Hospitals in Gaza Overwhelmed as Attacks Continue

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — It was clear from the bod­ies laid out in the park­ing lot of the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal here that it had as­sumed new du­ties: No longer a place that wel­comed new life, it was now a make­shift morgue.

Oth­er bod­ies lay in hall­ways and on the floor of the kitchen at Hi­lal Emi­rati Ma­ter­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal. In the walk-in cool­er, they were stacked three high, wait­ing for rel­a­tives to claim them for burial.

Sat­ur­day was the sec­ond day of heavy bom­bard­ment by Is­raeli forces on this city on Gaza’s bor­der with Egypt af­ter Is­rael’s an­nounce­ment that one of its of­fi­cers had been cap­tured by Pal­es­tin­ian mil­i­tants here dur­ing a clash.

But ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary an­nounced that the of­fi­cer, Sec­ond Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, was now con­sid­ered to have been killed in bat­tle.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Medics at a field hospital in Rafah, Gaza Strip. More than 120 Palestinians were killed in Rafah alone on Friday and Saturday.

Is­rael’s of­fen­sive had emp­tied neigh­bor­hoods, shut­tered the city’s cen­tral hos­pi­tal and killed more peo­ple than its re­main­ing health fa­cil­i­ties could keep up with. But for the res­i­dents of this dusty city of 150,000 peo­ple — un­til re­cent­ly fa­mous as the end­point for hun­dreds of smug­gling tun­nels un­der the bor­der with Egypt — the as­sault had un­leashed such a wave of ter­ror and death that Lieu­ten­ant Goldin, whose fate was un­known when the as­sault be­gan on Fri­day, was scarcely con­sid­ered.

“It is just an ex­cuse,” said Dr. Ab­dul­lah She­hadeh,

di­rec­tor of the Abu Yousef al-Na­j­jar Hos­pi­tal, the city’s larg­est. “There is no rea­son for them to force the women and chil­dren of Gaza to pay the price for some­thing that hap­pened on the bat­tle­field.”

Af­ter two days of Is­raeli shelling and airstrikes, cen­tral Rafah ap­peared de­serted on Sat­ur­day, with shops closed and res­i­dents hid­ing in their homes. The pres­ence of Is­raeli forces east of the city had caused many to flee west, crowd­ing in with friends and rel­a­tives in neigh­bor­hoods by the Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

More than 120 Pales­tini­ans were killed in Rafah alone on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day — the dead­li­est two days in the city since the war be­gan 25 days ago. Those deaths, and hun­dreds of in­ju­ries, over­whelmed the city’s health care fa­cil­i­ties.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse, Is­raeli shells hit the cen­tral Na­j­jar hos­pi­tal on Fri­day af­ter­noon, Dr. She­hadeh said, lead­ing its em­ploy­ees and pa­tients to evac­u­ate.

To con­tinue re­ceiv­ing pa­tients, his staff mem­bers moved to the small­er Ku­waiti Spe­cial­ized Hos­pi­tal, al­though it was ill equipped to han­dle the large num­ber of peo­ple seek­ing care.

Am­bu­lances screamed in­to the hos­pi­tal’s park­ing lot, where medics un­loaded cases on­to stretch­ers some­times bear­ing the blood of pre­vi­ous pa­tients. Since the hos­pi­tal had on­ly 12 beds, the staff mem­bers had lined up gur­neys out­side to han­dle the over­flow.

The city’s cen­tral hos­pi­tal had al­so housed its on­ly morgue, so its clo­sure cre­ated a new prob­lem as the ca­su­al­ties mount­ed: where to put the bod­ies.

At the Ku­waiti Spe­cial­ized Hos­pi­tal, they were put on the floor of the den­tal ward un­der a poster pro­mot­ing den­tal hy­giene. In a back room lay the bod­ies of Sa­di­ah Abu Taha, 60, and her grand­son Rezeq Abu Taha, 1, who had been killed in an airstrike on their home near­by.

Few peo­ple ap­proached the main en­trance to the pink-and-white ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal, in­stead head­ing around back, where there was a con­stant flow of bod­ies. Near­ly 60 had been left in the morgue of the cen­tral hos­pi­tal when it closed, so am­bu­lance crews who had man­aged to reach the site brought back as many bod­ies as they could car­ry. Oth­er bod­ies came from new at­tacks or were re­cov­ered from dam­aged build­ings.

New ar­rivals were laid out in the park­ing lot or car­ried down a ramp to the kitchen, fea­tur­ing a large walk-in cool­er. Some were kept on the ground, and those not claimed right away were added to the pile in the cool­er.

Word had spread that the dead were at the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal, so peo­ple who had lost rel­a­tives came to talk to the medics or look in the cool­er for their loved ones.

One short, sun­burned man point­ed to the body of a woman wear­ing pink sweat­pants and said she was his sis­ter Souad al-Tara­bin.

The medics pulled her out, laid her on a ta­ble and wrapped her in white cloth and plas­tic. Some teenagers helped the man car­ry her body up­stairs and lay it in the back of a yel­low taxi. A man in the front seat cra­dled a small bun­dle con­tain­ing the re­mains of the woman’s 4-year-old son, Anas.

Sit­ting near­by, As­ma Abu Ju­main wait­ed for the body of her moth­er-in-law, who she said had been killed the day be­fore and was in the morgue at the cen­tral hos­pi­tal when it was evac­u­ated.

“She is an old woman,” Ms. Abu Ju­main said. “She did noth­ing wrong.”

The move­ment of bod­ies made record-keep­ing im­pos­si­ble, al­though Arafat Ad­wan, a hos­pi­tal vol­un­teer, tried to jot down names in a small red note­book he kept in his pock­et.

He wor­ried that some bod­ies would re­main there for days, be­cause fam­ilies had been scat­tered and might not know that their rel­a­tives had been killed.

“There are peo­ple in here whose fam­ilies have no idea what hap­pened to them,” he said.

Oth­ers knew they had lost rel­a­tives but could not find them.

Mo­ham­med al-Ban­na said an airstrike the morn­ing be­fore had killed nine of his in-laws, in­clud­ing his wife’s fa­ther and four of her broth­ers.

“The ag­gres­sion here is cre­at­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of youth who want re­venge for all the crimes,” he said.

He had looked at the cen­tral hos­pi­tal the day be­fore, to no avail. Then, on Sat­ur­day, he re­ceived a mes­sage sent to lo­cal cell­phones telling those who had lost rel­a­tives to re­trieve them from the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal. He had come right away, but had not found them.

“I’ll keep wait­ing for their bod­ies to come in so we can

take them home and bury them,” he said.

Mr. Ban­na added that he had been too wor­ried to tell his wife what had hap­pened to her fam­ily and want­ed to break the news to her grad­u­ally. Ear­lier that day, she had told him that she was start­ing to wor­ry be­cause her fa­ther’s cell­phone had been switched off all day.

“I told her maybe he has no elec­tricity and his phone is dead,” Mr. Ban­na said.

 

BY BEN HUBBARD AND FARES AKRAM (New York Times), August 3, 2014

 

 

Missing Soldier Killed in Battle, Israel Confirms

JERUSALEM — The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing that an of­fi­cer thought to have been cap­tured by Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants dur­ing a dead­ly clash Fri­day morn­ing, which shat­tered a planned 72-hour cease-fire, was now con­sid­ered to have been killed in bat­tle.

The an­nounce­ment came just hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu vowed to con­tin­ue Is­rael’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in the Gaza Strip as long as nec­es­sary to stop Hamas at­tacks, while sug­gest­ing a de-es­ca­la­tion of the ground war in Gaza may be near.

The case of the miss­ing sol­dier, Sec­ond Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, be­came the lat­est flash point in the con­flict, prompt­ing a fierce Is­raeli bom­bard­ment and calls from lead­ers around the world for his re­lease. His dis­ap­pear­ance came af­ter Hamas mil­i­tants am­bushed Is­raeli sol­diers near the south­ern bor­der town of Rafah, at the start of what was sup­posed to have been a pause in the fight­ing.

As the death toll mount­ed Sat­ur­day to more than 1,650 Pales­tini­ans, many of them women and chil­dren, and im­ages of homes, mosques and schools smashed in­to rub­ble filled the me­dia, Mr. Ne­tanyahu was un­der con­sid­er­able in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure, from Wash­ing­ton and Eu­rope, to end the con­flict. The Unit­ed Na­tions warned of “an un­fold­ing health dis­as­ter” in Gaza with lit­tle elec­tric­i­ty, bad wa­ter and a lack of med­ical sup­plies.

At the same time, Mr. Ne­tanyahu was un­der po­lit­i­cal pres­sure at home to de­liv­er on his promis­es to crush.

Hamas, par­tic­u­lar­ly with 64 Is­raeli sol­diers dead. He in­sist­ed Sat­ur­day that Hamas had been se­vere­ly hurt and he warned that it would pay “an in­tol­er­a­ble price” if it con­tin­ues to fire rock­ets at Is­rael.

His for­mer deputy de­fense min­is­ter, Dan­ny Danon,who was fired by Mr. Ne­tanyahu for pub­lic crit­i­cism of the gov­ern­ment, said in a state­ment Sat­ur­day that “the cab­i­net is grave­ly mis­tak­en in its de­ci­sion to with­draw forces from Gaza. This is a step in the wrong di­rec­tion.”

But Mr. Ne­tanyahu, in a na­tion­al­ly tele­vised speech with his de­fense min­is­ter be­side him, in­sist­ed that Is­rael was achiev­ing its goals and could al­ter its tac­tics. “We promised to re­turn the qui­et to Is­rael’s cit­i­zens, and we will con­tin­ue to act un­til that aim is achieved,” Mr. Ne­tanyahu said. “We will take as much time as nec­es­sary, and will ex­ert as much force as need­ed.”

Is­rael was not end­ing its op­er­a­tion uni­lat­er­al­ly, he said, adding: “We will de­ploy in the places most con­ve­nient to us to re­duce fric­tion on I.D.F. sol­diers, be­cause we care about them.” There were Is­raeli tele­vi­sion re­ports on Sat­ur­day that some Is­rael De­fense Forces troops were pulling out of Gaza, and Is­rael in­formed Pales­tini­ans in Beit Lahiya and al-Ata­tra, in north­ern Gaza, that it was now safe to re­turn to their homes. Is­raeli of­fi­cials have said that the army’s ef­fort to de­stroy the elab­o­rate tun­nel sys­tem from Gaza in­to Is­rael would be fin­ished in the next day or two.

Is­raeli of­fi­cials sug­gest­ed that the army would leave built-up ar­eas and some forces would re­de­ploy in­side Gaza, clos­er to the bor­der fence, to re­spond to at­tacks if nec­es­sary. Oth­er units will re­turn to south­ern Is­rael.

Hamas, for its part, vowed to con­tin­ue fight­ing. Sa­mi Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, told the news agency Maan that “a uni­lat­er­al with­draw­al or re­de­ploy­ment by Is­rael in the Strip will be an­swered by a fit­ting re­sponse by the Hamas mil­i­tary arm.” He said that “the forces of oc­cu­pa­tion must choose be­tween re­main­ing in Gaza and pay­ing the price or re­treat­ing and pay­ing the price or hold­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions and pay­ing the price.”

Mr. Ne­tanyahu thanked the Unit­ed States, which along with the Unit­ed Na­tions ap­peared to sup­port Is­rael’s po­si­tion that Hamas’s ac­tions vi­o­lat­ed the cease-fire, and he asked for in­ter­na­tion­al help to re­build Gaza on the con­di­tion of its “de­mil­i­ta­riza­tion.” Is­rael ap­pears to be hop­ing that with the sup­port of Egypt and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ab­bas of the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty can con­trol Gaza through a uni­ty gov­ern­ment agreed up­on with Hamas and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for se­cu­ri­ty there and for the Rafah cross­ing to Egypt.

Mr. Ne­tanyahu re­peat­ed that his goal was to re­store “peace and calm” to Is­rael and that he in­tend­ed to do so by what­ev­er means — diplo­mat­i­cal­ly or mil­i­tar­i­ly. “All op­tions are on the ta­ble,” he said. But he in­di­cat­ed that Is­rael would not get caught up again in talk about a ne­go­ti­at­ed cease-fire with Hamas and Is­lam­ic Ji­had and would act in its own in­ter­ests, while seek­ing sup­port from Mr. Ab­bas and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for what Mr. Ne­tanyahu de­scribed vague­ly as “a new re­al­i­ty” in Gaza.

Is­rael has de­cid­ed not to send a del­e­ga­tion to cease-fire talks host­ed by Egypt, at least not now, Is­raeli of­fi­cials said. In Wash­ing­ton, Jen Psa­ki, a State De­part­ment

spokes­woman, said: “In the end, this par­tic­u­lar­ly bloody chap­ter will ul­ti­mate­ly re­quire a durable so­lu­tion so that all the fun­da­men­tal is­sues, in­clud­ing Is­rael’s se­cu­ri­ty, can be ne­go­ti­at­ed, and we will keep work­ing with Is­rael and oth­er part­ners to achieve that goal.” She said that Is­rael had a right to de­fend it­self.

Hours be­fore the mil­i­tary an­nounced that Lieu­tenant Goldin had died, his par­ents called on the prime min­is­ter and the army not to leave their son be­hind.

The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his death re­mained cloudy. A mil­i­tary spokes­woman de­clined to say whether Lieu­tenant Goldin had been killed along with two com­rades by a sui­cide bomb one of the mil­i­tants ex­plod­ed, or lat­er by Is­rael’s as­sault on the area to hunt for him; she al­so re­fused to an­swer whether his re­mains had been re­cov­ered.

As word spread on Sat­ur­day that Is­rael’s lead­ers were con­sid­er­ing pulling all ground forces from Gaza, Lieu­tenant Goldin’s fam­i­ly spoke to jour­nal­ists out­side their home in Kfar Sa­ba, a Tel Aviv sub­urb. “I de­mand that the state of Is­rael not leave Gaza un­til they bring my son back home,” said his moth­er, Hed­va. His sis­ter, Ayelet, 35, added, “If a cap­tive sol­dier is left in Gaza, it’s a de­feat.”

The fam­i­ly said they were con­vinced that Lieu­tenant Goldin was alive.

“I hope and be­lieve in hu­man kind­ness, that the world will do any­thing to bring Hadar with a smile back home,” his broth­er Che­mi, 32, said in an in­ter­view.

When his moth­er called him on Fri­day, Che­mi said, he

knew some­thing ter­ri­ble had hap­pened, but did not know whether it in­volved Lieu­tenant Goldin or his twin, Tzur, who was al­so fight­ing in Gaza. Che­mi said the twins, who at­tend­ed kinder­garten in Cam­bridge, Eng­land, did not talk much about their mil­i­tary ser­vice. In Gaza, the armed wing of Hamas said ear­ly Sat­ur­day that it was not hold­ing the Is­raeli of­fi­cer. The Qas­sam Brigades sug­gest­ed in a state­ment that the of­fi­cer might have been killed along with his cap­tors in an Is­raeli as­sault that fol­lowed a sui­cide-bomb at­tack by Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants, who emerged from a tun­nel that Is­raeli troops were try­ing to de­stroy near Rafah.

“Un­til now, we have no idea about the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Is­raeli sol­dier,” the state­ment said. Say­ing the lead­er­ship had lost touch with its “troops de­ployed in the am­bush,” the state­ment added, “Our ac­count is that the sol­dier could have been kid­napped and killed to­geth­er with our fight­ers.”

The Is­raeli Army con­tin­ued to pound Rafah in its search for Lieu­tenant Goldin, strik­ing more than 200 tar­gets across Gaza in the 24 hours since the Rafah con­fronta­tion, in­clud­ing what it de­scribed as a “re­search and de­vel­op­ment” lab for weapons man­u­fac­tur­ing at the Is­lam­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, run by Hamas. Five mosques that the mil­i­tary said con­cealed weapons or Hamas out­posts were al­so hit, the Is­raelis said.

Around noon, a bar­rage of rock­ets flew in­to south­ern Is­rael.

The Gaza-based health min­istry, which had re­port­ed 70 peo­ple killed in Rafah on Fri­day, said the ca­su­al­ties had con­tin­ued there overnight, in­clud­ing sev­en mem­bers of one fam­i­ly who died when their home was bombed.

 

BY STEVEN ERLANGER AND JODI RUDOREN (New York Times), August 3, 2014

Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem, and Jodi Rudoren from Kfar Saba, Israel. Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza City, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.

 

Graphic Humor 238 (Israel-Gaza-USA)

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

Israeli ‘leftist’ singer cancels show after threats

Singer-songwriter Rona Kenan panned by right-wing extremists after expressing sympathy for Gazan children

An Israeli singer-songwriter canceled her show in Haifa Thursday after she was harshly criticized and threatened by right-wing Israelis who accused her of showing solidarity with the mothers of dead terrorists.

Rona Kenan announced that her acoustic show in Haifa’s Turkish Market, which was scheduled to begin at 9 p.m., would not take place due to what she described as incitement against her.

Kenan said she had been “subjected to severe verbal attacks and threats over a false report” that during a conference with Palestinian women, she had observed a moment of silence in solidarity with Palestinian “martyrs.”

She said that while she had sung two songs at the conference, she had not observed a moment of silence. But this week, right-wing extremists raised the accusations again in comments on Kenan’s Facebook page after she expressed sympathy for the children of Gaza and called for an end to war between Israel and Hamas.

The onslaught began after Kenan posted a message on July 11, three days into the Gaza war, reproaching Israeli society and the Israeli press over their reaction to the offensive in Gaza, which she described as “one of the saddest places in the world.”

Kenan expressed sympathy for the children of both Sderot and Gaza, saying it “fills her with despair” to think that they “wet their beds at night out of fear and will grow up to see each other not as human beings, but as children of the devil.”

Kenan said she was “left speechless” by the knowledge that “any objections to the war, which Israel named Operation Protective Edge, was perceived in Israeli society as treason, as a lack of solidarity.” She ended her post with a prayer for quiet both in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

While many fans echoed Kenan’s sentiments, others criticized her for overlooking the threat posed by Hamas and Iranian-funded terror groups, as well as the suffering of residents of southern Israel and the risks IDF soldiers were taking to ensure Israel’s security. Some urged her to blame Hamas, not Israel, for the plight of the children of Gaza. Yet others said the children were themselves future terrorists, with one poster saying she had thought Kenan was “smarter than that” and another calling her “hypocritical, self-righteous filth.”

One poster wrote, “I’ve never responded to people like you, but to observe a moment of silence for martyrs with whom we are engaged in combat on a daily basis? For shame, and we even provide her livelihood. With people like you among us, we don’t need enemies.”

After the Haifa show was canceled, one Facebook user suggested, “Why don’t you volunteer to sing in Gaza? I think you will find a stage to sing on there without being subjected to criticism. You’re so stupid to voice criticism in wartime.”

The Thursday evening show will still take place, but will be headlined by singer-songwriter Shai Gabso rather than Kenan.

Kenan, the daughter of Lehi underground member, sculptor and journalist Amos Kenan and author and literary scholar Nurith Gertz, has released four albums so far, to critical acclaim.

 

* BY YIFA YAAKOV,  July 31, 2014

 

Graphic Humor 236

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

‘I want my father, bring me my father’

A photo of a desperate young Palestinian boy, badly wounded and screaming for his father as he clutches at the shirt of a paramedic in a hospital, has captured the tragic and bloody tension of the Gazan conflict.

Shirtless and with cuts to his face, torso, arms and legs, the child clings to the hospital worker who is attempting to lay him flat on a girdle.

The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian publication, reports the photo, taken at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last Thursday, was captioned with the boy’s desperate cry: ‘I want my father, bring me my father’, according to Fairfax.

The Palestinian paper claims the young boy was one of four siblings brought to the hospital wounded, two of them just three years old.

 

It comes as grinning Israeli tank commanders were pictured flashing the victory signs as they blast their way through Gaza in the bloodiest day of the offensive so far – as one resident of the troubled region said: ‘The gate of hell has opened.’

At least 65 people have been killed since this yesterday’s dawn strike on Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighbourhood – including the son, daughter-in-law and two small grandchildren of a senior Hamas leader.

Hamas says it has captured an Israeli soldier – a scenario that has proven to be fraught with difficulties for the country in the past – but Israel’s U.N. Ambassador has denied the claims.

The neighbourhood has come under heavy tank fire as Israel widened its ground offensive against Hamas, causing hundreds of residents to flee.

The dead and wounded – including dozens of women and children – have reportedly been left in streets, with ambulances unable to approach.

Source: (July 21, 2014)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699772/This-desperate-little-boy-face-tragedy-Palestinian-toddler-clutches-shirt-hospital-worker-screaming-I-want-father-bring-father.html?ito=social-facebook

 

Gaza Battle Deadliest in Conflict

Israeli ground forces waded into Gaza’s most densely populated city for the first time in nearly two weeks of fighting, destroying tunnels and drawing heavy fire from Hamas militants in the deadliest day of fighting for both sides since the conflict began.

Israel said 13 soldiers were killed and Gaza officials said 96 Palestinians were killed Sunday, including 60 in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shajaiyeh where the battle of the tunnels was fought. It was also the highest toll for Israeli soldiers in a single day since a brief war with the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah in 2006, according to military records.

Hamas’s military wing also claimed it captured an Israeli soldier. Israel said it was checking on the claim.

Two American citizens who were soldiers for the Israel Defense Force were among the 13 killed. “We can confirm the deaths of U.S. citizens Max Steinberg and Sean Carmeli in Gaza,” Jen Psaki, State Department spokeswoman, said late Sunday.

Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza on Thursday night with a high priority on destroying a network of cross-border tunnels that militants use to infiltrate Israel. On Saturday, Palestinians entered Israel through one of those tunnels and killed two soldiers.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been initially reluctant to send in ground forces for fear the military would suffer heavy casualties.

The Israeli attack began with predawn drone strikes and artillery shelling followed by small-arms fire and the sound of Israeli fighter jets whooshing overhead. The Israelis came under fire from antitank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades launched from densely populated neighborhoods, the military said.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, described the battles as “heavy fighting and close combat.”

Mr. Netanyahu vowed that attacks would go on.

“We will complete what they began and return quiet to Israel,” he told relatives of the dead soldiers.

The violence set off a panicked exodus of thousands of civilians from Shajaiyeh. Bodies were carted to a morgue while hundreds of onlookers uttered mourning chants.

In Israel, anthems for the dead soldiers played on the radio on a day when the toll surpassed the combined number of soldiers killed in the last two military conflicts with Hamas in 2008-9 and 2012.

The U.S. said Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in Cairo on Monday to try to work out a cease-fire. President Barack Obama, speaking to Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday morning in their second phone call in three days, “raised serious concern about the growing number of casualties, including increasing Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza and the loss of Israeli soldiers,” the White House said.

The United Nations Security Council late Sunday called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and expressed “serious concern at the escalation of violence,” calling for the protection of civilians under international humanitarian law. The council also said it was troubled by the growing number of casualties. It backed efforts by Egypt and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in the region on Sunday, to broker a cease-fire deal.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 425 Palestinians have been killed, including 112 children, and 3,000 wounded since fighting began. The United Nations said about three-fourths of the Palestinian casualties have been civilians. The Israeli military said it had killed at least 70 militants since the ground invasion.

“It’s like a metro, an underground” connecting weapons-manufacturing and storage sites to passageways beneath the Israeli border about 2 miles away, said Lt. Col. Lerner. “I would describe it as a lower Gaza City.” He said the army found openings in Shajaiyeh to 10 tunnel shafts leading to the underground network. The army entered the area with infantry, artillery and armored units, he said, expecting strong resistance.

“Our assessment and plan of action suggested they were planning to meet the army on the battlefield,” he said. “We are taking the battle to them. We don’t want it in our backyard.” Israel had warned civilians in Shajaiyeh to evacuate their homes days ago, Lt. Col Lerner said.

Israel has accused Hamas of shielding its fighters and weapons amid densely populated civilian areas, saying because of this, the group is largely to blame for civilian casualties.

“Unfortunately, there are civilian casualties which we regret and don’t seek,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Umm Rajab Helles, a mother of 12, described the first hours of the clashes.

“We’ve been attacked for almost two weeks but it was never this fierce,” she said, recounting how she huddled with her family inside her ground floor apartment.

“It was so tense every time there was a blast that the children would run to the door out of fear and we’d have to pull them back.”

Nearby, Umm Atta Said was inside a storage room of a clothing and mattress store along the neighborhood’s commercial strip. For 12 days, she said, the dark and cramped space was “the safest place” in Gaza.

Suddenly that wasn’t the case.

“There were blasts every minute,” she said. “It didn’t stop for four hours.” The buzz of drones was followed by sounds of missile strikes, the dull thud of artillery and the sound of rifle fire.

“It was closer than we had ever felt it and we were in complete darkness.”

Among the Israeli soldiers were two men from the Golani infantry brigade entering a neighborhood they didn’t know. Their orders were to establish a command center at a house they had secured as artillery fire boomed around them, said Vered Kerber, whose brother Doron had been sent. But Palestinian fighters were soon upon them, she said.

“They were told the area was clean,” she said. “But it wasn’t clean.”

The fighters buffeted the house with mortar fire for hours. They launched an antitank rocket at it.

“The entire wall collapsed on them, and [my brother] was injured by rock debris,” said Shay Vaknin whose brother Daniel suffered a concussion.

The would-be command center was abandoned after its commander was killed and several other soldiers were critically wounded. The soldiers fled as fighters launched mortars at them in a prolonged and treacherous retreat. The two men made it back to Israel.

“It’s a miracle. I feel like an angel was watching over him,” said Ms. Kerber, whose brother lay on a hospital bed in Ashkelon holding a small book of Psalms.

As day broke, following hours of nonstop fighting, residents began considering what been an impossibility at night—leaving their homes.

For Ms. Said, the decision was obvious. “The shelling reached us and we couldn’t stay.”

At approximately 6 a.m., she said, she and her husband, gathered their children and nothing else and walked about a mile to Gaza’s central hospital, her last hope to find a safe place.

Ms. Helles said she needed more of an alarm to muster the courage to leave. A relative called and said: “Run now,” she said. “We ran out with bare feet,” she said.

Thousands were pouring out into Shajaiyeh’s streets, dodging rubble as an acrid smoke hung over the neighborhood and blasts were still heard. Every few blocks residents encountered more injured or dead. Buildings that hadn’t collapsed smoldered.

In an acknowledgment of the intensity of the battle, Hamas and Israel agreed to a pause of a few hours in the neighborhood to evacuate the dead and wounded. But it broke down after less than an hour.

“It’s a miracle. I feel like an angel was watching over him,” said Ms. Kerber, whose brother lay on a hospital bed in Ashkelon holding a small book of Psalms.

As day broke, following hours of nonstop fighting, residents began considering what been an impossibility at night—leaving their homes.

For Ms. Said, the decision was obvious. “The shelling reached us and we couldn’t stay.”

At approximately 6 a.m., she said, she and her husband, gathered their children and nothing else and walked about a mile to Gaza’s central hospital, her last hope to find a safe place.

Ms. Helles said she needed more of an alarm to muster the courage to leave. A relative called and said: “Run now,” she said. “We ran out with bare feet,” she said.

Thousands were pouring out into Shajaiyeh’s streets, dodging rubble as an acrid smoke hung over the neighborhood and blasts were still heard. Every few blocks residents encountered more injured or dead. Buildings that hadn’t collapsed smoldered.

In an acknowledgment of the intensity of the battle, Hamas and Israel agreed to a pause of a few hours in the neighborhood to evacuate the dead and wounded. But it broke down after less than an hour.

There were scenes of chaos. Ambulances, journalists and aid workers surged into the district, their cars speeding through narrow streets to assess the damage. Nerves were frayed as residents emerged from their homes sometimes screaming in disbelief over what had happened. Al Shifa Hospital was overwhelmed with patients. Its morgue was becoming the scene of a grim ritual as ambulances opened their doors and hoisted the bodies of the dead through the crowd that had gathered. In 15 minutes, gurneys carrying six dead, including two small children, snaked their way into the morgue.

They were laid next to each other inside. A man tried to cover the leg of a dead woman, twisted and covered with blood. He screamed. The body of one boy was missing its face.

On one main street, two ambulances attempted a rescue as onlookers and journalists approached. A man emerged yelling to give the paramedics space before firing an automatic rifle repeatedly in the air, sending people scrambling for cover.

As the boy’s body left the ambulance, a young man had craned his neck to see it and sobbed into a mobile phone: “No, dad, it’s not him.”

—Joshua Mitnick, Jay Solomon and Joe Lauria
contributed to this article. (July 21, 2014)

 

Graphic Humor 234

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them.

Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

UN chief Ban Ki-moon pleas for Gaza ceasefire

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appealed for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Mr Ban urged both sides to exercise restraint, saying the Middle East could not afford “another full-blown war”.

More than 80 Gazans have been killed since Israel’s operation began on Tuesday, Palestinian officials say.

Israel says it has hit more than 100 targets in Gaza since midnight, while Palestinian militants are continuing to fire rockets into Israel.

Israel launched its operation after a surge in rocket-fire amid a crackdown on Hamas members in the West Bank last month, as Israel hunted for the abductors of three Israeli teenagers.

The teenagers were found murdered, and tensions were raised further with the killing of a Palestinian teenager in a suspected revenge attack days later.

 

James Reynolds reporting from the Kfar Aza kibbutz where the community has been “shaken” by rocket attacks

Israel says its targets in Operation Protective Edge have been militant fighters and facilities including rocket launchers, weapons stores, tunnels and command centres.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, many of those who have died were women and children.

 

At the scene: BBC’s Yolande Knell in Gaza

On a normal day, the streets of Gaza City are teeming with people and cars honk their horns as they sit in traffic jams. Now they are eerily quiet. Occasionally someone strides past purposefully, or a car or ambulance races by. The shops are all shuttered.

Most people here are staying at home trying to keep safe. Some will also be catching up on sleep after a noisy night when Israeli naval ships bombarded this coastal strip, making buildings shake and babies cry.

Local television stations can hardly keep up with the pace of news from inside busy hospitals and outside demolished homes. They show shocking images of dead children being pulled from the rubble on repeat.

The increasing number of civilians killed is alarming. Some people have moved in with other family members who they deem to live in safer areas. Egypt has opened its border crossing with Gaza for casualties but otherwise there is no way to leave the Palestinian territory because of the Egyptian and Israeli blockade.

At the scene: BBC’s James Reynolds on Israel’s Gaza border

Shortly before 0300 ( midnight GMT) in Ashkelon, a rocket siren sounded. I woke and headed to the secure room of our hotel (joined by guests in their pyjamas). There was no all-clear siren so, after a minute or two, we guessed that the threat from the rocket had passed, and headed back to our rooms.

This morning, near the border with Gaza, my colleagues and I saw a column of black smoke in a field – a fire caused by a rocket attack. Farmers drove tractors over the flames to put out the fire.

We drove on and saw Gaza itself, a few miles away, on the horizon. We saw three jet plumes of white smoke shoot up from Gaza – rockets being fired from the Palestinian territory.

More than 20 people have been killed in the latest air raids on Gaza, Palestinian officials say – most of whom were in a house and a cafe in Khan Younis.

Elsewhere on Thursday:

• Three people died in an Israeli air strike on a car in the west of Gaza City, Palestinian media reports said. Reuters said the victims were militants from Islamic Jihad
• Three people were killed in an air strike targeting a Hamas activist in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Palestinian officials said
• The Palestinian health ministry said that in addition to the dead, some 540 people had been injured overall
• The armed wing of Hamas said it had fired two M75 rockets at Tel Aviv – Israel said its Iron Dome missile defence system had intercepted one. The Israeli military also said communities in the southern Negev desert were targeted.

 

Ban Ki-moon: “The lives of countless innocent civilians and the peace process itself are in the balance”

Israel says militants have fired more than 365 rockets from Gaza since Tuesday – many of which have been intercepted by the Iron Dome system – and that it has attacked about 780 targets over the same time.

Meanwhile, an Israeli military spokesman said an attack on a house in Khan Younis on Tuesday in which eight people were killed was “a tragedy – not what we intended”, adding people had returned to the building too soon following a telephone warning.

The home was said to be that of Odeh Kaware, a local Hamas commander.

Israeli sources say a second warning was given when a projectile without a warhead was fired at the building in a tactic known as a “tap on the roof”, but people went back.

“They were told to leave, they returned, and the missile was already on the way. It was too late,” the Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted an Israeli security source as saying.

The Palestinian Maan news agency said dozens of people had gathered on the roof after the family had been warned by Israel that the building would be targeted.

A Palestinian thought to have been wounded in an Israeli air strike waits to cross into Egypt

Residents of Netivot in southern Israel look at the damage caused by a Palestinian missile strike

Israeli leaders say a ground offensive might happen “quite soon”

The site of an Israeli strike in Gaza City

Egypt’s role

Separately, Egyptian state television said the government had decided to open the Rafah border crossing on Thursday to evacuate some of those wounded in the Israeli attacks.

Hospitals in North Sinai have been placed on standby and 30 ambulances sent to the crossing.

Egypt says it is in contact with both sides. But while it has played a key role in the past as a mediator, it currently appears to be biding its time, says the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Cairo.

Analysts say Egypt is in no hurry to broker a ceasefire that might benefit Hamas – as happened under ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in November 2012.

Egypt sees Hamas, an offshoot of Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, as a direct threat.

Having crushed the Brotherhood over the past year, it wants to see Hamas suffer the same fate, our correspondent says. In that sense, it is on the same page with Israel, she adds.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield

1. Enemy fires missile or artillery shell
2. Projectile tracked by radar. Data relayed to battle management and control unit
3. Data analysed and target co-ordinates sent to the missile firing unit
4. Missile is fired at enemy projectile

 

* Source: BBC, 10 July 2014

 

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Graphic Humor 145

 

Graphic Humor 133

 

What You Don’t Know About Gaza and The Gaza Boomerang

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.
THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.
WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe.
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.”

* By RASHID KHALIDI (NYT,January 8, 2009)

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The Gaza Boomerang
readers’ comments for New York Times, January 08, 2009
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What we’re seeing in the Middle East is the Boomerang Syndrome. Extremists on each side sustain the other, and the Israeli assault in Gaza is likely to create more terrorists in the long run.
Israel continually forgets the most important lesson of their own history – and that of other conflicts:
Violence begets violence.

Each child bombed out of their own pitiful refugee home has a burning need for revenge. Each child who watches his parents and siblings being carried out of rubble in bits and pieces swears to spend their lives seeking revenge.

The Palestinians are a people Israel keeps trying to conquer, they are a people who Israel consistently views as an irritant who dare to want to keep their homeland.

No people can be expected to meekly step aside as their lands, homes, employment and families are taken from them. 99.99% of us would fight off invaders. That’s human nature. Why does Israel always expect the Palestinians not to fight for the return of their lives and homes?
— Katy, NYC

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Your argument is marred by the implicit suggestion that 20 Israeli deaths do not justify a much larger number of Palestinian deaths. The unwritten but implied word missing from your text is the qualifier “only” to describe those 20 Israeli deaths. Go tell the families of those slain Israelis that their loved ones were one of “only” 20 Israeli deaths. Go and tell the children living in a zone that has been constantly under missile attack for the past 8 years that their fears are less real than the fears of Gaza children. I have heard countless stories of children in Sderot who will not leave their parents’ side even at age 15, or of bedwetting by children long out of diapers.

Let’s not forget that for all the tragedy of war, one side of this argument did what the other side wanted: Israel withdrew from Gaza. All Israel wanted in return was quiet, but it never got that. It got hatred and violence in return. So while we can argue what should have been the appropriate response by Israel (and personally I agree that Israel’s response was not well thought out on many levels), we can not lose sight of the fact that but for the Hamas stance towards Israel, Palestinians in Gaza would not be burying their dead today.

If Scarsdale were under daily missile threat from White Plains, and “only” 20 Scarsdale residents had been killed by those attacks, would your opinion still hold?
— JK, Haifa, Israel

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During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States established a blockade around Cuba. The intent was to prevent Russian missiles from getting to Cuba. America had very good reasons to dislike having nuclear armed weapons just minutes away from our population centers.

But suppose the United States had extended the blockade to prevent any food, medicine, electricity or fuel from entering Cuba. Suppose we controlled and limited any humanitarian aid that could get in. Imagine that no Cuban sugar or cigars were allowed to be exported and no equipment or supplies were allowed to be imported. Then imagine the blockade was also extended to prevent any people from entering or leaving Cuba without U.S. government approval. Finally, imagine that the United States government refused to allow any international observers to enter Cuba to report first hand on what might have been perpetrated on the Cuban people.

Now, do you think that after 45 years of this blockade, the Cuban people wouldn’t be justified in doing whatever they could to fight this oppression? If they could build a rocket that could reach Miami, do you think they wouldn’t use it? Do you really think such actions would be totally unjustified?

Many people thought that Cuba was a rogue state. Do you think the United States would have been justified in treating Cuba in the same way that Israel has been treating the Palestinians? The Israelis have been keeping up these pressures on the Palestinians for sixty years. A change is needed, but it is the Israelis who need to change.
— Steve, Japan

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Any sympathy for Israel has now disappeared completely.
— Keith Tunstall, UK

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I recently retired from the US Marine Corps, but I saw service in Iraq. I do know something of military matters that are relevant to the situation now in Gaza.

I am dismayed by the rhetoric from US politicians and pundits to the effect that “if the US were under rocket attack from Mexico or Canada, we would respond like the Israelis”. This a gross insult to US servicemen; I can assure you that we would NOT respond like the Israelis. In fact, US armed forces and adjunct civilians are under attack constantly in Iraq and Afghanistan by people who are much better armed, much better trained and far deadlier than Hamas (I’ll ignore for now that the politicians seem to be oblivious to this fact). Israel has indeed taken a small number of casualties from Hamas rocket fire (about 20 killed since 2001), but we have taken thousands of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, including many civilian personnel. Hundreds of American casualties have occurred due to indirect fire, often from mortars. This is particularly true in or near the Green Zone in Baghdad. This fire often originates from densely populated urban areas.

Americans do not, I repeat DO NOT, respond to that fire indiscriminately. When I say “indiscriminately”, I mean that even if we can precisely identify the source of the fire (which can be very difficult), we do not respond if we know we will cause civilian casualties. We always evaluate the threat to civilians before responding, and in an urban area the threat to civilians is extremely high. If US servicemen violate those rules of engagement and harm civilians, I assure you we do our best to investigate — and mete out punishment if warranted. There are differing opinions on the conflict in Iraq, but I am proud of the conduct of our servicemen there.

With that in mind, I find the conduct of the Israeli army in Gaza to be brutal and dishonorable, and it is insulting that they and others claim that the US military would behave in the same way. I know the Israelis are operating under difficult circumstances, but their claim that they follow similar rules of engagement rings hollow; I see little evidence for this claim given the huge number of civilian casualties they have caused from indirect fire.

In particular, I am stunned at the Israeli explanation for the 30+ civilians killed at the UN school. The Israelis say they were responding to mortar fire from the school. Mortars are insidious because their high trajectory and lack of primary flash make it very difficult to trace the source of the fire; you have to have a spotter locate the crew. The Israelis claim that they traced the source of the fire precisely to the school; if so, they must have directly spotted the crew. Thus it is inconceivable that the Israelis did not know that the target was a crowded UN school, yet they chose to fire on the school anyhow. I say without hesitation that this is a criminal act. If the Israelis had said, “sorry, it was an accident”, that could indicate a targeting problem, confusion, or inferior training. But to openly admit that they responded reflexively to the Hamas fire without consideration for the inevitable civilian casualties is beyond the pale. The Israelis blame Hamas for firing from the school (although UN personnel on the ground dispute this), but choosing to fire directly at civilians is far worse; it is tantamount to murder. US servicemen do not behave that way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we face much deadlier adversaries (Hamas mortar crews are apparently not very effective: I believe that all but one of the total Israeli combat fatalities have been from friendly fire). In the rare and unfortunate cases where US personnel have willingly targeted civilians, they have been court-martialed and punished.

The Israeli approach in Gaza strikes me as uncontrolled and vengeful. My objective analysis is that it has little tactical effectiveness; my opinion is that its main goal is to whip the entire Gaza population into submission. This is disturbingly similar to the Israelis’ conduct in Lebanon in 2006, so I feel obliged to say that the Israeli military displays a concerted pattern of disregard for civilian lives. I am not a politician, but in my opinion the US should take some sort of political action in this regard. If we continue to formally condone Israel’s dishonorable and brutal military conduct in Gaza, I fear there will eventually be dire consequences for our country.
— JDS, North Carolina

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There is no more obnoxious concept flittered about than “proportionate response”. This is a concept that is only applied in one area in the international community, and that is towards Israel. Give me one other example of a country being dictated too what their response to bombs being lobbed over their border, in an attempt to kill and terrorize their citizens. The correct proportionate response to these actions is to kill anyone who is doing this, and kill anyone who possibly will be doing this in the future. If that proportionate response is successful, well then we don’t have to worry about citizens being terrorized or threatened in the future. What do you think I am missing here?
— Jeff Marbach, Boynton Beach, Fla.

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I didn’t see the words “immediate cease fire” that I was looking for.

The Gaza Mr. Kristof visited is far different today. Here’s a reporter’s story from inside Gaza City:
AP Gaza reporter finds hometown in rubble:
http://www.foxnews.com…
“My brother took a picture of the room where my boys, 2-year-old Hikmet and 6-month-old Ahmed, once slept. Their toys were broken, shrapnel had punched through the closet and the bedroom wall had collapsed. I don’t know if we will ever go back.

There are other pictures that haunt me. The Israeli army issued a video of the bombing of the Hamas-run government compound, which it posted on YouTube. In it, I also can see my home being destroyed, and I watch it obsessively.”

Stop worrying so much about Israel and start thinking about the humanitarian crisis and the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, utilities, farm land (tanks rolling over farm land makes me cringe).

Gazans are being crushed while American tv media is gushing over trivia.
— Agathena, Victoria BC Canada

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I take exception to your statement that Israel was provoked. It is the Gazan who live in an open air prison and have been blockaded from air land and sea ever since they exercised their democratic rights and voted in a government led by Hamas. Let’s call a spade a spade.
— Arif, Karachi Pakistan

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What a maddeningly simplistic analysis of the conflict! Mr. Kristof could just as well point out that U.S. support for Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion “boomeranged” into al-Qaeda and that therefore the U.S. is itself responsible for 9/11. Maybe this would be true in a world of no rights and no wrongs but that is certainly not Mr. Kristof’s usual, and usually highly effective, worldview. I read two proposals in the essay – first, to “ease the siege in Gaza”, and secondly that Mr. Obama should “need[s] to join European leaders in calling for a new cease-fire on all sides”. The first would guarantee that Hamas would quintuple its import of arms and ammunition. The second would do no better than the first cease-fire, during which Hamas spent all its resources on armaments and none of its resources on schools, jobs, farms, greenhouses, or any aspects of civil society. Surely Mr. Kristof and the “European leaders” realize that whatever arrangements are made must guarantee no more rocket fire from Gaza and no more armaments into Gaza, or this entire nasty episode will just flare up again in the next few weeks, months, or years. That would truly be a boomerang. Believe me, sitting within rocket range in Be’er Sheva, this is not something I’m going to vote for.
— Mark Keil, Be’er Sheva, Israel

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Israel can (and probably will) win a tactical military victory in Gaza. The relative calm that ensues will come with a terrible price – the certain loss of any moral position by Israel.

Yes, it is unacceptable for Israel to become the morally pure martyr of the world. It has a right of self defense. But proportionality in response is not just the rule of 21st century international law, but it is also biblical (assuming that we are not talking of the wars of the conquest of Canaan, where extermination was the principle).

Apart for morality,as a matter of cold calculation it is easy to see that for every dead Hamas terrorist, the “collateral damage” recruits at least ten more. Tactical victory, probably. Strategic miscalculation, certainly.
— John G., NYC

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Your analysis brings up some good points but has many holes. Yes, Extremes do not make peace as our friends at Daniel Pearl’s Foundation always remind us. Just look at what Israelis have done to Jerusalem, a previously magical place, now overrun and destroyed by a bunch of extreme Jews who need army protection for their provocations. At the same time the city is yearned by many extreme Hamas type Palestinians. It is another time bomb in this mess in the Middle East.
Speaking of Hamas, it’s Iran feeding tube is all Hate and that is what no military action by Israel can undo. No other regime has been more successful in constant manufacturing and systematic dissemination of Hate to the world since the Nazi’s.
Iran’s 30 year Islamic disaster also shows that extreme Islamist regimes, grow immediate and strong roots and turn themselves into mob supported movements, exactly like the Hamas’ mosque building model.
Palestinians have lost many chances over the years due to corrupt and criminal leaders to make Peace, dismantle their awful refugee camps, bring home their Best from Diaspora to rebuild and not elect and succumb to such Hate mongers like Hamas. But is too late now. Too much blood has been shed.
I differ with you on Mahmood Abbas. He is a joke with no charisma, power or agenda. A stupid nobody who looks and acts like a puppet of the events as they unfold. Of course Israel and the US have used him for many photo ups over the years, but made a huge mistake by not strengthening him when pulling out of Gaza in ’05 and creating a vacuum filled by Hamas.
I agree with Kelvinco of Boulder, that starvation, humiliation, and invasion of the Nation next door is not the best recipe for eventual peaceful coexistence, Again because systematic Hate mongering by the rulers, hardens all and Extremes boomerang. Israelis have no one to replace Hamas with in Gaza.
But it is too late for Peace as we like to see it. Because long term damage have been done by both sides to the spirit of Peace.
Sorry I have to remain a realist.
— Samir Albert Mano, Tehran, Iran

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You claim that strengthening the Fateh government is “crucial,” but you also state that many Palestinians see that party as corrupt. What will it look like to the Palestinians if we try to prop up what they see as a corrupt government? They will see that yet again, the US is trying to establish a puppet government in a foreign country.

We will have to talk to the Islamists. They were democratically elected. The US cannot simply ignore the widespread popularity of Islamic political parties and movements, if we want to be diplomatically effective.
— anneret, New York City

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In this war, every civilian casualty is another ugly red stain on the flag of Hamas.

The Israeli armed forces is almost certainly the most humane military in the world, warning the Palestinian civilians—their presumed enemy—through phone calls, through leaflets, with the indefinite threat that Hamas operatives, who work to kill Israeli civilians in the same building where Palestinian civilians sleep, eat, live, would be warned too.

And yet they still continue firing rockets into Israel—from apartment buildings, from mosques, from schools. They send Palestinian children to the top of Hamas-inhabited apartment buildings so that Israeli aircrafts would steer clear of killing noncombatants. They set off their missiles from places like the U.N. school, where dozens of congregating Palestinian civilians have been slain.

Blaming Israel for this massacre is preposterous. We need to isolate Hamas and pose them with two choices: a) Stop with the rockets, and we’ll have a ceasefire—or b) We’re going to teach you a lesson, and until you learn it we’re not going to stop.
— Gadi Cohen, Long Island

 

Hard Lesson for Israel

Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip is failing, but there may be a silver lining. The war against Hamas is proving — once again — that the Middle East’s extremist movements cannot be eliminated by military means. If the incoming Obama administration absorbs that lesson, it will have a better chance of neutralizing Iranian-backed groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and of eventually brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.

Israel’s bet was that it could substantially reduce Hamas’s military capacity and then force it to accept a cease-fire with improved terms for Israel. Hamas, predictably, has refused to play by those rules. It has defined victory as its own survival; by that standard, it has no incentive to agree to a new truce unless it receives major benefits in return, such as an end to Israel’s economic blockade.

That means Israel must choose among attempting to drive the Islamic movement from power (which would be hugely costly and leave its troops stuck in Gaza indefinitely), making significant concessions to Hamas or withdrawing without any assurance that rocket fire against its cities would cease.

At best, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might win an agreement for international forces to help stop the smuggling of new weapons from Egypt into Gaza, something that doesn’t necessarily require Hamas’s consent. But that won’t stop Hamas from continuing to build its own rockets or from claiming that — like Hezbollah in Lebanon — it successfully resisted an Israeli invasion.

The trap that Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have created for themselves lies not just in Hamas’s ability to withdraw its fighters and rockets into mosques, schools and densely populated neighborhoods, where they could probably survive weeks of bloody fighting or go underground. The larger fallacy is the persistent conceit among Israeli leaders that Hamas can somehow be wiped out by economic strangulation or force of arms.

Unlike al-Qaeda, Hamas is not merely a terrorist organization but a social and political movement with considerable support. Its ideology, however repugnant to Israel and the West, is shared by a considerable slice of the population in every Arab country from Morocco to Iraq. Because it is extremist, it thrives on war, the suffering it inflicts on Palestinians, and the anger generated by the endless, graphic and one-sided coverage of the Middle East’s satellite television channels. Every day this war continues, Hamas grows politically stronger, as do its allies in other countries and its sponsor, Iran.

Though Israel must defend its citizens against rockets and suicide bombings, the only means of defeating Hamas are political. Palestinians, who have no history of attraction to religious fundamentalism, have to be persuaded to choose more moderate leaders, such as the secular Fatah. In the meantime, Hamas’s existence must be tolerated, and it should be encouraged to channel its ambitions into politics rather than military activity. That means, yes, elections — like those Hamas won in 2006, when it took control of the Palestinian legislature.

Those elections took place over Israel’s objections, and the outcome caused the Bush administration, which had championed democracy in the Middle East, to lose its nerve. But during the relative quiet of the past six months, when Israel and Hamas observed a semi-truce, politics was beginning to work. Polls conducted by Palestinians showed that Hamas’s support was falling in Gaza and the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader, was beginning to talk about holding new elections for president and the legislature; he thought he could win both.

Egypt was working on brokering a deal between the two Palestinian parties. A split began to emerge in Hamas between leaders who wanted to make that deal and extend the peace with Israel, and Iranian-backed hard-liners who wanted to draw Israel into a fight. Israel probably could have ensured that the moderates won the argument by offering to lift its economic blockade of Gaza in exchange for a continued cease-fire. It then could have focused on negotiating a two-state settlement with Abbas and on improving life for Palestinians in the West Bank, while Hamas absorbed the blame for the unremediable misery of Gazans.

Instead, Israel took the Iranian bait and chose to fight. Now, bogged down, suffering casualties and inflicting many more, creating terrible pictures for television, it will have to accept an unsatisfying settlement — or prolong its agony indefinitely. It should settle so that the leaders chosen by Israeli voters in an election next month will have the chance to work with a fresh American administration on a smarter and more effective strategy for countering Iran and its clients — one grounded in politics rather than bombs.

* By Jackson Diehl (W.P.), January 9, 2009

 

An Unnecessary War

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.

After 12 days of “combat,” the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

* By Jimmy Carter, January 8, 2009;W.P.

The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.