Gaza in Pieces

Featuring In Gaza, Gaza Today, The Heathlander, Pulse

• Head of Emergency and Ambulances: Death toll 880 and injured 3620.
• Many ambulances stop due to fuel shortages!
• Medical sector still paralyzed!
• Humantarian Crisis still exacerbated as no access to water and bread.
• Israei reserve soldiers on the borders of Gaza!
• More thousands leaflets from Israeli air force in Rafah requesting all residents to leave their houses near Palestinian Egyptian borders.
• Israeli army spokesman, Avehay adra’I denied the use of banned weapons while Many International Ngo’s confirmed that Israel is using them. Human Rights Watah confirmed that and consider what’s going in Gaza as war crimes!
• More Phosphorous bombs are being used east of Gaza City and this is so clear on the T.V footages going out of Gaza.
  
• Many people faced suffocation cases in Khoza’a area due to an Israeli artillery shell.

Friday night, Red Crescent ambulances in Jabaliya collected numerous victims of smoke inhalation: a strange chemical smoke which seizes the lungs and air passage, and suffocates the victims. Many elderly were collected in turns, and a 3 month old baby was brought in held by a sobbing mother.

Mounting evidence is emerging that Israel is experimenting new non-conventional weapons on civilian population in Gaza. “It is happening again what we saw in Lebanon two years ago”, says Paola Manduca, genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa and member of New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), “where Israel used white phosphorus, Dense inert metal explosive (DIME), thermobaric bombs, cluster bombs and uranium ammunitions.Still today there are unexploded bombs and radioactivity on the ground”.

Israel has begun a new policy in Gaza in the past two days called the “roof knock”. This is when a “small” rocket is fired from Israeli military aircraft that is strong enough to blast open the roof of a targeted building. It is sent as a “warning message” to the building’s inhabitants giving them between 2 and 3 minutes to evacuate before the building is completely destroyed. A number of cases of this new technique have been reported recently.

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters are endangering the lives of Palestinian civilians – including by using them as human shields. “Our sources in Gaza report that Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are effectively being used as human shields.”

Colonel W. Patrick Lang (Ret.):- In Beit Suhur outside Bethlehem, I have seen IDF troops shoot at Palestinian Christian women hanging out laundry in their gardens.  This was done with tank coaxial machine guns from within a bermed up dirt fort a couple of hundred yards away, and evidently just for the fun of it.  In Bethlehem a lieutenant told me that he would have had his men shoot me in the street during a demonstration that I happened to get caught in, but that he had not because he thought I might not be a Palestinian and that if I were not the incident would have caused him some trouble.  I have seen a lot of things like that.  One might say that in war, s–t happens.  That is true, but such behavior is indicative of an army that is not well disciplined and not a completely reliably instrument of state policy.  In my travels in the west Bank in March of 2008, it was noticeable that the behavior towards Palestinian civilians of IDF troops at roadblocks was reminiscent of that of any group of post-adolescents given guns and allowed to bully the helpless in order to look tough for each other.  I think the IDF would be well advised to grow some real sergeants.

And two pictures, murderous assholes-

and the what they cause-

Big men baby killers, at least be upfront about the ‘job’ they want done. It’s called genocide. Oh and just so we are clear on who was open to peace negotiations and who wasn’t-

(IPS) – Contrary to Israel’s argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to “put pressure” on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.

The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November “if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza”.

Pastor said he passed Meshal’s statement on to a “senior official” in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.

“There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets,” said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective ceasefire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on whether there had been any discussion of a ceasefire proposal from Hamas in mid-December that would have stopped the rocket firing.