Palestinian funeral of martyrs killed in Israeli Air Force strikes on Gaza carried out on New Year's Day 2010. People are commemorating the one year anniversary of the siege.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
05:42 Mecca time, 02:42 GMT
Al Jazeera
Israeli jets and tanks strike Gaza
The Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip marked the latest violence along Gaza's border
At least four people, including a child, have been wounded when Israeli war jets and tanks struck several targets in eastern and southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources have said.
Israeli F16 fighters fired two missiles and tanks fired two shells early on Saturday that landed at empty areas east and northeast of Gaza City, witnesses said.
Local ambulances took four people from eastern Gaza for medical treatment at Gaza hospitals, according to medical sources. The four were lightly injured.
Residents also said Israeli warplanes carried out a fifth raid on a post belonging to the Hamas movement in the southeast of the Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported.
An Israeli army spokesman confirmed aircraft had attacked Gaza, but gave no further details.
The offensive marked the latest violence along Gaza's border, which has been mostly quiet since a war Israel launched in Gaza on December 27, 2008 ended on January 18.
Source: Agencies
IAF pounds Gaza one day after rocket attacks
Jan. 2, 2010
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST
One day after Grad-type rockets landed in Netivot, the IAF attacked a number of targets in the Gaza Strip Saturday night.
The IAF bombed three sites in southern, central and northern Gaza. Specifically, Israeli forces attacked a number of tunnels around the Gaza Strip which were used for smuggling. Palestinian media sources reported that two people, including a child, were injured in the attacks.
According to eye witnesses in the Gaza Strip, IAF fighter planes attacked an open field near a neighborhood east of Gaza City. Earlier Saturday, IAF fighter planes also attacked an area near Khan Yunis, which is in the southern part of Gaza. No injuries were reported.
Also on Saturday, Israeli navy ships lobbed a number of shells at several targets at a refugee camp in the central part of the Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported.
Eye witnesses claimed that a group of armed Palestinians succeeded in avoiding the shells that were fired at them near the Jabilia refugee camp, in northern Gaza.
On Friday evening, a mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip hit an open area near the Kerem Shalom border crossing at the southeastern end of the Gaza Strip.
No one was hurt in the attack and no damage was reported.
The IDF confirmed that its forces did indeed act in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, stating explicitly that the reason behind the targeting of Gaza was Friday's rocket attack on Netivot.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339370326&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Last update - 18:26 01/01/2010
Anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Sabbath in Gaza
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service
A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews were preparing Friday to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza, in an unlikely show of support for Palestinians in the Hamas-run coastal territory.
Bearded and wearing black hats and coats, the four members of a tiny Jewish group vehemently opposed to Israel's existence were a rare sight in the poverty-stricken Palestinian territory.
Members of the Neturei Karta group have expressed support for the Iranian regime and for others who oppose the Jewish state, which they believe was established in violation of Jewish law.
"It's crucial that the people of Gaza understand the terrible tragedy here is not in the name of Judaism," said one of the men, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of New York City, as the four prepared to observe the Sabbath at a Gaza City hotel.
Israel's offensive in Gaza destroyed some 5,000 homes and, according to figures from a Palestinian rights group, killed over 1,400 people. Israel has challenged this figure, stating that a total of 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation, the majority of whom were Hamas militants.
The four men are American and Canadian citizens. Israel bans its citizens from visiting the blockaded territory. Weiss and his comrades entered Gaza through a border crossing with Egypt.
This was not the first time Neturei Karta members visited the besieged strip, after a brief visit to Gaza in July of last year, when they met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh after crossing into the territory through Egypt.
Israel, which maintains a strict blockade of Gaza, would not let them cross through its passages with the territory.
"We feel your suffering, we cry your cry," Rabbi Weiss said at the time.
"It is your land, it is occupied, illegitimately and unjustly by people who stole it, kidnapped the name of Judaism and our identity," Weiss continued.
During their Thursday meeting, Haniyeh told them he held no grudge against Jews, but against the state of Israel, according to a Hamas Web site.
Neturei Karta, Aramaic for Guardians of the City, was founded some 70 years ago in Jerusalem by Jews who opposed the drive to establish the state of Israel, believing only the Messiah could do that. Estimates of the group's size range from a few hundred to a few thousand.
Representatives of the sect had previously visited Gaza when it was ruled by Fatah, Hamas' more secular rival.
One acted as Yasser Arafat's adviser on Jewish affairs, and a delegation traveled to Paris in 2004 to pray for the Palestinian leader's health as he lay dying in a hospital. Months later, a group participated in a conference in Lebanon with Hamas and Hezbollah militants.
Last update - 03:26 31/12/2009
Hamas: We foiled Israeli attempt to locate Gilad Shalit
By Avi Issacharoff
The internal security apparatus of Hamas claims to have foiled an Israeli attempt to collect intelligence on where kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit is being kept. According to the head of Hamas' internal security service, Abu Abdullah, the Shin Bet security service has tried gathering intelligence through members of the rival Fatah organization who have operated in the Gaza Strip in the past.
The report appears to be mostly an attempt to smear the Palestinian Authority and its activities. Abu Abdullah said in an interview to a Web site affiliated with Hamas, Falastin Alan, that the Fatah operatives hired a house and cars in the eastern part of Gaza City and planned to kidnap a senior figure in the military wing of Hamas and bring him to Israel. He did not specify when the operation was to take place.
Meanwhile, the Hamas Web site reported that the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit have met with Israel's refusal to release four "senior" prisoners. The four are: Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Sa'adat, and two of the heads of Hamas' military wing in the West Bank, Ibrahim Hamad and Abdullah Barghouti, who are responsible for the murders of dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings.
On the other hand, a member of the Hamas politburo, Izzat al-Rishq, stressed in an interview to the Arabic language TV station Al-Jazeera that the Islamist Palestinian group is continuing consultations on the proposal relayed to it by the German mediator.
Rishq rejected the report Tuesday by TV station Al-Arabiya that Hamas had turned down the proposal.
The Hamas official refused to offer details on the substance of the proposal from Israel or comment on problems that Hamas may have with it.
Last update - 08:51 01/01/2010
Comment/Settlers can stay, but only as citizens of Palestine
By Alexander Yakobson
The time has come to say to the settler leaders: Okay - you've convinced us. It seems that a mass evacuation of settlers is an impractical idea. You showed us clearly that you're prepared to turn such a removal into a national trauma. It's doubtful that any Israeli politician would chance it.
But whoever seeks to determine the country's fate with threats must know that the final result is likely to be disappointing. Giving up on evacuation doesn't mean giving up on dividing the land. Whoever concedes to this is giving up on Israel. In the end, the only alternative to the two-state solution is one state. This is usually called a "binational state," which is a bad joke. A binational state may exist in Belgium (perhaps; there, too, it barely works).
Here in our region, in real life, "one state" would be Arab, Muslim and Sunni (no matter what the constitution said), and much less binational than Israel.
If evacuation is not practical, the conclusion is to divide the land without removing settlers. Israel should formally adopt the suggestion by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad: There is no need for an evacuation; settlers who are interested may stay where they are after an Israeli withdrawal and live as a Jewish minority in a Palestinian state. Israel will have sovereignty on one side of the border and the Palestinians on the other - over everyone living there. There will be no evacuation, and Israeli soldiers won't have to take people from their homes. They will simply retreat to the new border.
Adopting this position would create an opportunity for Israel to gain a more comfortable border. Discussions on border corrections and territorial exchanges have been undertaken under pressure to keep as many settlers as possible within Israeli borders to reduce the size of an evacuation. The map offered to Palestinians by former prime minister Ehud Olmert shows that in the end, Israel would have a border worse than the Green Line: an infinite line winding like a snake, without any logic to it, military or otherwise.
These corrections to the border are no good for either side. If you don't have to worry about decreasing the number of people evacuated, it's possible to draw a much more rational border; the number of settlers included in Israel would be much smaller in this case. Second, if there is no evacuation, there is no financial compensation. In our country, some payment will certainly be made, beyond the letter of the law, but we are talking about much smaller sums. The state does not have to compensate a person for a change in the territories' political status, and settlers' property rights will be insured by a peace treaty.
Adopting this position would make things easier for Israel from a political point of view. Europe and America will continue to oppose construction in the settlements, as a violation of international law, but the world takes such a dim view of settlement expansion because it is viewed as a permanent erosion of the territory of the future Palestinian state, which aims to make the occupation irreversible. If the settlers are irrelevant to the border, they turn into a much less important issue.
It is clear that the great majority of settlers does not want to live under a Palestinian government and would leave. If there is a sizable minority that prefers the commandment to settle the land over national sovereignty, this is a legitimate choice that should be honored. If only this experiment succeeds. The connection to Judea and Samaria is worthy of respect; what is unworthy is the attempt to rule over another nation (in effect, we are talking about the attempt to rule over two nations and determine their fates).
And yet, it is worth asking, without doubting Fayyad's intentions, if it is reasonable that Palestine be the only Arab state with a significant Jewish community. The Jewish imagination pictures mass slaughter, but these are exaggerations of anti-Arab rhetoric.
The Arab world emptied of Jews without such dramas and in most cases without government decisions, and still Jewish life became impossible there. It is more reasonable to assume that virtually all the settlers will find themselves on the Israeli side of the border. But after all, that's what the Law of Return is for.
No comments:
Post a Comment