Living in Gaza, Under Starlight and Bomb Blasts

As big sister, I accompany two of my five younger siblings to the roof of our 14-story building. We head up there whenever we can, even if people say it makes us easy targets. We climb 13 floors of stairs just to stand and look out on Gaza and breathe in 15 minutes of air before we duck inside again. “Burning City,” the children call it. Columns of smoke rise from various locations in the distance changing the color of the sky and the sun. The entire landscape is transformed. We can make out the locations of several of the many public, residential and landmark buildings that have been turned to piles of rubble. Israeli tanks now block the roads where we used to drive along the coast. Dark, ominous warships look out of place so close to our beautiful Gaza shore, which had been one of the only escapes and source of relaxation for the besieged people of the Gaza Strip. Earthen barriers have risen in the Zatoun area, cutting off the densely populated, heavily bombarded neighborhood from the rest of the city.

Our entire lives is now one long chaotic stream of existence: waiting in line each morning to fill up containers with water from the only working tap on the ground floor of our building, baking homemade bread from the depleting supply of flour we managed to obtain a few days into the offensive, turning on the power generator for 30 to 50 minutes in the evening to charge phones and watch the news. Meanwhile, the constant in our lives has become the voice of the reporter on the small transistor radio giving reports every few seconds of the location and resulting losses from the explosion we just heard, or other attacks farther off on the Strip.

Source: By Safa Joudeh Time

Filed under: Voice, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, Voice, War

Israel adds reservists to forces in Gaza

Israeli forces pushed into the Gaza Strip’s most populous area on Sunday, killing at least 31 Palestinians on the 16th day of a devastating offensive Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said was close to achieving its aims.

An Israeli military spokesman said army reservists, held back until now, had been thrown into the battle.

“We have begun to integrate reservist forces into the action in the Gaza Strip,” Avi Benayahu said on Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “We aren’t acting in panic, but cautiously.”

Thick black smoke rose over the city of Gaza as fighting raged on in the Hamas-ruled territory in defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand for a ceasefire. Medical workers said about half the Palestinians killed on Sunday were civilians.

“Israel is getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself,” Olmert told his cabinet in Jerusalem.

“But patience, determination and effort are still needed to realize these goals in a manner that will change the security situation in the south,” Olmert said, referring to Israeli towns where life has been disrupted by Hamas rocket salvoes.

On the usually quiet Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, shots were fired from Syria at Israeli army engineers working on the frontier fence, but no one was hurt and it was not immediately clear who was responsible, an Israeli military spokesman said.

Backed by helicopter gunships, Israeli tanks pushed into eastern and southern parts of the city of Gaza, attacking Hamas militants who fired anti-armor missiles and mortar bombs.

At the edge of the city, Mahmoud Abu Hasseera surveyed the rubble of his house, in an area where Israeli tanks and infantry had battled Palestinian fighters hours earlier.

“Where should we and our children go to sleep? To the streets?” he asked. “We have no mattresses, blankets, cooking gas, food or water. Everything was destroyed.”

The Palestinian death toll since Israel’s offensive began on December 27 stands at 876, many of them civilians, Gaza medical officials said. More than 3,000 Palestinians have been wounded.

Thirteen Israelis — three civilians hit by rocket fire and 10 soldiers — have been killed, Israel says.

Source: Reuters

Filed under: MidEast, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Mahmoud Abbas, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Obama ‘Much more determined’ to break Mideast deadlock

“When you see civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, harmed, under hardship, it’s heartbreaking. And obviously what that does is it makes me much more determined to try to break a deadlock that has gone on for decades now,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”

Rejecting criticism that he has been relatively quiet on the violence in Gaza, Obama said he believes “the one area where the principle of ‘one president at a time’ has to hold is when it comes to foreign policy. We cannot have two administrations at the same time simultaneously sending signals in a volatile situation.

“But what I am doing right now is putting together the team so that on January 20, starting on day one, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole, that are going to be engaging with all of the actors there, that will work to create a strategic approach that ensures that both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations,” he said. Video Watch the latest on the Israel-Gaza conflict »

Asked whether he will be building on President Bush’s policies toward the region or offering “a clean break,” Obama responded: “I think that if you look not just at the Bush administration, but also what happened under the Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach. And I think that players in the region understand the compromises that are going to need to be made.”

Dealing with Iran, Obama said, will be “one of our biggest challenges. … Not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah, but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”

Source: CNN

Filed under: America, Aid, Al Jazeera, Barack Obama, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Casualties of War: Palestinian Moderates

The biggest political loser in the battle of wills between Israel and Hamas that continues to rage in Gaza is the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas. Even as Western and Arab diplomats take care to assign the increasingly marginalized Abbas a role in negotiations over a truce to end the fighting that has claimed more than 700 lives, he is facing mounting fury from Palestinians, not only in Gaza but also in his West Bank stronghold. When the blistering sermons and Friday prayers were done, several thousand inhabitants of Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank seat of power, gathered in the city’s central square for what organizers had billed as a demonstration of Palestinian unity against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. But Palestinian unity is wearing pretty thin.

Trouble began when one demonstrator unveiled a Hamas flag, and was immediately set upon by baton-wielding Palestinian police. Although Hamas was voted in as the ruling party in the Palestinian legislature in 2006, and its militias violently ejected security forces controlled by President Abbas from Gaza the following year, the West Bank remains in the hands of its more moderate rival, Fatah, and the U.S.-trained security services answerable to President Abbas.

Abbas’ presidential term of office ended Friday, although his supporters claim that by their political math, he can still serve another year. Hamas is unlikely to press the issue while it fights to survive in Gaza, but the single most important factor keeping Abbas in power may be the presence of the Israeli military throughout the West Bank, keeping the Islamists on the back foot. (See images of grief in the current conflict)

Source: Andrew Lee Butters Time

Filed under: Analysis, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Mahmoud Abbas, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Israel must increse its medical aid to Gaza

A few days ago, Physicians for Human Rights began soliciting $700,000 in donations for hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli humanitarian organization also provided a detailed list of the medical equipment Gaza lacks, including portable monitors, respirators, ultrasound and X-ray machines, wheelchairs, needles, dressings, catheters, oxygen, medical gases, endo-tracheal tubes, screws and plates for shattered limbs, and surgical gloves. According to PHR, Gaza also has a severe shortage of intensive-care beds, which cost about $50,000 apiece. Moreover, many Palestinian ambulances are out of commission.

As of Tuesday, dozens of people had responded to the call. Some NIS 400,000 has been raised, mainly from Palestinian-Israelis. However, the campaign is still about $600,000 short. And every day, the needs are growing. Every day, Palestinian doctors are forced to operate on wounded Palestinians without surgical gloves, without anesthesia and without other basic medical and sanitary equipment.

What Israel’s government should do, this very morning, is give PHR the missing $600,000. However, the government should not make do with that. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak must double, triple and quadruple the donation. The defense establishment must immediately provide a fund of $10-20 million that will inject new life into Gaza’s collapsing hospitals.

Money alone, however, is not enough. The Israel Defense Forces must seize the humanitarian initiative and erect a field hospital at the Kerem Shalom or Kissufim or Erez border crossings. The army should announce that first, the hospital will care for children: Any wounded Gazan child who is not receiving appropriate treatment in Gaza will receive excellent treatment at the Israeli hospital. If the experiment proves successful and is not abused, it can be expanded to offer emergency treatment to women, the elderly and anyone else not involved in terror.

By Ari Shavit Haaretz

Filed under: Voice, Aid, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Europeans protest against Gaza offensive

Tens of thousands of people, in cities all over Europe, have been demonstrating against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

In central London, three police officers were hurt when demonstrators hurled shoes and placards as police in riot gear confronted a crowd of around 20,000 outside the Israeli embassy.

Fifteen people were arrested after a breakaway group of about 2,000 people continued to clash with police. Two were detained on suspicion of assault.

Thousands demonstrated in Edinburgh, in Scotland and marches were held across France, the biggest of them in the capital Paris. Police estimated 30,000 people took part.

Scuffles broke out with small groups of demonstrators fighting running battles with police as the protest dispersed.

In Germany, some 8,500 people ralled in the centre of Berlin. Another 10,000 marched in Duisburg.

In Norway, police used tear gas to break up a 1000-strong protest after bottles and rocks were thrown and in Sweden, after a march by up to five thousand people, some protestors attempted to storm the Israeli embassy in Stockholm.

In Barcelona, an estimated 30,000 people took to the streets. The demonstration was called by 300 Catalan groups demanding an end to arms trading with Israel.

In Milan, Florence and Venice several thousand people carrying Palestinian flags marched to protest against the Israeli offensive, some waving Israeli flags, besmirched with swastikas.

The demonstrations have been fuelled by the rising death toll in Gaza which currently stands at over 800 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians.

Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers, have been killed.

Source: Reuters/Euro News

Filed under: Europe, Aid, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Protests, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal

Sanity on Gaza

There has been an awful lot of nonsense written about Gaza from both the left and right. There are those on the left who simply believe that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against a terrorist enemy that relentlessly attacks its civilians and refuses to acknowledge its right to exist. There are those on the right–my beloved neoconservatives–who think a clear-cut “victory” is possible against Hamas, which is ridiculous, or that real enemy is Iran, which should be attacked forthwith (by the United States)–which is criminally foolish.

My own feeling was, and has been, that Israel had the right to wage a limited campaign against Hamas’s military capability.

The most valuable targets were probably hit in the first few days–a clear defeat for Hamas–and that, as Ehud Barak desired, the French cease-fire should have been accepted when it was first proposed, with an international force established to block the tunnel-smuggling of new weapons across Gaza’s southern border (and with the understanding that Israel would pursue similar, limited bombing campaigns in the future if the rockets from Gaza persisted). The current ground campaign seems destined for failure, according to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a very astute observer of military actions. Here is his conclusion:

This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war.

Source: By Joe Klein Time

Filed under: Analysis, Aid, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Hamas tried to shoot down an IAF plane

Hamas tried to shoot down an IAF plane at the weekend using an anti-aircraft missile, the air force said during a briefing it held on Sunday.

The IDF has said that Hamas possesses several shoulder-held ground-to-air missiles, and in air raids overnight Saturday, the IAF hit a Gaza mosque in which a number of them were stored.

Meanwhile, IDF troops battled Palestinian gunmen in a suburb of Gaza City in one of the fiercest ground battles so far since the start of Operation Cast Lead as the army inched toward Gaza’s population centers and residents braced for an expansion of the offensive.

The fighting in the Sheikh Ajleen neighborhood erupted before dawn and continued into the morning as IDF infantrymen and tanks advanced toward Gaza City and its approximately 400,000 residents, Palestinian witnesses said. Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they ambushed the soldiers, leading to some of the heaviest fighting since Israel sent ground forces into the territory on Jan. 3.

Gunfire subsided in the early afternoon, with the IDF in control of buildings on the neighborhood’s outskirts.

At least 14 people were killed in Sunday’s fighting in and around Sheikh Ajleen, Palestinian health officials said. How many were gunmen and how many civilians was not immediately known. There was no word on IDF casualties.

At least 24 Palestinians had been killed across Gaza by early Sunday afternoon, according to Gaza health officials. Most were noncombatants, they said, including four members of one family killed when a tank shell hit their home near Gaza City.

The IDF has repeatedly stated that Hamas fighters are wearing civilian clothes and endangering civilians by operating out of heavily populated residential areas.

Overnight Saturday, IAF aircraft bombed over 60 Hamas targets in Gaza, including the home of Hamas military chief Ahmed Ja’abri.

At least 820 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians, have died since Operation Cast Lead was launched on Dec. 27, according to Palestinian medical officials. Thirteen Israelis, among them 10 soldiers, have been killed.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Filed under: MidEast, Aid, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Gaza war looks sets to go on

As the Israeli raids on Gaza and Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel continue, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen assesses why both Israel and Hamas seem likely to pursue the conflict.

After two weeks of war both sides have reasons to believe they can fight on.

Israel has suffered relatively light casualties, a fraction of the dead and wounded of Gaza. Even though many reserve units have now been mobilised, which means a large number of husbands and fathers are in uniform and potentially in the line of fire, public support for the war is holding steady.

The government has managed the war of Israeli expectations far more effectively than it did in Lebanon in 2006. Victory has been defined in less sweeping terms, so that it will be harder for anyone to accuse the government of failure.Even so, it has set objectives that need to be met if Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are going to have any kind of political career when this is over.

Unlike Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is leaving office because of allegations of corruption, Mr Barak and Ms Livni face a general election on 10 February.

They have set two main objectives, neither of which has been achieved yet.

First, damage the Hamas military wing so badly that they will either be unable to launch rockets into Israel, or be so intimidated that they will not dare.

Israel’s second demand is that the border between Gaza and Egypt is controlled so that Hamas will not be able to bring in weapons and money through tunnels.

Source: By Jeremy Bowen BBC News

Filed under: Analysis, Aid, Al Jazeera, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

US abstention in Security Council vote a warning to Israel

New York Times UN bureau chief who now works at the International Peace Institute, a think-tank that conducts research on UN affairs and conflict resolution. The US vetoed an earlier Security Council statement, proposed by Libya, condemning the outbreak of violence in Gaza, objecting to the “unbalanced” equation of Hamas shelling with the Israeli military operation

“That’s the most [the US has] ever done on a resolution the Israelis opposed, which I see as a sign that Israel may have gone too far,” said Thomas Weiss, codirector of the UN Intellectual History project and a professor of political science at the City University of New York.

“If you’re reading tea leaves, if I were an Israeli diplomat I’d be worried,” Weiss told the Post.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev reiterated after the Security Council vote that Israel will only accept a measure that places responsibility for the military action on Hamas’s shoulders.

The international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas’s terrorist activity and make clear that a terrorist organization can never be a legitimate leadership,” Shalev said.

Hamas also dismissed the resolution, with spokesmen in the Middle East expressing irritation that they were not consulted.

“Nobody consulted Hamas or talked to Hamas. Nobody put Hamas in the picture and yet Hamas is required to accept it. This is unacceptable,” Muhammad Nazzal, a senior Hamas official based in Syria, told Al-Arabiya television.

Resolution 1860 passed late Thursday by consensus, with the other 14 members of the council voting unanimously in favor of the text, which called for “an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.”

It was not drafted under the UN’s Chapter Seven, which would have permitted the creation of an international military force to implement the terms of the resolution

Source: Jerusalem Post

Filed under: MidEast, Aid, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAF, IDF, Israel, Kassam Rockets, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War