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Gazans face ‘humanitarian crisis’ as Israeli raids intensify

Aid agencies warn of looming disaster with supply shortage inflicting more suffering on families
Independent

Breaking News
Children Killed In Gaza Airstrike

Israeli tanks massing on the Gaza border Israel May Call Truce 1:48



Blast as missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft strike in northern Gaza Strip

Brothers Iyad, Mohammed and Abdelsattar al-Astal, aged seven to 10, were killed while they played on a street in southern Gaza, according to witnesses.

The missile strike may have been targeting a rocket launching pad near their home in al-Qarara.

With tanks and troops massed for a threatened ground offensive and with no ceasefire in sight, Israeli planes and naval guns staged more than 50 bomb attacks.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the overnight bombing targeted rocket launchers and weapons storage facilities.

Witnesses in Gaza said several people had been wounded in the attacks, but no deaths were reported.

Hamas has continued to fire rockets deep into Israel.

Israel has allowed 200 foreigners to leave Gaza as the death toll from the seven-day blitz reached at least 420, including the killing of a top Hamas commander.

Residents with dual citizenship have been passing through the Erez crossing at the request of their own governments, an Israeli defence ministry spokesman told Sky News.

"They're people married to Palestinians, when they were abroad and they came here and they've been here for years and at this time they've asked to leave due to the tension," spokesman Peter Lerner said.

He denied reports Israel had ordered the foreigners to go.

Many of those leaving are from the United States, Russia and Ukraine.

Palestinian-American Joanne Haji spoke to Sky's Dominic Waghorn at the crossing.

You know how it feels waiting for death? Yes it's very strong, it's very bad.

Palestinian-American Joanna Haji describes Gaza

"We don't know how to sleep, there's no food, there's nothing. And Arabs are not moving and they're supposed to move. If you go see Gaza it's like an unliving country," she said.

Israeli and Egyptian borders remain closed, with no one else able to pass through.

On Thursday, Israeli jets fired missiles on the home of hardline Hamas figure Nizar Rayan in the Jabaliya refugee camp.



The attack killed him, his four wives, 10 of his children and two neighbours, witnesses and medical sources said.

Rayan's headless body was hurled into the street by the force of the blast, which also destroyed or damaged 12 nearby houses.

Considered to be among the most hawkish of Hamas leaders, Rayan was the most senior figure to be killed by Israel since Abdel Aziz al Rantissi in 2004.

Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said: "This cowardly enemy must realise that he will regret these crimes against our people."

He called for a 'day of wrath' to avenge his death.

In addition to the 420 dead, Israel's Operation Cast Lead has also left more than 2,100 people wounded, according to Palestinian emergency services.

Hamas Rocket Strikes On Israel
Dec 31st Over 100 (approximate figure)
30th 70 rockets
29th 80 rockets (approximate figure)
28th 40 rockets, mortar rounds and two Grad missiles
27th 110 rockets, mortar rounds, including a Grad-Katyusha
Boxing Day 25 mortar rounds
Christmas Day 7 Qassam rockets, one Grad, nine mortar rounds
Christmas Eve & 23rd 33 rockets (Grad-Katyushas and Qassams), 37 mortar shells
22nd 2 Qassams, 1 mortar
21st 19 Qassams, 3 mortars
20th 10 Qassams



Source: Israeli Defence Force

Rocket fire from Gaza has killed four people and wounded dozens in Israel.

Thursday's Israeli strikes also reportedly hit the parliament and justice ministry, rocket launching sites, tunnels for smuggling weapons or supplies into the territory and weapons storage facilities.

The New Year Resolution of Hamas and Israel is each to stand firm until the other cracks.

Sky News foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall's blog

Hundreds of houses have been destroyed and the United Nations says about 25% of the dead are civilians.

Food, fuel and medical supplies are all running short, aid agencies say.

Israel began the offensive on Saturday in response to rocket fire by Hamas and its allies but has failed to halt those attacks.
skynews

Robert Fisk's World: What's in a name? Quite a lot, where the military is concerned

Churchill objected to names of a frivolous nature and banned Operation Bunnyhug

I am bemused by the name of Israel's latest military operation against Hamas (and the usual cull of toddlers) in Gaza. The Israeli military calls it Operation Cast Lead. Come again? "Cast Iron" I might understand, though it would woefully misrepresent Israel's policies since they will in due course talk to the "blood-soaked terrorists" of Hamas when it suites their purposes just as they eventually talked to the "blood-soaked terrorists" of the PLO.

Armies like to tell us that their operational names come from a computer though I always doubted this. Operation Iraqi Freedom did not come from a computer. Operation Litani – Israel's hopeless 1978 invasion of Lebanon – didn't come from a computer either. Nor did Operation Peace for Galilee – the even more hopeless 1982 invasion of Lebanon that took the Israeli army to Beirut and infamy at Sabra and Chatila. Besides, the real military name of Peace for Galilee was Operation Snowball. And as we all know, snowballs get bigger as they roll downhill.

Perhaps it's nostalgia for real history, but I always thought the armies of the Second World War had a better flair for names. Operation Overlord – D-Day on 6 June 1944 – was a real cracker. So was Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa), though Operation Market Garden – the landings at Arnhem – pretty much reflected its dismal results.

Nazi Germany's ferocious Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 – was named after the 12th-century King Frederick of Germany and chief executive officer of the Holy Roman Empire. The much postponed and cancelled German invasion of England in 1940 would have been Operation Sea Lion – Winston Churchill must have appreciated that – although my graduate research into Irish neutrality in the Second World War revealed that Germany's tentative plans to invade de Valera's island was to have been called merely Operation Green. Well, it would, wouldn't it?

Churchill himself had strong views about such nomenclature. Indeed, a largely forgotten disquisition on the subject can be found in a memo he wrote to General Hastings Lionel "Pug" Ismay, his chief of staff, on 8 August 1943. "Operations in which large numbers of men may lose their lives," Churchill wrote, "ought not to be described by code words which imply boastful and overconfident sentiment, such as 'Triumphant', or, conversely, which are calculated to invest the plan with an air of despondency, such as 'Woebetide', 'Massacre', 'Jumble', 'Trouble', 'Fidget', 'Flimsy', 'Pathetic', and 'Jaundice'."

Churchill also objected to "names of a frivolous character" and therefore banned Operations Bunnyhug, Billingsgate, Aperitif and Ballyhoo.

"After all," Churchill added, "the world is wide and intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called 'Bunnyhug' or 'Ballyhoo'."

Churchill preferred proper names, the heroes of antiquity, figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the constellations and stars, famous racehorses – was it a ghost of this idea that persuaded the Ministry of Defence to call its 1990 airlift of troops to Saudi Arabia Operation Ascot? – and the names of British and American war heroes. As usual, Churchill was a bit preachy. "Care should be taken in all this process," he wrote. "An efficient and successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters." If only.

The Americans followed Churchill's advice when they decided to organise a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq of Iran in 1953. They called it Operation Ajax, though this might actually have fallen into Churchill's "despondency" bracket. Ajax was second only to Achilles in bravery, but he killed himself in a fit of madness. "Monty" Woodhouse, MI5's man in Tehran, chose a more prosaic name for the whole fandango: Operation Boot.

Muslim armies tend to be a little tiresome in their operational titles. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians named their attacks after prayers and then gave them numbers. The Fajr ("Dawn") operation was followed, I'm afraid, by Fajr Two, Fajr Three, Fajr Four and so on. Not very inventive. I guess the most frightening Middle Eastern name of all was Israel's Operation Grapes of Wrath, which reached its appalling end after Israeli artillerymen killed 106 Lebanese civilians – more than half of them children – in the south Lebanese village of Qana in 1996.

Operation Grapes of Wrath was no tribute to John Steinbeck but took its name from the blood-and-vengeance Book of Deuteronomy wherein chapter 32, the song of Moses before he dies leading his Jewish people towards the promised land, speaks of those who will be destroyed by the wrath of God. "The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young men and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs," announced verse 25.

Not a bad description of the Qana massacre. And this week, not a bad account of Israel's Gaza shenanigans. Maybe the Israelis should take a leaf out of Iran's book and call it Operation Grapes of Wrath Two.
Independent

Anne Penketh: Tehran's links with Hamas could spark retribution

How long will it take Iran to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon?

Independent

Rallies to protest about Gaza strikes



Tens of thousands of protesters will voice their anger at the Gaza bombing blitz today in a series of rallies across the UK

Up to 20,000 people - including the singer Annie Lennox and Respect MP George Galloway - are expected to march along the Embankment in London before walking to Trafalgar Square to call for an immediate end to the Israeli attacks.

The demonstration in the capital is the biggest of at least 18 organised across the country.

Former model Bianca Jagger and singer Lennox have backed the protests, calling on American president-elect Barack Obama to speak up against the bombardment.

Other rallies will take place at Blytheswood Square, Glasgow; Bedford Square, Exeter; Princes Street, Edinburgh; Bristol city centre; Bold Street, Liverpool; Norwich Forum; Portsmouth's Guildhall Square; Queen Victoria Square, Hull; Tunbridge Wells town centre; Leeds Art Gallery; All Saints Park, Manchester; Grey's Monument, Newcastle; Castle Square, Swansea; St Sampson's Square, York; Morrisons, Caernarfon; Bradford city centre; and Sheffield town hall.

Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone and comedian Alexei Sayle also added their support yesterday to the campaign to end the violence.

Speaking at a press conference in central London, Ms Jagger said: "I would like to make an appeal to president-elect Obama to speak up.

"People throughout the world were hopeful when he was elected and we must appeal to him to ask for the immediate cessation of the bombardment of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip."

Lennox spoke of her shock at watching scenes of the bombing on television.

She said: "A few days after Christmas I came downstairs, put the television on, and saw smoke pyres coming from buildings and I was shocked to the core because I was thinking as a mother and as a human being.

"How was this going to be the solution to peace?"

Comedian Sayle said he was speaking out because it was important for Jewish voices to be heard.

He said: "I want to feel proud of Israel, I want to be proud of my people but I am ashamed."

Also present at the press conference were the writer Tariq Ali, Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Mr Galloway.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded since Israel began its aerial campaign on Saturday, Gaza health officials said.

The UN said the death toll in Gaza included more than 60 civilians, 34 of them children.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one eighth of Israel's population within rocket range.

Israel launched the offensive after more than a week of Palestinian rocket fire that followed a six-month truce.

The demonstration is the culmination of days of smaller protests around the country and outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington, central London.

Another demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in London is planned.

More than 30 organisations, including the British Muslim Initiative and the Stop the War Coalition have joined forces to organise the protest.
Independent

Israeli troops 'move into Gaza'

Israeli ground troops have started to enter the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials have confirmed, a week after the offensive against Hamas began.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the intention was to "take control" of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets into Israel.

A BBC reporter in Gaza says it appears to be a limited operation with 10 to 15 vehicles crossing the northern border.

BBC

Gazans face ‘humanitarian crisis’ as Israeli raids intensify

Aid agencies warn of looming disaster with supply shortage inflicting more suffering on families

By Kim Sengupta in Jerusalem



After six days of Israeli bombardment, aid agencies say that Gazans are facing a humanitarian crisis with air strikes causing severe problems in getting food, medicine and fuel supplies to the besiegedcivilian population.

The assessment, by several international relief organisations, contradicts the statement by the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, during a visit to Paris yesterday that "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce". While relief shipments were allowed into Gaza by the Israeli authorities in the days before the start of the offensive, they came after weeks of virtually no supplies getting through, the agencies point out.

The biggest difficulty is that many people are too frightened by bombing to venture out to collect food rations. Gaza officials are also unwilling to take part in food distribution because they could be considered legitimate targets by the Israeli military for working for the Hamas-run administration. Chris Gunness of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which looks after 750,000 refugees in Gaza, said: "How can one carry out proper relief work in these conditions of violence? The people of Gaza have already suffered the most stringent economic sanctions. There are obviously problems with giving out aid. Even when people want to get food for their hungry family, they are very aware of the dangers they are facing in going out."

Mr Gunness said the agency carried out food distribution yesterday. "But, as things stand now, we have only a few days supply left."

Doctors inside Gaza report that hospitals are running out of medicine and equipment as the toll of dead and injured continues to rise and puts further pressure on stretched resources. Anaesthetics, antibiotics and drugs for cancer and other long-term illnesses are in short supply along with syringes and IV fluids.

Dr Hassan Khalaf, of the main Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said that Palestinian civilians are paying a terrible price: "We are getting really badly injured people coming in every day. What is the point of saying you are allowing food in for people when you then go on to bomb them? The Israelis may say they are just attacking Hamas but I am seeing children and women coming covered in blood. What we are seeing is a war on the people. The Hamas fighters firing the rockets are at the border, they are not in the city.

"We have organised the hospitals so that different ones are looking after different types of injuries. But the common problem we face is that we are having bad shortages in lots of things, especially anesthetics and antibiotics. We are talking to the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and I hope we shall get some help."

A serious shortage of industrial fuel is also exacerbating the difficulties for civilians after Israeli forces stopped supplies because the crossing points into Gaza were coming under regular rocket attacks, creating the danger of conflagrations. At the same time, the destruction of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt has blocked alternative routes for procuring transport diesel used by Palestinian households.

Christine Van Nieuwenhuyse, head of the World Food Programme for Gaza and the West Bank, acknowledged that a "significant amount" of food was allowed in by the Israelis before the start of the air strikes. "But we must not forget this came after weeks when hardly any food had got in at all. One of our warehouses is full but we have another one empty as it is in an area which has seen a lot of bombings.

"Our partners in Gaza are the Ministry of Social Welfare and their officials are not taking part in the distribution process because they feel they might get bombed for working for a Hamas government. This is a serious problem as is the fact that people are finding it difficult to move about. We are facing an acute food crisis."

Maxwell Gaylard, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for Gaza and the Palestinian territories, said "Gaza is facing a serious emergency, that is a fact. Food supplies have been allowed in but there are huge problems caused by the lack of industrial fuel and this is causing severe problems. To address all these problems we need a ceasefire."

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister said "We are doing our utmost to avoid unnecessary suffering for civilians. What we cannot understand is the claim by officials from the ministries there that they cannot take part in the relief effort because they will be targeted. This is nonsense, perhaps the real reason is that it is in the interest of Hamas to ensure that food does not get to the people due to their own particular agenda."
Independent

AT LAST, AS ISRAEL SENDS IN TANKS, HE'S... TONY THERE!
By Dean Rousewell
People

Israel's attack on Gaza
Israel invades Gaza: Heavy fighting as tanks cross border

Armour and infantry, backed by jets and helicopters, launch operation to seize Hamas rocket sites, as Miliband declares urgent need for immediate ceasefire

By Donald Macintyre and Kim Sengupta in Jerusalem
Sunday, 4 January 2009


Israeli troops and tanks were engaged in heavy fighting with Hamas militants last night after Israel followed up its eight-day air assault on Gaza with a ground offensive. The attack, backed by military helicopters, had been preceded by a heavy artillery bombardment.

Columns of tanks, some firing their weapons, crossed the boundary fence from three directions into northern Gaza under darkness. TV networks showed troops, marching in single file, crossing into Gaza, and gun battles could be heard.

Several hours into the armoured offensive, Israeli tanks had moved just over a mile into northern Gaza, according to witnesses, taking up positions in an area frequently used by militants to fire rockets across the border. A Palestinian petrol station along the invasion route was engulfed in flames after being hit by a tank shell. A spokesman for the Israeli forces predicted that the operation would take "many long days". Tens of thousands of reservists have been called up.

The move was almost immediately met with largely unanimous international condemnation, with the United Nations hastily arranging an overnight emergency session and Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon calling for "an immediate end" to the operation.

The United States also warned Israel in a statement that while it blamed Hamas for the tension, it had grown "deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation" in Gaza as the tanks rolled in. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack added: "We have expressed our concerns to the Israeli government that any military action needs to be mindful of the potential consequences to civilians ... It is obvious a ceasefire should take place."

In Europe there was hurried diplomacy. Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "Unfolding events show the urgent need for the immediate ceasefire that we have called for." Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said: "The Israeli ground offensive in Gaza, while widely anticipated, will be greeted with horror around the world."

The Israeli land attack began after heavy artillery was used in an urban area – for the first time in two years – to clear the way for its forces; the practice had been stopped after 18 members of a single family died in a barrage in November 2006. Yesterday 10 people were killed when shells hit a mosque packed with 200 people in the northern town of Beit Lahiya during evening prayers. The Israeli military confirmed last night that "large numbers of forces" had entered Gaza at "several points", and a correspondent of the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera reported that ground troops backed by artillery had mounted a series of incursions, from the disused airport close to Rafa in the south to the town of Beit Lahiya in the north.

Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said the aim was to seize areas from where Hamas was launching rocket attacks on southern Israel. Israeli media quoted unconfirmed witness reports suggesting there were incursions under way elsewhere in Gaza. A Hamas spokesman in Damascus, Mohammad Nazzal, said several Israeli soldiers had been killed in fighting in eastern Gaza, but gave no further details. Israeli forces said they were unaware of any casualties among their soldiers.

Khalil Abu Shamala, the director of a human rights organisation, spoke to The Independent on Sunday from his home in Gaza City. "The city is totally paralysed," he said. "Nobody is leaving their houses or can move from one place to another. There is no electricity, so everyone who has a radio is listening and waiting ... for an announcement from the Israelis. From what I understand we are being bombed by F-16s, and tanks are entering from the north and east of the city. I hear they plan to divide Gaza into three sections to weaken communications. They may also enter from the Egypt border and from the Mediterranean."

More than 10,000 Israeli troops and columns of armour had been massing on the Gaza border for days waiting for the order to go ahead. Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, said: "The campaign won't be easy and it won't be short," emphasising that the operation entails risking Israeli lives. "I know well the dangers that come with an offensive, and what the heavy price will be. I don't want to fool anyone. The residents of southern Israel will also undergo some tough times." Mr Barak also acknowledged publicly for the first time that Israel was braced against a second front being opened by Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon launching supportive rocket attacks. "We hope that the northern front will remain calm, but we are prepared for any possibility," he said.

Mr Barak is facing political as well as military risks by authorising the long-debated ground offensive in Gaza. A poll last week showed that while 53 per cent of Israelis favoured continuation of the air attacks, only 19 per cent supported the use of ground troops.

The incursions, and last night's destruction of a mosque, are also likely further to inflame opinion across the Muslim world, which has seen violent demonstrations, leaving 400 dead and more than 2,500 injured. Witnesses said the Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque was hit by up to three Israeli shells. One of the wounded worshippers, Salah Mustafa, told Al-Jazeera from a hospital that the mosque was packed. Another survivor, Mohammed Raheem, described "a huge noise and then people screaming, covered in blood". The Israeli military said last night they were still checking what led to the deaths.

In yesterday's air strikes, Israeli warplanes destroyed large parts of an American school in north-west Gaza in which one person was reported to have been killed and around a dozen injured. Four others, including Abu Zakaria al-Zamal, a senior commander of Hamas's military wing, died from wounds. He was the second Hamas leader killed in three days. Earlier Israeli diplomatic sources said they "were not holding their breath" that a visit by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy tomorrow, would lead to a solution. They said that draft peace proposals being put together by the European Union do not make adequate provisions for monitoring Hamas attacks.

Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader in Damascus, had given a warning that any ground assault would lead Israel to "a black destiny of dead and wounded". But he added that Hamas was "ready to co-operate with any effort leading to an end to the Israeli offensive against Gaza, lifting the siege and opening all crossings". Mr Meshaal did not mention earlier Hamas demands for the ceasefire to be extended to the West Bank.

The US has signalled that it will be playing a more active role in the drive to achieve a ceasefire. One theory is that although the Americans had given tacit approval to the air strikes, they had warned Israel against a land offensive. The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and several Arab foreign ministers are flying to New York over the weekend to urge the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution that would condemn Israel and demand a halt to its bombing campaign. The US has dismissed it as "unacceptable" and "unbalanced" because it makes no mention of halting the Hamas rocket attacks.
Indemendent

John McCarthy: If it was your home, what hope 'restraint'?
As Israeli ground troops entered Gaza, Hamas's already fragile incentive to rely on diplomacy alone was trampled underfoot

Israel's invasion of Gaza comes hard on the heels of its massive air campaign which, it says, is a justified retaliation for the Hamas rocket attacks against southern Israel. Every rocket or mortar fired from Gaza into Israel is reported to the international media and, at the time of writing, more than 400 had been counted during the week. Details of the Israeli attacks are harder to find, but the week's report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that the Israeli Air Force also dropped 400 bombs, not over seven days, but in just the first few minutes of its opening assault on Gaza. These and hundreds more bombs have killed over 400 Palestinians. The Hamas missiles have caused just four deaths.

The Israeli people expect their government to punish attacks on Israel, and with a general election taking place in just over a month, politicians are keen to show their readiness to do anything to protect Israeli civilians. Ehud Barak, defence minister in the coalition government, has seen his poll ratings – and those of the Labour Party he leads – rise as a result of the campaign against Hamas which he has called "a war to the bitter end".

Yet, after a week of air strikes, Hamas continues firing rockets and firing them deeper into Israel. And so it appears inevitable that the military campaign will grind on, causing more and more civilian casualties until international pressure for a truce will eventually become loud enough to promote a ceasefire.

And while its disproportionate response does provoke calls for restraint from many international bodies, the Israeli establishment continues to paint itself as the passive underdog under threat. Ehud Barak has described Israel as "a villa in the middle of a jungle"– a place of civilisation surrounded by savage hordes.

I've met many Israelis who see themselves as just that, convinced that the rest of the world does not understand their plight and that the only important issue is to stop the Hamas rockets. This week's OCHA report may state that Israel's blockade means that food, medical supplies, fresh water and fuel are so severely limited that Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, but Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, denies any such problem. She promotes a widely held view that the suffering of the people in Gaza is their own fault for tolerating Hamas leadership.

Is this intransigence so surprising? We have had 60 years during which the modern state of Israel has never been taken to task for ignoring international criticism. It has ignored, with impunity, countless UN resolutions on the right of return of Palestinian refugees, on ending its occupation of the West Bank and encouraging its civilians to settle in the Occupied Territories, among others.

And why are they not brought to task? The simple fact is that Israel has the most powerful psychological influence to count on – the world's collective guilt over the Holocaust. This means that although the world may sporadically slap Israel's wrists, no one dare go too far, perhaps out of fear of being accused of anti-Semitism or in any way attacking a people who have historically suffered so much. The tragedy is, though, that it is now another people, the Palestinians, who are suffering because of the world's hesitation to offend Israel.

Pro-Israeli sentiment is reinforced by many in the international arena who, privately perhaps, approve Barak's "villa in the jungle" metaphor. To some, Israel represents a foothold of Western values on the edge of the Arab world, which, with the rise of fundamentalist Islam, is perceived as a growing threat. And there is, to me, the very frightening growth of fundamentalist Christian belief – especially in the United States – that, given that the existence of the Israeli state is part of God's plan, it is above criticism.

President Bush and other world leaders have stated that if Hamas stopped firing rockets, then peace negotiations could resume.

But is there really a viable peace process to restart? The idea is that peace will come with a two-state solution and that Israel will graciously give up occupied territory in the West Bank to create a Palestinian state there and in Gaza.

But there are few signs that the Israeli establishment, fully committed to the Zionist goals of creating Eretz Israel (a Greater Israel that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan), plans to relinquish very much land at all: 250,000 Israelis already live on the West Bank. On the contrary, Israel's road and settlement building programmes continue apace.

Israel's policy has always been to build "facts on the ground" while delaying accepting any final borders. Her founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, summed this up with the phrase "where we plough our last furrow is where we put our border".

Ben-Gurion's political heirs are still ploughing. While conceding that a Palestinian state of some sort is necessary to ensure Israel is kept as purely Jewish as possible, they will put off delineating that state until Israel ends up with as much land and as few Palestinians as possible on that land.

As Israel continues to create ever more "facts on the ground", the prospects of the Palestinians being offered a reasonable share of what was meant to be their homeland become ever more remote. The Israelis presumably will count on Palestinians becoming so desperate for their own state, amid international weariness and ineffectiveness, that they will achieve their territorial and demographic goals.

One can only hope that president-elect Obama will bring pressure on Israel to change its policies. But that is not a strong hope. How many more times will the world rub its hands in despair and feebly "call on all parties to show restraint" as our television screens show civilians cowering under bombing raids and hospitals unable to treat the wounded?

Yes, Hamas must stop its rocket attacks. But surely, above all, it is time for Israel to be taken to task and charged with recognising the will of the international community.
Independent

'NYT,' Most Others in U.S. Media, Silent as Israel Invades

By Greg Mitchell

Published: January 04, 2009

NEW YORK (Commentary) Israel launched its much-anticipated invasion of Gaza on Saturday. For over a week, U.S. media had provided largely one-sided coverage of the conflict, with little editorializing or commentary arguing against broader Israeli actions.

Most notably, after more than eight days of Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket launching in Gaza, The New York Times had produced exactly one editorial, not a single commentary by any of its columnists, and only two op-eds (one already published elsewhere). The editorial, several days ago, did argue against the wisdom of a ground invasion - - but even though that invasion had become ever more likely all week the paper did not return to this subject.

Amazingly, the paper has kept that silence going in Sunday's paper, with no editorial or columnist comment on the Israeli invasion.

The invasion, to no one's surprise, did begin on Saturday -- so any further criticism will now come too late. As in the past, U.S. media coverage and commentary has overwhelmingly backed the Israeli actions (as it did in the Lebanon war in 2006, which turned into a fiasco).

On Friday, Amnesty International condemned the U.S. response to the "disproportionate" Israeli bombing of Gaza -- with largely U.S. weapons. Some of it amounts to U.S.-backed "human rights abuses," it charged.

The group recalled that the U.S. supplied most of the millions of cluster bombs dropped by Israel in the Lebanon war in 2006.

"Amnesty International USA is particularly dismayed at the lopsided response by the U.S. government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," the group told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the letter, which was released to the media.

Ethan Bronner, in a news report at The The New York times, observed, "The scope of the assault, and the days of buildup at the border, hint at an unstated but profound question: can the rockets really be stopped for any length of time while Hamas remains in power in Gaza? And if the answer is determined to be no, then is the real aim of the operation to remove Hamas entirely, no matter the cost?"

Meanwhile, a columnist for the Spectator in London argued for the arrest of Western journalists who have criticized Israel's actions. Israel starting adding artillery fire to the bombing, even before the invasion. One nighttime airstrike hit the offices of the Hamas weekly newspaper Al Resala in Gaza City, wounding 16 civilians who live nearby, Hamas and residents said.

And Amir Oren, in a column at Haaretz, concluded with a call to get done with Gaza: "[T]he IDF must move quickly to disengage, in order to free its attention for the paramount task of preparing a military blow to Iran, if diplomacy and deterrence fail. As long as the great threat of Iranian power is hovering, the smaller threats of Hezbollah and Hamas that derive from it will not be dispelled."

Israel, meanwhile, maintained its ban on foreign journalists entering the Gaza Strip Friday despite a recent Supreme Court order to allow a limited number of reporters to enter the territory.

The Jerusalem daily Haaretz put up an editorial critical of Israel's actions -- and the boosterism of President Bush. Excerpt: "The need to present an achievement has compelled the civilian leadership to add a ground campaign to the aerial onslaught.... Those who back the operation are already imagining Hamas collapsing, its leadership fleeing or killed, and house-to-house searches for weapons to be destroyed. After the operation, Gaza would be returned to Palestinian Authority control, purged of terrorism -- the Lebanon dream realized in Gaza. This is what these people believe.

"It would be best to cut this dream short before it turns into a dragged-out nightmare, and to limit the ground operation to more modest goals.

And Gideon Levy writes in a column at Haaretz: "Everything is permitted, legitimate and just. The moral voice of restraint, if it ever existed, has been left behind....Nobody is coming to the rescue -- of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy. The statesmen, the jurists, the poets, the authors, academe, and the news media -- pitch black over the abyss."
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