Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony
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- Written by Robert Fisk Robert Fisk
- Published: 05 January 2009 05 January 2009
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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-bombing-ashkelon-is-the-most-tragic-irony-1216228.html
How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.
That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.
But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.
Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.
Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West. Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.
Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the corrupt Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."
Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.
To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.
As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the even more corrupt PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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- Written by Photographer Unknown Photographer Unknown
- Published: 05 January 2009 05 January 2009
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British telecom firm severs ties with Israeli counterparts over Gaza attack
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- Written by Meir Orbach Meir Orbach
- Published: 05 January 2009 05 January 2009
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UK's FreedomCall informs Israeli company of decision via email, blames Gaza operation
Meir Orbach
British telecommunications firm FreedomCall has terminated its cooperation with Israel's MobileMax due to the IDF operation in Gaza.
"We received an email from the British company informing us that it is severing all ties with us and any other Israeli company following Israel's strike in Gaza," said CEO Raanan Cohen.
"We weren't expecting this from them and there was no prior warning. I don't intend to appeal to them or answer the letter."
The email from FreedomCall said, "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."
MobileMax, established in 2004, produces a program providing cellular phones with inexpensive international service.
Doctor: Gaza patients dying before treatment, 20 percent of the 500 people dead children
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- Written by CNN CNN
- Published: 04 January 2009 04 January 2009
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Gaza's main hospital, already full of Palestinians wounded in the week-long Israeli air assault, reached critical mass on Sunday, according to a Norwegian doctor volunteering at Shifa Hospital.
Doctor in Gaza: Patients 'lying everywhere'
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/04/gaza.humanitarian/index.html
* NEW: Doctor: Some 20 percent of the 500 people dead at hospital are children
* NEW: At least 507 Palestinians have been killed in the military operation
* Doctor: "people were dying before they got treatment"
* Some 25 trucks bearing aid could not cross the Gaza-Egypt border on Sunday
GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Gaza's main hospital, already overloaded with Palestinians wounded in the week-long Israeli air assault, has reached critical mass, according to a Norwegian doctor volunteering at Shifa Hospital.
"The injured patients are mainly civilians, a lot of children with dreadful injuries," Dr. Erik Fosse told CNN on Monday, estimating that 20 percent of the more than 500 people dead were children.
"This figure is rising, and I think it has to do with the development of the war as it moves into the city," he added.
After a weeklong series of air strikes, Israel launched a ground assault Saturday night.
Palestinian medical officials said Israeli forces have killed 37 Palestinians -- both civilians and militants -- since moving into the territory. With those deaths, at least 507 Palestinians have been killed in the military operation, including about 100 women and children, officials said.
In addition, 2,600 Palestinians have been injured, most of them civilians, officials said.
"We've had a steady stream (of patients) every day, but the last 24 hours has (been) about triple the number of cases," Fosse said late Sunday.
Fosse said he estimated that about 30 percent of the casualties at Shifa -- Gaza City's main hospital -- on Sunday were children, both among the dead and wounded.
The increase in casualties at Shifa followed Israel's ground incursion into Gaza. Fosse said 50 patients were "severely wounded" when an Israeli air strike hit a food market in Gaza City. VideoWatch Palestinians describe fearful life in Gaza »
"We were operating in the corridors, patients were lying everywhere, and people were dying before they got treatment," he said.
Most of the casualties were due to the air strikes that preceded the ground incursion. Other hospitals in Gaza could not treat the wounded because of a shortage of supplies and staff.
Israel has said the military operation is a necessary self-defense measure after repeated rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas militants. Israeli leaders say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.
Last week, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, a psychiatrist who runs Gaza's mental health program, said Gaza was headed for "a major humanitarian disaster" unless the fighting ended soon.
Meanwhile, at the Gaza-Egypt border, nearly 25 trucks carrying aid and medical supplies were unable to pass through the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, CNN's Karl Penhaul reported.
Egyptian authorities said the guards who were manning the Palestinian side of the border had abandoned their posts. Aid workers and drivers banged on the gate to protest the closure. VideoWatch "absurd" situation at border crossing »
An official with the humanitarian group World Vision also confirmed that report, saying: "Unfortunately today, they closed the border, so no aid entered Gaza today."
"There are food shortages ... The health system is overwhelmed. The people here don't have electricity," added Mohammed El-Halaby, program manager for World Vision, adding that several power lines and water pumps were damaged by last week's air strikes.
On Saturday -- before Israel launched its ground incursion -- old Palestinian ambulances had carried the wounded across the border, where patients were loaded into modern ambulances.
Most of those taken into Egypt were civilians, including a teenage boy with his arm blown off, as well as a 4-day-old baby, who was not injured but needed to be kept on a ventilator and in an incubator. iReport.com: Share reactions to the crisis in the Middle East
About 10 truckloads of donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Greece crossed into Gaza on Saturday.
All AboutGaza • Israel
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/04/gaza.humanitarian/index.html
'There were shells, rockets everywhere'
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- Written by Hazem Balousha in Gaza City and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Hazem Balousha in Gaza City and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
- Published: 04 January 2009 04 January 2009
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As Israeli troops move deeper into Gaza, Hazem Balousha and Chris McGreal speak to people inside the beseiged territory.
It has never been like this before. The assault is coming from the sky, the sea and the ground. The explosion of shells, the gunfire from the tanks, the missiles from planes and helicopters, are all incessant. The sky is laced with smoke, grey here, black there, as the array of weaponry leaves its distinctive trail.
Most Gazans can only cower in terror in whatever shelter they can find and guess at the cost exacted by each explosion as the toll for those on the receiving end rises remorselessly.
As Israeli forces carved up the Gaza strip today, dividing the territory in two as tanks sliced through the centre of the territory to reach the sea south of Gaza City, the UN warned of a "catastrophe unfolding" for a "trapped, traumatised, terrorised" population.
Among the terrorised is Mahmoud Jaro. He was sheltering with his wife and four young children in his home in Beit Lahiya, on the eastern side of the Gaza Strip, within sight of the Israeli border, when he heard the first tank engines in the early hours of Sunday morning.
He grabbed his children, the youngest only three, and fled.
"I couldn't see anything. The area was dark. They cut off the electricity. We were moving in the pitch dark. There were shells, rockets everywhere. Shooting," he said.
"I was just trying to protect my children. They were very scared and afraid. My youngest son was crying all the time."
Eventually, Jaro and his family made it across Beit Lahiya to his parents in law's house in a relatively safer part of the town.
"I don't know what's going on. I don't know what the Israelis want. This time it's from the air, the sea, the ground at the same time. I've never experienced it like this," he said.
The Israeli army warned others who had stayed in their homes to get out.
It seized control of Palestinian radio frequencies, jamming Hamas and Islamic Jihad stations, and broadcast a warning in Arabic telling people to move towards the centre of Gaza City for their own safety.
Others did not escape the assault. The wounded and dead piled up at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital on Sunday.
Eric Fosse, a Norwegian doctor there, said Hamas fighters were a small minority of the casualties brought in.
"This hospital has been filled up with patients," he added. This morning they [Israeli forces] bombed the fruit market. There were a large number of casualties.
"We became like a field hospital. There were two patients at a time in the operating rooms and we were operating on other people in the corridors. Some were dying before we could get to them."
Moawya Hasanian, the head of al-Shifa's emergency and ambulance department, said the hospital had taken in 33 dead and 137 wounded by lunchtime on Sunday.
Among those killed was an paramedic after his ambulance was hit by Israeli fire. Three of his colleagues were wounded.
"Only three of the dead are from Hamas, the rest are civilians," Hasanian said. "There are many children under 18. There are many in critical condition. We are working under pressure. It's not easy to work with bombs and air strikes everywhere. It's not easy for ambulances to move."
Since Israeli ground forces crossed into Gaza on Saturday evening, five people were killed when an Israeli shell hit Gaza city's main market.
The Palestinians said a single tank shell killed 12 other people in northern Gaza. An air strike took five lives in a mosque as dusk fell. At least 20 others have died.
The total death toll since the Israeli assault began with air raids eight days ago has risen to more than 500.
Hamas has put up a fight, claiming Israeli casualties. The military said one soldier was killed by a mortar and 29 others wounded as they fought for control of areas around Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, close to where Hamas launches its rockets on Israel.
The Israeli military said Hamas fighters were not engaging them in close combat but using mortars and roadside bombs.
Occasionally, through the huge Israel attack and Palestinian resistance to it, there came the sound of a Hamas rocket launched into Israel - a reminder that the invading army is going to have to move even deeper into Gaza to achieve its declared aim. By dusk, Hamas had fired at least 30 rockets.
John Ging, the head of the UN relief agency in Gaza, described the situation there as "inhuman".
"We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population," he said. "The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They're trapped, they're traumatised, they're terrorised by this situation.
"They're in their homes. They're not safe. They're being killed and injured in large numbers, and they have no end in sight. The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them."
The UN has been particularly angered at the contention of the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Ging also accused Israel of a campaign of destroying public buildings vital to the administration and governance of Gaza.
"The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed," he said. "Blowing up the parliament building. That's the parliament of Palestine. That's not a Hamas building. The president's compound is for the president of Palestine. Schools, mosques."
While some Israeli forces seized control of areas north and east of Gaza City, tanks and troops also carved their way through the centre of Gaza, taking control of what used to be the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.
Its hundreds of houses and public buildings are nothing more than rubble after the Israelis bulldozed them as they pulled the settlers out of Gaza in 2005.
Some of the tanks then continued on the short distance to the sea, cutting Gaza in two - a tactic frequently favoured by the Israeli army when it still had military bases in the territory - and making movement between the halves impossible for Palestinians.
Samar Abdel Rahma lives close to Netzarim and watched the Israelis move back into the wreckage of settlement.
"All night there were bombs, fire, from everywhere," he said. "The noise was very loud. I could see the tanks moving. It was a terrifying situation. I could feel the ground moving because of the tanks.
"All of my family came to my room because its the safest place in the house. We are 13 people living here. Since the Israeli operation started I didn't leave the house. We've had electricity for just a few hours the entire time. We are not even cooking."
The Israeli military has been broadcasting derisory comments on the seized radio frequencies, accusing Hamas officials of cowardice and abandoning the population by going in to hiding.
The leadership, including the prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and the Hamas chief, Mahmoud Zahar, have not been seen in public in days following the targeted assassinations of other senior officials by the Israelis.
But Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, denied they were hiding and said the morale of the organisation's fighters remained high.
"We have been able to hit a tank ... and more surprises are awaiting the invaders," he added.