Arab blogs: Tents in desert reveal Israeli plan to transfer Gazans to Egypt
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- Written by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News
- Published: 20 January 2009 20 January 2009
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After flattening many parts of Gaza with aerial bombardment and ground artillery, Israel may be planning to transfer the now homeless refugees to Egypt, where hundreds of tents have been set up near Rafah. One local blogger said that a soldier told him there are many more tents being prepared, as well.
According to Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, author of
the 'Angry Arab' blog, fellow blogger Ahdaf Souif in (Egyptian) Rafah
told him, "Outside the general Hospital in Egyptian Rafah a city of
tents has sprung up. I counted 200. But the soldiers there told me they
have many more and can set them up immediately. They said the beds and
furnishings for all the camps are ready. I was also told that other
camps are being set up, in el-Arish and other locations. I was told
these camps were being set up for 'the Palestinian refugees.'”
Israeli
rightists have, in the past, promoted a plan to deny the Palestinian
people a state by making Gaza part of Egypt, and the West Bank (minus
the Israeli settlements) part of Jordan. Avigdor Lieberman, one of the
most outspoken proponents of such a plan, is currently a member of the
Israeli cabinet.
Egyptian officials have not commented on the tents, which were apparently set up after secret negotiations with Israel just prior to the Israeli 'ceasefire' in Gaza. Despite the 'ceasefire', Egyptian officials continue to make it extremely difficult for foreign nationals, including doctors and journalists, from entering Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.
Souif reported that he asked the Egyptian soldiers about the tents, and was told they were for Palestinian refugees who were expected to be coming through the Rafah border crossing when it opened. The Israeli government has been pressuring Egypt to open the Rafah crossing, while continuing to keep all other borders of Gaza completely sealed.
Palestinians
in Gaza, many of whom are the children or grandchildren refugees from
what is now Israel, who were forced out when Israel was created in 1948
on Palestinian land, may be hesitant to move to what are currently
temporary shelters in Egypt, but could end up becoming refugee camps –
as the Gaza Strip became for 1948 refugees.
But faced with a severe shortage of all essential items, the inability to rebuild homes flattened by Israeli forces due to the Israeli economic blockade preventing the entry of building materials and tools, many Gazans may not have much choice.
Many Arab bloggers are beginning to speculate that perhaps the transfer of the Gazans was, at least in part, Israel's main intention in invading the Gaza Strip for the last three weeks.
Amid dust and death, a family's story speaks for the terror of war: 48 killed in single day
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Zeitoun Rory McCarthy in Zeitoun
- Published: 20 January 2009 20 January 2009
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48 members of the Samouni family were killed in one day when Israel's battle with Hamas suddenly centred on their homes
Helmi Samouni knelt yesterday on the floor of the bedroom he once shared with his wife and their five-month old son, scraping his fingers through a thick layer of ash and broken glass looking for mementoes of their life together. "I found a ring. I might find more," he said.
His wife Maha and their child Muhammad were killed in the second week of Israel's 22-day war in Gaza when they were shelled by Israeli forces as they took shelter nearby along with dozens of relatives. In total 48 people from one family are now known to have died that Monday morning, 5 January, in Zeitoun, on the southern outskirts of Gaza City.
Of all the horrors visited on the civilians of Gaza in this war the fate of the Samounis, a family of farmers who lived close together in simple breeze-block homes, was perhaps the gravest.
Around a dozen homes in this small area were destroyed, no more than piles of rubble in the sand yesterday. Helmi Samouni's two-storey house was one of the few left standing, despite the gaping hole from a large tank shell that pierced his blackened bedroom wall. During the invasion it had been taken over by Israeli soldiers, who wrecked the furniture and set up sand-bagged shooting positions throughout.
They left behind their own unique detritus: bullet casings, roasted peanuts in tins with Hebrew script, a plastic bag containing a "High Quality Body Warmer", dozens of olive-green waste disposal bags, some empty, some stinking full - the troops' portable toilets.
But most disturbing of all was the graffiti they daubed on the walls of the ground floor. Some was in Hebrew, but much was naively written in English: "Arabs need 2 die", "Die you all", "Make war not peace", "1 is down, 999,999 to go", and scrawled on an image of a gravestone the words: "Arabs 1948-2009".
There were several sketches of the Star of David flag. "Gaza here we are," it said in English next to one.
Helmi's brother Salah, 30, had an apartment in the same house. He too was pulling out what he could, including an Israeli work permit once issued to his father. "They gave him a permit and then they came from Israel and they killed him," said Salah. In the attack he lost both his parents, Talal and Rahma, and his two-year-old daughter Aza.
During the war, Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza. But the accounts of Salah and his neighbours outside the rubble of their homes yesterday corroborate the accounts from witnesses given in the days after the attack, accounts which led the UN to describe the killings at Zeitoun as one of the gravest episodes of the war and the Red Cross to call it, in a rare public rebuke, "a shocking incident".
More than a dozen bodies were pulled from the rubble on Sunday, and one more yesterday, bringing the Samouni death toll to 48, according to Dr Mouawia Hassanein, head of Gaza's Emergency Medical Services. With more bodies being recovered each day, the death toll from Israel's three-week war now stands at 1,360. On the Israeli side, 13 were killed.
On the second Saturday of the war, after a week of Israeli air strikes, there came a wave of heavy artillery shelling which preceded the ground invasion of Gaza. That night, Salah Samouni took shelter on the ground floor with 16 others from his family. By the next morning, Sunday 4 January, more neighbours had come looking for shelter and the number now there was approaching 50.
"They fired a shell into the upstairs floor and it started a fire," said Salah. "We called the ambulance and the fire service, but no one was able to reach us." Soon a group of Israeli soldiers approached. "They came and banged on the door and told everyone to leave the house," he said. They walked a few metres down the dirt road and entered the large, single-storey home of Wa'el Samouni.
There they stayed for the rest of the day, now a group of around 100 men, women and children, with no food and little water. Though there may have been Palestinian fighters operating in the open fields around the houses, all the witnesses are adamant that those gathered in Wa'el Samouni's house were all civilians and all from the same extended family.
On the Monday morning, four of the men - Salah among them - decided to go out to bring back firewood for cooking. "They fired a shell straight at us," Salah said. Two of the four were killed instantly, the other two were injured. Salah was hit by shrapnel on his forehead, his back and his legs. Moments later, he said, two more shells struck the house, killing dozens of them.
Salah and a group of around 70 fled the house, shouting to the soldiers that there were women and children with them. They ran to the main road and on for a kilometre until ambulances could reach them. Others stayed behind.
Wa'el Samouni's father, Faris, 59, lived next door to the house where the crowd had taken shelter. He had a single-storey house with only a corrugated iron roof and so his family had moved next door to shelter, but he had stayed behind. He was unable to leave his building for fear of being shot, but on the Tuesday the survivors called to him to bring water. He ran quickly the short distance and joined them.
"Dead bodies were lying on the ground. Some people were injured, they were just trying to help each other," he said. There among the dead Faris found his wife Rizka, 50; his daughter-in-law Anan; and his granddaughter Huda, 16.
Only on the afternoon of the following day, the Wednesday, were the survivors rescued when the Red Cross arrived to carry them out to hospital.
The Israeli military has said it is investigating what happened at Zeitoun. It has repeatedly denied that its troops ordered the residents to gather in one house and said its troops do not intentionally target civilians.
Others in the family saw a different but equally grim fate. Faraj Samouni, 22, lived with his family next door to Helmi and Salah. Again on the Saturday evening the family had sought shelter from the heavy shelling, a group of 18 of them gathering in one room for the night. On the Sunday morning the Israeli soldiers approached. "They shouted for the owner of the house to come out. My father opened the door and went out and they shot him right there," said Faraj.
With the body of his father Atiya, 45, slumped on the ground outside, the soldiers fired more shots into the room, he said, this time killing Faraj's younger half-brother Ahmad, who was four years old, and the child's mother.
Yesterday there was blood on the wall of the small room where the child had been sitting.
Then the troops ordered them to lie on the floor. But when a fire started burning in the room next door, sending in acrid smoke, they began shouting to be allowed out. "We were shouting 'babies, children'," Faraj said.
Eventually the soldiers let them out and they ran along the street, passing the others who had gathered in Wa'el Samouni's house and making their way out on to the main road and to safety.
When Faraj returned, he found his home completely destroyed, a pile of twisted iron bars and concrete. On a small outdoor grill were the charred remains of the eight aubergines that the family had been cooking that Sunday morning for their breakfast.
Only on Sunday was he able to bury his father's body and even then there was a final injustice: Gaza's graves are now so crowded and concrete so scarce because of Israel's long blockade that he had to break open an older family grave and put his father in with the other corpse.
"How can we have peace when they are killing civilians, even children?" said Faraj. "I support the ceasefire now. We have no power. If there wasn't a ceasefire we couldn't even bury our dead."
Some Gazans speak privately of their anger at Hamas, blaming the Islamist movement that rules the small territory for dragging them into this conflict. But by far the larger majority are speaking now of their bitter anger at Israel and their deep resentment at the apathy of the Arab world and the rest of the international community, which failed to halt the destruction and the killing.
"We blame everyone," said Ibrahim Samouni, 45, who lost his wife and four of his sons in the killings at Zeitoun. "We need everyone to look at us and see what has happened here. We are not resistance fighters. We are ordinary people."
Portland Jews Speak Out Against Israeli Attacks on Gaza
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- Written by PPRC and Portland Area Jews PPRC and Portland Area Jews
- Published: 20 January 2009 20 January 2009
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Portland Jews Speak Out Against Israeli Attacks on Gaza
Press Release, January 16, 2009: Portland Jews Speak Out Against Israeli Attacks on Gaza.
Portland Jews Issue Statement on the Crisis in Gaza
As Jews living in the Portland-metro area, we call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli blockade. We call upon our elected representatives in Washington to take action immediately to bring a cease-fire into effect.
From the very beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza we have spoken out, individually and through American Jewish organizations that have called for a cease-fire and engagement, including Jewish Voice for Peace, American Jews for a Just Peace, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and many others. We have been disheartened by the coverage of this issue in our local broadcast and print media, which all too commonly shows Jews and Jewish organizations supporting the Israeli assault and Palestinian or Arab or Islamic organizations opposing it. This slanted and misleading presentation serves only to enflame hatred and bigotry in our community.
We are Jews and we strongly condemn the Israeli attacks in Gaza that as of this writing have killed well over 1,000 people and injured many thousands more. At least 40% of the killed and injured are civilians, enormous numbers of them children.
We condemn the targeting of civilians by both Israel and Hamas: targeting civilians under any circumstances is a war crime. The rockets, mortars and sniper fire that target Israeli civilians must be stopped, but that imperative in no way justifies the massively disproportionate violence that Israel has unleashed against a trapped and defenseless population of 1.5 million people. The firing of rockets from Gaza came almost to a halt during the recent six-month-long cease-fire. That cease-fire could have been prolonged and strengthened by addressing the Palestinians' legitimate demand that the blockade of Gaza be ended.
Read more: Portland Jews Speak Out Against Israeli Attacks on Gaza
Gaza rebuild 'to cost billions'
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 20 January 2009 20 January 2009
- Hits: 3527 3527
Rebuilding the Gaza Strip after Israel's three-week offensive will cost billions of dollars, the UN has warned.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been left homeless and 400,000 people still have no running water, it says.
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is currently visiting northern Gaza to see what assistance can be provided.
Ceasefires declared by Palestinian militant groups and Israel are holding, and Israeli troops are expected to complete their pull-out later.
Israeli political sources say the military aims to have withdrawn before Barack Obama's inauguration as the new president of the United States at 1700 GMT.
But analysts say big questions remain, such as who will police Gaza's southern border with Egypt and how much power Hamas still has.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he wants troops to leave Gaza "as quickly as possible" and some have already left. Hamas has said it will hold fire until Sunday to give Israel time to withdraw.
Meanwhile, an Israeli man was shot and seriously wounded while driving near the Kochav Hashachar settlement in the West Bank.
A previously unknown group calling itself the "al-Bashair Army" told the Palestinian news agency, Maan, it had carried out the attack.
Rubble
At a news conference in New York, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said hundreds of millions of dollars of aid would be needed immediately to help Gaza's 1.4 million people in the aftermath of the offensive, which ended on Saturday.
Mr Holmes said some neighbourhoods had been almost totally destroyed and many homes reduced to rubble.
Sewage was flowing in the streets, there were huge medical and food needs, and unexploded ordnance was posing a big problem, he said.
While 100,000 people had their water supply restored on Sunday, 400,000 still have no water, he said.
Electricity is available for less than 12 hours a day, and 100,000 people had been displaced, he added.
A total of 50 UN facilities and 21 medical facilities were damaged, he added.
"It may not be very clear who actually won this conflict, if such a concept means anything in Gaza, but I think it's pretty clear who lost and that was the civilian population of Gaza, and to a much lesser extent the civilian population of southern Israel," Mr Holmes told reporters at UN headquarters.
When asked to estimate the costs, Mr Holmes said he could not give exact figures until UN teams in Gaza had completed their assessments, but the likely figure was hundreds of millions, and the overall reconstruction costs would run into billions.
Separately, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said on Monday that 4,100 homes were totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged during the conflict.
About 1,500 factories and workshops, 20 mosques, 31 security installations and 10 water or sewage pipes were also damaged, it added.
The bureau estimated that the overall physical damage so far amounted to about $1.9bn (£1.4bn), including about $200m (£140m) of damage to infrastructure.
The Israeli Social Welfare Minister, Isaac Herzog, told the BBC the problem was how to rebuild Gaza without facilitating further attacks on Israel by militants.
There was a risk during reconstruction that buildings would be turned into missile launch sites, he said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon earlier met Israel's prime minister in Jerusalem before entering northern Gaza via the Erez Crossing, to inspect the damage and see what assistance could be given.
He will visit three UN facilities which were heavily damaged during the conflict, including a school where at least 40 people taking shelter were killed when what the Israeli military says was a "stray mortar" fired by its troops landed outside.
UN spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said Mr Ban was keen to express solidarity with the people of Gaza and for the UN staff, who he said had continued heroically to provide assistance under such difficult circumstances despite some of them being killed.
He will later visit the southern Israeli town of Sderot to see the damage caused by rocket attacks from Gaza.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Gaza City says Palestinians are meanwhile continuing to search through the rubble of their homes to try to find the bodies of those killed in the conflict.
Many are angry and feel that the world did not do enough when it mattered to stop the violence, our correspondent says.
'Horrific injuries'
Israel called a ceasefire on Saturday, saying it had met its war aims. Hamas later declared its own truce, with one of its leaders claiming a "great victory" over Israel.
Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed, nearly a third of them children, and 5,500 injured during the conflict. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.
The director of operations for UN aid agency in Gaza, Unrwa, told the BBC that the weapons used by the Israeli military had caused "horrific" injuries to children.
"These are not scratches or bullet wounds, these are kids who are hit by shrapnel in most instances," John Ging said.
Palestinian militant groups in Gaza meanwhile said 112 of their fighters and 180 Hamas paramilitary policemen were killed, according to the Reuters news agency.
Arab foreign ministers meeting on the sidelines of an economic summit in Kuwait City have meanwhile failed to agree on a unified statement on Gaza because "some are entrenched in their positions", Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7839075.stm
Published: 2009/01/20 10:50:26 GMT
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Gaza 'looks like earthquake zone'
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 19 January 2009 19 January 2009
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The worst-hit areas in the Gaza Strip after Israel's three-week offensive look as if they have been hit by a strong earthquake, aid agencies say.
Correspondents in Gaza City say entire neighbourhoods have been flattened and bodies are still being recovered.
The United Nations says some 50,800 Palestinians are now homeless and 400,000 are without running water.
Israel says it will allow 143 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid into Gaza plus 60,000 litres of fuel.
Israel launched its offensive on 27 December to stop Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel.
Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed and 5,500 injured during the conflict. Thirteen Israelis were killed.
Aid promise
An International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman said on Monday evening that 10 ambulances carrying medical supplies had travelled into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC that medicines, foodstuffs and energy would reach Gaza "in the volume that is required and in an expeditious manner".
The BBC was unable to verify whether the food and fuel convoys had reached Gaza.
Israel called a ceasefire on Saturday, saying it had met its war aims. Hamas later declared its own truce, with one of its leaders claiming a "great victory" over Israel.
European Union foreign ministers are due to hold separate talks later this week with Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority to discuss ways to ensure the truce holds.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has agreed a plan with top EU officials on how the 27-member bloc could help keep the ceasefire, German media report.
Scrap metal
Palestinians in Gaza have been returning home to assess the damage.
The BBC's Christian Fraser travelled to Jabaliya on the northern edge of Gaza City, where the Israeli tanks first crossed over the border. He says entire neighbourhoods have disappeared.
He met 67-year-old Fatma Umanim, sitting beside the remains of her collapsed house, her neighbours building a makeshift shelter for her next to the rubble.
Our correspondent says an industry is growing out of the destruction in broken wood and scrap metal - Gaza's poorest salvaging whatever they can.
Fatim Aljaru, aged 35, told the BBC that every single building on her street on the outskirts of Gaza City had been damaged or destroyed.
She said the home that she had shared with her husband and eight children was now a pile of rubble.
"Just look what they've done... we are human beings, how can they treat us this way? What will we do?"
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is planning to visit Gaza on Tuesday to inspect the damage but his trip "could be subject to change", Israeli officials said.
The director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, the UN relief agency, John Ging, said most important now was how to get basic supplies into the territory.
Unrwa was keen to reopen its schools, Mr Ging said, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been sheltering.
Arab split
Divisions among Arab countries re-emerged at an Arab League summit in Kuwait which was dominated by the crisis in Gaza.
Arab divisions over the Gaza crisis have re-emerged at a summit in Kuwait.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Hamas had invited the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip by refusing to extend a truce that expired in December while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Arab leaders should adopt a resolution declaring Israel a terrorist entity.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he wants troops to leave Gaza "as quickly as possible" and some have already left.
Anonymous Israeli officials, quoted by AP news agency, said the withdrawal would be completed before US President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday.
But analysts say big questions remain, such as who will police Gaza's southern border with Egypt and how much power Hamas still has.
Hamas has said it will hold fire for a week to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7838618.stm
Published: 2009/01/19 23:51:16 GMT
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