To day in Palestine

Two Hamas fighters killed in Gaza Saturday; Israeli warplanes destroy a car but occupants escape

Two Palestinian activists affiliated to Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades were killed and three others injured in an Israeli air raid on a group of fighters who attempted to stop the infiltration of an Israeli force into Izbat Abed Rabbo in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, on Saturday morning. Hassanain said that the Israeli forces fired at ambulances as they tried to evacuate injured people. Separately, a group of Palestinian activists survived an assassination attempt on Saturday morning, as Israeli warplanes targeted a car in the area of Sanafur east of Gaza City , completely destroying the car.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27304

Israeli jet fighters attack northern Gaza Saturday morning; death toll stands at 37 this week

Palestinian sources reported that two Palestinians said to be resistance fighters for Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, were killed on Saturday morning, when Israeli jet fighters fired missiles at them in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya. Witnesses said that Israeli tanks and bulldozers invaded the farming area near the town, undercover Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters, during the clashes, Israeli jet fighters fired missiles at the Palestinian fighters’ positions, killing two and injuring four. Also on Saturday Israeli jet fighters attacked civilian cars east of Gaza City , damage was reported but no injuries.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52368

VIDEO

– Friday afternoon’s Israeli attack on Interior Ministry
casualties were celebrating wedding at nearby structure during attack – “It felt like an earthquake,” said Umm Fahmi, a woman who lives across from the blast site. “My house did not only shake, it jumped from its foundations and back down. How could they drop such a bomb in a residential area on top of people’s heads?” she said, peering through the dust at the concrete and steel remains of the security complex.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3496003,00.html

A week of funerals in Gaza as Palestinians feel Gaza’s wrath

Mariam Rahal, a 53-year-old grandmother and her two sons, were in the wrong place at the wrong time as they drove their donkey cart of oranges home through a mainly residential district of Beit Lahiya. Mrs Rahal was buried yesterday with one of the sons, Mohammed, 23. They were killed when their cart was destroyed by a missile which targeted the car of a rocket-launching crew on Thursday evening. A neighbour, an Economic Ministry employee, Rafiq al Masri, 43, said: “[Mrs Rahal] was a simple woman. She was one of her husband’s two wives, which wasn’t easy. She worked from four in the morning until after sunset to try and give her family a better life. But she was a calm, lovable woman who loved her neighbours.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3350896.ece

US State Department: Israeli military operations constitute legal self-defense

The US on Saturday described the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip that have left more than 35 people dead and scores injured this week, as “legal self-defence” against Palestinian homemade projectiles launched against the Israeli town of Sderot. Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the US State Department Shaun McCormack called on the Israeli authorities to avoid killing Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip “as much as possible.” "When Israel practices self-defence, we encourage them to do their best to avoid harming civilians, the same as our armed forces do," he added.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27308

Israel urged not to punish Palestinian people over militant attacks

The UN’s humanitarian affairs chief, John Holmes, says Israel should not collectively punish the people of the Gaza Strip for rocket attacks carried out by Palestinian militants. The UN’s secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has also appealed to both the Israelis and Palestinians to take urgent measures to try to end the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip. While recognising Israel’s right to respond, Mr Holmes says retaliation that causes the loss of innocent lives is not appropriate.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/19/2142221.htm

Al-Qassam Brigades vow to continue projectile attacks

They affirmed in a statement that they will continue launching projectiles at Israeli towns in retaliation for the “ugly Israeli criminal acts committed against the Palestinian people.” They mentioned in the statement that they have launched 159 projectiles since the Israeli massacre at Az-Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City on January 15 left 17 dead, including five civilians and the son of senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27318

Gaza: Four gunmen turn themselves in to Israeli troops

The IDF on Saturday morning arrested four Palestinian gunmen following exchanges of fire which took place in the northern Gaza Strip. The four men are members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The troops confiscated the gunmen’s weapons, and the four were taken in for ’questioning’ by security forces in Israel. Military sources said that this was a great operational and intelligence achievement. According to the sources, the arrests would make it possible to learn important details on Hamas’ activities according to the different areas its members operate in.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3496167,00.html

Israel seals off Gaza; prevents UN aid from entering

After over six months of closure, the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have come to depend heavily on aid from the UN. Now, the Israeli forces that completely control Gaza’s borders have sealed the border even to the UN emergency aid vehicles. The sealing of the border is just the latest stage in the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza. According to the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency, fifteen trucks containing food aid were prevented from entering on Friday. 80% of Gaza’s population depends on the food aid for survival.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52367

Resistance strikes force Israeli army to dismantle new military post in Gaza

Talal Abu Tharefa, member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), stated on Friday that the Israeli army was forced to dismantle a military post in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning due to repeated shelling by different resistance groups, using homemade shells. The post was installed several months ago.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52366

Gaza gas distribution stations run out of supplies

The head of the Palestinian union of gas distributors in the Gaza Strip said on Saturday that fuel supplies in the impoverished coastal region are completely depleted and some distribution stations have shut as they have no supplies. Mahmoud Al-Khizindar told Ma’an, “Gas supplies to the Gaza Strip stopped two days ago.”
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27315

PCHR concerned over detention of Munir Riziq, director of Al-Hayyat newspaper in Gaza

Munir Abu Riziq has been detained by the Internal Security Apparatus, and PCHR is concerned that his detention is motivated by the fact he is a journalist The police in Gaza made two previous recent attempts to arrest and detain Abu Riziq. On 13 January, a contingent of police arrived at his house, but did not find him there. The following day, a large number of Internal Security Apparatus members raided the office of Al-Hayat Newspaper in the center of Gaza City. However, a crowd of journalists converged in the area, and prevented them from arresting Abu Rizaq.
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/06-2008.html

Hamas policy: Escalation to force Israel into cease-fire in Gaza

Palestinian sources predicted that Hamas would continue the rocket barrages, in an attempt to force Israel to agree to a cease-fire. Hamas, they said, believes that its previous, lower level of rocket and mortar fire allowed the IDF to operate freely in Gaza without Israel paying a serious price. Moreover, Hamas believes that Israel wants to avoid a major ground operation in Gaza, and therefore, it will have no choice but to call a truce if heavy rocket fire on southern Israel continues. Hamas is currently refraining from firing rockets on Ashkelon lest that reverse Israel’s opposition to a major incursion, the sources added.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946028.html

Fatah denies Hamas accusations of plot to assassinate Haniyeh

A PA presidential spokesman called the accusations ’too naïve to be responded to’. Earlier on Saturday the former Palestinian interior minister in the deposed Hamas-led government, Sa’id Siyam, said that ’Fatah-affiliated suicide bombers’ were behind a plot to assassinate Isma’il Haniyeh at a Jan 12 homecoming rally for Hajj pilgrims. Siyam said that the alleged bomber had recorded a message, explaining his actions. It was meant to have been broadcast on Palestine TV after he completed his mission. The group that planned the attack was in contact with exiled Fatah leader Ahmad Dughmush in Egypt, according to Siyam.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27314

PA blames Gaza violence on Hamas

“The party which staged a coup [!] against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and now rules Gaza is responsible for the condition of the Strip and the suffering of the Palestinian people there,” said Information Minister Riyadh al-Maliki, referring to Hamas’ takeover of Gaza by force in June. “Hamas is responsible for the Israeli madness and the massacres the (Israeli) army carries out everyday against our people in Gaza Strip,” al-Maliki said, adding that Israel also bear responsibility for the loss of life in the Strip.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/175755,extra-palestinian-authority-blames-gaza-violence-on-hamas.html

Abbas denies reports of resignation

The Jerusalem-based daily newspaper Al-Quds on Friday published an article, saying Abbas was threatening to resign and end negotiations with Israel in protest at the continued Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip. Abbas condemned the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, which he said is indiscriminately killing women, children and the elderly.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27307

PA PM Fayyad condemns killing of Al-Aqsa Brigades leader

Ahmad Sanakra, who was assassinated in Nablus on Friday by Israeli forces. He also denounced the continued Israeli aggression against the cities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the Salfit industrial zone for crafts, financed by the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development in collaboration with the Ministry of National Economy.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27320

Al-Aqsa Brigades announce end to three-month cease-fire

Abu Uday said in a statement that the ceasefire was now over and that the Brigades will respond to the recent Israeli assassinations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Abu Uday said that the ceasefire had been abandoned as the Israeli forces “have not stopped killing our people and destroying our institutions and our cities for a single day.”
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27287

Palestinian woman gives birth in Israeli jail

Despite his wife’s incarceration, Fatima Al-Zaq’s husband, Muhammed, was ecstatic when he heard the news of the birth of his son, Yousef. Forty-four-year-old Muhammad, who lives in the Ash-Shaja’iyeh neighbourhood of Beit Hanoun, in the Gaza Strip, told Ma’an that he had been present at the birth of his other eight children. Fatima was arrested on 20 May 2007, as she her was taking her niece to Ramallah for medical treatment. She was then detained in Hasharon Prison. Israeli forces allege she was planning to commit a “terrorist act” against the Israeli forces. Her court case is not due to be heard until 29 January 2008.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27303

Israeli forces seize three ’wanted’ Palestinians in West Bank

Hebrew sources reported that the Israeli army arrested the three in the West Bank, and that one of them had a knife in his car when he was seized at a military checkpoint near Ramallah in the central West Bank.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27311

The cruelty of youths

As long as the vile behaviour of young settlers is allowed to continue unimpeded by Israeli authorities, peace will not be achieved – While there’s no one around to take the settlers down a peg or two and show them that they are not lords of all they survey, their hatred and misanthropy flourishes unchecked in the vacuum. At present, no one acts to stop the rot - the army because they don’t care enough, the observers because they aren’t confident enough and the Palestinians because they’re not suicidal enough to dare stand up to the bullying settler thugs. And the longer it goes on, the easier it is to see why nothing will break the deadlock while the lunatics are running the asylum in Hebron.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2008/01/the_cruelty_of_youths.html

Jenin, Jenin – by Gideon Levy

The pictures of death from Gaza reach Jenin on television, but young people are killed here as well, almost every week. The latest victim fell in the neighboring village of Al Yamun. Fawaz Frihat was 17 and a half when he died. The IDF invades the city’s refugee camp every night, sowing panic and sleeplessness. There are almost no wanted men left here, but the IDF doesn’t give up. The residents’ bitterness toward the PA is reaching new heights. Back at Zbeidi’s house, “Everyone who can, leaves,” he says at supper, which is served in the spirit of the times, without meat. "Everyone is afraid of the PA. You can’t say a word. Say a word and you’ll be arrested. But you think about Fatah and ask: What have they done for us? And you think about Hamas and ask: What have they done for us?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945759.html

West Bank bantustan

Since the only Palestinian ’state’ the current peace process can deliver is another Gaza-style enclave, this upsurge of violence is hardly encouraging – The IDF operations and rocket attacks are indeed linked to the so-called peace process, but not in the way that most have suggested. One cannot divorce events in Gaza and Sderot from the Annapolis agenda since, in fact, far from being a threatening interruption to Olmert-Abbas talks, the violence is sadly a natural extension of Roadmap logic.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ben_white/2008/01/west_bank_bantustan.html

Leader and vassal – bringing death and destruction to Muslims

By Paul Craig Roberts, former Ass’t Sec. of the Treasury in the Reagan administration – Every country in the world, except America, knows by now that the US is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and that the neoconservative drive for US hegemony over the world threatens the security of nations everywhere. Bush considers Iran to be the leading state sponsor of terror, because Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian ghetto. Hezbollah and Hamas are two organizations that exist because of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon . The two organizations are branded “terrorist” because they resist Israel’s theft of Palestine and Israel’s designs on southern Lebanon. Both organizations are resistance organizations. They resist Israel’s territorial expansion and this makes them “terrorist.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01172008.html

Rami Khoury: Stalemate in Palestine after 60 years

The juxtaposition between military action on the ground and the words and acts of politicians is dizzying in its contradictions. Sixty years after the tensions between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine erupted into a full war, we continue to experience warfare as a routine mode of interaction between Israelis and Arabs, mostly on the Palestinian-Israeli front, and occasionally on the Lebanese-Israeli front. Simultaneously, politicians explore opportunities to end the conflict through a negotiated peace agreement, but without any major successes on the Palestinian-Israeli front. The most important single development in recent weeks, I suspect, was the Palestinians’ firing of longer-range missiles into southern Israel, some of them traveling over 15 kilometers. One of the lessons of the past 60 years: Sustained Israeli attacks elicit greater Arab technical proficiency and political will to resist and retaliate.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=88161

Israeli security forces thwart Islamic Jihad plan to bomb Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railroad

The members of the cell were captured in a joint operation by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service approximately one month ago near Bethlehem. The operation also uncovered the cell’s explosives lab. An Islamic Jihad leader in Ramallah said the group was not aware of any such raid targeting its members in the area. The militants admitted under ’questioning’ that they were planning terrorist attacks against Israel, including placing a bomb on the tracks at their closest point to Bethlehem, near the Palestinian village of Batir.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945819.html

Khalid Amayreh: The lying ambassador

The new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, is devoting much of his time these days to trying to enhance his country’s image as the British public continues to be disillusioned with Israel’s colonialist polices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Prosor thinks that aggressive and proactive PR can eventually morph critics of Israeli occupation and racism into loyal lovers. Prosor claims that Israel is both Jewish and democratic. This is a brazenly mendacious claim because Prosor knows deep in his heart that Israel can’t be both Jewish and democratic at the same time. In Israel, one has to be Jewish in order to enjoy full human rights and full equality. And if you are not Jewish, you are always viewed as a child of a lesser God.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7yOL8S3audbsUJ%2fxx%2fJrAe8BnXpQHyTIDNMnNsU8VNmXAAg%2bKldx2%2b5%2bHA8jlK3FN%2bqr4Ae8gZShwANDxbb48QM8gCEu8kZdh30S4Q6XDH9g%3d

More Jerusalem ’Arabs’ seek Israeli citizenship

Like hundreds of thousands of other Jerusalem residents, Salim Shabane considers himself a Palestinian. But his life and work are intertwined with Israel , where he runs an auto shop. So, despite his tacit support for a Palestinian state, Shabane is part of a new surge of Jerusalem Arabs applying for Israeli citizenship. “I live in Israel ,” said Shabane, “why shouldn’t I be an Israeli citizen?” Shabane has plenty of company
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080119/wl_mcclatchy/2819205_1

Rift between Israel, Druze growing

MK Said Naffaa (Balad) attributes this growing rift between Israel and the Druze community to the marked discrimination and prejudice that Druze resident perpetually faced, as evidenced in the extreme by riots in the Druze village of Peki’in in late October. “Israel had always viewed the Druze as some type of domesticated beast, but now this previously docile animal is fighting back,” said Naffaa. Alluding to the historic alliance between Israel and the Druze, who serve in the IDF and contribute to the state in a wealth of other respects, Naffa noted that “we (the Druze) had hoped that serving in the military would afford us equal rights to those of other Israelis. We soon, however, discovered that this is mere illusion when we awoke to a very harsh reality.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3495934,00.html

Israel Education Ministry drops Arabic studies from core curriculum

The Education Ministry has decided against including Arabic in the compulsory core curriculum that was made public several weeks ago for the first time. Previously, secular and religious state schools had to teach three hours a week of Arabic in Grades 7 and 8. Ministry officials said the decision was motivated by an effort to create a curriculum acceptable to ultra-Orthodox schools.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945899.html

SPNI on Arava hothouses: Farming will endanger rare animals

Environmentalists see the fight as one intended to maintain one of Israel’s last remaining natural large areas with continuous open space. According to the petition, the new agricultural land will bring with it “poisons, hunting of wild animals by foreign workers, agricultural waste and increased foreign species. Even now there is a drastic drop in the number of animals in the area and even extinction of a number of local species, such as the sand fox and the sand cat.” One of the animals unique to the region is a species of spiny-tailed lizard which digs huge tunnels that are spread all over the land designated for farming.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945728.html