Israel, Palestinians must restrain Gaza violence, U.K. says: Haaretz
Israel and the Palestinians must show restraint in the wake of a recent bout of violence, a U.K. official said Friday, just hours after Israel war planes struck the Gaza Strip in retaliation of recent rocket fire.
A spokesman for the U.K. Foreign Office said that London was “concerned by today’s strikes and the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel over the past week.”
Talking to the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph, the official called “on all parties to show restraint,” adding that Britain encouraged “Israelis and Palestinians to focus efforts on negotiation and to engage urgently in US-backed proximity talks.”
Earlier Friday, a Qassam rocket was reported to have been fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, a report which the IDF Spokesman’s Office said was the result of a false alarm.
At least 35 rockets were fired at Israel over the course of March.
Also Friday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on the international community must intervene in the latest cycle of violence between Gaza and Israel in order to avoid a possible escalation.
Haniyeh urged the world must stop “the escalation and aggression,” according to a Channel 10 report. He was likely referring to the Israel Air Force strikes, which destroyed what an Israel Defense Forces spokesman described as Palestinian munitions sites.
“We are contacting the other factions in order to reach an internal consensus as to the measures we may take in order to protect our people and strengthen our unity,” Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza.
Friday’s IAF air strikes were Israel’s response to a Palestinian short-range rocket that was fired across the border into Israel on Thursday, an IDF spokesman said. The attack, which went unclaimed by any Palestinian faction, caused no damage.
Four air strikes blew up two caravans near the town of Khan Younis, witnesses and Hamas officials said. There were no casualties.
A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were slightly wounded by flying debris.
Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry. There were no casualties.
An IDF spokesman confirmed the attacks, saying they had targeted two weapons-manufacturing plants and two arms caches.
Last Friday, Major Eliraz Peretz and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed while pursuing a group of Palestinian militants trying to lay mines near the border fence. Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident, and two militants were killed.
Britain calls for peace as violence escalates in Gaza: The Guardian
Three children injured in Israeli air strikes after Palestinian militants step up rocket attack
Israeli jets and helicopters have attacked Gaza, injuring three children and hitting what the Israeli military said were weapons manufacturing and storage sites.
The attacks continue the escalation in violence around Gaza in recent weeks. A day earlier Israeli had dropped leaflets in southern Gaza warning of an attack.
The number of rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian militants has begun to increase and a week ago two soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen were killed in the most serious clashes on the border for more than a year.
There were at least seven Israeli missile strikes overnight. Two caravans near the southern town of Khan Younis were hit as well as a cheese factory in Gaza City and a metal foundry in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to reports. Hamas said a complex it built for making movies was damaged, the Associated Press reported.
The Israel defence forces (IDF) said a rocket was fired into southern Israel on Thursday and there were nearly 20 rocket and mortar attacks in March. Two weeks ago a rocket killed a Thai worker in Israel.
“The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the citizens of the state of Israel and will continue to operate firmly against anyone who uses terror against it. The IDF holds Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip,” the military said.
Britain today called for restraint and urged Israel and the Palestinians to renew talks. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are concerned by today’s strikes and the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel over the past week. We encourage Israelis and Palestinians to focus efforts on negotiation and to engage urgently in US-backed proximity talks.”
Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian elections four years ago and controls Gaza, has tried in recent months to curb rocket fire. But it also said its fighters were involved in a gun battle a week ago in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and released video footage apparently taken during the fight.
Today Hamas said it had contacted armed groups in Gaza in an apparent attempt to rein in their attacks.
A statement by the Hamas government accused Israel of an escalation against the territory. But it also said the Hamas government was “making contact with the factions to safeguard internal agreement”.
Israel led a devastating war into Gaza in January last year that killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians. Thirteen Israelis died. For months afterwards the area was quiet, with both sides apparently keen to prevent further fighting.
Israel is continuing a tight economic blockade on Gaza, preventing exports and limiting imports to a small number of aid and food items.
EDITOR: Democracy of Silence
For over three months Israel has silenced this bizarre affair, in which the army and the judges operate illegally, in order to silence two journalist who have found the evidence that the IOF murders Palestinians despite a High Court order to the contrary. In this democracy, you are allowed to say what you want, until you find yourself in jail, at which point even the papers are not allowed to writye about it – the Israeli papers have not yet reported this latest news…
Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain: The Independent
‘Haaretz’ writer fled to London fearing charges over exposé on Palestinian’s killing
By Kim Sengupta, Diplomatic Correspondent
Friday, 2 April 2010
An Israeli journalist is in hiding in Britain, The Independent can reveal, over fears that he may face charges in the Jewish state in connection with his investigation into the killing of a Palestinian in the West Bank.
Uri Blau, a reporter at Israel’s liberal newspaper, Haaretz, left town three months ago for Asia and is now in London. Haaretz is understood to be negotiating the terms of his return to Israel with prosecutors, according to an Israeli source, who declined to be identified, because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The news of Mr Blau’s extended absence comes just days after it emerged that another Israeli journalist, Anat Kam, has been held under house arrest for the last three months on charges that she leaked classified documents to the press while completing her military service.
Although no media outlet or journalist has been specifically named as the recipient of the classified information, there is speculation on Israeli blogs that Ms Kam gave documents to Mr Blau that formed the basis of a story he wrote in November 2008.
In his article for Haaretz, Mr Blau reported that one of two Islamic Jihad militants killed in Jenin in June 2007 had been targeted for assassination in apparent violation of a ruling issued six months earlier by Israel’s supreme court. While not outlawing assassinations in the West Bank altogether, the ruling heavily restricted the circumstances in which they were permissible, effectively saying that they should not take place if arrest was possible.
In an unusual move, Israel has placed a gagging order on national media, preventing them from reporting any aspect of the Kam case. Israel’s Channel Ten and Haaretz are expected to challenge this order on 12 April.
According to the court order, Ms Kam, 23, is being held on “espionage” charges. It alleges that she passed classified documents to a male journalist while working as a clerk in the Israel Defence Forces Central Command during her military service.
She was arrested more than a year after Mr Blau’s report, which was cleared by military censors at the time of publication, when she was working for the news service Walla, until recently owned by Haaretz.
Ms Kam denies all the charges. Her trial has reportedly been set for 14 April and she could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. Mr Blau did not respond to requests for comment; his friends and colleagues refused to discuss the case in detail.
Dov Alfon, Haaretz’s editor-in-chief, said in an emailed statement: “Haaretz has a 90-year-long tradition of protecting its reporters from government pressures, and Uri Blau is getting all the help we can provide him with.”
The move to gag Israel-based media has sparked fevered debate on Jewish blogs, which have freely reported the story. Bloggers have railed against the blackout, saying it represents a critical challenge to the freedom of the press.
“I do not believe that a citizen can be arrested and tried for suspected security offences right under our noses without anyone knowing anything about it,” wrote former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari in an eloquent cri de coeur on the Seventh Eye website.
“Trials do not take place here in darkened dungeons, nor do we have show trials behind glass or chicken wire. I have no doubt that such a strange, terrible and baseless scenario cannot take place in such a sophisticated democracy as our own.”
Israeli journalist Anat Kam under secret house arrest since December: The Guardian
Woman faces treason trial after allegedly leaking documents that suggest military breached court order on West Bank assassinations
Anat Kam is accused of copying documents while she was a soldier on her national service and passing them on to Ha’aretz.
An Israeli journalist has been under secret house arrest since December on charges that she leaked highly sensitive, classified military documents that suggest the Israeli military breached a court order on assassinations in the occupied West Bank.
Anat Kam, 23, goes on trial in two weeks on treason and espionage charges and could face up to 14 years in jail. A court-imposed gagging order, proposed by the state and more recently by the defence, is preventing media coverage of the arrest and charges in Israel.
Kam is reportedly accused of copying military documents while she was a soldier on national service and then passing them to an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Kam denies the charges. Her lawyers declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
A Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau, who has written several stories critical of the Israeli military and who has been linked in internet reports to the case, has left Israel and is now in London, apparently for fear he will be targeted for his reporting. Haaretz and Channel 10, an Israeli television station, will challenge the media gagging order at a hearing on 12 April, two days before Kam’s trial is due to start at the Tel Aviv district court.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which reported the story from New York this week, said the investigation into Kam was jointly conducted by Israeli military intelligence, the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. The Israeli military declined to comment on the case.
During her military service, Kam reportedly worked in the office of a senior Israeli general and is accused of copying classified documents from the office. After her time in the army she became a journalist, working for the Israeli news website Walla, which was previously partly owned by Haaretz but entirely editorially independent. Reports suggest she is accused of leaking the documents to Haaretz.
Attention has focused on an investigation Haaretz published on the Israeli military’s assassination policy in November 2008, written by Uri Blau and headlined “Licence to Kill”. He reported that the military, the Israel Defence Force, had been carrying out assassinations of Palestinian militants in the West Bank in contravention of an Israeli high court ruling, which said efforts should be made first to arrest suspected militants rather than assassinating them.
The story described meetings in the spring of 2007 in which senior Israeli generals discussed a mission to assassinate Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha, a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The army chief, General Gabi Ashkenazi, allegedly approved the operation but said Malaisha’s car was not to be attacked if there was “more than one unidentified passenger” in it.
Malaisha and another Islamic Jihad leader were killed by the military in June that year, and the military claimed at the time that the militants had first opened fire at the soldiers.
One of the generals involved in the meetings, Major-General Yair Naveh, was quoted in the story as defending the killings as legal. The AP reported that Kam served in Naveh’s office during her military service.
The Haaretz piece was accompanied by copies of military documents but it was approved by the military censor before publication, the Guardian understands. The story was published more than a year before Kam was arrested and was followed by several other articles by Blau that were similarly critical of the military.
Dov Alfon, editor of Haaretz, said: “Uri Blau is in London. He will be there until his editors decide otherwise. We are ready to continue to keep him in London as long as needed. Uri Blau published a lot of articles in Haaretz. All of them are dynamite stuff and it is clear of course that the authorities are not satisfied with these kind of revelations in a major newspaper.
“We understand this but we also understand that Israel is still a democracy and therefore we intend to continue to publish whatever public interest demands and our reporters can reveal.”