Not only does the illegal blockade of Gaza continued with the quiet assent of the west, but hardlya day passes without Israel bombing and killing more civilians in Gaza. Why is the world not reacting to this endless atrocity?
‘Four injured’ by Israeli air strike in Gaza: BBC
The Israeli military has carried out an air strike on the Gaza Strip, targeting what it said were Palestinian militants preparing to fire rockets into Israel.
Palestinian medical sources said four civilians were injured, one of them critically. Hamas officials said the attack had occurred near a cemetery.
But Israel said a member of a Salafist militant group, Jaljalat, was killed.
On Thursday, two Palestinians were injured in an air strike on smuggling tunnels near the border with Egypt.
The strike reportedly came in response to to rocket fire the previous day by Palestinian militants.
Incidents of rocket fire from Gaza have decreased since Israeli forces launched a large-scale offensive last December and January, but there have been sporadic attacks.
In a statement issued on Friday morning, the Israeli military said its air force had attacked a group of militants “on their way to fire rockets from the northern Gaza Strip”.
“Accurate hits, including the rocket launching pad, were identified,” it added.
But the Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, said civilians who had been on their way to visit the graves of relatives were hit.
According to reports from Gaza, a group called Jaish al-Umma (Army of the Nation), an Islamist militant group affiliated with al-Qaeda, has said it fired several mortars into Israel overnight.
However, the Israeli army has said it was only aware of two mortars fired on Thursday, and that they did not reach Israel.
What a nice game this is – they announce a ‘freeze’ on the same day that they announce this, blow. Is Obama stupid? I doubt it; in which case, he is culpable and isa party to the continued Nakba:
Israel approves 28 schools for West Bank settlements: BBC
Israel’s government has approved 28 new schools for settlements in the West Bank, a day after it announced a 10-month halt to new residential building.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said construction would completed before the beginning of the 2010-11 school year.
Settlers have been angered by the decision to limit building, although the Palestinians say it is not enough.
They refuse to restart peace talks without a total freeze and are angry the policy does not include Jerusalem.
Under the Israeli new policy, backed by the security cabinet on Wednesday, permits for new homes in the West Bank will not be approved for 10 months. But municipal buildings and hundreds of houses already under construction will still be allowed to go ahead.
The Palestinian Authority and some members of the international community, including Russia and the UK, want Israel to go further and include East Jerusalem. However, Israel does not consider Jerusalem occupied territory.
Nevertheless, right-wing Israeli leaders have been angered by what they see as capitulation by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, and vowed to keep building.
The chairman of the settler group, the Yesha Council, Danny Dayan said on Wednesday that Mr Netanyahu had “betrayed the very principles for which he stood for all his life”.
‘Real test’
After approving the 28 educational institutions, Mr Barak said: “Alongside our duty to be open and attentive to the settler public we must not confuse ourselves, the state means what it says.”
“Everybody who asks whether the political echelon intends to fulfil its decision, I say, the answer is positive. This is a real test for the Israeli democracy,” he added.
The row over settlements has dogged US President Barack Obama’s attempts to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians since he took office.
Israel previously pledged to freeze all settlement activity under the 2003 Middle East peace plan known as the Roadmap, which also called on the Palestinian Authority to dismantle militant groups.
However, the administration of former US President George W Bush did not pressure it to curtail building in the settlement blocs which it was widely expected to keep in any eventual deal.
Mr Obama’s administration began by pressing for a total freeze, but softened its language in the face of refusals from Mr Netanyahu and his right-leaning government.
Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built on occupied territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law – although Israel disputes this.
Israel settlers obstruct building curbs inspectors: BBC
Jewish settlers have sought to prevent building inspectors from enforcing recently announced limits on construction in the occupied West Bank.
Groups of settlers, who have vowed to ignore the curbs, gathered at the entrance to one settlement and said they had forced inspectors to leave.
A government official said there had been some “low level friction”.
The Palestinians say Israel’s 10-month building pause is not enough and are refusing to restart peace talks.
The building restrictions do not apply to East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want to locate the capital of their future state.
‘Without violence’
Settler groups have reacted angrily to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of the new policy last week.
Qoute:
We would like them to disappear to where they came from
Malachi Levinger
Kiryat Arba
Obstacles to peace: Borders and settlements
He had been under heavy pressure from the US, with the settlements issue becoming a major sticking point in attempts to resume peace negotiations.
On Monday, the Yesha Council settler group dubbed the new policy, “illegitimate, immoral, anti-Zionist and inhuman”, and said the settlers would “continue building the country with the government or without it”.
On Tuesday it said it had called on all residents of Israeli settlements in the West Bank to try to “prevent, without violence” the entry of the inspectors.
An Israeli government official said that teams from the civil administration in the West Bank, which is tasked with enforcing the restrictions, had inspected 80 settlements in the past two days.
‘Resistance’
He said the teams, which are operating with police escorts, had served at least 60 notices demanding that construction work be halted, and seized five heavy construction vehicles.
The official said residents and local council leaders had “showed some resistance” but “most cases were resolved peacefully”.
In the settlement of Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank, the head of the regional council, Malachi Levinger, told the Israeli media residents had forced a team of inspectors to “retrace their steps” by using “passive resistance”.
“We would like them to disappear to where they came from,” Mr Levinger said.
Under the Israeli new policy, backed by the security cabinet on Wednesday, permits for new homes in the West Bank will not be approved for 10 months.
In an effort to ease the fears of the settlers, many of whom are political allies of his right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu told an audience in Tel Aviv the moratorium was “a one-time decision and it is temporary”.
“We shall resume building once the moratorium is over,” and the future of the settlements in occupied land “shall be determined only through peace negotiations and not a single day beforehand”, Netanyahu said.
Israeli courts
But municipal buildings and about 3,000 homes already under construction will still be allowed to go ahead.
Last week the Defence Ministry approved the construction of 28 educational establishments.
Separately on Tuesday, scuffles broke out at a disputed house in East Jerusalem, which a Jewish family has been attempting to take over.
Television footage showed a Palestinian hitting one of the settlers on the head with a stick.
The house is one of a group of properties which both Palestinian and Jewish families claim to own. Israeli courts have recently ruled in favour of the Jewish claims in some of the cases.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his “dismay” at the “continuation of demolitions, evictions and the instalment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem”.
Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built on occupied territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law – although Israel disputes this.
The Palestinians have refused to return to peace negotiations unless Israel completely ends all settlement activity.
Australia hosts war criminal Ehud Olmert: The Electronic Intifada
Sonja Karkar, 1 December 2009
The news that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Australia and was welcomed by the honorable members of our parliament came as somewhat of a shock. It is one thing to have allowed a man charged with corruption and suspected of war crimes into Australia at all; it is another thing that he was listed as a distinguished guest in Hansard — the official record of parliamentary proceedings — and received a resounding “hear, hear” from our elected representatives.
As a High Contracting Party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Australia has a duty to bring before its courts those responsible for alleged violations amounting to grave breaches of the convention. The UN-commissioned Goldstone report and other investigations into Israel’s conduct during its attack on Gaza last winter by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross and others, make for chilling reading of what the Palestinians in Gaza are made to endure for Israel’s “security.” Our government has shown a callous disregard for Palestinian human rights and no amount of aid can compensate for its cavalier decisions to back Israel regardless.