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UN Humanitarian report from Gaza 4/1/08

The latest information on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be downloaded from the UN Office of Coordination of Human Afairs.

The situation is extremely bleak – Israel, with the unrelenting support of its accomplice, the US Bush administration, continues to violate human rights and Geneva Conventions. A hospital ambulance has been shelled and food distribution has been stopped except in southern Gaza. Hospital generators are about to collapse.

Some quotes from the 4th January report:

“Israeli forces are now deployed in several areas of the Gaza Strip with clashes taking place between Israeli forces and militants. Damage and destruction of roads, infrastructure and buildings has been reported, including to a large gas storage facility. The military incursion compounds the humanitarian crisis following more than a week of shelling and an 18-month long blockade of the territory. There is an increased threat to civilians due to combat in densely populated urban areas. Hospitals continue to be overstretched because of the large number of casualties that have accumulated since the beginning of Israeli attacks, and ambulances and medical personnel face dificulties in accessing casualties. Electricity and telecommunications are down over much of the Strip.

Food distributions have been suspended and all crossing points remain closed.”

This morning, an ambulance of Al Awda hospital in the north was shelled, seriously injuring 4 medical staff. Palestine Square in central Gaza City was also hit, reportedly killing 5 civilians and injuring another 40 persons. Prior to the ground incursion, 15 Palestinians were killed and more than 25 injured when the Israeli Air Force bombarded the Ibrahim Al Makadima Mosque in Beit Lahiya.

There is an almost total blackout in the governorates of Gaza, North Gaza, Middle Area, and Khan Yunis. Most of the telephone network (both land lines and cell phones) in Gaza is also not functioning since it
now depends on back-up generators with dwindling fuel stocks.

All of Gaza City hospitals have been without mains electricity for 48 consecutive hours, depending entirely on back-up generators. The hospitals warn that the generators are close to collapse. At the Shifa hospital, collapse would have immediate consequences for 70 intensive care unit (ICU) patients including 30 in the neonatal care who are connected to machines. ICUs throughout the Gaza Strip are overloaded. The
security situation is also preventing medical staff from reaching hospitals.Ambulances are experiencing dificulty in reaching the injured because of continuous ire. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society continues to work around the clock in order to assist the population. From Friday to Saturday midday, its ambulances transported 78 wounded to hospitals. Fifteen fatalities were also transported.

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United Stupids fomented civil war in Gaza in 2007

Here’s a flashback to January 2007 which alone should get Bush and his incompetent warmongering thugs imprisoned for life:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Bush had encouraged democratic elections for the Palestinian people – when he didn’t like their choice, he acted like the petty meddling tyrant he is to this day.

These over-powerful idiots – how will they learn not to misbehave if the people who vote them in don’t keep them in their place – in a cell for their wanton crimes against humanity.

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Israel violating humanitarian law again

Richard Falk at the UN:

WASHINGTON, (PIC)– The UN human rights rapporteur, Richard Falk, has described the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip coupled with the tight siege on it as a serious and blatant violation of the international humanitarian law.

He stressed in a radio interview on Friday that the Palestinians, especially the Gaza Strip inhabitants, need and deserve the world community’s protection a long time ago even before the Israeli military assault started.

Falk said that the Israeli bombing with advanced weapons on a society that is not capable to defend itself follows a human tragedy that resulted from the Israeli blockage on the Strip.

The Israeli tightened siege is a collective punishment that violates international laws, he said, adding that Israel’s claims that it withdrew from the Strip and thus was not an occupying power was not legally or morally true since it continued to impose its control on the Strip’s borders, beaches and air space.

Editorial in the Guardian:

Israel must withdraw and the Arab nations in the region that must persuade Hamas to end its murderous missile attacks and observe the ceasefire. Instead of attacking and putting its citizens at risk, Israel could make this happen by lifting the siege that has only served to strengthen the Islamist group.

But the reality on the ground is that Israel has sent in troops and returned to the failed strategies of the past. A deeper and more terrible tragedy is beckoning.

Further statements by Richard Falk – Israel’s War Crimes

OPERATION CAST LEAD MASSIVE FAIL

ISRAEL MASSIVE FAIL

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Israel’s troops invade Gaza – again

After bombing schools, universities, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, public buildings, homes, market places, chicken farms and numerous other suspected sources of Hamas weaponry in Gaza, Israel is sending troops into the rubble left after the Gazan people have endured eight days of massive air bombardments, an 18 month siege, previous hideous invasions and 60 years of collective punishment and torment.

During the current grotesque, vastly unequal confrontation, about 460 Palestinians have lost their lives with more people buried and unidentified beneath toppled buildings. Last time Israel punished its hapless, impoverished Gazan neighbours, it killed more than 700 people. But this time, the world is watching keenly – will the bar be lifted? does the sociopathic Israeli propaganda machine imagine they have sufficiently brainwashed the world to accept even graver and greater atrocities? this is how Israel conducts its election campaigns – with Palestinians used as expendable human pawns for bloodthirsty oneupmanship within the Israeli elite.

hulk

From Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images – Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Gaza border

While Israel’s monstrous bullying may play well to short-sighted, enraged members of the Israeli public who support violent non-solutions that inevitably blowback against them and potentially the rest of the world as well later, it will not wash with people within Israel and without who are better informed and innoculated against Zionist mock tantrums. The numbers of people who are aware of Israel’s bad faith are growing, despite the collusion of the western media with its deceitful narrative. Those in charge of the Israeli propaganda machine however, may not perceive this.

I fear and feel for the people of Gaza, made scapegoats again as Palestinians have been for 60 years while the world has remained hamstrung by an Israel occupied US. It’s way past time that Israel should declare its borders on the pre 1967 Green Line, give Palestinians back their land, compensate refugees, release prisoners and become good neighbours – if they fail to do this, the time will rapidly approach when the rest of the world, including the US, rejects them as soundly as it did the apartheid regime in South Africa – the US was the last major nation to condemn them as well.

UPDATES

Tired now, still here’s some shocking links.

Gaza invasion starts: Refugee camp with ISMers in it shelled by tanks

@AJGaza: Israeli authorities refuse to allow International Committee of Red Cross emergency medical team into #Gaza for 2nd day.

UN Gaza Humanitarian Situation Report for 3 January 09 – just horrific. Read it for yourself, I’m choked up by the awful inhumanity contained therein directly caused by Israel’s vicious blockade, consequent bombardment and now ground ‘offensive’ being peddled as ‘defensive’ while their satraps posture with weasel words that it’s not their fault. Alternate pdf download link here.

Fatah-affiliated wing shells Israeli intelligence building

America’s Hidden Role in Hamas’s Rise to Power

Bush repeats the same lie as the Israeli hasbara when in fact it was Israel who breached the cease fire with Hamas on November 4 last year.

Is Israel using cluster bombs on Palestinians?

Meanwhile in the UN:

Riyad Mansour, the permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, told reporters that it was the council’s responsibility “to bring Israel into compliance and to stop this aggression immediately”.

“Israel cannot continue to behave as a state above international law – this is the law of the jungle,” he said.

Earlier, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon urged an immediate end to Israel’s ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

A statement issued by his office said Mr Ban had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and “conveyed his extreme concern and disappointment”.

“He is convinced and alarmed that this escalation will inevitably increase the already heavy suffering of the affected civilian populations,” the statement said.

Israeli video propagadana exposed on the BBC

Who fires those primitive rockets anyway? would Israel run another of its infamous false flag operations to create a pretext for a Gaza invasion?

What can Israel hope to achieve with its disgraceful, deceitful incursion

Ivan Eland adds some perspective:

Even the best outcome for Israel is grim. If the Israeli military invades Gaza on the ground to wipe out Hamas and its military infrastructure and Egypt does not allow Hamas fighters to escape to its territory, the Arab grievance will likely merely morph into a more angry and virulent form after the almost certain eventual Israeli withdrawal. Alternatively, if Hamas is not completely wiped out – either because some fighters successfully melt back into Gaza’s population or because Israel merely threatens a ground invasion but doesn’t follow through – Hamas’s stature will grow in Gaza and the Arab world for successfully withstanding the Israeli goliath – as Hezbollah’s did after the Israeli onslaught against and withdrawal from Lebanon in 2006.

Instead of making peace with the Palestinians and Syrians by eliminating the underlying grievance and giving back their land, or at least answering minor provocations with limited tit-for-tat responses, Israel will likely continue flailing disproportionately against its enemies. This Israeli government policy will make the long-term security situation worse for the Israeli people – with the United States subsidizing and giving the green light to such irresponsible behavior. Same stuff, different year