researchers found hundreds of perfectly cubic pieces of metal shrapnel, circuit boards and other parts (including some marked with Motorola serial numbers), and four small impact craters--all consistent with drone-fired missiles.

The assault that killed Mo'men Allaw was one of six drone attacks that Human Rights Watch researchers in the Gaza Strip investigated, in which twenty-nine civilians were killed. Five of six took place in broad daylight, and all of them without any evident military targets in the vicinity, in civilian areas that were removed from fighting and, because they were so densely built-up and distant from border areas, were unlikely sites for launching rockets into Israel. In addition to interviewing more than a dozen witnesses, we gathered extensive physical evidence consistent with drone attacks, such as telltale cubic pieces of shrapnel, and took photographs of the blast patterns left behind in walls and items of clothing speckled with dozens of tiny square holes. Other human rights groups have documented dozens of similar incidents.

One of the deadliest drone attacks occurred a few hours after the initial December 27 air assault. A drone fired a missile at a group of youths who had gathered around a radio as they waited for a bus near the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters in Gaza City. The missile killed twelve young men, mostly students at the UNRWA-sponsored Gaza Training College across the street.

Report: Racist Attacks Against Arabs in Israel Increase Tenfold in 2008; Gaza War Seen as "Chief Agitator"

2009-03-24T20:47:00.004-04:00

Ynetnews/com, March 24, 2009 - The year 2008 saw a sharp rise in racist incidents against Arabs in Israel, the Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel reported Saturday, estimating the increase at tenfold those recorded in 2007....

"What we are witnessing is a moral collapse, and it's time to shout out against racism," said Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center. "The data is especially worrying in regards to civilian violence, and definitely attests (to the fact that) a Knesset member's extremist message permeates and leads to the involvement of more and more citizens."

A total of 32 violent incidents were recorded in Jerusalem alone in 2008, most of them occurring during soccer matches. Twenty-two such incidents were recorded in Akko. Tel Aviv, in third place, witnessed 13 racist incidents according to the center.

The Mossawa Center's report states that "if not for the elections and the war in Gaza, we would be witnessing a sharp decline in data from the soccer field", thereby relating most of the racist incidents occurring in 2008 to Israel's offensive in Gaza, which began in late December of that year.

"These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials," the report says.....

New Report by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel: "The Military Repeatedly Violated Medical Ethic Codes During its Gaza Offensive"

2009-03-23T22:13:00.003-04:00

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel press release, March 23, 2009 - Prevention of medical assistance from the trapped and the wounded, severe difficulties to emergency medical evacuation, attacks on medical personnel and medical facilities, and de facto prevention from the chronically ill and gravely wounded referral to medical care outside Gaza. "We call for an outside independent body to investigate the events" say representatives of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

The new report, published today by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, gives room for concern that during the operation in Gaza, Israeli soldiers repeatedly acted in violation of the army's code of ethics, the medical code of ethics, and basic human values. These actions suggest repeated violations of the International Law regarding the treatment of the ill and the wounded and the protection of medical personnel.

The report examines six topics: the situation of the Gaza health system on the eve of the military operation, the difficulties in evacuating the wounded to medical centers outside Gaza, attacks on medical personnel, difficulties in internal evacuation of the wounded, attacks on medical facilities and injury to chronic and acute patients.

Based on numerous first hand testimonies that were brought to the attention of PHR-Israel during the attack, the report depicts a grave picture of the realities in Gaza during those 22 days. In some of the cases revealed to PHR-Israel, the army did not allow for the evacuation of wounded and trapped civilians for days on, leaving them in isolated pockets with no access to food, water and medical treatment. The army did not assist these civilians but even more, it prevented the Palestinian emergency vehicles and staff from reaching these civilians. In other cases, the soldiers did not give medical assistance to wounded human beings that were within several feet from the soldiers. This, in serious violation of the army's Ethical Code for the War on Terror of 2004 that states that "soldiers are obliged to provide adequate health services, as conditions allow, equally to themselves and to the enemy."....

See also Haaretz, IDF Killed 16 Medical Workers During Gaza Op, March 23 2009

More on the Israeli T-shirt Story

2009-03-23T20:27:00.007-04:00

Photo: Yanai Yechiel for Sky News
T-shirt on the left reads "Sniper Unit" in Hebrew.
T-shirt on the right reads, "The smaller... the harder!" [ie, to target/kill]

Al Jazeera English TV, March 23, 2009 - Haaretz recently published a story (posted below) about T-shirt designs sported by Israeli soldiers who had fought in the Gaza Operation "Cast Lead" and others. The T-shirts have disturbing designs that boast of violence committed against Palestinian women, pregnant women, and children. The army's response was to dismiss the shirts as "tasteless and unbecoming." Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, reports from Tel Aviv about the T-shirt phenomenon -- where it comes from, how it happens, and what it portends about Israeli society.

Opinion: Euros Do Not Buy the Palestinians Political Rights - Pepijn van Houwelingen

2009-03-23T20:15:00.002-04:00

Electronic Intifada, March 24, 2009 - The carnage of Israel's recent invasion of Gaza spurred great numbers of dismayed Europeans to participate in demonstrations against the war. In major cities such as Madrid, Brussels, Rome, Berlin and London, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations to make clear to their governments that what was happening was unacceptable. Yet, their objections to Israel's massive use of deadly force were not reflected in the declarations and actions of their countries, as represented by Europe's most significant political body, the European Union, which did not alter its policy of status quo relations with Israel.

Despite these and other remarks, however, the EU undertook no action that could have been perceived as even vaguely critical of Israel and much effort was put into not "singling out" the country. This apparent ambiguity is typical of the EU's approach. In early December last year, the European Parliament suspended voting on whether or not to upgrade relations with Israel. Yet, only a few days later this decision was bypassed by the EU's Council of Ministers, where all 27 European foreign ministers voted in favor of the upgrade, allowing Israeli ministers to meet with their European counterparts on a regular basis so as to enable dialogue on various strategic issues. Even though plans to make Israel a "privileged partner" have been put on hold, it has been emphasized that this is not a sanction and constitutes merely a "pause" (see Ian Traynor Europe stalls on closer Israel links in Gaza protest Guardian, 14 January 2009). It is therefore likely that talks will be resumed at a later time, which in effect means that Israel is still on its way to become part of the single European market as a sort of semi-member of the EU.

Access to European markets and the ability to influence European decision-making are extremely important to Israel. While the EU lacks the moral authority of the UN and the political visibility of the US, it is, indeed, an important player in the region. Currently the EU constitutes Israel's biggest market for exports as well as its second-largest source of imports (after the US). Furthermore, the EU is a member of the so-called Middle East "Quartet" -- with the hardly credible Tony Blair as its envoy -- which supports a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Practically speaking, the EU's dedication to this solution has primarily been expressed through the medium of euros. In 2008, 486 million euros ($666 million) were donated to the Palestinians, most of it (258 million euros) directly to the Palestinian Authority (see European Commission External Relations, EC Assistance to the Palestinians 19 January 2009). Other beneficiaries include the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) and various Israeli and Palestinian civil society organizations.....

Being the largest donor of aid to the Palestinians and Israel's main trading partner, the EU has the potential to play a much more significant role in supporting and protecting Palestinian rights. This would give substance and credibility to its discourse on defending human rights and acting as a "force for good." Yet, by taking a seemingly neutral approach and abiding by the positions of the Quartet, which typically represent the lowest common denominator imaginable, EU member-states reveal a disinterest in protecting Palestinians from anything other than starvation.....

Pepijn van Houwelingen is a Dutch PhD candidate at the department of Politics and International Relations of Royal Holloway, University of London. He is affiliated with the department's Centre for European Politics (http://cep.rhul.ac.uk). His PhD research is concerned with the impacts of European Foreign Policy towards the Middle East.

Palestinians in Gaza Have No Meat to Eat as Chicken Prices Hike

2009-03-23T19:59:00.004-04:00

Photo: Rafah Today

China View (via Xinhua), March 23, 2009 - In Remal neighborhood in Gaza City, Ahmed Mattar, 56, asked Abu Omar Abu Karsh, who sells chicken in a store across the street, about the price of a slaughtered chicken.

He was surprised when he learnt that a net kilogram of a slaughtered chicken now costs 35 Shekels (9 U.S. dollars).

Mattar, a physician who works at one of Gaza hospitals and has a family of five children, said "I used to buy two slaughtered chicken per week, each weighs 2 kilograms and I used to pay 25 Shekels for each kilogram. It is really so expensive."

Most of the meals the Gaza households cooked were made up of chicken due to the increasing prices of beef and lamb meat, but the recent Israeli war against the territory, together with previous restrictions, made the prices of chicken skyrocketing.

"Chicken is the only meat that the poor can afford but the increase of the prices forced the people to turn away from buying and my sales decreased by 90 percent," Abu Karsh said as he sat idly in his once the busiest shop.

Before the 22-day offensive, which started in December, the price of the living chicken was between 10 to 12 Israeli Shekels per one kilogram. Nowadays, the prices jumped for 100 percent, said Abu Karsh.

The net kilogram of slaughtered chicken, which used to be sold for around 25 Shekels, is now sold for 35 Shekels "and during the war we sold it for 55 Shekels," according to Abu Karsh.

During the war, the Israeli bulldozers completely destroyed three of the 11 chicken hatcheries while two more suffered variable degrees of damage.

The majority of the Gaza families have already given up the fresh meat since one kilogram cost 70 Shekels, compared with 30 Shekels a few years ago. Now people are dependent on the limited amounts of frozen meat and fish Israel allowed in.

Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007 after Hamas seized control of the territory....

Gaza's Fishing Industry Reeling

2009-03-23T19:56:00.004-04:00

Photo: Tom Spender

IRIN (reporting from Gaza City), March 12, 2009 - A combination of damage to fishing resources caused by the Israeli offensive, and a restriction on the zone in which Gazans are allowed to fish is reducing catches and adversely affecting people’s diets in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In January 2009 the Israeli authorities reduced the area in which fishermen can fish from six to three nautical miles from Gaza’s coastline.

In Rafah (southern Gaza) fishing has almost completely stopped due to the damage inflicted on fishing gear and boats during the 22-day war which ended on 18 January.

Fishing nets, rope, twine and gas mantles are in short supply due to the Israeli blockade of Gaza since June 2007, according to OCHA, along with engines and spare parts.

“During Operation Cast Lead a naval closure was imposed on the Gaza Strip. Following the end of fighting the navy decided to allow fishing from up to three miles from the coast,” said an Israeli military source who preferred anonymity. “The closure was imposed to prevent the smuggling of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip by sea.”

Gazan fishing was permitted up to 12 nautical miles from the coast before 2000, but was reduced to six after 2000, according to OCHA. Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 fishing off Gaza was allowed within 20 nautical miles of the coast.

Parlous state

In 2008 fishing accounted for 1.5 percent of Gaza’s economy (agriculture and fishing together accounted for 10 percent), according to the agricultural ministry in Gaza.

The fishing industry was in a parlous state even before the 27 December 2008 Israeli attack on Gaza.

“Today there are about 3,500 fishermen in Gaza; in 2000 there were 10,000,” said agricultural minister Mohammed Agah. “The main obstacle for fishermen before the war was the lack of fuel, but now they are having greater difficulties.”

Petrol and diesel were last allowed into Gaza via Nahal Oz for public use on 2 November 2008, reports OCHA, and according to the Gas Station Owners’ Association, no fuel has been delivered to Gaza through the tunnels under the Gaza-Egyptian border since 26 February 2009.

Protein intake down

The restrictions on fishing - and imports of such things as animal feed and livestock - have effectively reduced Gazans’ protein intake since the war, said Agah, who says daily protein intake is 50 percent less than average daily protein intake across the Arab world - something that would affect child development, he said....

Arab Interim Parliament Condemns Israeli Atrocities

2009-03-23T19:51:00.002-04:00

The National (reporting from Damascus), March 23, 2009 - DAMASCUS: Concluding its first ordinary session here yesterday, the Arab Interim Parliament (AIP) condemned the continuing Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people, most notably the barbaric offensive on Gaza Strip early this year.

The session, chaired by AIP President Jassem Al-Saqr called on the national parliaments of the Arab countries, as well as regional and international parliamentary organizations, to support call for taking the Israeli leaders who perpetrated the massacres of Gaza to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The Arab parliamentarians called on the Arab countries to lodge a lawsuit with the ICJ prosecutor against the Israeli political and military leaders for perpetrating crimes against humanity and war crimes and violating international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The legal action against Israel should be brought through coordination with the Arab Lawyers' Union (ALU), they said, recommending the formation of a joint legal team between the ALU and the AIP.

They held Israel fully responsible for the violations committed in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon They also urged an acceleration of the relief efforts for Gazans and the reconstruction of the war-ravaged enclave.

They hailed Egypt's efforts to host the Palestinian national dialogue and asked the Palestinian factions to unify their ranks in the face of the mounting challenges against the backdrop of the imminent formation of an Israeli far right-wing government....

Children in Gaza Need More Support - UNICEF

2009-03-23T19:47:00.001-04:00

IRIN (reporting from Gaza City), March 23, 2009 - UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman recently paid a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory to assess the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with special focus on children. As of 5 February, 431 Palestinian children had died and 1,872 had been wounded in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Veneman spoke to IRIN in Gaza City during her visit.

IRIN: After visiting Gaza, what are your first impressions and priorities?

Veneman: We focused on the impact of the conflict on children. So often children are the ones that are hurt by the wars of adults. The total population of Gaza is about 1.4 million, of which 56 percent - approximately 793,520 - are children, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Humanitarian access to all, especially to the most vulnerable, must be unhampered.

IRIN: How are the health and nutrition standards for Gaza’s children since the recent war?

Veneman: UNICEF remains concerned that the nutritional status and general health of children in Gaza is likely to deteriorate given the dependency of Gazan families on food aid and cash assistance, as well as the lack of access to clean tap water.

From mid-January, UNICEF has provided basic essential supplements of vitamin A and D, and iron-folate, to 50,000 infants and children under five through health ministry centres and UNRWA [UN agency for Palestinian refugees] clinics.

We saw lines of people [in Gaza] queuing for gas, fuel and food aid. Right now many families are living in tents and with relatives. Certainly a lack of adequate housing can lead to a lack of clean water.....

At the end of February, an UNRWA assessment indicated that 2,350 families need to have their homes reconstructed; 10, 500 families have homes needing repair, and these figures are likely to rise.....

Guardian Investigation Uncovers Evidence of Alleged Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

2009-03-23T14:05:00.002-04:00

The Guardian, March 23, 2009 - The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive against Gaza earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields, the targeting of medics and hospitals, and drone aircraft firing on civilians.

Three Guardian films based on a month-long investigation, add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, including up to 300 children.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) refused to respond directly to the allegations made against its troops, but issued statements denying the charges, and insisted international law had been observed.

The Guardian's investigation follows soldiers' evidence published in the Israeli press about the killing of Palestinian civilians and complaints by colleagues involved in the military operation that the rules of engagement were too lax.

Amnesty International has said Hamas should be investigated for executing at least two dozen Palestinian men in an apparent bout of score-settling with rivals and alleged collaborators while Operation Cast Lead was under way.

Human rights groups say the vast majority of offences were committed by Israel, and that the Gaza offensive was a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks. Since 2002, there have been 21 Israeli deaths from Hamas rockets fired from Gaza and during Operation Cast Lead there were three Israeli civilian deaths, six Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian fire and four killed by friendly fire.

"Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure Israel's co-operation and it's the only body that can secure some kind of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in Gaza investigating war crimes allegations. "Without a proper investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'It's OK to do these things – there won't be any real consequences.'"

Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. The trio describe how they were taken from their home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing at them and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them.

"They would make us go first so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us not them," 14-year-old Al'a al-Attar said....

Read the rest and view the three videotapes of testimony at the link.

Gazans Struggle for Clean Drinking Water

2009-03-23T11:27:00.002-04:00

Inter Press Service, March 17, 2009 - As environmental experts, NGOs and government officials gather in Istanbul this week to attend the Fifth World Water Forum, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has drawn attention to the critical water situation in Gaza.

"ICRC teams are repairing water and sewage systems in Gaza that were badly damaged during the three-week Israeli military operation in January," the ICRC says in a media release.

"According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, one-fifth of the population had no direct access to drinking water, and relied on water purchased from private suppliers. Today, thousands of people still have no access to running water."

Much of Gaza's infrastructure was destroyed during Israel's military assault on the coastal territory during Operation Cast Lead, which created a critical humanitarian situation on the ground.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 150,000 Gazans still remain affected by inadequate and unsafe water supply. Of these, about 50,000 remain without any water while the remainder receive water only every five to six days.

The OCHA adds that approximately 28,000 children in the Gaza Strip have no access to piped water. An additional 56,000 children have access to water only every week or so.

Gaza's Coast Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), which handles water and sewage treatment, says the water crisis will continue until Israel allows sufficient spare parts and repair materials into Gaza.

Israel's continuing blockade of the strip means that construction material, most spare parts and repair materials have been prevented from entering. This has made it impossible to rebuild the thousands of destroyed and damaged buildings. It has also severely restricted repair of vital infrastructure such as waste and water treatment plants.

Continual electricity blackouts have further limited the treatment plants' operating capacity, while severe restrictions on the import of fuel have limited the ability of emergency generators....

A Judicial Document - Uri Avnery

2009-03-23T11:11:00.003-04:00

Gush Shalom, March 24, 2009 - The most important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in the general tumult of exciting events....

In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written by lawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court?

The judicial debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.

It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a “hostile” Arab country.....

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be “terrorists”. True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a “security” assertion need evidence to prove it?

Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?

The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:

“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”

One should read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter.

If we are at war with “the Palestinian people”, this means that every Palestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout the world as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel, a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – “collective against collective”.

Of course, the lawyers did not invent this principle. It has been accepted for a long time in daily life, and all arms of the government act accordingly. The army averts its eyes when an “illegal” outpost is established in the West Bank on the land of Palestinians, and sends soldiers to protect the invaders. Israeli courts customarily impose harsher sentences on Arab defendants than on Jews guilty of the same offense. The soldiers of an army unit order T-shirts showing a pregnant Arab woman with a rifle trained on her belly and the words “1 shot, 2 kills” (as exposed in Haaretz this week).

These anonymous lawyers should perhaps be thanked for daring to formulate in a judicial document the reality that had previously been hidden in a thousand different ways.

The simple reality is that 127 years after the beginning of the first Jewish wave of immigration, 112 years after the founding of the Zionist movement, 61 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, 41 years after the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian war continues along all the front lines with undiminished vigor.

The inherent aim of the Zionist enterprise was and is to turn the country – at least up to the Jordan River – into a homogeneous Jewish state. Throughout the course of Zionist-Israeli history, this aim has not been forsaken for a moment. Every cell of the Israeli organism contains this genetic code and therefore acts accordingly, without the need for a specific directive....

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with the Israeli movement Gush Shalom.

Aftermath: The Writings on the Walls

2009-03-22T15:46:00.004-04:00

Photo: (c) Kent Klich

PHRC, March 18, 2009 - The Palestine Human Rights Center in Gaza has been publishing a series of testimonies about how Palestinians in Gaza are coping in the aftermath of the war. In this, the fifth in the series, homeowners describe some of the graffiti they found Israeli soldiers had scrawled on the walls of their homes when they returned.

Alongside the 1,000s of homes partially or completely destroyed by bulldozers, tank shells and bombs dropped by F-16 fighter jets, are the homes that have been defaced by graffiti left by individual Israeli soldiers and the vandalisation of civilian property within them.

At Mos’ab Dardona’s home in Jabal Al Rayes, northeast Gaza, Israeli soldiers who had taken up positions in civilian houses in the area left behind intricate drawings on the walls, some depicting soldiers urinating on toppled mosques, or devouring Palestinian villages. In the house next door, belonging to Ibrahim Dardona, soldiers left behind dozens of bags of faeces in the bedrooms, despite the presence of a functioning toilet,and left rude sexual diagrams on the walls.

“The writing left by Israeli soldiers in the homes in Gaza provides an insight into the disturbing culture of hatred and racism towards Palestinians and Arabs which exists among parts of Israeli society,” says Hamdi Shaqqura, PCHR’s director of democratic development. “In light of the evidence PCHR has gathered of the wilful and wanton killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, this graffiti is even more disturbing.”...

The complete series of testimonies is available here.

Tough Times for Gaza's Children

2009-03-22T15:40:00.002-04:00

Photo: Al Arabiya News Channel

Al Arabiya, March 22, 2009 - Ahmed Saud Basal is an eleven-year-old boy from Tuffah, a village in the middle of Gaza. He lives in a two room house along with five brothers and sisters, his parents and a grandmother. Times are tough, much harder than before. The two-year-long siege of Gaza has been devastating and its effects will continue to take a toll. Education, health care, transportation, economy and every aspect of a normal society lie in ruins. The result of a campaign of collective punishment was clear, disregarding not only the international human rights law but also underlying values of every major religion.

Ahmed and his family aren’t starving. This isn’t Somalia. Gaza was never the so-called “third world,” but hierarchies of suffering miss the point. Compared to before, when factories were open, when farms could bring their products to market, when students could study at night by electricity rather than by candles; life today has grown desperate. Unemployment hit 80%. Skyrocketing prices for basic necessities, such as food, clothes and medicines, force people to survive hand to mouth. In such an economic crisis, parents, however reluctantly, must enlist their children as wage earners.

Beginning early each morning, Ahmed and his ten-year-old sister, Hadia, go to work with their father. The three of them sell tea in the street. For an eight hour day, each of the children earns between 6-10 shekels ($2-3.50). Added to what their father makes, the family brings in $12 a day, not much when beef costs $15 a kilogram and fruit, which Ahmad hasn’t tasted in a year, $3 a kilogram.

UNWRA food packages help, but the rations, which are given out four times a year, are basic: 30 kilograms of flour, 5 kilograms of rice, 5 kilograms of sugar, 3 kilograms of lentils, 6 liters of oil; and sometimes, 5 250-gram cans of sardines. For a family of eight, this doesn’t go far....

Real News Network Interviews Phyllis Bennis

2009-03-22T15:27:00.003-04:00

Real News Network, March 21 2009 - Phyllis Bennis, a Fellow at Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute, writes widely about the Middle East. Her books include Understanding the Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Primer and Understanding the US-Iran crisis: a Primer. In 2001, she helped found and currently co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.

In the interview, she discusses the changing discourse about Israel in the wake of the Gaza War, particularly the significance of the events of the past week in Israel (with the soldiers' testimonies) and in Washington DC (with the furor over the nomination of Charles Freeman).

Gaza War Crimes Gather Pace as More Soldiers Speak Out

2009-03-22T15:17:00.002-04:00

The Guardian, March 22, 2009 - investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college.

Although Breaking the Silence's report is not due to be published for several months, the testimony it has received already suggests widespread abuses stemming from orders originating with the Israeli military chain of command.

"This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."

Manekin described how soldiers had reported their units being specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.

The outlines of the evidence gathered comes hard on the heels of the disclosure by the Oranim Academy's pre-military course last week of devastating witness accounts supplied by soldiers involved in the fighting, including the "unjustified" shooting of civilians.

The claims appear to add credence to widespread claims of Israeli soldiers firing on civilians, made by Palestinians to journalists and international investigators and lawyers who entered Gaza at the end of the conflict and in its aftermath.

With Israeli newspapers threatening new disclosures, the New York Times has weighed in with an interview with a reservist describing the rules of engagement for the Gaza operation. Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old military reservist, told the newspaper that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training talks before his tank unit entered Gaza in January.

"Shoot and don't worry about the consequences" was the message from commanders, said Marmor. Describing the behaviour of a lieutenant-colonel who briefed the troops, Marmor added: "His whole demeanour was extremely gung-ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said that in this operation, we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."....