Archive for January, 2008

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Israel will maintain closure on Gaza

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

Gaza’s power plant is shutting down on Sunday for lack of fuel. Gaza is totally dependent on Israel for the fuel supplies that run the power plant, but military-ordered fuel cuts in place since 28 October because of Palestinian firing of Qassam rockets into Israel have completely depleted the plant’s useable reserves.

After last week’s fighting in Gaza, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a complete closure of border crossings where vital humanitarian supplies, including the industrial diesel fuel needed to operate the power plant, are transferred into Gaza.

Now, there is no available fuel to run the Gaza power plant.

One of two-remaining turbines was shut down on Sunday morning, and the last one will be powered down at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday night.

AFP reported Sunday afternoon that “The Israeli cabinet decided to keep the lockdown in place for the time being at its weekly government meeting on Sunday, officials said. ‘The ministers discussed the ongoing closure during the cabinet meeting, but decided to keep up the pressure’, a senior government official told AFP … Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the crossings into Gaza closed late Thursday, saying the move was aimed at pressuring militants inside to stop firing rockets and mortars into Israel and that it would be reassessed. ‘We cannot keep the border crossings open while rockets fall on our towns and while Israelis posted at these crossings are themselves targeted in these attacks’, a defence ministry spokesman said in explaining the move. On Sunday, Barak told the cabinet that the army was ‘weakening the daily life in Gaza’. ‘We are targeting the terror elements and we are trying to show the international community that we are exhausting all possible options before Israel decides on a broad (military) operation’, a senior government official quoted him as saying … On Saturday Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad called for ‘international protection’ for Gaza residents and criticised anew the firing of rockets into Israel which he said ‘only brought misfortune… for our people’.” This AP report is published here.

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What happened to 9,000 cows – there already is a crisis, but not yet a catastrophe

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

I’ll bet that Shlomo Dror knew exactly what he was saying to the Associated Press: “Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said crossings into Gaza were not opened Friday, preventing the scheduled passage of about 20 truckloads of food. The crossings, which normally work only a half-day on Fridays and are routinely closed Saturdays, may not open Sunday if rocket fire continues, he said. He said Gazans had sufficient stocks of food so that no one would go hungry, adding that about 9,000 cows were allowed into the strip in the past two months”.

Last night, Rebecca and I met for a drink, and discussed among other things Dror’s latest comments. Her take: “he always says the same thing, doesn’t he…”

Except this sly but artful reference to 9,000 cows — that’s something new.

Many of those 9,000 cows were slaughtered during the biggest Muslim holiday, The Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) in mid-December. They are consumed and gone. Shlomo Dror knows that as surely as the sun rises in the East, and is fully aware that the Gazans are not surviving on the dairy products that could have been derived from cows — though these were very young animals, imported from Australia, as I recall. Is it just another dig at the Islamic faith (which many Israelis — and, to be fair, many Westerners as well, including Americans — are not embarassed to say they believe to be nihilistic, death-obsessed, backward and barbaric. It’s too bad they fail to see the beauty of its exhortations for human equality and solidarity — in fact, they argue strenuously against this view, speaking often of all examples that can be found through history of Muslim discrimination against others, and even against themselves)?

In any case, as Takis observed on Saturday evening, 9,000 cows for 1.5 million people — it’s not very many…

On the other hand, on a recent brief visit to Gaza ten days ago, I saw absolutely no evidence that the Gazans were doing anything to anticipate tightening sanctions — except saying they should stop. There was no organized effort to try to overcome some of the hardships — except saying the sanctions should stop. The Gazans were driving full speed ahead (though there were fewer cars on the road than usual), until the gas runs out…

The AP story also reported Dror as saying: “There is a government decision that there will not be a humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.

It depends on how you define humanitarian crisis.

The word “crisis”, it could legitimately be argued, and in this context, refers to something horrible that could (or could not, if wisely avoided) happen.

Using this definition, there clearly is already a major humanitarian crisis.

Once everybody falls off the cliff we are now standing at the edge of, it will legitimately be called a humanitarian catastrophe.

Maybe Dror really meant more: “there is a government decision not to have a humanitarian catastrophe”. However, this is normally not something you would decide. But, once it happens, I suppose the government could say that it was not the intention to cause a humanitarian catastrophe — thinking that will excuse everything. And, maybe it will …

The AP report continues: “The Israeli human rights group Gisha wrote to Israel’s attorney general this week, saying that due to fuel shortages the Gaza power plant had been forced to halve its output from 80 to 40 megawatts and asking him to order the immediate lifting of sanctions. For weeks Gaza has been subjected to blackouts of up to 12 hours a day, and aid workers said the situation would turn critical if the closure lasted into next week“. This AP report is here.

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Support for Hamas reportedly increasing with Israeli strikes on Gaza

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

The AP reported Saturday from Gaza that “Israeli air strikes killed two Hamas militants in Gaza early Saturday, a day after Israel sealed the territory and bombed an empty Hamas government ministry in an intensifying campaign to halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns … Thirty-six Gazans have been killed in Israeli attacks since Tuesday, including at least 10 civilians. Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday denounced the Israeli air strikes as “brutal,” but also accused Hamas of trying to destroy the Palestinians’ national aspirations. Abbas, who controls the West Bank, reiterated his demand that rival Hamas relinquish power in Gaza. However, the air strikes and the blockade appeared to be increasing support for Hamas among Gazans. Hamas was defiant Saturday, saying it would keep firing rockets at Israel. ‘We will not surrender and we will not raise white flags’, said Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha… Early Saturday, Israeli forces backed by several tanks and bulldozers entered Gaza and searched homes in the town of Jebaliya. Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with the troops, and Israeli aircraft fired three missiles, killing two Hamas fighters involved in the fighting, hospital officials said”. This AP report is posted here.

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U.S. Diplomat had problems at Israeli Checkpoint

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem Jacob Walles had problems at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank this week.

It was the same exact checkpoint that U.S. President George W. Bush breezed through, on his way to Ramallah with his 45-car motorcade, WITHOUT BEING STOPPED, as he later confided at an internationally-broadcast press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Jerusalem Post reported this week that “Sources in the Civil Administration [the Civil Administration replaced the Military Administration some years ago, but it is more or less the same, except that it doesn't have any Palestinian employees, because they now work for the Palestinian Authority -- and it is the military and bureaucratic apparatus of Israel's occupation in the West Bank] said Walles had arrived at the Beit El checkpoint on his way into Ramallah and that his car had been stopped by IDF soldiers. In accordance with guidelines, the soldiers refused to let Walles’s car pass, the sources said.”

Why?

Well, the JPost story explains: “Civil Administration officials said that diplomatic cars with white license plates are not subjected to inspections, but their occupants need to identify themselves when passing through checkpoints. For that purpose, the Foreign Ministry issues special ‘diplomat cards’ that diplomats can present at checkpoints. The US cars are armored vehicles, which makes rolling down the windows impossible. ‘We don’t check the trunk, but we do need to know who is inside that car to ensure that there are no terrorists being smuggled in’, the official explained”.

That is very nice of them. They are protecting the Palestinian residents of Ramallah and/or elsewhere on the West Bank from terrorists being smuggled in from Jerusalem — and in the car of the U.S. Consul General! Good work. Give these men a promotion.

But, the men at the checkpoint were completely indignant at the conduct of the U.S. Consul General: “According to the officials, the US consulate car held up traffic at the checkpoint for several minutes and even delayed an ambulance, which was approved for travel from the West Bank to an Israeli hospital, for 10 minutes”.

Normally, it is the Israeli personnel at the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank who do quite a good enough job themselves of holding up ambulances — and everybody else — at the checkpoints, without any help from the U.S. Consul General.

However, these particular Israeli officials were so indignant that they decided to file a complaint against the U.S. Consul General.  Now, that is democracy in action.

According to the JPost story, however, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, diplomatically, that “it had not received the complaint”.

For balance and objectivity, the JPost added these details, to round out its coverage: “A US official, however, said that Walles had shown identification through the car window but refused to open the door. ‘When the car pulled up to the roadblock, they identified themselves as being from the consulate’, the official said. ‘The standard diplomatic practice is, there is no requirement for the soldiers to open any of the doors and physically look inside the vehicles’. The official said the occupants of the car had refused to open the doors, ‘because it is not diplomatic practice’. The official denied, however, that the vehicle had held up the ambulance, and said the consulate car had cooperated with the IDF to allow the ambulance to continue on its way. Following a short standoff at the checkpoint and after US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones got involved, Civil Administration head Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai authorized Walles to pass into Ramallah. The US official, meanwhile, said that ‘we were very surprised that they would treat the consul general, or any diplomat, in this way’. The official said there had been instances in the past in which soldiers had insisted on opening the doors and the US diplomats had refused, but it had never reached ‘this extreme’.” This JPost report is posted here.

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Silent diplomacy — way too silent

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

Nothing has been publicly heard from the Bush Administration on the present escalation of fighting, firing, and reprisals in Gaza that took a sharp turn for the worse last Tuesday, when over 20 Palestinians were killed, including the son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar — who is said to be the hard-line tactician responsible for the Hamas rout of Fatah fighters in mid-June 2007.

Needless to say, this silence has only given greater credibility to reports in the media even before Bush’s 9-13 January visit to Israel and the West Bank that a green light would be, or has been, given to an Israeli military operation in Gaza. Some of the reports went on to suggest that the IDF would only be acting as a forward operation on behalf of the Palestinian Authority which is now based in Ramallah, and its President, Mahmoud Abbas.

The spokesman of the U.S. State Department told journalists on Friday, in response to their questions, that: “The use of violence by Hamas is not new; didn’t begin last week, the week before, or two years ago, it began well prior to that. The fact of the matter is that Israel is acting in its self-defense. There are — there is a steady stream of rockets that is falling on Israeli territory. Israeli citizens are being injured. Israel has a right to defend itself. We have made it very clear and we have been very consistent in stating our counsel to the Israeli Government that in acting in its own self-defense, that it take every possible precaution to avoid harm to innocent life. You know, all of that said, nobody can bring back those innocent victims, who might — may have been lost in these actions. And no one mourns the innocent — loss of innocent life more than we do. The best way to get to a point where you do have peace between Israel and the Palestinian people is through the negotiating track that the President and Secretary Rice have been working very hard on. And those efforts, by the way, continue even in the wake of the President’s trip while these events are ongoing in Gaza. Now on the crossing points, the Israeli Government has said that they are going to take, as one of their utmost priorities in calculating their actions, the humanitarian situation in Gaza. And they have stated that they do not want to, in any way, degrade the — an already very difficult humanitarian situation in Gaza. And we take them at their word and we expect them to live up to that word. Now as for our specific efforts, I can’t give you a read on what Jake Walles [see next post above] or Dick Jones have done over the last 48 or 36 hours, but I think the Israeli Government understands pretty clearly where we stand. We have a very significant humanitarian aid program, along with many others of the international community, that is directed at Gaza and we would expect that we would be able to continue to deliver that humanitarian aid as it’s in nobody’s interest, first and foremost, on the ground in Gaza to see the humanitarian situation in any way, shape or form, degrade because of it”.

With barrages of Palestinian “projectiles” landing in Israel territory around the north and west — and now even the souther side — of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered Thursday night a complete closure of all crossings into Gaza. Israeli officials said they will review the situation “next week”.

One Palestinian woman was killed while attending a wedding party in a residential area of Gaza City on Friday, when Israel launched an air attack to target the Ministry of Interior building, which has been abandoned since it was damaged by a previous Israeli air attack in July 2006 — shortly after an Israeli air strike destroyed the Gaza power plant. The 2006 attacks were in response to the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held somewhere in Gaza.

On Friday, according to the Israeli “Debkafile” website, said to be linked to Israel’s intelligence community, and which says it starts where the media leaves off, “Two extended-range missiles hit former PM Sharon’s Sycamore Farm earlier Friday, as an 8-mortar Palestinian barrage was aimed at Sufa workmen … Of the 5 aimed at Ashkelon Friday, two exploded in an industrial zone; five more hit Sderot, one landing outside a nursery school. Another blasted Kibbutz Nir Am’s fruit orchards”.

UN and international aid workers are apparently trapped inside the Gaza Strip, unable to come out for the weekend.

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Israel holds entire Gaza Strip – 1.5 million souls – responsible for Qassams

Friday, January 18th, 2008

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel bombed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza and closed border crossings with the strip on Friday, sharply escalating what it called a campaign to halt Palestinian rocket attacks. The four-story ministry complex in Gaza City was empty at the time but one woman was killed and at least 30 others nearby were wounded in the air strike, medical officials said. ‘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. It was the first Israeli bombing of a Palestinian government building since Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip in June after routing secular Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas. A second Israeli air strike minutes later damaged Hamas’s so-called naval headquarters in the central Gaza Strip. Israel has killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza this week as part of what officials describe as a stepped-up campaign to pressure Hamas to rein in militants who have fired more than 110 rockets into the Jewish state in the last three days alone. An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the air strikes, calling the targets ‘Hamas terrorist’ positions. ‘This is part of our response to Qassam (rocket) fire against Israel’, the spokeswoman said. The Interior Ministry oversees Hamas-controlled government forces in Gaza, but not the group’s armed wing. The armed wing has claimed responsibility for most rocket salvoes since Tuesday, when Israel killed 18 Palestinians, mostly Hamas militants … Earlier on Friday, the Israeli Defence Ministry closed all Israel’s border crossings with Gaza and prevented the delivery of a UN aid shipment. Only so-called ‘humanitarian cases’ given Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s personal approval would be allowed through, the ministry said. ‘If milk is low in Gaza, the minister will be asked to approve a milk shipment, and it will enter’, a Defence Ministry spokesman said. This Reuters report was published in Boston.com here.

According to an AP report published in the Jerusalem Post, “A senior United Nations official implored Israel to reverse its decision Friday to seal all border crossings with the Gaza Strip, warning that the situation in the region has deteriorated into a full-fledged emergency because of the cutoff of vital supplies for 1.4 million Palestinians. ‘I believe it is a crisis already, because I think the reduction of goods coming in cumulatively is creating an extremely difficult situation for the Palestinians’, said John Holmes, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. ‘In Gaza, we’re getting to a situation where virtually all of the population is dependent on international aid supplies’.” This AP report was published in the JPost here.

And, an AP report published in the Washington Post said that “John Ging, the Gaza-based head of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, said the most immediate concern was the suspension of fuel deliveries, leading to reduced output from power plants. ‘The supplies that are in most desperate need is the fuel’,”he said. ‘This is a very precarious situation’. He said Israeli officials told him they would meet next week to re-evaluate the situation and decide whether to reopen the passages“. This AP report was picked up and published in the WPost here.

Meanwhile, the main — actually, it’s the only one — power plant in Gaza has enough fuel for only three more days of operation: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. See here for more details on this story.

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What is wrong in this paragraph?

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

Avigdor Lieberman, a Russian immigrant who leads the Israel Beitenu party, pulled out of the Israeli Government this week because he opposes negotiations with Palestinians that could involve territorial concessions, among other things.
The NYTimes reported this week that “Mr. Lieberman, who espouses a hard line toward the Palestinians, said on Wednesday that he advocated a solution based on ‘exchanges of territory and populations’, adding that Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, presented more of a danger to the Jewish state than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. One veteran Arab Israeli legislator, Ahmed Tibi, said that Mr. Lieberman ‘gives racists around the world a bad name’.” This remark is contained in a story published by the NY Times here.

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Palestinians agitate for end of negotiations to protest Israeli attacks on Gaza

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

The ferocity and scale of Israeli attacks on the captive population of Gaza has caused agitated Palestinian demands for a cut-off of negotiations. It looks like “shooting fish in a barrel”, as one saying puts it.

Israelis, on the other hand, are working up into their own frenzied agitation because of increased Palestinian firing on Israeli areas around Gaza. Over 50 rockets, mortars, and one missile were fired from Gaza on Wednesday, and nearly 50 “projectiles” were fired again on Thursday.

Lamis Andoni, a Middle East analyst for al-Jazeera, has written an article clearly favoring a negotiations cut-off: “The Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip which has left scores of Palestinians dead has further underscored the weakness and failure of the Palestinian leadership to protect its people as it continues unconditional negotiations with Israel.
The incursion has further undermined the credibility of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority’s negotiating strategy and deepened the disillusionment of Palestinians already sceptical of the ongoing talks with Israel. The new attack, which mainly targeted members of Hamas, came a day after the launch of Israeli-Palestinian final status talks in a clear signal to the Palestinian leadership that Israel is determined to sustain what it calls its ‘overriding security control’ over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even prior to the visit to the region of George Bush, the US president, the Israeli media reported that the government was making clear to the US administration that it would continue its raids into both the Fatah-led West BanK and the Hamas-led Gaza Strip. The revelations, combined with Bush’s statements, which called for uprooting ‘terrorism in Gaza’, had prompted many Palestinians, including those from inside the Fatah movement, to call for the suspension of negotiations. But Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has succeeded in mustering majority support from his own Fatah leadership for resuming talks, mostly through fear of alienating the support of the US administration and international community for his leadership. A meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership which concluded late on Monday in Ramallah fell short of stipulating a suspension of final status talks, if Israel refused to halt its Jewish settlements expansion and its military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip towns. A statement issued by the PLO Central Council condemned Israel’s declaration that the Gaza Strip was ‘a hostile entity’, demanded that the negotiations with Israel ‘are linked to suspension of Israeli settlement expansion’, but it steered away from demanding the suspension of negotiations with Israel. Although the statement came as no surprise, the position of the PLO, which is considered the highest authority defining the Palestinian peace strategy, is expected to further widen the existing Palestinian divide and discredit the ongoing negotiations. The ferocity of the Israeli attacks, especially the killing of Hussam al-Zahar, the son of prominent Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, is bound to render the continued negotiations to be seen as no more than a cover up for an all-out Israeli crackdown on the besieged Gaza Strip. But the proceedings of the PLO Central Council meeting, according to different participants reached by Al Jazeera, showed that the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas had eclipsed demands for putting forward a Palestinian negotiating strategy to counter Israel’s refusal to stop the settlement construction and its continued ‘military incursions’. The discussions, that were reportedly heated, criticised Abbas’ silence while the US president, in the heart of the PA headquarters in Ramallah, repudiated the United Nations resolutions, particularly the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the illegality of Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem.  The US president implicitly endorsed Israel’s annexation of major Jewish settlements into Israel, effectively rendering the Palestinian state into a fragmented entity connected with corridors (at the very best). The PLO Central Council has indirectly rejected Bush’s policy statements, but the unconditional resumption of talks is provoking concern, even within the Fatah movement, that the negotiations can only embolden Israeli attacks“… Lamis Andoni’s article in Al-Jazeera is posted here.

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The killing has gone too far

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Now, this is a very dangerous moment. The killing and fighting has escalated to the brink of a major conflict — one that all sides have said they want to avoid. But, the momentum is there.

And, tonight, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — who last spring said that Hamas in Gaza were terrorist murderers — called the senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, to offer his condolences on the death of his son. It was the second of Zahar’s sons to be killed by the Israeli military.

Reuters reported this evening that “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called a leader of rival Hamas on Wednesday to commiserate on the killing of his son by Israeli forces, Hamas said, the first such contact since a Palestinian factional schism last year. Hamas routed Abbas’s secular Fatah to take over the Gaza Strip in June, prompting the Palestinian president to shun the Islamist group and step up Western-sponsored peace efforts with Israel. Hamas refuses to give up fighting the Jewish state. Hamas said Abbas suspended his boycott by phoning Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official whose son, a gunman, was among 18 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday. ‘In the first call since June, President Mahmoud telephoned Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar … and paid his condolences at the killing of Zahar’s son, said Taher al-Nono, spokesman for the Hamas administration in Gaza. ‘The telephone conversation was very friendly and the two leaders spoke at length about the current political situation and they both stressed the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of the differences’ … Israeli officials have said rapprochement between Abbas and Hamas could scupper peace talks”. The Reuters report of the Abbas condolence call to Zahar is published here.

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What is wrong in this paragraph?

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

What is wrong in these lines, published in an article in the Jerusalem Post today: “Three of my sons serve in elite combat units. They risk their lives to protect this state. But when my daughter tries to exercise her right to settle the land of our forefathers, they treat her worse than an Arab.” From an article published in today’s Jerusalem Post here.

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