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ISRAEL INVADING BEIT LAHIA, 6 PALESTINIANS DEAD, AT LEAST 45 INJURED

Kristen Ess | 21.04.2004 11:16 | Anti-militarism | Anti-racism | Repression | World

The Israeli military have been attacking this area, uprooting its agricultural economic mainstays, rendering thousands of people homeless, leaving the once-fertile and lush area looking like a desert, for more than two years.

ISRAEL INVADING BEIT LAHIA, 6 PALESTINIANS DEAD, AT LEAST 45 INJURED

Kristen Ess for PNN

21 April 2004

The Israeli military are invading Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. Until this moment they have killed six Palestinians in just a few hours. They are firing from Apache Helicopters and from tanks. Forty-five people are injured. People are coming from throughout the Gaza Strip to try to help defend against the invasion. Shohada Al Aqsa has just issued a leaflet stating they destroyed an APC. Al Kassam has also just issued a leaflet that they are shooting at all Gaza Strip settlements and into a nearby Israeli town. Israeli bulldozers are plowing through the town that has little left standing to destroy, making 10 meter walls out of dirt. Tanks are shelling while kids run the other direction. Members of the armed resistance fire from single guns or hand held rockets at tanks and Apaches.


Presidential Advisor and Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudaina told PNN reporter Rashid Hilal at noon today, "What is happening in Gaza right now just ensures that the Israelis are not ready to withdraw from Gaza as they said. But they are working on destroying all the efforts for the Road Map. The Palestinian leadership will go back again to the Security Council to discuss the Israeli operations and assassinations against Palestinians."


Palestinian medical sources in the northern Gaza Strip reported eight Palestinians injured this morning at 7 when Israeli Apaches fired missiles into a crowd of residents of Beit Lahia. The Israeli Apaches fired missiles next to the Education Ministry Building of the besieged northern Gaza Strip town. A crowd of people had gathered in the street. Two of the injured were in critical condition, but died as of 9:16 this morning. As of 9:52, the Israeli military killed two more Palestinians. As of 10:22, 45 people are injured. At 10:30, the Israeli military killed another Palestinian, and just after 11 another, bringing the total to six since this morning’s invasion began.

The Israeli military invaded Beit Lahia early this morning after killing five Palestinians in neighboring Beit Hanoun yesterday. Over 30 tanks, bulldozers, jeeps and Apaches invaded the town. Israeli soldiers broke into, and have taken over, the Education Building, using it as a sniper tower from where they are shooting randomly. Eyewitnesses report tanks and Apaches firing randomly at different times into homes and crowds of people who have run from their houses in a futile effort to escape the invasion.

The Israeli military have been attacking this area, uprooting its agricultural economic mainstays, rendering thousands of people homeless, leaving the once-fertile and lush area looking like a desert, for more than two years.

This morning the Israeli military bulldozed the main roads to Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun. Eyewitnesses describe a huge number of tanks, bulldozers, APCs, and jeeps lining the northern Gaza Strip roads. Local sources report that many residents do not expect to live through the day.

Kristen Ess
- Homepage: http://palestinenet.org/english/

Comments

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the truth about the fence

21.04.2004 13:09

The fence is solely a defensive measure, intended to protect Israelis from suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. It is not a political act. It is not intended to be a border or to prejudge any future negotiations with the Palestinians. It has no effect on the status of the land on which it is constructed. It is simply the most effective method they have found, after over 20,000 separate terrorist attacks in the last three and half years, to save the lives of civilians.

Second, the fence is temporary. Its sole purpose is security, and it can be moved or removed in accordance with any agreement may be reached. Israel has moved hundreds of kilometers of fences in the past, despite the expense involved, when it signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and when it left Lebanon. The fence is reversible. The lives taken by terrorism are not.

Israel is aware of the impact of the fence on the lives of Palestinians. It has no wish to damage Palestinian quality of life. That is why they are constantly reviewing the humanitarian arrangements and the routing of the fence, and have already introduced changes. Israel is committed to continuing to review all aspect of the fence, to find the most effective and humane way of protecting lives without causing unnecessary hardship to the Palestinian population.

As the Prime Minister has said, Israel remains committed to fulfilling its commitments under the Roadmap, and will do everything it can to promote peace. Protecting the lives of its citizens and taking terror out of the equation is a crucial step in this direction.

Ben


Um, yeeeesssss

21.04.2004 14:38

For more hilarious Israeli government propaganda, why not visit its website and you too can paste easily-refutable right wing nonsense on IMC websites as part of a tireless Zionist disinformation campaign!

Moshe Pitt


. or

21.04.2004 16:05

. . or you can be like "Moshe Pitt" here and fail to accept facts when they are laid out in front of you. Glad to see we are getting under your skin there Moshe.

Laughing Boy


bollox

21.04.2004 16:30

well it looks to me like it would be better if the fence there was protecting Palestinians from israeli terrorism, than the other way around. Poor buggers, just watching them being slaughtered fills me with a rage, and i am sorry to my many israeli friends, but at this time i feel sickened by what israel is doing to the Palestinians.

un


Sorry

22.04.2004 10:38

Sorry to spoil your circle-jerk, Zion-boy, but you're not "getting under my skin" at all.

Its just that, like most reasonable people, I have an aversion to tendentious opinion being peddled as fact.

It is not fact, and shrilly insisting that it is does not make it so. Not one jot.

Sorry again.

Moshe Pitt