A violent escalation is precisely the response Israel is hoping to provoke.
When that happens, Israel will re-take Gaza militarily, flattening every man, woman, and child still standing, while invoking the "they MADE us do this" defense" like a mantra.
When that happens, Israel will re-take Gaza militarily, flattening every man, woman, and child still standing, while invoking the "they MADE us do this" defense" like a mantra.
The siege of Gaza is going to lead to a violent escalation
Far from helping settle the Middle East conflict, the US and Europe are fuelling it with their contempt for democracy
Seumas Milne
Thursday November 1, 2007
The Guardian
There is, it seems, an unbridgeable gap between the western world's apparent recognition of the dangers of Palestinian suffering and its commitment to do anything whatever to stop it. This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups. A plan to cut power supplies has only been put on hold till the end of the week by the intervention of Israel's attorney general.
Both moves come on top of the existing blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since last year's election of Hamas and the confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it is obliged to pass on as part of previous agreements. And instead of being restrained by the US or European Union, both have deepened the crisis by imposing their own sanctions and withdrawing aid. The result has, inevitably, been further huge increases in unemployment and poverty. But far from discouraging rocket attacks, they have risen sharply - though the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been running at more than 30 to one, compared with four to one at the height of the intifada five years ago.
The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, yesterday branded Israel's intensification of the Gaza siege as a violation of international law: despite its withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power both legally and practically. Not that the situation is much better in the occupied West Bank. Despite the US and Israel's fatal backing for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his emergency government of a non-existent state, Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions, segregated road-building and construction of the land-grabbing separation wall continue apace in the territory where Abbas's nominal writ supposedly runs.
There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, squeezing this already constricted piece of land into apartheid-style cantons, and making free movement or normal economic activity entirely impossible. All this is in contravention of international law; much of it directly violates UN security council resolutions, such as resolution 446 against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But, whereas the occupied people face sanctions and international isolation, the occupiers pay no penalty at all. On the contrary, they are aided and armed to the hilt by the US and its allies.
Given the speed at which Israel continues to create facts on the ground, it's no surprise that even Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned a few days ago that the "window for a two-state solution" could be closing. But it is of course her government that has underpinned this takeover at every stage. And having preached democracy as the salvation of the Middle East, the US and its allies demonstrated what that meant in practice when it greeted the winners of the Palestinian elections with a political and economic boycott.
Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel. The US and Israel then went one step further, funding and arming a section of the defeated Fatah leadership in an attempt to overthrow Hamas's administration. When that failed, the US encouraged Abbas to impose an unconstitutional administration of his own and blocked any power-sharing with Hamas, which is the precondition for Palestinian advance.
Instead, the US is gearing up for a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from which Hamas is excluded and which almost nobody believes offers any prospect of real progress towards a settlement. Its main appeal to the Bush administration is perhaps that it can be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran. For the Palestinians, it's maybe just as well that the Israeli government is resistant to any timetable for statehood - let alone serious negotiation on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders - as any agreement that such a weak leadership could now secure would not stand a chance of being accepted by its people.
Already, Hamas and the other non-Fatah Palestinian parties are preparing to stage their own conference in Damascus to coincide with the Annapolis jamboree. Their aim is to challenge the right of Abbas, who has never had any of the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat, to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations over its future. While they were prepared to accept him as a negotiator for a national unity government, there will be no acceptance of deals made by a figure many Palestinians now regard as simply operating under US and Israeli licence.
Nor should there be any interest in such a setup for anyone who wants to see a lasting settlement of the conflict. As in previous periods when political progress has been blocked, there are clear signs that pressures for a return to wider resistance are building up on the Palestinian side. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said on Monday that he did not expect a new intifada if Annapolis failed because the Palestinian public was "exhausted and lacks leadership". It's true that any new upsurge in violence is likely to be different from in the past. But Palestinians are also well aware that it was the first intifada that led to the Oslo agreement, for all its weaknesses, and the second intifada that triggered Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas has mostly held back from armed action against Israel in the past couple of years, though it has allowed attacks by others. That may be about to change. This week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared that "every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza", while Hamas leader Ahmad Nimr told a rally that the movement was now ready to "strike inside the heart of Israel, the occupation entity" if Israel did not stop its killings in Gaza. Hamas has a variety of options - including rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the West Bank over the much-vaunted security barrier - that could dramatically escalate the conflict. The wider international interest in a just settlement could not be more obvious.
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2202895,00.html
When the Palestinians respond, just remember who started all this, and direct your anger at them.
And of course, our Zionist-loyal "Government" won't so anything about this.
The timing is interesting, given the upcoming "Annapolis Conference", which serves to be about PR alone, as Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations or Compromise in the name of peace.
If you follow the events surrounding Israel's "Disengagement" from Gaza, you will quickly understand that this was the plan all along. While Israel was making a public spectacle of "forcing Jews to leave their homes", it was quietly surrounding the Strip with artillery emplacements, in an operation ominously named "First Rain".
Under this operation, Gaza basically became a "Free-Fire Zone", and several artillery and gunship strikes killed a high number of civilians. Finally, when one of these batteries fired upon and murdered a Palestinian family - picnicking on a beach that had been Segregated "Jews Only" only weeks before, Hamas finally decided to call an end to its unilateral, two-year cease-fire.
(In essence, they took Israel's bait. After all, you can't excuse your Aggression and label it "defense" if you're not being intermittently attacked. Never mind the hypocrisy underlying the entire media's framing of that whole debate ...)
When the Palestinians responded by electing Hamas to power (yes, elected), Israeli Extremists and their Ideological, bought foreign co-conspirators imposed unilateral sanctions on Gaza, a bit of Collective Punishment which increased the hardship of those stuck in the world's largest Concentration Camp.
When they felt Gaza had been substantially weakened, the US and Israel undertook a Coup attempt, using corrupt elements within the Fatah Party, provoking a violent response by Hamas, which expelled the group. Most of the world's media ignored the events leading to this "crisis", and instead only repeated the Propaganda emanating from the US and Israel, which used this to further increase sanctions against Gaza.
Most recently, Israel stepped up its Collective Punishment, except that human rights groups and legal advisors to the Government halted some of its approved measures, because they run contrary to International Humanitarian Law.
This was sold as another "response to rocket attacks" (again highlighting the hypocrisy of the debate's Framing - are the Palestinians allowed to defend themselves from strikes which actually KILL people ... ?), even though high-ranking officials said that this was NOT, in fact, a response to these attacks, but a way to "distance Israel from Gaza's infrastructure".
The real reason for this whole episode, of course, has been to "soften up" the Gaza Strip for a long-planned military attack, a way to undermine the resolve, and hopefully rid this territory of Palestinians altogether.
Of course, the corporate media says none of this, unless you're able to read between the lines. Then it's all right there in black 'n white ...
Barak: Large-scale Gaza operation near
By YAAKOV KATZ, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
A large-scale IDF operation against Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza was drawing near, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday.
"Every day that passes brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza," Barak told Army Radio.
"We are not happy to do it, we're not rushing to do it, and we'll be happy if circumstances succeed in preventing it," he said. "But the time is approaching when we'll have to undertake a broad operation in Gaza."
Meanwhile, Hamas "terror chief" Muhammad Deif was quoted as saying that Hamas would soon strike "deep inside Israel."
Hamas official Sheikh Ahmad Hamdan of Khan Yunis said Tuesday that he recently met with Deif in the fugitive's hiding place. According to Hamdan, Deif, leader of Hamas's Izzadin a-Kassam armed wing, told him that in the next few weeks, his group would initiate an attack against the "Israeli occupation, and not remain on the defensive."
Deif, wanted by Israel for planning and executing numerous terror attacks, has eluded capture for years. In July 2006, he was wounded in an IAF strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Palestinian sources reported that nine members of the same family were killed in the attack, including seven children.
Deif has survived at least two other targeted assassination attempts.
The report of the Izzadin a-Kassam leader's alleged plans comes after Brig.-Gen. Moshe (Chico) Tamir, head of the Gaza Division, said Monday that Hamas was trying to establish a bunker system as well as fortified rocket-launching and surveillance positions along the security fence with the Gaza Strip.
Tamir said that Hamas was "building an army" in the Gaza Strip and had obtained unprecedented capabilities through smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Also Monday, head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Yuval Diskin said that since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians have smuggled over 112 tons of explosives into the Strip.
"They are trying to dig tunnels, build surveillance positions and mortar-fire stations along the fence," Tamir told reporters during a briefing concerning the death of IDF reservist Ehud Efrati during clashes with Hamas gunmen early Monday morning. "They are trying to build this up and we are trying to stop them."
Tamir said that Hamas was studying Israeli tactics during the IDF's daily operations along the fence and was trying to use this knowledge in its fighting methods.
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380691224&pagename=JPost/JPArtic
Israeli army conducts largest maneuver since Lebanon War in 2006
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are conducting in northern part of the country the largest military drill since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported Tuesday.
The four-day military operation, started from Sunday, was continuing in north Israel's Galilee region, the report said.
The maneuver was originally planned to take place also in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in 1967 Mideast War, but the IDF decided to cancel that part of maneuver only two days before the drill for fear that increasing tensions with Syria.
The maneuver involved ground, air and naval forces as well as intelligence and S4 units, said local newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, adding that no live fire would be used in the drill.
A similar drill had been held a month before the Second Lebanon War.
The objective of the exercise is "to synchronize the decision making process between the various military bodies in the midst of a crisis situation," it said.
Yedioth Ahronoth also said that the maneuver will further pressure the decision makers by complicating the combat scenarios with various possible political developments as well as the opening of a new front in southern Israel.
news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/30/content_6975606.htm
Israel sees Palestinians too 'exhausted' to rebel
Reuters | Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Israeli intelligence believes that Palestinians would lack the will for a new popular uprising against occupation should an upcoming peace conference fail to meet their expectations, a senior official has said.
Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, told a parliamentary committee that while failure at the conference could provoke some violence, it would not reach the same level as the Intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000 when the last major peace initiative collapsed.
"In my estimation ... the Palestinians are exhausted. There isn't the energy in the public and there also isn't the leadership right now that could spur such resistance," Diskin was quoted by a parliamentary spokesman as telling lawmakers.
The spokesman offered no definition of what failure might entail. Palestinian negotiators say their goal following a US-hosted conference due by December is the launch of formal statehood negotiations leading to a peace accord next year.
Many observers question whether either the Israeli or Palestinian governments have the strength to implement such a deal – Diskin himself was quoted as saying he did not believe Palestinians were capable of preventing attacks on Israel.
Over 4000 Palestinians and some 1000 Israelis have been killed since the uprising that began after peace talks between then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat broke down in 2000. Violence eased in 2005.
Diskin added in his briefing to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, sitting in a closed session, that Hamas was consolidating its hold on the Gaza Strip since its violent takeover of the coastal territory in June.
"Hamas has an army of 15,000 trained and armed individuals with underground bunkers and military communication centres. They have smuggled in some 70 tonnes of explosives and they can manufacture mortars, anti-tank missiles and other weaponry," the parliamentary spokesman said, quoting Diskin.
The Shin Bet chief said it appeared unlikely Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would manage to regain control of the Gaza Strip "in the foreseeable future". Hamas routed Abbas's Fatah faction to take control of the enclave in June. Fatah still holds sway in the occupied West Bank.
Diskin added that Abbas's security forces were too weak to ensure control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew troops in the way that it did from Gaza in 2005. He said pulling out of the West Bank would "pose a great security threat for Israel".
Hardline Hamas leader Nizar Rayan said at a rally in Gaza late on Monday that the Islamist group would aim to emulate its seizure of Gaza by ousting Abbas and his Fatah faction in the West Bank as well.
"In autumn the leaves will drop, (Abbas) will drop and we will pray in Abbas's office in Ramallah," Rayan said.
www.stuff.co.nz/4255652a12.html
The intention of this long-planned crime is the 'softening up' of the world's largest Concentration Camp, paving the way for an Israeli attack which was planned alongside 'disengagement'.
Regardless of the reasons, this is an illegal policy.
ANALYSIS: Israel's real intention behind sanctions on Gaza Strip
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff , Haaretz Correspondents
October 26, 2007
There is an enormous gap between the reasons Israel is giving for the decision to impose significant sanctions against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, and the real intentions behind them. Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized Thursday a plan for disrupting electricity supply to the Gaza Strip, as well as significantly shrinking fuel shipments. This is supposed to reduce the number of Qassam rocket attacks against Sderot and the other border communities. In practice, defense officials believe that the Palestinian militants will intensify their attacks in response to the sanctions.
As such, the real aim of this effort is twofold: to attempt a new form of "escalation" as a response to aggression from Gaza, before Israel embarks on a major military operation there; and to prepare the ground for a more clear-cut isolation of the Gaza Strip - limiting to an absolute minimum Israel's obligation toward the Palestinians there.
Several weeks ago, Barak said Israel "is getting closer" to a major operation in the strip. Like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Barak is not excited about this possibility. He knows that it will not be easy, and there are no guarantees for positive results. Many soldiers will be killed and so will many innocent Palestinians, because the IDF will employ a massive artillery bombardment before it sends infantry into the crowded built-up areas. This will be a "dirty war," very aggressive, that will have scenes of destruction similar to southern Lebanon in 2006. The sole exception: unlike in Lebanon, the population there has nowhere to run.
Moreover, Ashkenazi has told the cabinet that he will only support an offensive operation if it is long-lasting. If after several weeks of fighting, the IDF is allowed time to carry out arrests and gather intelligence, then the chief of staff sees a point for the operation.
Defense sources say the sanctions will lead the militants to intensify their attacks to show that they do not succumb to Israeli pressure. And because the sanctions will not be severe - so as not to create a humanitarian crisis - they will not be effective. It is actually expected that the gasoline shortage will have a greater effect than the disruptions in the electricity supply - which normally happens because of equipment breakdowns.
The decision on sanctions is also an attempt to give expression to the inclination to completely disengage from Gaza. In this way Israel is sending a message to the Palestinian leadership in the strip that it must seek alternatives, however minor, to goods and services coming from Israel. This touches on the day after the Annapolis summit. Failure at the summit may lead Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas into the arms of Hamas. In such a case, Israel is raising a big stop sign at the exit from Ramallah: Passage to Gaza is closed.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/917385.html
Israel 'won't cause Gaza crisis'
Israel has vowed not to cause a humanitarian crisis in Gaza - despite plans to cut fuel and electricity in a bid to halt rocket attacks.
(However, the UN has already called this a Humanitarian Crisis, and has condemned Israel for making it worse.)
"We will take the steps needed but we will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip," PM Ehud Olmert told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Meeting in Jerusalem, before a US-led peace conference, the leaders made little progress on a joint statement.
(This is for foreign consumption, as anyone looking at the facts on the ground sees through this bullsh*t.)
Israel supplies 60% of the electricity for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants.
'Collective punishment'
"Israel will protect its citizens," Mr Olmert told Mahmoud Abbas, according to Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.
Both leaders agreed to implementing the stalled 2003 roadmap to peace as part of the joint statement due before the US-led peace conference, Ms Eisin said.
We call for an end to these meetings, which have become a cover for the killings, destruction... and the escalation of the aggression against the Gaza Strip
Ismail Haniya
Hamas
The conference is due in November in Annapolis, Maryland, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been touring the Middle East to secure a joint agreement that would allow it to go ahead.
"They [Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas] agreed to try to reach, as soon as possible, a meaningful statement," Ms Eisin said.
(But Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations that would lead to peace. This conference is about PR, since Israel's actions over the past three years has destroyed most of its international sympathy and support.)
The leader of the Hamas faction in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, condemned Friday's meeting.
"We call for an end to these meetings, which have become a cover for the killings, destruction, assassinations, incursions and the escalation of the aggression against the Gaza Strip - including talk of new collective punishments," Mr Haniya said.
Palestinians have said they will only attend the Annapolis conference if key issues are up for discussion, including the final status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the right of return for refugees.
The Israelis have said no prior text is needed as a basis for the talks.
The events in Gaza underline the enormous difficulties of advancing the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, says the BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem.
There is a growing belief among the Palestinian and Israeli public that this diplomatic process will offer no significant advance, our correspondent adds.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7064107.stm
This proves that the Israelis are planning for the conference to fail.
Proving, once again, that the Palestinians have no partner for peace, since this is a Zionist war to wipe Palestine off the map, and they desire no peace which includes coexistence - the Israeli and Palestinian Peoples be damned.
Far from helping settle the Middle East conflict, the US and Europe are fuelling it with their contempt for democracy
Seumas Milne
Thursday November 1, 2007
The Guardian
There is, it seems, an unbridgeable gap between the western world's apparent recognition of the dangers of Palestinian suffering and its commitment to do anything whatever to stop it. This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups. A plan to cut power supplies has only been put on hold till the end of the week by the intervention of Israel's attorney general.
Both moves come on top of the existing blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since last year's election of Hamas and the confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it is obliged to pass on as part of previous agreements. And instead of being restrained by the US or European Union, both have deepened the crisis by imposing their own sanctions and withdrawing aid. The result has, inevitably, been further huge increases in unemployment and poverty. But far from discouraging rocket attacks, they have risen sharply - though the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been running at more than 30 to one, compared with four to one at the height of the intifada five years ago.
The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, yesterday branded Israel's intensification of the Gaza siege as a violation of international law: despite its withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power both legally and practically. Not that the situation is much better in the occupied West Bank. Despite the US and Israel's fatal backing for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his emergency government of a non-existent state, Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions, segregated road-building and construction of the land-grabbing separation wall continue apace in the territory where Abbas's nominal writ supposedly runs.
There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, squeezing this already constricted piece of land into apartheid-style cantons, and making free movement or normal economic activity entirely impossible. All this is in contravention of international law; much of it directly violates UN security council resolutions, such as resolution 446 against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But, whereas the occupied people face sanctions and international isolation, the occupiers pay no penalty at all. On the contrary, they are aided and armed to the hilt by the US and its allies.
Given the speed at which Israel continues to create facts on the ground, it's no surprise that even Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned a few days ago that the "window for a two-state solution" could be closing. But it is of course her government that has underpinned this takeover at every stage. And having preached democracy as the salvation of the Middle East, the US and its allies demonstrated what that meant in practice when it greeted the winners of the Palestinian elections with a political and economic boycott.
Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel. The US and Israel then went one step further, funding and arming a section of the defeated Fatah leadership in an attempt to overthrow Hamas's administration. When that failed, the US encouraged Abbas to impose an unconstitutional administration of his own and blocked any power-sharing with Hamas, which is the precondition for Palestinian advance.
Instead, the US is gearing up for a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from which Hamas is excluded and which almost nobody believes offers any prospect of real progress towards a settlement. Its main appeal to the Bush administration is perhaps that it can be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran. For the Palestinians, it's maybe just as well that the Israeli government is resistant to any timetable for statehood - let alone serious negotiation on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders - as any agreement that such a weak leadership could now secure would not stand a chance of being accepted by its people.
Already, Hamas and the other non-Fatah Palestinian parties are preparing to stage their own conference in Damascus to coincide with the Annapolis jamboree. Their aim is to challenge the right of Abbas, who has never had any of the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat, to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations over its future. While they were prepared to accept him as a negotiator for a national unity government, there will be no acceptance of deals made by a figure many Palestinians now regard as simply operating under US and Israeli licence.
Nor should there be any interest in such a setup for anyone who wants to see a lasting settlement of the conflict. As in previous periods when political progress has been blocked, there are clear signs that pressures for a return to wider resistance are building up on the Palestinian side. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said on Monday that he did not expect a new intifada if Annapolis failed because the Palestinian public was "exhausted and lacks leadership". It's true that any new upsurge in violence is likely to be different from in the past. But Palestinians are also well aware that it was the first intifada that led to the Oslo agreement, for all its weaknesses, and the second intifada that triggered Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas has mostly held back from armed action against Israel in the past couple of years, though it has allowed attacks by others. That may be about to change. This week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared that "every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza", while Hamas leader Ahmad Nimr told a rally that the movement was now ready to "strike inside the heart of Israel, the occupation entity" if Israel did not stop its killings in Gaza. Hamas has a variety of options - including rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the West Bank over the much-vaunted security barrier - that could dramatically escalate the conflict. The wider international interest in a just settlement could not be more obvious.
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2202895,00.html
When the Palestinians respond, just remember who started all this, and direct your anger at them.
And of course, our Zionist-loyal "Government" won't so anything about this.
The timing is interesting, given the upcoming "Annapolis Conference", which serves to be about PR alone, as Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations or Compromise in the name of peace.
If you follow the events surrounding Israel's "Disengagement" from Gaza, you will quickly understand that this was the plan all along. While Israel was making a public spectacle of "forcing Jews to leave their homes", it was quietly surrounding the Strip with artillery emplacements, in an operation ominously named "First Rain".
Under this operation, Gaza basically became a "Free-Fire Zone", and several artillery and gunship strikes killed a high number of civilians. Finally, when one of these batteries fired upon and murdered a Palestinian family - picnicking on a beach that had been Segregated "Jews Only" only weeks before, Hamas finally decided to call an end to its unilateral, two-year cease-fire.
(In essence, they took Israel's bait. After all, you can't excuse your Aggression and label it "defense" if you're not being intermittently attacked. Never mind the hypocrisy underlying the entire media's framing of that whole debate ...)
When the Palestinians responded by electing Hamas to power (yes, elected), Israeli Extremists and their Ideological, bought foreign co-conspirators imposed unilateral sanctions on Gaza, a bit of Collective Punishment which increased the hardship of those stuck in the world's largest Concentration Camp.
When they felt Gaza had been substantially weakened, the US and Israel undertook a Coup attempt, using corrupt elements within the Fatah Party, provoking a violent response by Hamas, which expelled the group. Most of the world's media ignored the events leading to this "crisis", and instead only repeated the Propaganda emanating from the US and Israel, which used this to further increase sanctions against Gaza.
Most recently, Israel stepped up its Collective Punishment, except that human rights groups and legal advisors to the Government halted some of its approved measures, because they run contrary to International Humanitarian Law.
This was sold as another "response to rocket attacks" (again highlighting the hypocrisy of the debate's Framing - are the Palestinians allowed to defend themselves from strikes which actually KILL people ... ?), even though high-ranking officials said that this was NOT, in fact, a response to these attacks, but a way to "distance Israel from Gaza's infrastructure".
The real reason for this whole episode, of course, has been to "soften up" the Gaza Strip for a long-planned military attack, a way to undermine the resolve, and hopefully rid this territory of Palestinians altogether.
Of course, the corporate media says none of this, unless you're able to read between the lines. Then it's all right there in black 'n white ...
Barak: Large-scale Gaza operation near
By YAAKOV KATZ, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
A large-scale IDF operation against Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza was drawing near, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday.
"Every day that passes brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza," Barak told Army Radio.
"We are not happy to do it, we're not rushing to do it, and we'll be happy if circumstances succeed in preventing it," he said. "But the time is approaching when we'll have to undertake a broad operation in Gaza."
Meanwhile, Hamas "terror chief" Muhammad Deif was quoted as saying that Hamas would soon strike "deep inside Israel."
Hamas official Sheikh Ahmad Hamdan of Khan Yunis said Tuesday that he recently met with Deif in the fugitive's hiding place. According to Hamdan, Deif, leader of Hamas's Izzadin a-Kassam armed wing, told him that in the next few weeks, his group would initiate an attack against the "Israeli occupation, and not remain on the defensive."
Deif, wanted by Israel for planning and executing numerous terror attacks, has eluded capture for years. In July 2006, he was wounded in an IAF strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Palestinian sources reported that nine members of the same family were killed in the attack, including seven children.
Deif has survived at least two other targeted assassination attempts.
The report of the Izzadin a-Kassam leader's alleged plans comes after Brig.-Gen. Moshe (Chico) Tamir, head of the Gaza Division, said Monday that Hamas was trying to establish a bunker system as well as fortified rocket-launching and surveillance positions along the security fence with the Gaza Strip.
Tamir said that Hamas was "building an army" in the Gaza Strip and had obtained unprecedented capabilities through smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Also Monday, head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Yuval Diskin said that since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians have smuggled over 112 tons of explosives into the Strip.
"They are trying to dig tunnels, build surveillance positions and mortar-fire stations along the fence," Tamir told reporters during a briefing concerning the death of IDF reservist Ehud Efrati during clashes with Hamas gunmen early Monday morning. "They are trying to build this up and we are trying to stop them."
Tamir said that Hamas was studying Israeli tactics during the IDF's daily operations along the fence and was trying to use this knowledge in its fighting methods.
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380691224&pagename=JPost/JPArtic
Israeli army conducts largest maneuver since Lebanon War in 2006
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are conducting in northern part of the country the largest military drill since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported Tuesday.
The four-day military operation, started from Sunday, was continuing in north Israel's Galilee region, the report said.
The maneuver was originally planned to take place also in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in 1967 Mideast War, but the IDF decided to cancel that part of maneuver only two days before the drill for fear that increasing tensions with Syria.
The maneuver involved ground, air and naval forces as well as intelligence and S4 units, said local newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, adding that no live fire would be used in the drill.
A similar drill had been held a month before the Second Lebanon War.
The objective of the exercise is "to synchronize the decision making process between the various military bodies in the midst of a crisis situation," it said.
Yedioth Ahronoth also said that the maneuver will further pressure the decision makers by complicating the combat scenarios with various possible political developments as well as the opening of a new front in southern Israel.
news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/30/content_6975606.htm
Israel sees Palestinians too 'exhausted' to rebel
Reuters | Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Israeli intelligence believes that Palestinians would lack the will for a new popular uprising against occupation should an upcoming peace conference fail to meet their expectations, a senior official has said.
Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, told a parliamentary committee that while failure at the conference could provoke some violence, it would not reach the same level as the Intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000 when the last major peace initiative collapsed.
"In my estimation ... the Palestinians are exhausted. There isn't the energy in the public and there also isn't the leadership right now that could spur such resistance," Diskin was quoted by a parliamentary spokesman as telling lawmakers.
The spokesman offered no definition of what failure might entail. Palestinian negotiators say their goal following a US-hosted conference due by December is the launch of formal statehood negotiations leading to a peace accord next year.
Many observers question whether either the Israeli or Palestinian governments have the strength to implement such a deal – Diskin himself was quoted as saying he did not believe Palestinians were capable of preventing attacks on Israel.
Over 4000 Palestinians and some 1000 Israelis have been killed since the uprising that began after peace talks between then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat broke down in 2000. Violence eased in 2005.
Diskin added in his briefing to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, sitting in a closed session, that Hamas was consolidating its hold on the Gaza Strip since its violent takeover of the coastal territory in June.
"Hamas has an army of 15,000 trained and armed individuals with underground bunkers and military communication centres. They have smuggled in some 70 tonnes of explosives and they can manufacture mortars, anti-tank missiles and other weaponry," the parliamentary spokesman said, quoting Diskin.
The Shin Bet chief said it appeared unlikely Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would manage to regain control of the Gaza Strip "in the foreseeable future". Hamas routed Abbas's Fatah faction to take control of the enclave in June. Fatah still holds sway in the occupied West Bank.
Diskin added that Abbas's security forces were too weak to ensure control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew troops in the way that it did from Gaza in 2005. He said pulling out of the West Bank would "pose a great security threat for Israel".
Hardline Hamas leader Nizar Rayan said at a rally in Gaza late on Monday that the Islamist group would aim to emulate its seizure of Gaza by ousting Abbas and his Fatah faction in the West Bank as well.
"In autumn the leaves will drop, (Abbas) will drop and we will pray in Abbas's office in Ramallah," Rayan said.
www.stuff.co.nz/4255652a12.html
The intention of this long-planned crime is the 'softening up' of the world's largest Concentration Camp, paving the way for an Israeli attack which was planned alongside 'disengagement'.
Regardless of the reasons, this is an illegal policy.
ANALYSIS: Israel's real intention behind sanctions on Gaza Strip
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff , Haaretz Correspondents
October 26, 2007
There is an enormous gap between the reasons Israel is giving for the decision to impose significant sanctions against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, and the real intentions behind them. Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized Thursday a plan for disrupting electricity supply to the Gaza Strip, as well as significantly shrinking fuel shipments. This is supposed to reduce the number of Qassam rocket attacks against Sderot and the other border communities. In practice, defense officials believe that the Palestinian militants will intensify their attacks in response to the sanctions.
As such, the real aim of this effort is twofold: to attempt a new form of "escalation" as a response to aggression from Gaza, before Israel embarks on a major military operation there; and to prepare the ground for a more clear-cut isolation of the Gaza Strip - limiting to an absolute minimum Israel's obligation toward the Palestinians there.
Several weeks ago, Barak said Israel "is getting closer" to a major operation in the strip. Like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Barak is not excited about this possibility. He knows that it will not be easy, and there are no guarantees for positive results. Many soldiers will be killed and so will many innocent Palestinians, because the IDF will employ a massive artillery bombardment before it sends infantry into the crowded built-up areas. This will be a "dirty war," very aggressive, that will have scenes of destruction similar to southern Lebanon in 2006. The sole exception: unlike in Lebanon, the population there has nowhere to run.
Moreover, Ashkenazi has told the cabinet that he will only support an offensive operation if it is long-lasting. If after several weeks of fighting, the IDF is allowed time to carry out arrests and gather intelligence, then the chief of staff sees a point for the operation.
Defense sources say the sanctions will lead the militants to intensify their attacks to show that they do not succumb to Israeli pressure. And because the sanctions will not be severe - so as not to create a humanitarian crisis - they will not be effective. It is actually expected that the gasoline shortage will have a greater effect than the disruptions in the electricity supply - which normally happens because of equipment breakdowns.
The decision on sanctions is also an attempt to give expression to the inclination to completely disengage from Gaza. In this way Israel is sending a message to the Palestinian leadership in the strip that it must seek alternatives, however minor, to goods and services coming from Israel. This touches on the day after the Annapolis summit. Failure at the summit may lead Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas into the arms of Hamas. In such a case, Israel is raising a big stop sign at the exit from Ramallah: Passage to Gaza is closed.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/917385.html
Israel 'won't cause Gaza crisis'
Israel has vowed not to cause a humanitarian crisis in Gaza - despite plans to cut fuel and electricity in a bid to halt rocket attacks.
(However, the UN has already called this a Humanitarian Crisis, and has condemned Israel for making it worse.)
"We will take the steps needed but we will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip," PM Ehud Olmert told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Meeting in Jerusalem, before a US-led peace conference, the leaders made little progress on a joint statement.
(This is for foreign consumption, as anyone looking at the facts on the ground sees through this bullsh*t.)
Israel supplies 60% of the electricity for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants.
'Collective punishment'
"Israel will protect its citizens," Mr Olmert told Mahmoud Abbas, according to Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.
Both leaders agreed to implementing the stalled 2003 roadmap to peace as part of the joint statement due before the US-led peace conference, Ms Eisin said.
We call for an end to these meetings, which have become a cover for the killings, destruction... and the escalation of the aggression against the Gaza Strip
Ismail Haniya
Hamas
The conference is due in November in Annapolis, Maryland, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been touring the Middle East to secure a joint agreement that would allow it to go ahead.
"They [Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas] agreed to try to reach, as soon as possible, a meaningful statement," Ms Eisin said.
(But Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations that would lead to peace. This conference is about PR, since Israel's actions over the past three years has destroyed most of its international sympathy and support.)
The leader of the Hamas faction in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, condemned Friday's meeting.
"We call for an end to these meetings, which have become a cover for the killings, destruction, assassinations, incursions and the escalation of the aggression against the Gaza Strip - including talk of new collective punishments," Mr Haniya said.
Palestinians have said they will only attend the Annapolis conference if key issues are up for discussion, including the final status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the right of return for refugees.
The Israelis have said no prior text is needed as a basis for the talks.
The events in Gaza underline the enormous difficulties of advancing the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, says the BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem.
There is a growing belief among the Palestinian and Israeli public that this diplomatic process will offer no significant advance, our correspondent adds.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7064107.stm
This proves that the Israelis are planning for the conference to fail.
Proving, once again, that the Palestinians have no partner for peace, since this is a Zionist war to wipe Palestine off the map, and they desire no peace which includes coexistence - the Israeli and Palestinian Peoples be damned.
