who doesn’t warn against humanitarian crisis in Gaza?

ha!

Israel? Greenland’s permafrost?

One can only hope karma’s a bitch

Palestinian farmer killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza A Palestinian farmer was shot dead on Friday by Israeli soldiers in his Gaza fields along the border with Israel, local medics said. The young farmer named Bahjat Abu Daqqa was shot fatally wounded by Israeli fire east of Khan Yunis from an army position along the border fence, according to the sources.

Livni to push for international force in Gaza Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to discuss the idea of the deployment of a NATO force in the region in talks with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Belgium over the weekend, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Traditionally NATO’s position was that it would not deploy here until there was a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and does not want to go to Gaza and risk attack from Hamas, which has made clear it would oppose a NATO presence. However, in recent months the idea of deploying NATO forces in Gaza has been raised as one way of possibly reinstating Abbas there, with the idea that he would ‘ride in’ on NATO’s back.

Gaza’s donkeys in demand as fuel crisis mounts While working donkeys have been bought and sold in Gaza since before Samson pulled down the Philistines’ temple, it is a long time since they have been as valuable as they are now. Prices have risen, according to the traders, by up to 60 per cent since Israel closed off the enclave after Hamas’s enforced takeover of the Strip almost six months ago.

Israeli extremists march to set up new outposts in West Bank Israeli right-wing activists marched up a hill outside the occupied West Bank’s largest settlement on Sunday aiming to set up a symbolic new wildcat settlement outpost…Their action came on the 20th anniversary of the first Palestinian intifada, an uprising that eventually led to mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and that passed quietly on Sunday without commemoration on either side.

Carrying orange flags and signs reading “The Land of Israel for the people of Israel,” around 200 mostly young activists climbed a hill outside the walls of Maale Adumim as several dozen police looked on.

Organisers said the activists did not intend to stay at the sites but were staging the action in order to send a message to the government.

“We didn’t come here to build, but to protest,” Arieh Eldad, an MP from the right-wing National Union party, told AFP.

According to Arieh Itzhaki, one of the event’s organisers: “If E-1 falls into Palestinian hands it will be dangerous for the future of the state of Israel.”

...The E-1 corridor, stretching from the edge of Jerusalem east to Maale Adumim, is mostly uninhabited but is part of the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

The Palestinians have said that if Israel makes good on plans to construct in the area and thereby link Jerusalem to Maale Adumim, it would effectively split the West Bank in half and separate the territory from east Jerusalem, which they want as the capital of their future state.

Close to two thousand Palestinian pilgrims trapped in Egypt Close to two thousand Palestinian pilgrims who arrived in Egypt on Saturday protested Egyptian demands that they return to the Gaza Strip through an Israeli-controlled border crossing, security officials and pilgrims said…The Palestinians, who recently finished their pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, arrived on two ferries at the port city of Nuweiba on the Sinai Peninsula from Jordan, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Israeli tanks and troops backed by helicopter gunships raided the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least seven Palestinian gunmen, militant sources and hospital officials said….Several other Palestinians, including a 7-year-old boy and a Reuters Television sound operator, Nihad Odehtallah, were wounded.

Hence.. Islamic Jihad vows not to disarm A senior leader of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) movement in Gaza said on Saturday that his movement would not disarm since resistance against Israel was a way to achieve the Palestinian people’s goals…‘For us, the resistance was not our aim but a way to reach the goals of the Palestinian people who are suffering from the occupation and have no other choices to face the Israeli aggression,’ said Naffez Azzam, a senior Jihad leader in Gaza City.

While the rest of the nuclear powers are said to have dismantled them, the Israelis have reportedly made considerable investments in neutron weapons and it isn’t at all unlikely that a plan for their use has been considered as the ultimate solution for their “Palestinian problem” in the Gaza Strip and possibly the West Bank as well.

Should Israel come under serious attack from Iranian missiles in any further escalation of the current state of crisis in the greater Middle East, what could happen in the aftermath defies imagination.

Sometimes no Peace

Jeez. Neutron weapons? Bloody ‘ell.

Today’s news…
Hamas raids rival Fatah offices in Gaza Armed men from the Islamist Hamas movement raided the Gaza offices of the rival Fatah movement overnight ahead of a key anniversary of president Mahmud Abbas’s party, officials said on Sunday. Gunmen from the Hamas-run Executive Force broke into Fatah headquarters in Gaza City, confiscating equipment and computers, Fatah officials said. At least two other Fatah offices in the coastal territory were also targetted.

Which came after… 14 Hamas members were arrested in the West Bank Palestinian security forces arrested 14 members of the Islamist Hamas movement on Saturday in dawn raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a Palestinian security official said. ‘We arrested them in order to question them about their membership of the Executive Force and about plots to undertake actions that endanger the security situation,’ the official told AFP.

IDF kills 2 Gaza militants trying to place bomb near fence Israel Defense Forces troops shot and killed two Palestinian militants Sunday as they tried to place a bomb on the security fence along the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported….Early on Friday, the IDF killed one of Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia’s bodyguards during an arrest operation in Ramallah.

And of course… Israel denies Italian delegation entry into Gaza – can’t let any independent sources of verification spoil our little concentration camp.

They also have genetic weapons that target specific DNA traits.
The breakdown of the sewage system in Gaza could provide a nice cover for their use.

I take it there’s a strong scientific basis for these “genetic weapons”? After all, they’re all Semites.

The actual existence of “genetically targeted biological weapons” is of course unproven, undocumented and entirely theoretical, though plausible.

I didn’t intentionally introduce this as a possibility (though it was mentioned in a link) and would certainly hope that they don’t exist.

The fact remains that the IDF has a million and a half Palestinians under siege in the Gaza Strip with severely limited resources and no means to escape their plight or any realistic hope of improving their own lots.

As the noose tightens on the Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza, though it is in Gaza where the situation currently is the most critical, as it is they that are under the “control” of Hamas; eventually these circumstances will lead to further escalations in the level of violence.

In the event of any outside attack or credible threat, such as ballistic missile strikes from Iran, Syria or Lebanon; there are those in the IDF that will use the crisis as an opportunity for radical action to deal with the “Palestinian problem.”

While any contemplation of the utilization of weapons of mass destruction “internally” are in times of relative peace far too radical for any possibility of implementation, in the event of mass casualties of Israeli citizens or upon the premise of an attempted use of biological or chemical weapons by Israel’s adversaries, these military options become viable politically and are easily within the capabilities of the IDF.

Sometimes no Peace

After all, they’re all Semites.

LOL, no they’re not.

Admittedly, Semite is a cultural term, but indeed they are all Semites if they speak Hebrew or Arabic.

Gaza pilgrims stay on their buses More than 1,000 Palestinian pilgrims are refusing to leave the buses on which the Egyptian authorities want to return them to their homes in Gaza…The pilgrims want to go home through the Rafah border crossing point. But Egypt is insisting they use Aouja, which is controlled by Israel.

IDF kills pilgrim at Erez IDF troops at the Erez border crossing shot and killed a female Palestinian pilgrim returning from Mecca and wounded four others on Sunday night, according to Palestinian accounts…The Palestinians also said four other people were wounded by IDF fire.

More than one third of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2007 were civilians who were not involved in hostilities, an Israeli human rights group said in a report released on Monday. ‘In 2007, about 35 percent of those killed were civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities when killed,’ said the report by the B’Tselem organisation. Out of the 373 Palestinians killed, 131, or some 35 percent, were civilians who were not involved in fighting, the report said — a decrease of 19 percentage points from the 2006 figure of 54 percent.

Out of the 373 Palestinians killed, 131, or some 35 percent, were civilians who were not involved in fighting, the report said — a decrease of 19 percentage points from the 2006 figure of 54 percent.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2007 nearly halved compared to the previous year — 373 died up to December 29 this year, while 657 were killed in 2006, it said.

Relative calm before the storm?

Sometimes no Peace

Maybe.

Egypt Allows Palestinians to Return to Gaza Egypt allowed about 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims to cross back into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after they had been stranded for days in the Egyptian Sinai on their way back from Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The decision came against a background of tensions between Egypt and Israel over what Israel regards as Egypt’s failure to maintain a secure border with Gaza, and may exacerbate those tensions further. (NYT)

And, Israel irate about Palestinian pilgrims Israel criticized Egypt Wednesday for letting Palestinians returning from Mecca to enter Gaza at the Rafah Crossing, which is controlled by Hamas…‘This is against all agreements,’ a senior Israeli military official told The Jerusalem Post. The official said Cairo’s decision to open the Rafah Crossing to the pilgrims would damage Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and undermine his government in Ramallah on the West Bank. (UPI)

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill seven Palestinians Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip killed seven Palestinians overnight, including three militants from the Hamas movement that has ruled the Gaza Strip since June, medics said on Wednesday. In the largest operation, a helicopter strike near Gaza City killed six militants and wounded another 11 people, Palestinian medics said. (AFP)

Gaza sewage, water disaster looms More than 1.4 million Gaza Palestinians are facing an impending health disaster from decaying sewage and water systems that lack vital spare parts, fuel, and maintenance work, due to an Israeli economic siege on the Gaza Strip. ‘We are a one-generator-failure away from disaster,’ Michael Bailey, an Oxfam spokesman, told the Middle East Times. (Middle East Times)

“The situation is verging on critical. There are 35 sewage pumping stations operational in Gaza. If one of the pumps breaks there is no way to replace it, because of a lack of spare parts,” said Bailey, whose organization works with Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utilities. “This would mean sewage backing into homes and onto the streets and the resulting health problems associated with it.”

In March an earth embankment around a sewage reservoir in the northern Gaza Strip collapsed spewing a river of waste and mud that killed at least five people.

...The World Bank and UNICEF have reported that despite repeated requests Israel has forbidden the importation by any means — sea, air, or by land across the Egyptian border — of consignments of pumps, metal pipes, air and oil filters, and other goods that need to be obtained from outside Gaza; while allowing only a few basics to be trucked through the Erez crossing with Israel in the northern Gaza Strip.

Egypt arrests five Bedouin over Sinai protests Authorities stormed houses of several Bedouin tribes, arresting five people Wednesday over allegedly inciting anti-government protests a day earlier complaining of economic conditions in the impoverished northern Sinai peninsula. Hundreds of Bedouins burned tires and hurled stones at government cars in an area south of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza on Tuesday. A government employee was seriously injured and five cars were smashed. (IHT)

Bedouin in north Sinai are demanding the resolution of bank loans for some 8,000 farmers who have been unable to pay back their debts and that land be distributed to local Bedouin instead of to outside investors.

A million and a half people living in a ghetto cordoned off from the rest of the world by the IDF.

It is amazing to me that things remain as peaceful as they’ve been.

Must be difficult for those who have journeyed to Mecca to return to the uncertainty of life in the Gaza Strip.

Powerful faith.

Peace,

Israeli Offensive Kills 11 in Gaza The Israeli army stepped up a broad offensive in the Gaza Strip starting Thursday and killed at least 11 Palestinians in a 24-hour period after militants fired a rocket that struck deep into Israel…Palestinians accused Israel of poisoning the atmosphere ahead of President Bush’s visit to the region next week.

In strikes all over Gaza, Israeli aircraft and tanks hit buildings the Israelis said were used by militants. In one clash, Israel shelled a house in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing a militant along with his mother, sister and brother. Israeli army spokeswoman Capt. Noa Meir said militants were “intentionally using civilian areas” to fire at troops and blamed them for the deaths…In another strike, a 14-year-old boy was critically wounded. His limp body, a mangled foot dangling, was rushed into a hospital emergency room.

...For weeks the Israelis have been conducting pinpoint strikes at suspected Gaza militants involved in rocket fire. On Thursday they reverted to the tactic of hitting buildings, putting civilians in the line of fire.

PA doesn’t want demilitarized Palestine The prospects for a breakthrough in the peace process in the near future have dwindled following reports that Israel will demand that the future Palestinian state be demilitarized, Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah said Thursday. (Jerusalem Post)

The PA leadership said it was very concerned by the fact that Israel was planning to demand that the IDF be able to operate inside a future Palestinian state to foil terrorist attacks or a military offensive from the east.

“The Palestinian Authority rejects talk about a demilitarized Palestinian state,” a senior PA official told The Jerusalem Post. “A Palestinian state that does not have a strong security force won’t be able to survive for one day. Every day Israel sends yet another message that it does not want peace with its neighbors.”

Another official in Ramallah said Israel’s talk about a demilitarized Palestinian state and retaining control of Ma’aleh Adumim and other settlement blocs in the West Bank “proves that Israel is not working toward achieving a two-state solution.”

Israel, he added, wanted a Palestinian state only on parts of the West Bank where the IDF would continue to operate freely. “Our position remains unchanged,” the official said. “There will never be peace without a Palestinian state in the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. We insist on a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders.”

...Nabil Shaath, a former minister and a top adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel’s recent actions and statements jeopardized the future of the peace process. “It’s impossible for us to negotiate on the basis of land for peace while Israel is taking our lands and continuing to build more settlements,” he said. “Israel is doing everything to sabotage the understandings reached at the Annapolis peace conference.”

Four killed in Gaza as Israel vows to up army operations Four Palestinians, including at least two civilians, were killed in an Israeli incursion in Gaza on Sunday as Israel vowed more operations in the Hamas-run territory in response to rocket fire. The Palestinian Authority slammed ‘Israeli escalations’ amid revived peace talks and ahead of a landmark visit to the region by US President George W. Bush to bolster the relaunched negotiations. (AFP)

Seventeen-year-old Ziad Abu Raqba died after being shot in the chest during the incursion, medics said, adding that the teenager was not a member of any militant group…An air strike on a house east of Al-Bureij killed Iman Hamdan, a 34-year old woman and Mahmud Abid, an 18-year-old member of Hamas’s armed wing, medics said, adding that several other people were wounded in the strike.

A fourth man, Ahmed Khalaf, 29, was killed by a tank shell as the fighting continued past sundown, with helicopters and tanks laying down a heavy barrage of fire in the area of the operation…At least 50 Palestinians have been wounded in the fighting, medics said.

Nazareth protestors demand end to Gaza siege Some 10,000 Israeli-Arabs took to the streets of Nazareth Saturday afternoon in a mass demonstration demanding an end to the ‘siege on the Gaza Strip’...This mass protest, orchestrated by the Balad Party, the two factions of the Islamic movement, and the ‘Bnei Hakfar’ Israeli-Arab movement, was comprised of representatives of virtually every Arab political party and social movement in Israel. (YnetNews)

Gaza Outages Expand After Fuel Cutbacks Palestinians in Gaza will be forced to live without electricity eight hours a day, beginning Sunday, because Israel has sharply reduced fuel supplies to the territory’s only electric plant, the head of Gaza’s energy authority said…Israel said the fuel cutback was meant to send a ‘stern message’ to Gaza militants to stop rocket attacks on southern Israel. The power outages come just days ahead of President Bush’s visit to the region to promote nascent talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank.

On Sunday, Kanan Obeid, chairman of Gaza’s Hamas-run energy authority, said Gaza now has only 35 percent of the power its 1.5 million residents need. Israel supplies all of Gaza’s fuel and 60 percent of its electricity…“We have decided to reduce the amount of electricity that we supply and to have a gradual program, starting from today, of cutting the electricity for eight hours every day,” Obeid said.

Even before the latest cutback, which came as winter was setting in, power blackouts in Gaza were common because Israeli military strikes have knocked out electrical transformers.

“The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people,” said Hassan Akram, owner of a grocery in Gaza City. “We are the only losers. Now it’s cold and there’s no electricity.”

Collective punishment meant to incite more problems during the Bush visit?

Being left without electricity in the wintertime isn’t likely to help prevent rocket attacks.

Sometimes no Peace

2 killed in IDF air strikes in Gaza An Israel Defense Forces strike in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday killed two Palestinians, witnesses and medical officials said. The army is saying both casualties were firing at the troops, but Palestinian sources say at least on was a civilian. (Haaretz)

The army said both casualties were militants, but added it would look into the claims that civilians had been hit. A senior officer in charge of the area told Haaretz that even if the report turn out to be true, “the terrorist organizations are responsible for their deaths and not the IDF.”

A simple truth in Gaza The day before the US president arrived in the region, a crowd of thousands gathered in the Gaza City rain – preceded by a truck loaded with speakers they slowly proceeded through the city, carrying a total of 62 coffins, all of them empty…Each symbolised one of the people that Palestinians say died since Israel sealed the borders because they could not get out of Gaza to receive medical treatment. (Al Jazeera)

Threat To Cut U.S. Aid Opens Rift With Egypt Pro-Israel advocates in Washington refrained from contesting a congressional decision last month to withhold part of American military aid to Egypt, in what appears to be a departure from a 30-year-old unwritten understanding that Israel would help Cairo fight off any efforts to cut American assistance to Egypt. (Forward)

Since 1979, when Washington put together generous military-assistance packages following the signing of the Camp David peace accords, Israel and Egypt — the two largest recipients of American foreign aid — have been mutually supportive of each other’s aid packages. But when Congress decided last month to condition aid to Egypt on a crackdown on arms smuggling across the Gaza border and on improving its human rights record, Israel and its supporters in Washington remained noticeably silent.

The lack of support for Cairo among Israel’s allies in Washington so rankled the Egyptians that Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Gheit accused the pro-Israel lobby last month of trying to “harm Egypt’s interests with the Congress,” and has prompted talk of a deepening crisis in Egypt’s relations with Israel and the United States.

Food crisis worsening in Gaza: World Food Programme Food is running short for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the impoverished Gaza Strip and more aid is urgently needed to prevent a humanitarian crisis, the World Food Programme said on Friday…Some 302,000 people need food aid in Gaza, equivalent to nearly two-thirds of the population not including refugees, WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told journalists. (AFP)

Nearly 70 percent of the 1.5 million people in Gaza live on less than 250 dollars (169 euros) a month, while food accounts for 60 percent of household expenditure…Anaemia rates have risen to 77.5 percent as Gaza’s isolation has deepened, Berthiaume said.

“I would like the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza to be acknowledged and there to be some recognition that only a third of the people in Gaza support Hamas,” said Karen Koning AbuZayd, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency.

“We are seeing evidence of stunting of the children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented,” she said.

And perhaps Bush’s visited has forced the Israelis to temporarily relent in some ways. Barak authorizes increasing shipments of diesel fuel to Gaza (YnetNews)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has authorized the temporary increase of diesel fuel sent to Gaza’s power station, State prosecutors said Thursday in their answer to a High Court petition filed by human rights groups.

...The petitioning human rights groups, Adalah and Gisha, said in a statement that “Israel, which controls Gaza’s borders, is making cynical use of the population’s complete dependency on the supply of basic necessities such as fuel and electricity.

And, eventually… David Miliband and Douglas Alexander concerned over impact on Gaza of fuel cuts by the Government of Israel (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

Three Palestinians killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza Three Palestinian militants, including the local head of an armed group, were killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp of Gaza City late Sunday, medics and security sources said…They said an air-to-ground missile struck their car in Shati camp, killing Nidal al-Amudi, a head of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is loosely linked to the Fatah group of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.