SIRATYST

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Day 8 of Israeli War On Gaza -- Sameh Habeeb

Day 8 of Israeli War On Gaza

Death toll 450, injured 2350, disastrous humanitarian situation

By Sameh A. Habeeb, A Photojournalist, Humanitarian & Peace Activist in Gaza Strip.

Photos of Israeli Airforce: http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/GazaWar3#

Gaza Strip,3, January, 2oo9- In the recent reporting period of this report, Israeli army is using all naval, ground and air forces to attack Gaza. With the early hours of Saturday morning, Israeli army started to shell and launch heavy air strikes against Gaza. Most of the bombings targeted buildings, farming and agricultural fields. The bombings range dramatically increased midday leaving 5 dead and ten other wounded.

The heavy deadly bombings focused on four areas in Khan Yonis, Gaza and the north cities. The artillery shells engaged in the continued strikes with more new tactics. New shells are used for the first time. Eyewitnesses reported that new shells explode before landing on the targets making more small bombs. The shells are expected to be cluster bombs.

More Israeli new weapons are used today. Palestinians in Khan Yonis massively called the radio stations and health centers to report on a bad smell goes out from the rockets in Khan Yonis City. People are afraid this kind of weapon is shells enriched with Uranium and nuclear elements.

In Al Zaytoun area holes estimated of 20 meters dig deep underground due to new heavy rockets. Some of the targeted houses turned rubbles and many people reported to be injured. The ground military operation is expected to start within hours and this is due to heaviy bombings which is a stage Israel uses before she goes on ground.

United Nations says humanitarian crisis is in Gaza due to the big number of casualties and inability of medical tools sector to deal with it. John Holmes, also said that people of Gaza are I poor conditions due to the siege which was already imposed 18 months ago.

Thousands of Gaza population hurried into the local markets in search of life basics but in vain. No more fuel, benzene, gasoline, flour, wheat, sugar, rice, bread, candlelight and thousands of commodities are not available in Gaza. Add to that, continued power cuts up to 20 hours during the cold weather of winter.

More airborne aids from Tunisia, Bahrain and Saudia Arabia arrived to Egypt and not to Gaza Yet. Secertay of Arab league, Amr Mousa critcised statements' of livini which say no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He indicated that Gaza faces a catastrophic situations.

Key targets, bombings and strikes of Israeli Army in day 8

1- Israeli naval forces open heavy artilary fire on west of Al Nusairat refugee Camp. Several house were fired in the attack took place early in the morning.

2-Israeli naval vessels reach off Gaza shore firing the densely populated areas, houses, buildings leaving some Palestinians wounded.

3-A 20-year-old guy killed by Israeli rockers in an Israeli air raid destroyed the International American School in Bait Lahia town, north of Gaza Strip. The victim is one of the school staff.

4-Air raid targeted the Central Market of Gaza cars near Al zaytoun quarter east of Gaza City.

5-Several rockets fired at agricultural and farming fields near Al Buarij Refugee Camp mid of Gaza Strip. The bombings resulted in the killing of one farmer and injuring several others.

6-Two Palestinians killed at the Egyptian hospitals due to their injures in Israeli air raids in Gaza.

7-A playground hit by Israeli rockets in Al shija'ya densely populated quarter.

8-Israeli artillery shells target the eastern agricultural and farming fields in Gaza City.

9- Eight peoples injured due to bombings targeted Hils family east of Gaza City. The wounded all civilians between women and children.

10-

10-Several deadly raids at Khan younis city targeting the civil defense forces.

11- Israeli army uses new kind of rockets leave bad smell in the targeted area. A number of heavy bombings land on several targets in Abasan Al Kabira.

12-More bombings hit Bait Hanon town targeting agricultural and farming fields. The rockets landed in Al Basha farms.

13-Many rockets targeted some agricultural fields near Khoza'a town in Kahn Yonis City mid of the occupied Gaza Strip.

14-A number of wounded people resulted from air raids near oil stations in Khan Younis City.

15-More targets attacked in Al Sudania area north of Gaza City.

16- Heavy and deadly rockets of F16s strike stores of construction materials in Jabalia City. The strike caused clouds of smoke never seen before in Gaza.

17- Shocking bombs strike more agricultural fields in Al Atatra family north of Gaza Strip.

18-Two Palestinians killed due to an Israeli air strike hit their car in Khan Yonis City mid of Gaza Strip.

19-Rockets fired from Israeli airforce destroyed to rubbles a house in AL Nusairat Refugee Camp.

20-New deadly Bombings caused holes amounted of 20 meters in the ground. A house for Al Sirhi family was totally damaged and fade away underground.

21-Thirteen heavy artillery shells landed at Bait Hanon, east of Gaza and other areas around. This vows of start of military operation on ground. The bombings of these shells is ongoing till now.

22-Shells hit some targets around Al Khozndar gas station.

23-Air strike on Slah el din key street mid of Gaza Strip. The bombings destroyed parts of the street causing deep holes on the ground hindering the movement of cars from and into Gaza.

24-Drone planes strike At Dar Al Arqam school east of Gaza City.

25-Rockets strike more farming fields in Absan area in Khan Yonis City.

26-Ten Artillary shells fall in Al Buraij Camp within mintues.

27-Israeli air strike at fields near Sofa crossings south of Gaza Strip, city of Rafah.

28-One injured due to a bomb west of Gaza City.

29-Airforce raided on Al Hawooz tank of Water for 3 times.

30-Three people injured in Al Zaytoun area. The rockets are also falling down in farming fields and water tanks. A massive devastation

31- Bombings at Al Shoka town and more rockets hit the Gaza airport again.

32-Around 20 rockets fired into Israeli by Palestinian militants.

33-Israel is using submarines for the first time. A sea landing is expected due to the heavy engagement of naval forces.

34-Hundreds of artillery shells fired with the start of evening through all Gaza Strip in the north, middle and south.

35-Ground to Ground rockets fired into the northern areas of Gaza.

-----------------
Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb

Living in Fear in Gaza

Friday, January 02, 2009

If Hamas Did Not Exist (Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State)

Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21611.htm

Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the ‘wretched of the earth’ begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible?

The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 248 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.

It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when –alone with the United States—it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and the into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.

Israel had no intention of granting a Palestinian state at Madrid or at Oslo where the PLO was superseded by the quivering, quisling Palestinian Authority, too many of whose cronies grasped at the wealth and prestige it gave them at the expense of their own kin. As Israel beamed into the world’s satellites and microphones its desire for peace and a two-state solution, it more than doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on the ground in the West Bank and around East Jerusalem, annexing them as it built and continues to build a superstructure of bypass roads and highways over the remaining, severed cities and villages of earthly Palestine. It has annexed the Jordan valley, the international border of Jordan, expelling any ‘locals’ inhabiting that land. It speaks with a viper’s tongue over the multiple amputee of Palestine whose head shall soon be severed from its body in the name of justice, peace and security.

Through the home demolitions, the assaults on civil society that attempted to cast Palestinian history and culture into a chasm of oblivion; through the unspeakable destruction of the refugee camp sieges and infrastructure bombardments of the second Intifada, through assassinations and summary executions, past the grandiose farce of disengagement and up to the nullification of free, fair and democratic Palestinian elections Israel has made its view known again and again in the strongest possible language, the language of military might, of threats, intimidation, harassment, defamation and degradation.

Israel, with the unconditional and approving support of the United States, has made it dramatically clear to the entire world over and over and over again, repeating in action after action that it will accept no viable Palestinian state next to its borders. What will it take for the rest of us to hear? What will it take to end the criminal silence of the ‘international community’? What will it take to see past the lies and indoctrination to what is taking place before us day after day in full view of the eyes of the world? The more horrific the actions on the ground, the more insistent are the words of peace. To listen and watch without hearing or seeing allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue and deepens with each grave our collective shame.

The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. Those dreaming of one state must be forced to ask themselves what Israel would do to a population of 4 million Palestinians within its borders when it commits on a daily, if not hourly basis, crimes against their collective humanity while they live alongside its borders? What will suddenly make the raison d’etre, the self-proclaimed purpose of Israel’s reason for being change if the Palestinian territories are annexed to it outright?

The lifeblood of the Palestinian National Movement flows through the streets of Gaza today. Every drop that falls waters the soil of vengeance, bitterness and hatred not only in Palestine but across the Middle East and much of the world. We do have a choice over whether or not this should continue. Now is the time to make it.

Finkelstein: Israel Seeking Arab Obeisance

Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21602.htm

Press TV: Speaking of deterrence, Hamas said that it would retaliate. How great a response do you think Hamas can give Israel? Could one expect something like the one Israel received from Hezbollah in 2006?

Finkelstein: I think it is impossible to predict those things. But, it is clear that Israel is faced with a dilemma. In the case of Lebanon during the first few days they apparently destroyed (Hezbollah's) long-range and medium-range missiles, but they couldn't destroy the short-range rockets being used against the Israel unless they invaded. They tried to invade, but they couldn't and the rocket attacks continued. And now they have the same problem in Gaza.

In order to end the rocket attacks they have to invade and clear all the areas where the rocket launchers are located one by one. But, if they invade there is the possibility of them being caught in a guerrilla war which they plainly cannot win in Gaza. So they are not sure at this moment how to proceed.

Press TV: Israeli foreign minister (Tzipi Livni) also says that Israel wants to negotiate peace with what she calls moderate Palestinians. On the other hand, we see Mahmoud Abbas saying that peace talks are meaningless under the current situation wherein Israel is targeting all Palestinians, so where does that leave Israel?

Finkelstein: Well we have to be clear what Israel means by moderate Palestinians. The Hamas leadership in recent years has signaled that it is willing to negotiate a two-state settlement according to the June 1967 border and also the resolution of the refugee question. That means that Hamas has signaled to do what the international community has wanted Israel to do over the past 30 years.

Israel rejects such a two-state settlement because it wants to continue its control of the West Bank. So for Israel a moderate Palestinian means the one who rejects all the terms proposed by the international community, a Palestinian who rejects the position of Hamas. For Israel a moderate Palestinian is a Palestinian who is willing to do whatever Israel wants: is a Palestinian who is willing follow Israeli orders.

Press TV: Observers say that a ceasefire is the best Israel can achieve from this. How is the war affecting Israel?

Finkelstein: It is hard to say that whether Israel is in a position for a ceasefire. If Israel accepts the ceasefire I don't think Hamas would accept it if the Gaza blockage continues. It was due to the continuation of the Gaza blockade that Hamas rejected renewal of the truce with Israel. If the blockade is not lifted it is just a slow death for the Palestinians. If Israel agrees to lift this blockade along with a ceasefire then it will in effect have given in to the conditions that it refused last week. So it's really unclear that Israel would propose a ceasefire that Hamas would accept and vice versa.

Press TV: Israel says that its war is with Hamas, but it has prevented the flow of international aid into Gaza and prevented journalists from covering what is going on there. There is a saying Persian if you cannot help then don't prevent help from others.

Finkelstein: Well we have to be clear that Israel's war is not with Hamas but with the international community, including Iran. Israel is defying the international community, including Iran on the two-state settlement.

Burying Children in Gaza -- from Angry Arab Newservice

Burying children in Gaza. (AP)

Anarchists Against the Wall Arrested at Tel Aviv Airport Die-In 1-2-09

Gaza Demonstration at Tel Aviv University - Asi Omar

Tel Aviv Demo Against Gaza Attack -- 12-27-08

"CNN: US Weapons 'Killing Innocent Civilians' in Gaza" -- Is Zionist Kool-aid Wearing Off?

Portion below; whole thing (via Raw Story and Angry Arab Newservice) here: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/CNN_U.S._weapons_create_Gaza_civilian_0102.html

As Israeli warplanes continue to bomb Gaza, attention is turning to the role of American-made weapons in the deadly attacks, which have now killed over 400 and wounded 2000, including many civilians.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr believes that Israel's use of American weapons against civilians "is becoming very problematic." She notes, for example, that the 2000 pound bomb which killed a Hamas leader and members of his family on Thursday "is part of the billions of dollars that Israel has spent buying weapons from the United States."

Israel's use of American-made weapons in attacking Gaza has been a matter of offical concern for years. In 2002, the State Department announced it was monitoring possible violations of the Arms Export Control Act after the Israeli military used an American-made jet to drop a laser-guided bomb that killed a Hamas leader and 14 civilians in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood.

Just last September, Congress approved a $77 billion dollar deal to sell a thousand Boeing GBU-39 bunker-buster "smart bombs" to Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that these small, GPS-guided missiles have now been used on underground tunnels and launchers in Gaza.

"Precision guided bombs are only precision in that they hit the target they are aimed at," Starr explained. "We're getting these civilian casualties. These weapons are supposed to be used for a country's self-defense. Israel, obviously, believes this is its self-defense against Hamas, but you see these civilian casualties. That's not why the US sells weapons abroad -- for the killing of innocent civilians."

"The world community only is going to stand for this for so long," continued Starr. "It's this reason that you're seeing people look for a political settlement." She added that Israel now intends to launch a ground campaign in Gaza to "get rid of Hamas once and for all," but -- as the US has learned in Iraq and Afghanistan -- it is impossible to wipe out an insurgency by military force along without first getting the civilian population on your side.

The Donkey Who Scared the Israeli Army -- Kawther Salam

Portion below; whole thing (via Uruknet.info) here: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/01/01/the-donkey-who-scared-the-israeli-army

The weakest and most coward army in the world, which considers itself as the strongest one targeted and bombed a donkey on the streets of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. The cowards of the Israeli Air forces fired a missile at the donkey which was pulling a cart while Lama and Haya Hamdan, two sister aged 4 and 11, were searching for some food for their impoverished family.

The poor terrorist donkey scared the Israeli soldier who was watching him outside Gaza, using war equipment received from the “friendly” USA. The great scare of the “innocent” Israeli army obliged them to protect, to defend themselves and their criminal state from the big horror of a “terrorist” donkey, probably from “Hamas”. So they in the air force to drop an intelligent GBU-39 bomb at the donkey cart, immediately killing not only the donkey, but also Lama and Haya, the two young sisters.

In this was another small new catastrophe was added to the current horrors, leaving another poor family of two young girls without bread. The eyewitnesses of this tragic crime said the body and the blood of the donkey was splattered all around the place, mixed with small pieces of the young girls bodies. It was not possible to identify which parts belonged to the donkey, and which parts belonged to the innocent girls.
The murder of Lama, Haya and their donkey one day after the murder of the five daughters of Anwar Khalil Ba’losha from the Jabalia refugee camp, Jawaher, aged 4, Donia, aged 8, Samar, aged 12, Ikram, aged 14, and Tahrir, aged 17, shows the deteriorated level of the well paid and manipulated western and international media. These two incidents and other similar ones were not reported, but CNN, BBC, Al-Arabia TV, Euronews and the Egyptian and Saudi news, which falsify the facts and are only reporting “Hamas, Hamas, Hamas”, and they swear to god that the Israeli army is targeting the fighters of the “great army” of Hamas in Gaza.

MARCH FOR GAZA_SATURDAY

Saturday, January 3
12:00 -- 2:00
Westlake Plaza, Downtown Seattle
4th & Pine

STOP THE MASSACRES

Come join us to protest the ISRAELI war crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Don't let this go unnoticed.

Israel has killed more than 450 & wounded over 2,100 Palestinians through eight days of brutal attacks on Gaza Strip with U.S. supplied weapons in violation of international law. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has threatened that this is merely "the first stage."

Sponsored by Arab American Community Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Committee, ANSWER, Freedom Socialist Party, Palestinian Concerns Task Force, CCGS, Mid East Focus Group, St. Mark's Cathedral, American Jews for a Just Peace.

This protest is organized by Voices of Palestine
general@voicesofpalestine.org

COME JOIN US!

Day 7 of Israeli War On Gaza -- Sameh A. Habeeb

Death toll 435, injured 2300, disastrous humanitarian situation

By Sameh A. Habeeb, A Photojournalist, Humanitarian & Peace Activist in Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip,2, January, 2oo9- For the 7^th day in consequence, Israeli military machine pursue the suffocating air raids and shelling through the Gaza Strip. Today's bombings claimed lives of more Palestinian civilians while no militants recorded to be killed. Seven Palestinians killed today mostly children in the heavy ongoing raids.

Dramatically the number of victims still rise to reach 435 while wounded rise up to 2300 persons. The health conditions in Al shifa' hospital still direful while not much humanitarian aids entering Gaza Strip neither through Egypt nor Israel.

The humanitarian status still the same while the rage of it EXACERBATES due to ongoing War. Basics of life still not available but with limited quantities like fuel, benzene, gasoline, flour, wheat, sugar, rice and bread. Add to that, continued power cuts up to 20 hours during the cold weather of winter.

United Nations' OCHA said that Gaza is being exposed to the heaviest war actions ever. Meantime, many protests across all EU countries, USA, Australia, Arab countries and Asian are taking place. A considerable mainstream I is being automatically formed rejecting the recent Israeli deadly War against Gaza population.

Main Israeli Military Actions in Gaza:

1- Three Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid east of Khan Yonis City. The victims are children from Al Astal family.

2-Israeli army targets the borders with Egypt, destroyed more tunnels for food smuggling.

3-Five people injured in Israeli rocket targeted house of Musa abu Musa in Khan Yonis City. The 2-floor-house totally destroyed while some other homes around partially damaged.

4-A house for DaBabish family bombed to rubbels and 7 people wounded including an Ambulance driver.

5-Palestinian child aged 15 killed in al shijaya area due to Israeli rocket hit his area.

5- A house of four floors for Aqil family bombed by Israeli air force in Al Nusairat town mid of Gaza Strip.

6-A house hit in Rafah City and 2 floors destroyed leaving 2 Palestinians injured.

7-Airforce targets the Gaza sole airport with many heavy rockets of F16s. Medical reports say one Palestinian injured.

8-Intensive bombings from Israeli Naval forces on many targets in Gaza shore.

9-Israeli air force bombed to rubbles the western side of Gaza Valley destroying a car

10 - Fadi Shebat, 10, killed in Israeli tanks shelling at Bet Hanoun northern occupied Gaza Strip.

11-A 23-year-old girl killed in Israeli bombings in Juhr El dik town mid of Gaza. Five injured.

13-Israeli artillery hit the eastern areas of Gaza City by 7 shells at least.

14-A bomb turned Al sousi mosque to rubbles mid of Gaza City.

15-Israeli Naval forces destroyed house of Abd Al Salam Abu Midain off Gaza shore.

16-A Palestinian killed in Dair Al Balah city, Awad Musbih,

17-Maan: One dead several injured as Israeli missiles land on home in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. 6 year-old Christine At-Turk died from her wounds sustained during the strike on Friday afternoon.

18- Foad Al-Matuq was killed and four were injured after Israeli shells hit an empty home in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

19 Missile strikes in residential areas across the Strip were reported.

20- Two homes destroyed in Rafah were leaving 7 people wounded. Many houses were affected.

21-Isareli army targets 2 training centers for Palestinian factions west of Gaza City.

22- Israeli shelling targeted a house in the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood west of Gaza City.

23-Rockets targeted a cemetery eastern Gaza Strip, Rafah City. Additionally, more tunnels are destroyed.

24-Apachi helocapters raided on a car mid of AL Nusairat refugee camp. Some people killed and other wounded.

25 Israeli airforce raided on Kahlifa Mosque in the Jabalia refugee camp injuring four Palestinians.

26- Tens of Thousands of birds killed when Israeli fire targeted a farm in Gaza City.

27-Neither spare parts nor Gasoline available to operate pumps of fresh water. A great number of Palestinians don't have an easy access for fresh drinking water.

28-Palestinian factions retaliate against Israeli air raids in Gaza. Around 10 homemade rockets fired into Israel with no casualties.

29-International journalists, peace activists and organizational officers left Gaza after the Israeli notification.

30- Israeli authorities ban press from going into Gaza while a big problem of cummnictaion and citizen Journalists are not able to report.

--
Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb

Rules of Engagement from Baghdad to Gaza

The first couple of sentences almost made me quit reading this, but the analysis turns out to be excellent in that it ties the strategies and tactics of the U.S. and Israel together in their militarism and what the author calls a fantasy that "says we [U.S. & Israeli gov'ts] can end terrorism by killing all the terrorists." Glad to see Huffington post readers getting this message. Also note Anne Richards Dem. leader's extraordinary pledge to back Israel no matter what.
Mid-portion below; whole thing here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/rules-of-engagement-from_b_154669.html

There is a word for the straightforward killing of enemies by a superior force where the victims are sparsely equipped and the odds one-sided. Much of the world is calling Israel's actions in Gaza a massacre. By contrast the American press has been cleansed and euphemized. "3rd Day of Bombings," said the New York Times headline on December 30, "Takes Out Interior Ministry." Takes out. The Times paid an involuntary homage to George W. Bush: "I think it's a good thing for the world that we took out Saddam Hussein." Under that phrase are half a million Iraqis killed and a country destroyed. And for Israel in Gaza?

The U.S. and Israel share many things. A form of government, it is sometimes said; a set of ideals. But much more in the past ten years the U.S. and Israel have shared a fantasy. The fantasy says that the Arabs understand only force. It says we can end terrorism by killing all the terrorists. The neighbors of the terrorists will be overawed. No new terrorists will be created. Finally, when every face on the president's fifty-two card deck is crossed out and the known composition of Hamas is dead, we can "address the social conditions" that foster terrorism. But perhaps there are no such conditions. Do the terrorists not hate for hate's sake?

You can see the shape of the fantasy most distinctly in the writings of those journalistic enablers who move into position as soon as either country starts a war that needs interpreting. "It was Israel at its best," writes Yossi Klein Halevy, a typical war broker, in a New Republic column posted on December 29. "In response to random attacks aimed at civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists." Halevy does not add that the precise attacks killed almost 400 persons and that one death in every four was civilian.

Another war broker on Gaza has been David Brooks. In a column of January 29, 2006 entitled "The Long Transition," Brooks pointed out that democracy often leads to "bad choices." The people of Gaza, said Brooks, in electing the Hamas government had made a bad choice. This error he attributed to the "traumatic phase" in the gradual maturing of "a romantic, revolutionary people." It was the duty of America and Europe to teach the Palestinians to choose again until they choose right. The task was "to isolate Hamas" and devote our energies to "finding and fostering" an opposition to Hamas. The siege of Gaza, the rejection by Europe and America of the Palestine Unity Government, and the attempted insurrection in Gaza by Fatah thugs bankrolled by the same powers, might all be said to be pardoned in advance by such a salutary intent.

But a fantasy is no wilder than the methods it answers for; and Israel and the U.S. now hold as common property a whole school of counterinsurgency tactics. The citizen of Baghdad who said of the wall General Petraeus built to separate the good from the bad, "This reminds me of another wall," was only saying what many Arabs must have thought when they reflected on the "surge" in Iraq and its precursor in the West Bank. Israel has most often, these past few years, been the teacher and the United States the pupil. An article by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times on December 7, 2003 reported that the rules of engagement used by the U.S. in Iraq were modeled on the Israeli rules for Gaza and the West Bank. On the other hand, what is happening now in Gaza is plainly modeled on the American "shock and awe" in Iraq; it derives indirect permission from the fact that Americans never regretted that first stage of what we did to Iraq. Also, somewhere in back of the Israeli methods are usually American equipment and an American brand name. Apache helicopters and F-16s for the missiles and the bombs, and a Caterpillar bulldozer to reduce the house to rubble.

There is one art of peace that Israel might have learned from the United States: equal rights and citizenship for all the people of the country. But this, Israel has not learned, and in the nature of its constitution it cannot learn without a radical change of self-definition. The difference ought to be a fact of some interest to the first non-white president-elect of the United States; but the response of Barack Obama to the slaughter in Gaza has been a nerveless silence. "If somebody," he said last summer, "was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." He has left it at that, for now, and made no comment on Israel's showing this week of the scale of obliteration that lies in its power.

Obama would not in fact do everything, he would not destroy a city of innocent people. But one may note the resonance of "everything," a word that crept into his usage once before and revealingly, in his AIPAC speech. There, Obama said three times that he would do everything to assist Israel against a threat from a nuclear Iran. When Israel is on the minds and the Israel Lobby script is in the mouths of American politicians, every statement takes on a quality at once categorical and unreal.

We have stopped thinking for long enough. We might start again with a definition. A terrorist is not a function X, the compacted essence of evil. A terrorist is someone who kills and approves the killing of undefended civilians to achieve political ends. Thus the Israeli commander who ordered the attack on the university in Gaza was an agent of state terror. The Hamas soldier who fired the missile that killed an Israeli woman yesterday was an agent of guerrilla terror. But terrorists, too, act from motives. To suppose their only instinct is a fevered hatred of everything we are is to yield to madness. Kill them all becomes the only imaginable policy then. Kill them, or else install a dependency so sweeping and abject that not a man in Gaza mounts a bicycle, not a woman crosses a street, not a child eats a morsel of food but by permission of the Israel Defense Forces. It is hard to see what else the current actions of Israel are looking toward.

The Democratic party grandee Ann Lewis said recently (as quoted in an excellent Salon column by Glenn Greenwald): "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." The statement is absurd. No country ever gave another country so blind a endorsement. Such a pure identification of interests would amount to the signing away of the conscience of the nation that granted it. We cannot make our fidelity a pawn for another's injustice; and more than conscience forbids it. Prudence also does. Even in the depths of the Second World War the U.S. never said it would support every decision made by the people of Britain, nor did it say in the Cold War that it would do whatever the people of Formosa wanted, or what the people of West Germany wanted. Such a surrender of judgment, even if it were practicable, would be a curse that harms the receiver as much as the giver. To support without question the decisions of any person or any people, is to accept a standard of friendship or fealty above the standard of right and wrong. Do that, and you resign yourself to a world of injustice.

The eighteenth-century moral thinker Joseph Butler once gave us one of those sentences that are so true they earn a separate life for themselves. "Every thing," said Butler, "is what it is, and not another thing." Gaza is not Iraq then. Mumbai is not New York, and the contests against terrorists are not the War on Terror. Butler also asked once in passing: "Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals?" We have seen it happen in our time. This surmise received vivid confirmation from the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon who told the Haaretz reporter Meron Rappaport in a story published on December 9, 2006: "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs."

Israel and the United States have evolved, almost behind our backs, from the countries we read about in histories to militaristic societies widely seen as oppressors by those on the wrong end of our adventures abroad. Israel has the better excuse, driven half mad by threats and wars and the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada; but a series of queasy concessions to the fanatical colonists who are sometimes miscalled "settlers" have deformed its politics from within. The U.S. may now be the country with the stronger hope, and therefore the stronger partner. Anyway one thing is sure. When an allied nation goes out of itself, in the same sense in which a person may be out of himself, the work of a friend is to say no and no again and refuse to give the self-destruction our blessing.

Obama: Inherit[ed] Bush's Blinkers

Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/02/israelandthepalestinians-barackobama

But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured – the majority civilians – since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has maintained his silence. "There is only one president at a time," his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, say, to Obama's detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the "coordinated attacks on innocent civilians" in Mumbai in November.
The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East however is seen as more "complicated" and so polite opinion accepts Obama's silence not as the approval for Israel's actions that it certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.
It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel's murder of civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the building housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament.
It ought not to be risky or disruptive to US foreign policy to say that Israel has an unconditional obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to lift its lethal, months-old blockade preventing adequate food, fuel, surgical supplies, medications and other basic necessities from reaching Gaza.
But in the looking-glass world of American politics, Israel, with its powerful first-world army, is the victim, and Gaza – the besieged and blockaded home to 1.5 million immiserated people, half of them children and eighty percent refugees – is the aggressor against whom no cruelty is apparently too extreme.
While feigning restraint, Obama has telegraphed where he really stands; senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28 December that Obama understood Israel's urge to "respond" to attacks on its citizens. Axelrod claimed that "this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel responded".
The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian itself reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George Bush on 20 January.
Axelrod also recalled Obama's visit to Israel last July when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."
This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful thinking that Obama would abandon America's pro-Israel bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration's (as I showed in a longer analysis.
Along with Tony Blair and George Bush, Obama staunchly supported Israel's war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, where it used cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing more than 1,000 people.
Obama's comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He recalled an earlier visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon which he said reminded him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters". He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli children, while never having uttered a word about the thousands – thousands – of Palestinian and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks just since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president appears fully invested in the racist worldview that considers Arab lives to be worth less than those of Israelis and in which Arabs are always "terrorists".

Thursday, January 01, 2009

The Reality in Gaza -- Norwegian Aid Worker

Angry Arab Newservice Shows Our U.S. Tax Dollars at Work

All US media today carried stories of an Israeli "assassination" of a senior Hamas official. Those two children were also killed in that assassination. (And don't feel sorry for them: tomorrow Ethan Bronner and Taghreed El-Khodary will refer to their beds as "Hamas strongholds"). Reuters)

ABOVE PICTURE AND QUOTE FROM ANGRY ARAB NEWSERVICE

Is the UN complicit in Israel's massacre in Gaza? -- Omar Barghouti

Portion below; whole thing here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10089.shtml

A recent article published in The Washington Post, for instance, quoted a senior Israeli military official saying: "There are many aspects to Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." An Israeli army spokeswoman went further, stating "Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target." Given that, in the ghetto of Gaza, Hamas is effectively the "ruling" party -- it was democratically elected, after all -- and its network of social and charitable organizations are the largest provider of social services to the impoverished and besieged population, all of Gaza's civilian infrastructure, public schools, hospitals, universities, law and order organs, traffic police, sewage treatment and water purification stations, ministries providing vital services to the public, mosques, public theaters and many non-governmental institutions can technically be considered "affiliated" with Hamas.

Lest the reader feel that this is an exaggeration, today, in the first hours of the first day of the new year, the Israeli air force already bombed the following "targets" in Gaza: the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice. Earlier, several mosques were pulverized to the ground. So were main buildings in the Islamic University of Gaza, which serves 20,000 students. Ambulances and private homes were not spared either.

Even B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization that often issues sanitized, "balanced" or selective reports focusing on Israel's less criminal behavior in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was compelled to conclude that the Israeli army was intentionally targeting "what appear to be clear civilian objects" that are not "engaged in military action against Israel," without making the distinction between male and female civilians. A statement from the organization on 31 December said:
For example, the military bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed, according to reports, 42 Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order.

Another example is yesterday's bombing of the government offices. These offices included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction and Housing. An announcement made by the [Israeli army] Spokesperson's Office regarding this attack stated that, 'the attack was carried out in response to the ongoing rocket and mortar-shell fire carried out by Hamas over Israeli territory, and in the framework of [Israeli army] operations to strike at Hamas governmental infrastructure and members active in the organization.'
Just to drive the point closer to home for an average western reader who may have internalized over the years a perception of Israelis -- inaccurately and quite deliberately depicted by Israeli and western propaganda as part of the "west" -- as full humans and Palestinians, along with almost all global southerners, as relative humans, perhaps the following mirroring exercise is necessary.

Imagine if the Palestinian resistance, in exercising its otherwise perfectly legitimate, UN-sanctioned right to fight Israel's occupation and apartheid, were to regard all institutions "affiliated" with the Israeli government as legitimate targets, justifying the bombing of universities, hospitals, civilian ministries, publicly-run synagogues, neighborhoods where government or army officials live or work, and other civilian "targets," killing in five days only 1,600 Israelis and wounding 8,000 (four times the current toll in Gaza, given that Israel's population is four times as large). What would the UN do? Would UN officials only count Israeli women and children victims? Would they call on both parties to "exercise restraint" or to end "the violence"? Morally, and even legally, this is not even a fair reversal of roles, for Israel, no matter what, remains the occupier and settler-colonial oppressor, while the indigenous Palestinians remain the colonized and oppressed.

The truth is the UN leadership, in the unipolar world that we are still living in and is perhaps on its way to be transformed to more multipolar space, has effectively turned into a rubber stamp bureau for US dictates. Ban Ki-moon will go down in history as the most subservient and morally unqualified Secretary-General to ever lead the international organization. The only question remaining is whether one day he and his senior staff will stand trial for being accomplices in Israel's war crimes, together with leaders of the US, the EU and many Arab regimes. In a more just world, governed by the rule of law, not the US-dominated rule of the jungle, they should.

Day 6 of Israeli War On Gaza -- Sameh Habeeb

More suffocating bombings claim lives of children, women
By Sameh A. Habeeb, A Photojournalist, Humanitarian & Peace Activist in Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip,1, January, 2oo9- The scale of Israeli war escalated today by hitting more targets in various places across the occupied Gaza. The army opened the new year with more military fatal actions in Gaza leaving more people dead. Trauma cases raise up and more people are suffering from the air raids.

Many facets of harmed people can be found in Gaza. You either find a hit house with a dead one of the family or a hit house in which its residents traumatized and panics.

Casualties of Israeli heavy bombings reached 415 while wounded rise up to 2100 persons. Many wounded are in critical condition and there is no ability to respond to their deteriorated cases.

Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Tsivi Livini, declared that Israel is only targeting Hamas members indicating that Gaza doesn't suffer from any shortages of humanitarian needs. However, the incoming humanitarian needs are not enough for the populations amounted of 1.5 million.

United nation debunks the allegation of Mrs. Livini and says the incoming materials are not enough. Gaza needs 100 vans of flour. Karin Abu zaid the general commissioner of UNRWA said also that around 20 thousand people face troubles in getting the food supplies.

Main Israeli Military Actions in Gaza:

Now: Loud bombings in all Gaza City and north of Gaza. Naval fire, F16s, Apaches and tanks heavily bombs many targets and darkness prevail Gaza.

*Israel asks International journalists and peace activists to leave Gaza tomorrow.

*Israeli army broke into local radios and tunes some statement for people.

*Israeli F16s destroyed civic defense station and a local organization in the north of Gaza city of Bait Hanon. Many houses partially destroyed.

*Rockets of F16s hit a target in Al Zaytoun area in Gaza City. More bombings in some areas west of Gaza City.

*Heavy bombings in East of Gaza. A house next to an ex-Hamas member destroyed in Al shja'ya area. No news about conditions of house residents.

*Israeli F16s bombed the run Palestinian legislative Council. The air raid destroyed half of the premises and caused massive damage in some of the neighboring houses.

*Israeli heavy artillery takes part in the military operation by hitting many targets in Gaza. Many parts in the eastern areas of Gaza were shelled.

*A house destroyed mid of Gaza city, Al Sabra Quarter, leaving around 13 injured. Most of the wounded are women and children who also turned traumatized.

*Israeli F16s raided on the house of Nizar Rayan, a Hamas key leader. The house is based in Jabalia camp where thousands live in that small refugee camp.

*Nine Palestinians between children and women killed due to the bombing of Rayan's house. Some of the killed children were playing near the targeted house.

*Five houses partially damages while bombing Rayan's house and several other got deadly shrapnel.
*Israeli heavy F16s' rockets destroyed the Agricultural College of Bait Hanon, north of Gaza Strip.
*Israeli navy bombs Gaza shores and open its heavy fire on some buildings, boats and security offices. Many shells fall down behind some densely populated buildings north of Gaza.

*Trauma across the Nusairat Refugee Camp as Israel hit the house of Ahmed Abu Nader twice. The house was totally damaged while neighboring houses partially damaged.

*Israeli F16s raided on a house of Tawfiq Abu Al Ros, in Al Nusairat Refugee Camp. Many civilians injured.

* A house of Hani Abu Al Amrain in Al Shaikh Ridawan area bombed by Israeli Air forces. Medical sources reported that many wounded arrived at Al Shifa' hospital.

*A number of wounded resulted in a rocket hit a house for a Hamas member in Rafah.

*Israeli Air forced totally destroyed two mosques by heavy rockets in Khan Yonis and Rafah cties.

*Few vans of aids, food stuff and medical aids arrived into Gaza. Arab governments to send urgent medical and food aids to Gaza. Airborne assistance expected to land in Al araish Egyptian airport near Gaza.

*Neither fuel, nor gasoline nor Benzin in Gaza. Power cuts up to 21 hours. All aspects of life are not longer available in Gaza.

*Neither spare parts nor Gasoline available to operate pumps of fresh water. A great number of Palestinians don't have an easy access for fresh drinking water.

*Palestinian factions retaliate against Israeli air raids in Gaza. Around 50 homemade rockets fired into Israel with no casualties.

Security Bombing? When Will Israel Be Secure? When All the Palestinians Are Dead?

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3041&updaterx=2009-01-01+13%3A46%3A14

Above link is a Real News report from a teacher in Rafah. She asks the titled question at the end of her report.

Je Me Souviens (I Remember) -- Rockets Falling on Former Homes

Portion below; whole thing (from Lawrence of Cyberia) here: http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2008/12/yes-virginia-there-is-a-context.html

Yesterday, rockets from Gaza fell on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Benny Tziper in the Hebrew-language version of Ha'aretz online was the only person I saw publicly mention that the Israeli city of Ashkelon was, until quite recently, the Palestinian city of Majdal al-Asqalan

whose Arab population was expelled within the lifetime of many present-day Israelis to the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip:
[...]A nice man was there at the entrance to the museum, an invalid of IDF from the Yom Kippur War, who was born and lived all his life in Ashkelon. From his knowledge and enthusiasm one could tell that he loves the city very much. He had no problem telling me how in 1953 the Arabs were expelled, and the long process of looking for a new name for the place started (the Arab name was Majdl), till it was decided to call the place Ashkelon. The entire communications between the authorities regarding the cleansing of the city of Arabs and Hebrewisation of the name is exhibited in the museum. I think that nobody makes the connection today between the fact that the Qassams land on Ashkelon and the fact that poor Arabs who did nothing wrong to anybody were put on trucks and expelled from their city to Gaza fifty five years ago, and since then they are there and Ashkelon is here. And this did not happen in wartime or as a result of hostilities, but from a cold calculation that the area must be cleansed of Arabs. There is a picture in the museum that shows the Arabs sitting and waiting in front of the of Israeli military government building. It sends shivers down my spine because it happens in the year I was born. And it is really, really hard for me to realize that at the time that my parents were happy with my birth, other people were put on trucks and expelled from their homes.[...]
(via skyredoubt, via Mondo Weiss; emphasis mine).

Gaza: It's Terrorism, it's Slaughter -- (Think It's About the Rockets?)

Portion below; whole thing here: http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/31/gaza-its-terrorism-its-slaughter-crime-can-be-reported/

This was the so-called liberated Gaza. The biggest prison in the world, an entire population (1.5 million) completely locked up. And more than any other prison, one full of innocent people.

When the unilateral “withdrawal” took place in 2005, an unbiased look at the circumstances would have let one understand at once that it wasn’t about a gust of hope but rather the base for a situation that would only get worse. It would be sufficient to go and read again the interview to Haaretz delivered on October 6^th 2004 by Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s right hand man, when he stated that the so-called Gaza disengagement plan (which also contemplated building the wall in the West Bank) was nothing but a diversion meant to supply Israel with “the amount of formaldehyde necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians”.

One month later, the father of the homeland and President of the Palestinian National Authority Yasser Arafat died. All the defects of the top brass of Al Fatah’s secular leadership, until then kept together by Arafat’s charisma, were laid bare. These leaders had been embezzling shamelessly and building Palladian-style villas in the midst of the Occupied Territories’ misery while lacking concrete results to offer as achievements of their negotiation, continuously overwhelmed by the Israeli government’s iron fist and melancholically heading for the label of collaborationist with the occupier.

On the other hand, the prestige of the “Islamic Resistance Movement” was growing amongst the population. Its Arabic acronym, “Hamas”, means “zeal, enthusiasm”. Hamas’ leaders used to live with frugality while putting together a network of material solidarity in the middle of all that havoc, a sort of residual yet infinitely more reliable welfare than the disaster the PNA was sinking into.

It’s under these circumstances that Hamas, in January 2006, won the Palestinian elections by 76 seats out of 132, against only 43 seats gained by Al Fatah. A genuine and electorally clean victory, but also a variable regarded as being unacceptable by the calculations of the affected powers. An example of double-standard democracy.

Again Dov Weisglass, in his role of coordinator of a governmental team which included also the army high-ranks and which was entrusted with implementing anti-Hamas operations, commented in this way immediately after the elections about starting an economic clampdown on the PNA: “it’s like putting them on diet: The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die.” The audience, among which there was Tzipi Livni, burst out laughing (see Gideon Levy’s “As the Hamas team laughs”, Haaretz February 19^th 2006).

After all, Weissglass is witty. In the famous 2004 interview with Haaretz he made clear very well how much formaldehyde was needed to “embalm” the chances of a peace agreement: “we educated the world to understand that there is no one to talk to. And we received a no-one-to-talk-to certificate… The certificate will be revoked only when Palestine becomes like Finland.” Sort of putting off until doomsday, should someone still dare cherish the two-State solution.

The Palestinians from the big prison didn’t turn into Finns. They underwent their “diet” thoroughly, day by day. In spite of a faltering truce, the clampdown got more intense, even less trucks loaded with aid were let in and nothing got out of the camp of concentrated despair.

Caution Reins in Ground Invasion -- Jonathan Cook

Link to Original: http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0357.htm#Top

Jerusalem // Ever since Hamas triumphed in the Palestinian elections nearly three years ago, the story in Israel has been that a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip was imminent. But even when public pressure mounted for a decisive blow against Hamas, the government backed off from a frontal assault.

Now the world waits for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to send in the tanks and troops as the logic of this operation is pushing inexorably towards a ground war. Nonetheless, officials have been stalling. Significant ground forces are massed on Gaza’s border, but still the talk in Israel is of “exit strategies”, lulls and renewed ceasefires.

Even if Israeli tanks do lumber into the enclave, will they dare to move into the real battlegrounds of central Gaza? Or will they simply be used, as they have been in the past, to terrorise the civilian population on the peripheries?

Israelis are aware of the official reason for Mr Barak’s reticence to follow the air strikes with a large-scale ground war. They have been endlessly reminded that the worst losses sustained by the army in the second intifada took place in 2002 during the invasion of Jenin refugee camp.

Gaza, as the Israelis know only too well, is one mammoth refugee camp. Its narrow alleys, incapable of being negotiated by Merkava tanks, will force Israeli soldiers out into the open. Gaza, in the Israeli imagination, is a death trap.

Similarly, no one has forgotten the heavy toll on Israeli soldiers during the ground war with Hizbollah in 2006. In a country such as Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the firing line.

That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one Mr Barak, leader of the Labor Party, will take lightly with an election in six weeks.

But there is another concern that has given him equal cause to hesitate.

Despite the popular rhetoric in Israel, no senior official really believes Hamas can be destroyed, either from the air or with brigades of troops. It is simply too entrenched in Gaza.

That conclusion is acknowledged in the tepid rationales offered so far for Israel’s operations. “Creating calm in the country’s south” and “changing the security environment” have been preferred over previous favourites, such as “rooting out the infrastructure of terror”.

An invasion whose real objective was the toppling of Hamas would, as Mr Barak and his officials understand, require the permanent military reoccupation of Gaza.

But overturning the disengagement from Gaza – the 2005 brainchild of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister at the time – would entail a huge military and financial commitment from Israel. It would once again have to assume responsibility for the welfare of the local civilian population, and the army would be forced into treacherous policing of Gaza’s teeming camps.

In effect, an invasion of Gaza to overthrow Hamas would be a reversal of the trend in Israeli policy since the Oslo process of the early 1990s.

It was then that Israel allowed the long-exiled Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to return to the occupied territories in the new role of head of the Palestinian Authority. Naively, Arafat assumed he was leading a government-in-waiting. In truth, he simply became Israel’s chief security contractor.

Arafat was tolerated during the 1990s because he did little to stop Israel’s effective annexation of large parts of the West Bank through the rapid expansion of settlements and increasingly harsh movement restrictions on Palestinians. Instead, he concentrated on building up the security forces of his Fatah loyalists, containing Hamas and preparing for a statehood that never arrived.

When the second intifada broke out, Arafat proved he had outlived his usefulness to Israel. His Palestinian Authority was gradually emasculated.

Since Arafat’s death and the disengagement from Gaza, Israel has sought to consolidate the physical separation of the Strip from the much-coveted West Bank. Even if not originally desired by Israel, Hamas’s takeover of Gaza has contributed significantly to that goal.

Israel is now faced by two Palestinian national movements. The Fatah one, based in the West Bank and led by a weak president, Mahmoud Abbas, is largely discredited and compliant. The other, Hamas, based in Gaza, has grown in confidence as it claims to be the true guardian of resistance to the occupation.

Unable to destroy Hamas, Israel is now considering whether to live with the armed group next door.

Hamas has proved it can enforce its rule in Gaza much as Arafat once did in both occupied territories. The question being debated in Israel’s cabinet and war rooms is whether, like Arafat, Hamas can be made to collude with the occupation. It has proved it is strong, but can it be made useful to Israel, too?

In practice that would mean taming Hamas rather than crushing it. Whereas Israel is trying to build up Fatah in the West Bank with carrots, it is using the current slaughter in Gaza as a big stick with which to beat Hamas into compliance.

The ultimate objective is another truce stopping the rocket fire out of the Strip, like the six-month ceasefire that just ended, but on terms even more favourable to Israel.

The savage blockade that has deprived Gaza’s population of essentials for many months failed to achieve that goal. Instead, Hamas quickly took charge of the smuggling tunnels that became a lifeline for Gazans. The tunnels raised Hamas’s finances and popularity in equal measure.

It should come as no surprise that Israel has barely bothered to hit the Hamas leadership or its military wing. Instead it has bombed the tunnels, Hamas’s treasure chest, and it has killed substantial numbers of ordinary policemen, the guarantors of law and order in Gaza. Latest reports suggest Israel is now planning to expand its air strikes to Hamas’s welfare organisations, the charities that are the base of its popularity.

The air campaign is paring down Hamas’s ability to function effectively as the ruler of Gaza. It is undermining Hamas’s political power bases. The lesson is not that Hamas can be destroyed militarily but that it that can be weakened domestically.

Israel apparently hopes to persuade the Hamas leadership, as it did Arafat for a while, that its best interests are served by co-operating with Israel. The message is: forget about your popular mandate to resist the occupation and concentrate instead on remaining in power with our help.

In the fog of war, events may yet escalate in such a way that a ground invasion cannot be avoided, especially if Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel. But whatever happens, Israel and Hamas are almost certain in the end to agree to another ceasefire.

The issue will be whether in doing so, Hamas, like Arafat before it, loses sight of its primary task: to force Israel to end its occupation.

Covid