A Gaza explosion from Israeli aerial bombardments of the people. Hamas, the legitimately elected government of the Palestinian Authority, has been villified in the corporate press.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
04:54 Mecca time, 01:54 GMT
Israel closes in on Gaza City
Large explosions and ground battles were reported close to the centre of Gaza City overnight
Israeli troops have tightened their military grip on the Gaza Strip as the war on Gaza enters its 11th day.
Air and naval bombardments killed 45 Palestinians on Monday, bringing to 548 the number of Palestinians killed since the offensive began on December 27.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 wounded in the battles around Gaza City on Monday night, the Israeli military said early on Tuesday.
The military said an errant tank shell fired by its own forces hit the soldiers' position.
The deaths were the biggest blow to Israel's military since it launched its ground assault on Saturday, with only one other soldier killed in the previous two days.
Nonetheless, witnesses told Al Jazeera that the Israeli ground offensive was closing in on Gaza City, where Israel believes most of the Hamas leadership to be.
Large explosions and intense ground battles close to the centre of the city in the eastern neighbourhood of Shejaiya, were reported late on Monday and into the early hours of Tuesday.
Flares lit up the skies as Israeli attack helicopters and fighter jets flew low over the city.
A spokesman for the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, told Al Jazeera that Israeli tanks were trying to move into Gaza City.
He said that the group's fighters had destroyed an Israeli armoured personnel carrier in the clashes.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the Gaza Strip, said that much of the fighting was taking place around a high area on the outskirts of the city.
The area gives an overview of the entire northern part of Gaza, which would be strategically useful to the Israeli military, and because of its height and elevation, it had probably also been used to fire rockets into Israel, our correspondent said.
Fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters was also reported in eastern Jabliya in the northern Gaza Strip.
'Missiles everywhere'
Moussa el-Hadda, a retired doctor in the Gaza Strip, said "all of Gaza is dark except for the flares fired by F-16s and Apache [attack helicopters]".
"The F-16s for the first time are flying very low and shooting missiles everywhere.
"Nobody can leave their home, we have no shelters and Israel knows this. They just bombed everywhere and most of their bombs are hitting houses," he told Al Jazeera.
Earlier, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, told members of parliament that Gaza City was partially surrounded.
"We have hit Hamas hard, but we have not yet reached all the goals that we have set for ourselves," he said.
Dozens of Palestinians were reported to have been detained during the Israeli push into the Gaza Strip, with Israel saying they were Hamas fighters.
Hamas confident
Despite 10 days of constant bombardment of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military, a senior Hamas official said on Monday that "victory is coming" for Palestinian fighters.
Mahmoud al-Zahar said that the movement's armed wing had "given the most beautiful performances during its confrontation with the army that the world thought invincible".
"We will defeat it, God willing," he said.
Israeli officials say the assault on Gaza is aimed at stopping Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel.
Al-Zahar warned that Israel's war on Gaza had opened it up to retribution by Palestinian fighters.
"They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine," he said.
"They have legitimised the destruction of their synagogues and their schools by hitting our mosques and our schools."
'Fewer rockets'
Palestinian fighters have continued to fire rockets into southern Israel despite the Israeli military offensive.
But Major Avital Leibovitch, an Israeli military spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera that the cross-border attacks were being slowed.
"Those rockets are coming less and less, because today we have had approximately 20 launchings which is one-tenth of Hamas's original launching capabilities ... there are signs that Hamas is weakening," she said.
"The second stage of the operation is going as planned, we have a variety of forces joining in this and it is proceeding according to the plan."
Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas's military wing, the Izz-e-din al-Qassam Brigades, warned the Israeli military that it had many fighters ready to face it in the Gaza Strip.
"We have prepared thousands of brave fighters who are waiting for you in each corner of the street and will welcome you with fire and iron," he said.
"As long as the aggression intensifies, your losses will increase and you will sink further into the Gaza quagmire."
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
05:24 Mecca time, 02:24 GMT
UN: Humanitarian crisis worsening
Holmes said there were fears that the humanitarian situation would further deteriorate
The UN has said that there is an "a worsening and an increasingly alarming" humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, told reporters on Monday that officials believed as many as 25 per cent of the 548 people killed in the fighting were civilians and that Gaza's health system, overwhelmed by the more than 2,500 injured, was "increasingly precarious".
"This is, in our view, a humanitarian crisis," Holmes said. "It's very hard for me to see any other way you could describe it, given the conditions in which the population are living."
Holmes added that "cluster munitions are being used", and that it was "a fair presumption" that most of the civilians killed were women and children.
He also said there were fears that the humanitarian situation would further deteriorate as the strip, home to 1.5 million people, was suffering from acute shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies.
Israeli leaders have maintained that there is no humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians living in the densely populated territory, and that they have been keeping border crossings open and are delivering vital supplies.
Several times last week, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, denied there was a humanitarian crisis.
She said in Paris on Saturday that Israel had been careful to protect civilians and there was no need for a humanitarian truce, since there was no humanitarian crisis.
Iyad Nasr of the Red Cross in Gaza City said Israel's offensive against Gaza had worsened the hardships created by the Israeli blockade over the last 18 months.
"The size of the operations and the size of the misery we are seeing here on the ground is just overwhelming," he said.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
03:06 Mecca time, 00:06 GMT
Arab ministers hold UN Gaza talks
Bush has repeatedly blamed Hamas for the crisis in Gaza
Arab foreign ministers have held talks at the United Nations in New York to press the Security Council for action over the crisis in Gaza.
The meeting on Monday of the Palestinian, Egyptian and other ministers with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, follows a US decision to block a Libyan-backed proposal for the UN to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza last weekend.
Al Jazeera's Ghida Fakhry at the UN in New York said UN sources now described the Libyan proposal as "dead" and said a new proposed resolution was being mooted by the French, current president of the council, who were attempting to gain Arab support for it.
UN sources said the proposed new resolution would have three main points: An urging for an immediate ceasefire, the formation of some sort of "humanitarian corridor" for much-needed aid and a form of "monitoring mechanism" for the ceasefire.
Jean-Maurice Ripert, French ambassador to the UN said after the discussions: "We will do our best to have a resolution as soon as possible, and as soon as feasible."
However Gabriela Shalev, Israel's UN ambassador said there was no point any ceasefire resolution while Hamas fighters continued to fire rockets at Israel.
"The situation will be ripe for a ceasefire whenever Hamas will stop shooting the rockets and we will have guarantees that there is going to be a comprehensive package to ensure a long-term ceasefire," she told Reuters news agency.
Further informal talks between council members are expected to continue on Tuesday morning, while later on in the day Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, will also arrive in New York for talks with the UN secretary-general.
An open meeting is also reported to be held on Tuesday where Abbas will address the council.
'Arab harmony'
Ahead of the meeting Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said the meeting was to "show harmony among Arabs" and support for a speedy end to the Israeli offensive.
Malki said he hoped the Security Council would pass a resolution calling for an "immediate and permanent" ceasefire in Gaza.
Malki said the Arabs wanted "a resolution that will permit first of all ending the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, lifting the siege, opening the crossings between Gaza and Israel, and also between Gaza and Egypt".
At least 548 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last 10 days, with more than 80 deaths reported since Israeli launched a ground offensive that began on Saturday.
In a statement released on Sunday, Ban appealed "to all members of the international community to display the unity and commitment required to bring this escalating crisis to an end".
An Arab draft resolution circulated by Libya last week, condemning Israel and calling for an end to its offensive, was dismissed by the US as "unacceptable" and "unbalanced" because it did not call for an end to Hamas rocketfire targeting Israel.
On Monday, George Bush, the US president, said any ceasefire to end the Gaza crisis must include provisions that prevent Hamas from using the coastal strip to fire rockets into Israel.
"Instead of caring about the people of Gaza, Hamas decided to use Gaza to use rockets to kill innocent Israelis," Bush said at the White House.
"Any ceasefire must have the conditions in it so that Hamas does not use Gaza as a place from which to launch rockets," Bush added.
Source: Agencies
Monday, January 05, 2009
14:00 Mecca time, 11:00 GMT
In the US, Gaza is a different war
By Habib Battah
The mainstream US media has been careful to balance images of Gazan suffering with those of Israelis, leading to accusations it is not reflecting the unequal death toll
The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.
On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.
As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.
The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.
Arab frustration
To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.
If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?
When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.
What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians - would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?
Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.
For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.
To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?
Context stripped
Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.
By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.
Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket - while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle."
Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.
When number of deaths did appear - sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen - it was identified as the number of "people killed" rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians.
No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as "rising tensions in the Middle East" by news anchors.
With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear.
ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as "Mideast Violence". And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll.
On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets.
The reporter's script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing "everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis". And with that McGregor-Wood signed off.
Palestinian perspective missing
There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead.
For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.
In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks.
Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other's views.
Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged.
Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. "How many people did we kill in Germany?" Scarborough posed.
The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. "They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table," he said repeatedly.
Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough's characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature.
According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it "very clear" that they were uninterested in peace talks.
Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, "could not be trusted", according to Bill Clinton, the former US president.
Gregory then added that Hamas had "undercut the peace process" and actually welcomed the attacks.
"The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn't want the ceasefire," he said.
Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be "crushed" but voicing concern over the cost of such action.
Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention.
Victim's perspective
Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.
For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed.
The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors.
On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin's new grandchild.
On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story.
For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households.
Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves.
The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established.
The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood.
Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant.
Palestinian voices
The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live.
Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions.
The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals.
On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements?
For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a "durable" ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets.
Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas.
Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply "the Palestinian resistance".
While American analysts map out Israel's strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one.
Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York.
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
Source: Al Jazeera
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