Quote:
Scores Killed Across Gaza as Israel Strikes at Hamas
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ISABEL KERSHNER
GAZA CITY — The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire from the area, hitting mostly security headquarters, training compounds and weapons storage facilities, the Israeli military and witnesses said.
Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of emergency services at the Gaza Ministry of Health, said at least 140 Palestinians were killed in the raid.
Most were members of the security forces of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, but a few civilians were also among the dead, including children. Scores more Palestinians were wounded.
The air attack came after days of warnings by Israeli officials that Israel would retaliate for intense rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday alone, more than 60 rockets and mortars were fired, some reaching further than previously. While the rockets are meant to be deadly, and several houses and a factory were hit, sowing widespread panic, no Israelis were killed or seriously injured in the recent attacks.
A shaky Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas started to break down in early November. Hamas had originally agreed to a six-month lull, and declared it officially over when the six-month period expired on Dec. 19.
Though Israel had been threatening to end its policy of restraint that saw only limited strikes against rocket launchers and squads in recent days, the timing of the raid came as a surprise to Gazans. It came in mid-morning, when official buildings and security compounds were filled with personnel and children were at school, and not, as many had anticipated, at night.
Expecting some kind of Israeli response, the Hamas leaders in Gaza had already been in hiding for two days.
In a statement issued immediately after the raid, the Israeli military warned that “This operation will be continued, expanded and intensified as much as will be required.”
At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, scores of dead bodies were laid out in front of the morgue waiting for family members to identify them. Many were dismembered.
Inside the hospital, relatives carried a five-month old baby who had suffered a serious head wound from shrapnel. Overwhelmed, the hospital staff seemed unable to offer help.
At the Gaza City police station, at least 15 traffic police who had been training in a courtyard were killed on the spot.
Tamer Kahrouf, 24, a civilian who had been working on a construction site in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, said he saw his two brothers and uncle killed before his eyes when the Israeli planes bombed a security post nearby. Mr. Kharouf was wounded and bleeding from the head.
Women were wailing as they searched for their relatives among the dead. Sawsan Al-Ajab, 50, was looking for two sons, aged 32 and 24, who both worked at the Gaza police station.
The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appealed to the Gazans to reject Hamas and the rocket launchers in an interview with the Al Arabiya Arabic satellite television station on Thursday.
But Ms. Ajab’s anger was not initially directed against Hamas.
“Egypt, the United States and Israel have agreed together to destroy Hamas,” she said.
In Israel, the authorities seemed braced for yet more rocket fire from Hamas. The Home Front Command declared a “special situation” in all communities up to 12 miles from the Gaza border, Israel Radio said. Bomb shelters in all those communities have been opened, and residents have been asked not to congregate out of doors and to remain in protected areas, the radio said.
Taghreed El-Khodary reported from Gaza City and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/wo...t.html?_r=1&hp
first off, this is appalling.
the policy logic behind this is a direct result of yet another disastrous choice made by the far right nutjobs in the bush administration. it embodied a number of elements particular to "democratization" in the rightwingworld--fetishizing the fact of elections so long as the group you want to win does in fact win. so the elections are "free" so long as the population "freely" agrees with what the administration understands as being american interests. in this case, those interests were: hamas should not be elected. but they were, and everyone knew they would be. once they were elected, the americans decided to back israel's response, which was to seal off gaza, lay seige to it, under the assumption that if hamas could not provide basic services to the palestinian population, their political legitimacy would collapse.
except it didn't work, mostly because it was, and is, a brutal and idiotic plan.
unless you operate with the assumption that a siege is invisible, that you can seal off an area, trap it's population, starve it out, refuse to allow medical supplies in, etc etc etc without anyone noticing that these problems follow from a siege rather than from organizational breakdowns within the governing party, the effects of siege are likely to be the opposite of what was desired. had the israelis and americans wanted to undermine hamas in this way, they should have put it in the position of having ot govern more or less normally.
this is not rocket science.
if you want to read sustained coverage of what the past 18 months have meant for the population of gaza, go here:
ei: Palestine
i emphasize the origins of this situation because it seems to me that today's raid, directed at a "terrorist infrastructure" which apparently included some children, and the rocket launches which prompted it---all follows from this idiotic policy decision.
worse, you have an extremely weak olmert government jockeying for electoral position. you have the expriation of the cease fire that egypt had negociated followed by a phase of posturing--a couple days ago, hamas signalled it's willingness to extend the cease fore--but in the interim there was an increase in the number of rocket and mortar incidents---but people in gaza do not have basic things like flour (see the ei articles on the top of the linked page, from 25 december)--they do not have basic medical supplies---who on earth would seriously expect people NOT to act independently (maybe)---but this acting is interpreted as "evidence" that hamas does not control the population--and so and so.
apart from the situation itself, what astonishes me is the relative absence of coverage of gaza in the american corporate press. i find it interesting that the boundary which separates that which is covered from that which is passed over in relative silence is coterminous with official foreign policy logic. hell, in comparison, iraq is a policy triumph for the bush administration. maybe this silence is a function of the way in which the press has come to operate relative to the state--reduced staff coupled with need for streams of information results in increased reliance on pre-packaged infotainment ("public diplomacy") such that the sequence of official talking heads not only determines the narrative logic within particular stories that are covered, but also which stories are covered at all.
but gaza represents the furthest lunatic extension of the "war on terror" the most obscene sequence of implications of it. hamas was designated a "terrorist" organization a priori--this designation is what set the policy into motion that resulted in an 18 month siege of a civilian population. it constitutes a basis for an immanent critique of this entire "logic"....
but the american press rarely gives it any attention, particularly not now in a context of crisis and christmas, elections and transition, which result in a wholesale collapse into narcissism.
but maybe this is a good moment to look forward.
what do you think the obama administration should do relative to this situation?
i think the incoming administration should immediately begin reversing the bush administration's policy toward israel with respect to gaza. it should be carried out on both human rights grounds and with arguments concerning the political damage this situation is doing to israel itself. you'll notice in the ei coverage linked above that a dominant term for referring to what israel has defaulted into by following the logic that it has been following is apartheid. this association is of great concern to many israelis, and for obvious reasons.
the siege should be ended immediately. hamas should be allowed to govern under the assumption that the exercise of power will moderate it---it is self-evident that this other tactic has not and will not work.
the quartet framework should become a centerpiece for moving negociations forward concerning a two-state solution in the region.
the political disadvantage the fact of the siege puts israel in, combined with indications coming from olmert's government over the past month or so that israel is willing to stop providing the funds it was officially not providing to settlements in the west bank may make it easier to advance a reasonable solution.
the sticking point will be jerusalem.
but what do you think should happen?
in the immediate run, what do you think should be the reaction of the americans to this escalation in explicit violence (a siege is itself obviously violence)....?