Israel Takes Gaza Fight to Next Level

[Malang]

GAZA — Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 46 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.


Hamas militants staked out positions in the northern Gaza Strip during an incursion by Israeli troops on Saturday.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, the Israelis said, especially after Ashkelon, a large city 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets of Iranian design.

Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But as many as 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.

More than 70 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; an Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.

The fighting brought harsh criticism from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who reportedly threatened to call off negotiations with Israel over a peace treaty. “We tell the world: watch and judge what’s happening, and judge who is committing international terrorism,” Mr. Abbas said in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, who has referred to the rocket firing as useless provocation, said last week that armed conflict remained an option if negotiations failed.

An Israeli spokesman, David Baker, said that Israel was conducting “defensive measures” to protect its civilians from rocket fire against cities, which Mr. Baker called terrorism. “We have over 200,000 Israelis in range of Palestinian rockets. We cannot allow this to go on. These rocket attacks on Israelis are sheer terror, designed to kill or maim as many Israelis as possible.”

The Israeli deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, said the military was engaged in “an enlarged operation and not a major ground operation” of the type Israeli politicians have been pressing for. Mr. Vilnai told Israel Radio that “we are using mostly air units” and that Israeli forces “are permanently engaged in Gaza, and what we are doing now is within the scope of such activities.”

On Friday, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, which also means catastrophe, Mr. Vilnai warned Palestinians that they faced catastrophe if the rocket firing continued.

After something of a lull on Friday, about two dozen rockets landed in Israel on Saturday, including seven Katyushas that struck in or near Ashkelon, lightly wounding a woman and two children just after midnight. Saturday afternoon, another rocket hit the Ashkelon marina shopping center, wounding three others, the Israeli military said.

Israeli troops began their operation just after midnight, concentrating on hilly area near crowded Jabaliya, within two miles of the Gazan border, where many of the rockets are launched from among the civilian population. Late Saturday, the Israeli military confirmed that two soldiers had been killed and that seven others, including an officer, had been wounded.

In Gaza on Friday, Hussein Dardouna, 50, was burying his son, Omar, 14, killed while playing with his friends by an Israeli strike aimed at a rocket-launching team. “I couldn’t identify the body of my son,” he said. “It was very hard until I found the head of my son. I’m against these rockets, but I am afraid. What can I do? If I protest they will hit me, they will kill me.”

Another woman at the funeral said: “Everyone is afraid now. Where is Abu Mazen, where is Haniya?” she asked, referring to Mr. Abbas and the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniya. “Come and protect us.”

Another woman, fully veiled, and a Hamas supporter, yelled at a reporter for asking such questions. Neither woman would agree to be identified.

The Israeli operation killed at least 10 fighters from Hamas, which has run Gaza since it drove out Fatah forces in fierce internal fighting last June. The dead included the son of a Hamas legislator, Muhammad Shihab.

Most residents hid in their homes. The Palestinian dead on Saturday included at least four children, two of whom, brother and sister, 11 and 12, respectively, died in their beds from shrapnel, medics said.

Hamas said that one young girl, Malak Karfaneh, 6, died Friday night from an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, but locals said that a Palestinian rocket had fallen short and landed near the house. Israeli officials say that up to half of Palestinian rockets — mostly crude, inaccurate Qassams — fall inside Gaza. But when Hamas broke open the border with Egypt, Israeli officials say, the militants were able to bring in more of the manufactured Katyusha-style rockets as well as antitank missiles and concrete, for building fortifications.

The United Nations agency that deals with Palestinian refugees closed down the 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza.

“We are living in the middle of the battle zone,” Rami Muhammad Ali, 21, told Reuters by phone from Jabaliya. “We wanted to flee the house, but we’ve been trapped since last night.”

He described the scene, saying: “Rockets and missiles are whistling by all the time, and the building has been shaken by mines the Palestinians are setting off against the Israeli soldiers.”

A Hamas military spokesman who calls himself Abu Obeida said, “The Zionist forces have failed in Gaza before.” Hamas, under some political pressure from the effective closing of Gaza and deteriorating conditions there, seems to be trying to lure Israel into a major ground operation.

The Israelis have been cautious, with little desire to reoccupy Gaza and take full responsibility for its 1.5 million inhabitants, nearly 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. The Israeli security cabinet will meet during the week to discuss Gaza, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arriving as well.

She has defended Israel’s right to defend itself but has urged restraint. A major Israeli operation would likely put a crimp in American-sponsored peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.

Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem, and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza.


Israel Takes Gaza Fight to Next Level - New York Times

 

[mujahideen]

I ask the world dont the Palestinian people have the right to defen themselves, but wait defence is only the right of Israel and all others who stand in its way will face war. Why isn't the U.S. condeming this act of brutality?

 

[dotaplayer]

I ask the world dont the Palestinian people have the right to defen themselves, but wait defence is only the right of Israel and all others who stand in its way will face war. Why isn't the U.S. condeming this act of brutality?

palestinians have the right to defend but ,its
bcoz it was hamas who broke the peace-process.

why do they fire missiles to israeli territory?

 

[mujahideen]

54 Gazans dead in Israeli 'holocaust'

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Israeli forces killed more than 50 Palestinians in a land and air blitz in the Hamas-held Gaza Strip on Saturday, medics said, amid warnings that the violence had “buried” the peace process.
It was the deadliest day since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 and one of the deadliest Israeli operations since the Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.
Fifty-two Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza, and two others in an air strike in the south of the territory which is ruled by the Islamist
Those killed included at least 13 civilians, seven of them women, said Dr Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza’s emergency services.
More than 150 people were wounded in the operation, Hassanein said.
At least 16 of those killed were militants, including 13 fighters from the Hamas movement, two from Islamic Jihad, and one from the Popular Resistance Committees.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting, and another seven, including two officers, were wounded, the army said.
The latest operation began before dawn when Israeli tanks supported by helicopters pushed into the town and refugee camp of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and continued the assault throughout the day.
At least 284 people have been killed since Israel and the Palestinians relaunched formal peace talks at a US conference in November, the vast majority of them Gaza militants, according to an AFP count.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said recently revived Middle East peace talks had been “buried” in the rubble of an Israeli incursion into Gaza.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday called for “international protection for the Palestinian people” while his office said he had contacted several world leaders to press for an end to the Israeli assault. He denounced the assault as “more than a holocaust.”
“It is unthinkable that Israel’s reaction to Palestinian rocket attacks - which we condemn - can be so terrible and frightening,” Abbas said, adding that the attacks were targeting “innocent women, children and old people.”
Mahmud Abbas has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the latest Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, his spokesman said.
“President Abbas has officially requested that the Security Council convene an urgent meeting to discuss the Israeli aggressions in Gaza,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
Israel’s incursion into Gaza on Saturday was the deadliest assault on the isolated and impoverished territory in well over a year and sparked international condemnation and protests across the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Hamas which seized power in Gaza in June bore “full responsibility” for the deaths.
Israeli public television reported that the army, which suffered its first deaths since the violence escalated on Wednesday, had deployed an “entire regiment,” in Gaza, which would number around 2,000 soldiers.
By midday troops had pushed nearly three kilometres inside the Gaza Strip, according to witnesses.
The urban battlefields were littered with debris as frightened residents hid inside their homes and imams read Koranic verses over mosque loudspeakers.
“We are in the middle of a total war. We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere... we cannot leave our homes,” Jabaliya resident Abu Alaa, 40, told AFP by telephone as he and his children took cover.
“They’re shooting at everything that moves.”
News photographers were hemmed in by the Jabaliya fighting and came under Israeli fire, a trapped AFP photographer said. A Palestinian working for the local Media Group was slightly hurt by an Israeli shell blast, his agency said.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), called “for an immediate ceasefire and political negotiations to end the fighting, which is impeding our humanitarian work.
In Ramallah about 300 Palestinians from all the major political factions marched through the streets, carrying pictures of children killed in recent Israeli strikes.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had killed at least 15 Palestinian militants, “all of them planting explosive devices or shooting.”
Gaza militants meanwhile fired at least 40 rockets and mortars at southern Israel, including eight long-range rockets which crashed in and around the seaside town of Ashkelon, it said.
Six Israelis were wounded by the rockets that fell on Ashkelon, one of them seriously, it added.
Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai told public radio that Israeli forces were engaged in an “enlarged operation,” but denied it was the start of a major campaign aimed at partly reoccupying Gaza.

The Nation

 

[mujahideen]

palestinians have the right to defend but ,its
bcoz it was hamas who broke the peace-process.
why do they fire missiles to israeli territory?

Look my friend I totally agree with you that if indeed Hamas fired the rockets they should be blamed.
But the question I ask you is what would you do if your country was occupied for the past 60 years?
The fact is Israel has occupied their land, the Palestinians as according to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter are living under conditions which are wrose than arparthied.
The I ask you what would you do if a guest came into your house occupied your living room, your bedrooms and said you can only use and live in the bathroom?
The bottom line is the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves just like your country has the right to defend itself. But the difference is on one side the Palestinians are fighting with stick and stones while Israel uses tanks and jets(note this is a figure of speech but to some extend it is true).

 

[mujahideen]

Savage Israeli strike kills 46 in Gaza

GAZA, March 1: Israel killed 46 Palestinians on Saturday in its deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling out in 2005, stoking fears of a broader conflict that could derail renewed US-backed peace talks.

Two Israeli soldiers were also killed and seven wounded, the army said -- its first casualties in four days of fighting.

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday in intense Israeli air strikes and ground raids in the tiny Hamas-controlled territory, home to 1.5 million people, bordering Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

Israel claimed it was responding to cross-border rockets, which killed an Israeli man in the border town of Sderot on Wednesday and wounded others in the southern city of Ashkelon.

Almost fifty rockets and mortars landed in southern Israel on Saturday, including several Soviet-designed Grad missiles, which are more powerful and accurate than improvised Qassams produced locally, the army said.

Palestinian officials said the one-day death toll in Gaza was the highest since 2002.

Of the 46 Palestinians killed, 26 were civilians and the rest were militants, according to hospital staff and the Hamas movement, which seized Gaza last June after routing the more secular Fatah forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Uncle, I do not want to die, I want my dad,” a toddler screamed as doctors tried to treat burn wounds across her body in Gaza’s main Shifa hospital. The girl was injured in a house which the army said was used to store and make weapons.

One of the dead civilians was a mother who was preparing breakfast for her children when she was hit by gunfire, relatives and medical workers said.

One missile slammed into a crowd of Palestinians, killing four civilians, medical staff and Hamas said. The army said it had fired on militants.

Palestinian officials said Israeli forces advanced towards the towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalya, the largest and furthest incursion into Gaza since 2005, when Israel pulled out its settlers and troops from the territory after 38 years.

The US on Friday urged Israel to “consider the consequences” of any action ahead of next week’s scheduled visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Russia and the United Nations appealed for calm.

More bloodshed could derail Washington’s hopes of a deal on Palestinian statehood before President George Bush leaves office in January.

Speaking in Damascus, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told Israel what he believed it would face if it mounted an invasion: “I say to the Zionist leaders, if they decided to raid Gaza, they will not be fought by dozens of fighters but they will be fought by 1.5 million people.”

Mr Abbas, who remains hostile to Hamas, called the Israeli actions “unbelievable” and said what is happening “is more than a holocaust”, a reference to a senior Israeli defence official who warned of a “shoah” (the Jewish word for holocaust) in Gaza.

Witnesses said fighting erupted after Israel soldiers, backed by helicopter gunships, entered northern Gaza on Friday night and were confronted by Palestinian militants.

A Palestinian said he saw at least one Israeli soldier, whose body had been sliced in half, being pulled from a tank. Three Israelis were injured by rockets that reached deep into Ashkelon.—Reuters

 

[mujahideen]

Worsening Gaza conflict leaves children at risk: UNICEF warns

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (APP) - The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today voiced its deep concern at the escalating conflict in the Gaza Strip, warning both Israel and the Palestinians to “take all feasible measures” to ensure the protection of children caught up in the violence.

Since the current upsurge in fighting began on Wednesday, at least 17 children from Gaza have been killed and more than 200 others injured, UNICEF said in a statement, quoting figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry.

UNICEF noted that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also expressed his deep concern in recent days at civilian deaths in both Gaza and southern Israel and issued a call for maximum restraint from all sides.

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child puts an emphasis on the need to take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict,” the UNICEF statement said. “In addition to being its direct casualties, the terrifying impact of this conflict affects all children.

“Children constitute more than half the population of Gaza and are bearing the brunt of the crisis. They are already suffering severely from a series of restrictions, including the blockade on most goods imposed since June 2007.”

app - Worsening Gaza conflict leaves children at risk: UNICEF warns

 

[salman nedian]

palestinians have the right to defend but ,its
bcoz it was hamas who broke the peace-process.

why do they fire missiles to israeli territory?

Hamas is the elected Government of Palestine and they have the backing of Palestinian people so how one can call Hamas terrorist? They have the right to defend their territory against the aggressors.

 

[salman nedian]

Look my friend I totally agree with you that if indeed Hamas fired the rockets they should be blamed.
But the question I ask you is what would you do if your country was occupied for the past 60 years?
The fact is Israel has occupied their land, the Palestinians as according to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter are living under conditions which are wrose than arparthied.
The I ask you what would you do if a guest came into your house occupied your living room, your bedrooms and said you can only use and live in the bathroom?
The bottom line is the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves just like your country has the right to defend itself. But the difference is on one side the Palestinians are fighting with stick and stones while Israel uses tanks and jets(note this is a figure of speech but to some extend it is true).

And they are not even guests they had been thrown by the champions of Human rights and they captured Palestine.

 

[su-47]

both countries are wrong on this issue. hamas is wrong to break the caesefire by firing rockets into israel, and israel is wrong to kill palestinian civilians.

hamas should realise that israel is not the enemy, rather the zionist govt is, and if hamas wanted to attack, they should attack israeli military targets, rather than fire unguided rockets in Sderot with the aim of harming israeli civilians. if hamas fought the military instead of civilans, they would have much more support from the rest of the world.

the israelis should not use tanks and aircraft which can cause massive collateral damage. if they want to crush hamas, they should ensure that collateral damage is minimal.

this is not a case of good vs evil. this is a case of two ideologies clashing and civilian from both sides suffering.

 

[salman nedian]

both countries are wrong on this issue. hamas is wrong to break the caesefire by firing rockets into israel, and israel is wrong to kill palestinian civilians.

hamas should realise that israel is not the enemy, rather the zionist govt is, and if hamas wanted to attack, they should attack israeli military targets, rather than fire unguided rockets in Sderot with the aim of harming israeli civilians. if hamas fought the military instead of civilans, they would have much more support from the rest of the world.

the israelis should not use tanks and aircraft which can cause massive collateral damage. if they want to crush hamas, they should ensure that collateral damage is minimal.

this is not a case of good vs evil. this is a case of two ideologies clashing and civilian from both sides suffering.

To an extent I agree with you but the case here is different from the rest of the world.

Israel has a very small population and their civilian population is also armed and trained so that they can fight when ever needed also since they have a small population they all were involved in occupying Palestinian land so its not possible to differentiate Israeli government and civilian society.(Note: I am not the advocate of Civilian killings but just explaining the complexity of the situation).

 

[Always Neutral]

Hamas is the elected Government of Palestine and they have the backing of Palestinian people so how one can call Hamas terrorist? They have the right to defend their territory against the aggressors.

How can firing missiles against civilians be defending one's territory ? Why is the West Bank so peacefull ? After all Palestinians live there too.

Regards

 

[salman nedian]

How can firing missiles against civilians be defending one's territory ? Why is the West Bank so peacefull ? After all Palestinians live there too.

Regards

Israeli civilians are armed and trained.

 

[Always Neutral]

Israeli civilians are armed and trained.

Care to explain to me why they are trained and armed ? With your logic every small Palestinian kid who carries a toy pistol while shouting Hamas slogans is also a legitimate target ?


Regards

 

[salman nedian]

Care to explain to me why they are trained and armed ? With your logic every small Palestinian kid who carries a toy pistol while shouting Hamas slogans is also a legitimate target ?


Regards

Right from the beginning they are armed because they were the aggressors and with such small population it was necessary for each and every one to be armed. Palestinians on the other hand were innocent people and there were no Hamas or any other movement when Israel forcefully captured Palestine.