While we were tucking into leftover Turkey sandwiches, a world away, Israel began to bomb the Gaza strip claiming retaliation for rocket attacks launched by Hamas. In the nine days since, images of burnt out homes, bodies lining the streets, and tear stained relatives have dominated the front pages. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began “Operation Cast Lead” in what it says is an effort to smash Hamas and destroy its weapons stockpile.
World leaders remain gridlocked about who should do what, when, where and why as protests continue to flare in cities across the globe. And as cease fire talks continue to stall, the BBC is reporting that in the last two days “Israeli ground forces and heavy armour have effectively cut the territory in two” and the UN have warned of a “catastrophe unfolding” for a “trapped, traumatised, terrorised” population.
Here’s what the international media are saying:
Civilians die in Gaza fighting. Heavy fighting is raging in the Gaza Strip between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters after Israel launched its ground offensive on the territory. At least 30 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since fighting began late on Saturday, according to Palestinian medical sources. An Israeli soldier was killed on Sunday in the fighting, the Israeli army said. Thousands of Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip overnight with tanks and helicopters, accompanied by naval support and air strikes. The ground offensive followed eight days of intense Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, purportedly aimed at ending cross-border rockets being fired by Hamas fighters from the territory into southern Israel. The Israeli assault, codenamed “Operation Cast Lead”, has killed more than 507 Palestinians and wounded more than 2,400 others. Four Israelis have been killed by the Hamas rocket strikes in the same time. — Al Jazeera
Israeli troops reach the edge of Gaza City . Israeli tanks and infantry battalions swept up to the very edges of Gaza City today, battling die-hard Hamas fighters and sealing off the bomb-scarred capital city from the rest of the coastal territory. With the civilian death toll rising by the hour and diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting making no headway, the head of the UN refugee agency called the situation a “catastrophe”. But Israel made clear it was not about to heed calls for a swift ceasefire to “Operation Cast Lead”. It insisted that it had to smash Hamas and destroy its weapons stockpile in order to ensure a lasting peace not just for its citizens, who have endured years of Palestinian rocket fire, but for the people of Gaza themselves. — Times Online
Israeli troops push deep into Gaza. Israeli tanks and thousands of troops today battled Hamas fighters as they pushed deep into the Gaza strip in a dramatic escalation of the conflict which has killed more than 30 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier since the ground invasion began. Soldiers reached as far as the Mediterranean coast, cutting Gaza in half and seizing control of large areas of the overcrowded territory. Israel’s ground operation, which had been widely expected, began on Saturday night, the eighth of the conflict, and is the biggest assault on Gaza since Israel withdrew its Jewish settlers in 2005. — The Guardian
In Gaza, at least 35 Palestinians killed in Israeli ground attack. In the face of mounting international calls for a cease-fire, including harsh criticism from the head of the United Nations, Israeli leaders pledged to continue their campaign to end the threat of rocket launches by Gazan militants at southern Israeli cities and towns. — LA Times
The analysis:
Why Israel went to war in Gaza. It is a war on two fronts. Months ago, as Israel prepared to unleash its latest wave of desolation against Gaza, it recognised that blasting Hamas and “the infrastructure of terror”, which includes police stations, homes and mosques, was a straightforward task. Israel also understood that a parallel operation would be required to persuade the rest of the world of the justice of its cause, even as the bodies of Palestinian women and children filled the mortuaries, and to ensure that its war was seen not in terms of occupation but of the west’s struggle against terror and confrontation with Iran. — The Guardian
What’s the true target in Gaza invasion? As Israeli tanks and troops poured into Gaza, the next phase in its fierce attempt to end rocket attacks, a question hung over the operation: Can the rockets really be stopped for any length of time while Hamas remains in power in Gaza? And if the answer is determined to be no, then is the real aim of the operation to remove Hamas entirely, no matter the cost? After her visit to Paris on Thursday to explain to the French authorities why she thought this was not the time for a quick cease-fire, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.” Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza. — The International Herald Tribune
Business as usual . Moral relativism, political double talk, and a military juggernaut blind to its violence against an occupied people highlight the most recent, tragic conflagration in Israel and Palestine. In justifying Israel’s most brutal and bloody salvo against Gaza in decades — which has so far killed nearly 400 Palestinians and wounded more than 1800 — Israel’s UN ambassador stated that Israel was “rightfully defending itself from continued Hamas rocket attacks within her borders.” Furthermore, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert forewarned that the offensive “is liable to continue for some time.” By affirming Israel’s “right to self defense” and supporting Israel’s contention that the onus is on Hamas to renew the truce, President Bush’s waning administration highlighted its remarkably predictable political incompetence and tone-deaf moral vacancy by squandering yet another precious opportunity to remedy — at least rhetorically — the festering, radioactive sore that is the Palestinian human rights crisis in Gaza and the West Bank. — Altmuslim
And in pictures:
The Times Online photo gallery:
Alex MacDonald’s photostream on Flickr Israeli bombing of Gaza protest in London:
I submit there is a quick short circuit to the 1948 re-opening of the establishment moral can of worms regarding theocratic bias. (By the by my personal view is post WW2 and say 72 million deaths (wikipedia) later tells me national boundaries were bound to be fluid in the wash up, winnners and losers and that context is realistic.)
Irresistable fact is Zionist Israel has got the nuke weapons now. No country will relinquish that power, not even North Korea. The question of Israel ‘s Zionist/discriminatory existence is effectively over as per whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu witness 20 years back now. I much prefer the realos geo politik analysis when it comes to the Middle East these days. Hamas and Iran have to deal this side of Armageddon. And Israel surely must know their effective aparthied will catch up with them like South Africa.
I’m sick to death of Hamas using innocent palestinians as human shields. I hope Israel occupies Gaza and the West Bank forever!! Hamas and all its allies are evil. Go Israel.
These rockets have been shot at Israel for some time now. Perhaps the new assault by the Israelis has more to do with the upcoming Prime Ministerial election than anything else. Pollies positioning them selves as staunch defenders of Israel. In other words cynical power politics.
For the record, and because most world leaders are still mouthing the vain fiction that Hamas broke the cease fire, it was in fact Israel who was responsible for triggering the last spat of rockets with incursions over the Gazan apartheid fence on Nov 4. The Israelis spun the ‘breach’ as Hamas’ fault very quickly and continue to do so.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1034284.html
“The rocket barrage came a day after an Israel Air Force strike in the southern Strip killed at least five militants and wounded several others.”
Further
“Also on Tuesday, IDF soldiers killed a Hamas gunman and wounded two others on Tuesday in the first armed clash in the Gaza Strip since a cease-fire was declared in the territory in June, Palestinian medics said.”
And that wasn’t the only strike at Gaza Israel made that day either according to other sources.
http://occupiedlove.blogspot.com/2008/11/israel-breaches-gaza-ceasefire-invades.html
The forest press have shown much reticence in hunting down the truth – why is that?
Regardless of who started what, go back more than 100 years & work from there, as the Palestinian people gradually have their countryside bargained and chipped away at by foreigners till by 1948, when Zionists owned a small fraction of it, they seized the rest & have defended it as theirs ever since, despite 67 UN resolutions against their self-declared ‘nation’ which they have defied with impunity, with an ongoing cost in terms of credibility and esteem within most of the world community.
Then there’s the bigoted self-harming support of the US, a ‘free’ nation which vetoes resolution after resolution in the UN while the rest of the world looks on in anguish at the injustice, and down the bottom of the barrel, reviled, the Palestinians, who are still waiting for the state promised to them for nearly a century, now made virtually unviable by the proliferation of colonial settlements encroaching on and dismembering their heritage and birthright.