Obama holds silence over Gaza

by Leonard Doyle in Washington

from The Independent

President-elect Barack Obama maintained his silence on the situation Gaza yesterday as America's next first family moved into a luxury hotel steps from the White House and his children prepared for their first day at school in Washington.

Mr Obama has left the ritualised hand wringing about the humanitarian situation in Gaza to the Bush Administration, with his aides repeating the mantra that there is only one president at a time in America.

But as the bombs rained down, Vice President Dick Cheney went on television yesterday implying that Washington had effectively given Israel a green light to take down Hamas before the Obama Administration could make any changes to US policy in the Middle East.

Mr Obama has received the same national security briefings as President Bush since his election on 4 November, but he has opted to remain silent on growing crisis as have his new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and usually voluble Vice President elect Joe Biden. By contrast Mr Obama has been all over plans for dealing with the US economic meltdown. He also broke his silence on foreign affairs to condemn the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

In the absence of either President Bush or President elect Obama, Mr Cheney told CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday that Israel “didn’t seek clearance from us.” He revealed that he was briefed on Israeli plans during a recent visit and told the situation would turn “very ugly” if Hamas did not end its rocket attacks.

By formally ending its ceasefire with Israel on 19 December, Hamas provided Israel with the opening for its onslaught, he added. “They (Israel) haven’t told me exactly what they planned to do,” Mr Cheney said before adding, “We’ve been very concerned about the Palestinian people.”

But Mr Cheney made it clear that the Bush administration had no interest in demanding a ceasefire in Gaza unless it was “durable and sustainable.” There was no point, Mr Cheney said, in freezing the situation in a way that would allow Hamas to fire rockets into Israel once again.

There is much unease in the outgoing administration that Mr Obama’s yet to be revealed policy towards the Islamic world and concern that he may jettison many of the hard line policies of the past eight years.

During the election Mr Obama seemed to bend over backwards to express support for Israel, at one stage going further than official US policy to endorse Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But he has also promised to transform US foreign policy towards the Islamic world and signalled his intention to make a keynote policy speech at a "major Islamic forum" within 100 days of entering the White House.

"I will make clear that we are not at war with Islam, that we will stand with those who are willing to stand up for their future, and that we need their effort to defeat the prophets of hate and violence," he said.

Mr Obama’s determination to end the war in Iraq, close the military prison in Guantanamo and conduct foreign policy is a way that is more than a “war on terror,” is not something either the outgoing Bush administration or Israel have applauded.

Mr Obama has not come under pressure to speak out on the crisis in Gaza however.

“Almost everyone in Washington agrees that the timing of the latest crisis had at least one benefit,” the New York Times said yesterday, “It came before the inauguration of Mr. Obama.”

Despite his staunch support for Israel — at one point justifying a response to Hamas rocket attacks — he “has raised expectations of a change in policy in the Middle East,” the paper said.

A recent Pew survey reveals that US voters are far more worried about their jobs and the economy than foreign policy. And finding a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict comes bottom of US foreign policy worries.

Mr Obama is still in his honeymoon period with a Gallup Poll indicating that his transition is more than weathering any criticisms it has endured since the election. 

Gaza: The death and life of my father

by Fares Akram

from The Independent

For Fares Akram, The Independent's reporter in Gaza, the Israeli invasion became a personal tragedy when he discovered his father was one of the first casualties of the ground war

The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. Nestled in a flat fertile agricultural plain north-west of Beit Lahiya, it had lemon groves, orange and apricot trees and we had recently acquired 60 dairy cows.

It was the closest farm to the northern border with Israel. Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us.

But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48. Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.

The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. "Just a pile of flesh," my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty.

Like most Gazans, my mother, my sisters and my wife – who is nine months' pregnant – and I have spent the past week of the Israeli onslaught trapped inside our flat in the city. But my father had decided to stay up at the farm; he knew it would be impossible to get back to tend the livestock if the expected troop invasion began. But he called us every day.

The last time I saw him was on Thursday when he brought cash and a bag of flour. We talked about the imminent birth of my first child and how we would get my wife, Alaa, to hospital amid the bombing and chaos. Of course, on Saturday evening there was no hope of getting an ambulance up to the farm because the roads were cut off by the Israelis. So my uncle and brother drove the 8km and the rest of us sat, in shock, shivering in the dark apartment, bed covers over us to keep warm, the sound of non-stop tank shelling around us. Deep down we all knew Dad was dead. He would have been in or near the house, and if an F16 strikes directly at your house you know what it means.

They arrived to find a smoking pile of rubble. Most of the cows lay dead; others had run off injured. Mahmoud, a teenage relative, was with my father when the Israeli bomb smashed into the house. The force of the airstrike threw him 300 metres. They found Mahmoud's body in a neighbour's field.

We buried my father and Mahmoud yesterday morning in a very quick funeral, knowing Israeli tanks were just 3km away, on the outskirts of the city. We could hear the rattle of the machine-gun fire accompanying the tanks. The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide.

My father, Akrem al-Ghoul, was no militant. Born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he was a lawyer and a judge who worked for the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, he quit and turned to agriculture. Dad's father, Fares, who had been driven out of his home in what is now Israeli Ashkelon in 1948, had bought the land in the 1960s.

During the second intifada and until the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the farm was taken over by Israeli settlers, but after 2005 we went there every holiday. In Gaza, the only escape is the beach or, if you are lucky enough, the farmland. My father hated what Hamas was doing to Gaza's legal system, introducing Islamist justice, and he completely opposed violence. He would have worked hard for a just settlement with Israel and a better future for Palestinians. When the PA gained control over the West Bank, he moved to Ramallah to help establish the courts there.

My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza. What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father. 

Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn't work

by Robert Fisk

from The Independent

What is Israel afraid of? Using the old "enclosed military area" excuse to prevent coverage of its occupation of Palestinian land has been going on for years. But the last time Israel played this game – in Jenin in 2000 – it was a disaster. Prevented from seeing the truth with their own eyes, reporters quoted Palestinians who claimed there had been a massacre by Israeli soldiers – and Israel spent years denying it. In fact, there was a massacre, but not on the scale that it was originally reported.

Now the Israeli army is trying the same doomed tactic again. Ban the press. Keep the cameras out. By yesterday morning, only hours after the Israeli army went clanking into Gaza to kill more Hamas members – and, of course, more civilians – Hamas was reporting the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Reporters on the ground could have sorted out the truth or the lie about that. But without a single Western journalist in Gaza, the Israelis were left to tell the world that they didn't know if the story was true.

On the other hand, the Israelis are so ruthless that the reasons for the ban on journalism may be quite easily explained: that so many Israeli soldiers are going to kill so many innocents – more than three score by last night, and that's only the ones we know about – that images of the slaughter would be too much to tolerate. Not that the Palestinians have done much to help. The kidnapping by a Palestinian mafia family of the BBC's man in Gaza – finally released by Hamas, although that's not being recalled right now – put paid to any permanent Western television presence in Gaza months ago. Yet the results are the same.

Back in 1980, the Soviet Union threw every Western journalist out of Afghanistan. Those of us who had been reporting the Russian invasion and its brutal aftermath could not re-enter the country – except with the mujahedin guerrillas. I received a letter from Charles Douglas-Hume, who was editor of the The Times – for which I then worked – making an important observation. "Now that we have no regular coverage from Afghanistan," he noted on 26 March that year, "I would be grateful if you could make sure that we do not miss any opportunity for reporting on reliable accounts of what is going on in that country. We must not let events in Afghanistan vanish from the paper simply because we have no correspondent there."

That the Israelis should use an old Soviet tactic to blind the world's vision of war may not be surprising. But the result is that Palestinian voices – as opposed to those of Western reporters – are now dominating the airwaves. The men and women who are under air and artillery attack by the Israelis are now telling their own story on television and radio and in the papers as they have never been able to tell it before, without the artificial "balance", which so much television journalism imposes on live reporting. Perhaps this will become a new form of coverage – letting the participants tell their own story. The flip side, of course, is that there is no Westerner in Gaza to cross-question Hamas's devious account of events: another victory for the Palestinian militia, handed to them on a plate by the Israelis.

But there is also a darker side. Israel's version of events has been given so much credence by the dying Bush administration that the ban on journalists entering Gaza may simply be of little importance to the Israeli army. By the time we investigate, whatever they are trying to hide will have been overtaken by another crisis in which they can claim to be in the "front line" in the "war on terror".

Massive Demonstration Against The War

by Gush Shalom

At the same time as Ehud Barak was ordering the army to start the bloody ground offensive against Gaza, some ten thousand protesters from all over Israel marched in Tel-Aviv in a massive demonstration against the war. All four lanes of Ibn Gvirol St., one of the city's main throughfares, were packed full of demonstrators who marched the two kilometres from the Rabin Square to the Cinemateque, chanting and waving banners all the way.

“One does not build an election campaign over the dead bodies of children!” shouted the protesters in Hebrew rhymes. “Orphans and widows are not election propaganda!”, “Olmert, Livni and Barak – war is no game!”’ “All cabinet ministers are war criminals!!” Barak, Barak, don’t worry – we shall meet you in The Hague!”, “Enough, enough – speak with Hamas!”

The written posters were similar. Some of them paraphrased Barak’s election slogans: “Barak is not friendly, he is a murderer!” (The original Barak slogan says: “Barak is not friendly, he is a leader!”) Also: “No to the Election War, 2009!” and “The six-Knesset-seat war!” – an allusion to the polls which showed that in the first days of the war Barak’s Labor Party has gained six prospective seats.

The demonstration took place after a fight with the police, which tried to prevent or at least limit it, arguing that they would not be able to stop right-wing rioters from attacking it. Among other things, the police demanded that the organizers undertake to prevent the hoisting of Palestinian flags. The organizers petitioned the High Court of Justice, which decided that the Palestinian flag is legal and ordered the police to protect the demonstration from rioters,

The demonstration was decided upon by Gush Shalom and 20 other peace organizations, including the Women’s Coalition for Peace, Anarchists Against the Wall, Hadash, the Alternative Information Center and New Profile. Meretz and Peace Now did not participate officially, but many of their members showed up. Some thousand Arab citizens from the north arrived in 20 buses straight from the big demonstration of the Arab public which had taken place in Sakhnin.

The organizers themselves were surprised by the large number of protesters. “A week after the start of Lebanon War II, we succeeded in mobilizing only 1000 demonstrators against it. The fact that today there came 10,000 proves that the opposition to the war is much stronger this time. If Barak goes on with his plans, public opinion may completely turn against the war in a few days.”

The giant Gush Shalom banner said in Hebrew, Arabic and English: “Stop Killing! Stop the Siege! Stop the occupation!” The slogan of the demonstration called for the end of the blockade and an immediate cease-fire.

On the day of the protest, the extreme Right mobilized their forces in order to break up the demonstration by force. The police made a great effort to prevent riots, and the one-mile march from Rabin Square to Cinematheque Square proceeded relatively quietly. However, when the protesters started to disperse, in accordance with the agreement with the police, a large crowd of rightists started to attack them. The police, which till then had been keeping the two camps apart, disappeared from the scene. The rioters then encircled the last of the protesters, harassing them, pushing them about and at a certain point started to besiege the Cinematheque building, where some of the last protesters had found refuge. They tried to break into the building, threatening to “finish off” the protesters, but at the last moment some police arrived and protected the entrance. The rioters stayed around for a long time.

Circumstances made it impossible to hold the planned public rally at the end of the march. No speeches were made. Here is a translation of the speech Uri Avnery was about to make on behalf of Gush Shalom:

They tell us

We are traitors.

They tell us

We are destroyers of Israel.

They tell us

We are criminals.

But we tell them:

The criminals are those

Who started this

Criminal and unnecessary war!

An unnecessary war

Because it was possible

To stop the Qassams

By the government

stopping the blockade

On the million and a half

Inhabitants of Gaza.

A criminal war

Because, on top of everything else

It is openly and shamelessly

Part of Ehud Barak’s and Tzipi Livni’s

Election campaign

I accuse Ehud Barak

Of exploiting the IDF soldiers

In order to get more Knesset seats.

I accuse Tzipi Livni

Of advocating mutual slaughter

In order to become

Prime Minister.

I accuse Ehud Olmert

Of trying to cover up

Rot and corruption

With a disastrous war.

I call upon them

From this tribune,

On behalf of this

Courageous and decent audience:

Stop the war at once!

Stop shedding the blood of

Our soldiers and civilians for nothing!

Stop shedding the blood

Of the inhabitants of Gaza!

The ground invasion

Will cause

An additional disaster,

A mutual massacre

And even more

Terrible war crimes!

At the end of this war

No general

Will be able to set foot

On European soil

Without fear of being arrested

For war crimes.

We are told

That there is no alternative.

Not true!!!

A cease-fire is possible even now,

Yes, this very minute,

If we agree to lift

The murderous siege,

If we allow the Gaza people

To live in dignity,

If we talk with Hamas.

I wish to address

The people of the South,

The people of Sderot,

Ashdod and Beersheba:

We know your anguish –

Even though we don’t live with you,

We know well.

But we also know

That this war

Will not change your situation.

The politicians exploit you,

The politicians conduct a war

On your back.

You too know that!

I call upon

Olmert, Barak and Livni:

Do not send the soldiers into the Strip!

All three of you will be accused of war crimes!

All three of you will pay the price!

The masses in Israel

Saluting you now

Will punish you tomorrow.

That happened in the

Second Lebanon War

That will happen

Again this time!

And YOU who are standing here,

Women and men,

Young and old,

Jews and Arabs,

YOU who have protested

Against this horrible war

From the first day,

From the first minute,

Isolated and cursed –

YOU are the real heroes!

You can be proud,

Very proud,

Because you stand in the middle

Of a hurricane of hysteria and ignorance,

And are not swept away by it!

You are retaining your sanity,

Not only at home

But here, in the street!

Millions around the world see you,

Salute you,

Salute each one of you.

As a human being,

As an Israeli,

As a seeker of peace,

I am proud

To be here today.

Israeli troops move into Gaza Strip

by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

from The Independent

 Israeli troops backed by helicopters advanced into Gaza today, a Palestinian witness and the Israeli army said, in the first ground action of an eight-day offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave.

The small column of military vehicles crossed the boundary fence into the northern Gaza Strip under darkness, said the witness, a resident of Beit Lahiya.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the incursion and said the aim was to seize areas from where Hamas was launching rocket attacks on southern Israel.

"The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations," Major Avital Leibovitch said.

Israeli tanks and troops had been massed on the border for days awaiting a possible invasion as Israeli firepower pounded Gaza from land, sea and air.

Witnesses had earlier reported Hamas fighters taking up positions in Gaza to repel any Israeli incursion.

Israeli officials had repeatedly warned they were prepared to step up military action if Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel did not stop but Hamas kept up the action on Saturday.

An Israeli air strike earlier on Saturday evening killed 11 Palestinian worshippers, including children, and wounded dozens as in a mosque in Beit Lahiya, Hamas officials and medics said.

Rescuers pulled people from the debris and the bodies of victims lay in pools of blood, witnesses said.

Israel has targeted mosques previously saying that Hamas had used them as command posts and fire bases.

The mosque raid brought the Palestinian death toll to at least 446, with about 2,050 wounded, in the worst sustained bloodshed in decades of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Four Israelis have also been killed in the cross-border rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Israeli air strikes targeted Gaza from early morning on Saturday and naval vessels also shelled the area from the Mediterranean, witnesses said.

One strike killed Abu Zakaria al-Jamal, a senior commander of Hamas's armed wing, Hamas said. He was the second Hamas leader killed in three days.

Israel launched the campaign, called Operation Cast Lead, on Dec. 27 saying it wanted to stop the rocket attacks.

But about 30 Hamas rockets smashed into Israel on Saturday, the military said. Two people were hurt by shrapnel when a rocket hit a building in the port city of Ashdod.

Hamas said the Israeli operation would not force it to bow.

"Whoever thought a change in the political area could come through the bombs of planes and the tanks and without dialogue is an illusionist," it said in a statement after a cabinet meeting in Gaza in an undisclosed location.

The attacks have sparked a wave of protests around the world, where thousands of demonstrators marched in solidarity with the Palestinians in European cities on Saturday.

In Paris, more than 20,000 demonstrators, many wearing Arab keffiyeh headscarves, chanted slogans like "Israel murderer!".

In London, 10,000 protesters led by singer Annie Lennox marched with Palestinian flags and placards with slogans such as "End the siege on Gaza" and "Stop the massacre".

The plight of the 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into Gaza was growing more desperate. People sheltered in their homes and humanitarian agencies warned that food, water and medical supplies were running short.

"Nobody feels safe," an International Committee of the Red Cross worker said in a report on the body's website.

"The problem is that we have nowhere to run for shelter."

The power plant has shut down and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage. In the winter cold, fuel for heating and cooking was no longer available, aid agencies said.

"We do not sleep at all at night. We stayed awake the whole night because of the planes," said Umm Kamel, a mother of 11 baking bread on a wood fire in her home in Gaza.

Israel has denied a humanitarian crisis is unfolding and says it has allowed food and medicine convoys into Gaza daily.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Hamas - which the United States, Israel's main backer, deems a terrorist organisation - must take the first step towards a ceasefire.

"Another one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable," Bush said in a weekly radio address.

Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 Middle East War and after Palestinian uprisings formally ended its military rule in 2005, although it still controls the borders.

International peace efforts aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state foundered after Hamas won elections in 2006 and drove Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from Gaza a year later.

Hamas called off a six-month truce with Israel last month and stepped up the rocket attacks, complaining at Israeli raids into Gaza and a continuing blockade of the enclave. 

Palestinians in New Zealand to protest today

from the New Zealand Herald

New Zealand-based Palestinians are taking to the streets this afternoon to protest against the violence in the Middle East.

A rally will take place down Auckland's Queen St.

The civilian death toll continues to climb in Israel's air offensive against Hamas on the Gaza Strip. At least 429 Palestinians have been killed, and 2,000 wounded in the seven day conflict.

Southern Israel, a substantial tank force is assembling, sparking fears of a ground incursion.

Another Aborigine Murdered, This Time Near Canberra

by Ewa Kretowicz

from The Canberra Times

South Coast police are investigating the apparent bashing death of a 57-year-old Narooma man.

The man, identified as Sam Connelly, appears to have been brutally beaten and left for dead on the stairs to his apartment yesterday morning. Police are questioning several men in relation to the incident.

They were called to the Harper Crescent units at 11pm on Thursday to investigate a disturbance and again at 4am yesterday, when they found Mr Connelly bleeding from a head wound. 

He was taken to hospital but died before reaching Moruya.

South Coast area command superintendent Michael Willing said police had not identified a weapon used to assault Mr Connelly or the cause of death. The post-mortem is expected to take place on Monday. Superintendent Willing said, ''He was found outside, literally on the stairs so at the moment we don't know until such time we can look in the units and do the examination of them and piece together what happened; we don't know.

''We are treating this suspiciously. I've got detectives from far South Coast command, based in Batemans Bay, with support from southern region command, and the homicide unit has been informed as well.'' 

Mr Connelly was an Aboriginal man known in the area as ''Gadget''. 

He had previously lived in Wallaga Lake Koori Village. The indigenous housing reserve between Tilba and Bermagui has views to the Pacific Ocean and the name Narooma comes from the Aboriginal word meaning clear, blue water.

Superintendent Willing said Mr Connelly's death was a tragedy.

''He's a local identity, he's been known to police for a long time for a range of reasons,'' he said. ''Part of the investigation we will be looking at his background and those associated with him and his history to try and identify motives and those that could be responsible for this thing.'' 

A man was arrested at the scene for an unrelated offence.

It is believed Mr Connelly lived alone on the top floor of the two-storey apartment block. 

Forensic investigators arrived at the Harper Crescent address at 1.20pm from Goulburn.

A witness who found Mr Connelly called the ambulance.

Police blocked the street and sealed the area to conduct forensic tests, diverting traffic away from the bottom of Willcock Avenue.

The forensic examination is expected to take three days.