New Attacks From Gaza and Israel Test Truce

NEW YORT TIMES

02 February 2009

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The tenuous two-week-old truce between Israel and Hamas faced its most severe test yet Sunday, when Palestinian militants lobbed at least four rockets and a shower of mortars from Gaza into Israeli territory, and the Israeli Air Force responded with a bombing raid on Gaza.

Tensions have spiraled in the two weeks since Israel pulled its troops out of Gaza, ending a devastating 22-day military campaign that Israel said had been meant in part to silence such rocket attacks. While tit-for-tat skirmishes began last week, Sunday was the first time since the truce that multiple rockets were launched from Gaza.

After the rocket attacks, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel signaled the Israeli bombing raid with a warning of a “sharp” and “disproportionate” response.

U.S. Thwarted Israeli Attack on Iran

MEL FRYKBERG (Middle East Times)

JERUSALEM — As Israel flexes its military muscles in Gaza around a forthcoming Israeli election, a report has detailed how the U.S. George W. Bush administration thwarted Israeli plans for an attack on Iran.Israel will hold its next general election on Feb. 10. Elections in Israel are usually a period when Israeli leaders get aggressive militarily, as they attempt to secure votes by appearing to deliver on promises to guarantee the Israeli public’s safety.

UN suspends Gazan aid operation

BBC NEWS

08 January 2009

The UN’s main aid agency has suspended its operations in Gaza because its staff have been hit by Israeli attacks.

The suspension would continue “until the Israeli authorities can guarantee our safety and security”, the UN said.

Meanwhile, the US, UK and France have dropped opposition to a UN resolution urging an immediate ceasefire, and Arab nations are studying a draft.

It comes on day 13 of an offensive by Israel aimed at stopping Palestinian militants firing rockets from Gaza.

It breaks my heart to see Israel’s stupidity

Times

January 5, 2009

It has a right to respond to attacks, but will not achieve its ultimate aim – peace – until it stops thinking in military terms

Michael Lerner

Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighbouring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialists bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for America to mobilise a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond.

But the kind of response matters. Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,000 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas’s indiscriminate bombing of population centres is a crime against humanity, so is Israel’s killing of civilians (at least 130 so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands in the years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).

Only the U.S. Can Rein in Israel

AIJAZ ZAKA SYED

Middle East Times

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Watching the mind-numbing savagery unleashed on Gaza in utter helplessness with the rest of the world and listening to the statements of Israeli and Western leaders over the past few days, I’ve often wondered: ‘Are we all on the same planet?’On Monday, Israel’s Shimon Peres told visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Israel was committed to peace. At that precise moment, Israeli jets were bombing the daylights out of Gaza, literally.

‘This operation won’t be easy and it won’t be short’

Times

The militant Arab states are outraged, America stands behind Israel; but neither side will get sucked into war

Marie Colvin

ISRAEL’S dramatic incursion into Gaza last night plunged the region into the biggest crisis it has faced since the Lebanon invasion in the summer of 2006. It sparked anger among some Islamic states but drew support from America.

Israel continues Gaza assault

 AL JAZEERA INTERNATIONALA senior commander of the armed wing of Hamas has been killed in continuing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Abu Zakaria al-Jamal, a senior figure in Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades died of his wounds on Saturday after Israeli jets bombed his house overnight.

His death came as Israel kept up its deadly assault on Gaza for the eighth straight day. Hamas vowed to defeat the Israeli army if it invaded the territory.

Hamas leader killed in air strike

BBC NEWS

1 January 2009

A senior Hamas leader has been killed by an Israeli air strike on his home in the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials say.

Nizar Rayyan, the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since 2004, had urged suicide attacks against Israel.

News of the strike came on the sixth day of Israeli strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical sources say 402 people have been killed. Israel says it is trying to prevent militants from firing rockets into southern Israel.

Mr Rayyan is the most senior Hamas leader to be killed since the death of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in April 2004.

Hamas insider killed in Israeli strike on Gaza

Times

Fran Yeoman

The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip today claimed a significant blow against the top ranks of Hamas when an air strike killed Nizar Rayyan, one of the movement’s inner circle.

Mr Rayyan, one of Hamas’s most hardline political figures who had advocated renewing suicide bombings inside Israel, died in a targeted strike on his home. He is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since 2004, and only yesterday vowed that rocket attacks from Gaza would hit Israel “even deeper” than they have so far.

Israel ignores its own history in Gaza

Rami G. Khouri

Daily star – Lebanon

When diplomacy fails to deliver in the Middle East, other options come to the fore, usually in some form of violence practiced in different ways by both sides. The current violence in Gaza is disproportionately being carried out by Israel’s armed forces, which are waging a fierce attack against mostly unarmed civilians, killing hundreds at a time, injuring thousands, and destroying Palestinian civilian infrastructure for the fifth or sixth time in the past 50 years. This follows Israel’s strangulation of Gaza that caused hardship by reducing the flow of food, medicines and essential needs.