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Baraka_Guru · 01-10-2009, 09:19 AM

After ignoring the calls for a ceasefire from the U.N. and others, Israel prepares its next phase: an intensive ground operation. They've been sending communications to "the residents of Gaza," asking them to stay away from terrorists and to evacuate Rafah due to an "imminent operation." Where are there no terrorists, and to where should they evacuate? I'm not sure they were told. You'd think an organization with the budget of the IDF, they'd have a better handle on logistics.

Quote:

NY Times
January 11, 2009
As Talks Falter, Israel Warns Gazans of More Extensive Attacks
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Israel warned Gaza residents on Saturday that it was preparing the next phase of its war against Hamas — a deeper ground force operation — as diplomatic efforts to end the 15-day assault and Hamas rocket fire into Israel faltered.

Tank and artillery fire pounded Gaza all night and day with plumes of black smoke visible especially in the eastern part of Gaza City. A tank shell landed outside the home of a family in Jabaliya, northeast of the city, killing eight members of the same family who were sitting outside, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll to more than 820. Nearly half of them were reported to be civilians.

United Nations relief operations resumed after a daylong suspension prompted by fears for the safety of the drivers. On Thursday, a United Nations driver was killed and two others were wounded from what the agency said was Israeli fire. Israel issued a statement on Saturday saying it was certain that the shooting had not come from its forces, adding that the drivers were treated in an Israeli hospital. It also redoubled its assurances to the United Nations on holding its fire around aid convoys.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah Party opposes Hamas, was in Cairo pressing a call for a cease-fire, and he discussed with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt the idea of international troops along the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas representatives were also there, but the plan, also urged by the French, seemed to be losing steam. Egypt is unenthusiastic about the presence of foreign troops on its soil, while Hamas is unwilling to have the troops inside Gaza.

More focus was being placed on technical assistance to the Egyptians to help them block and destroy the smuggler tunnels that help Hamas stay lethal.

Both Israel and Hamas rejected a United Nations Security Council Resolution on Friday calling for a cease-fire. And the actions of both on Saturday made their resolve to keep fighting manifest.

More long-range rockets hit Israel, including two in open areas in Ashdod, a city of 200,000 on the way to Tel Aviv.

Israel said its aircraft attacked more than 40 targets throughout Gaza, striking 10 rocket-launching sites and weapons-storage facilities. It also rounded up people in the north of Gaza, questioning them and telling them to deliver warnings to Hamas activists. It said it killed the man in charge of Hamas’s rocket launchers and another 15 militants.

In Gaza City as well, residents reported getting phone calls that said, “We are going to intensify the military strike against Hamas. Our intention is not to harm civilians. If you live near Hamas, evacuate.”

Leaflets were dropped addressed to “the residents of Gaza,” saying that the Israeli military had in recent days warned residents of the southern city of Rafah of “an imminent operation” and asking them to evacuate their homes for their safety.

“The fact that the residents of Rafah abided by the orders,” the leaflets continued, “has protected those who had nothing to do with the fight. The Israel Defense Forces will intensify shortly its directed operation against tunnels, weapon storehouses and members of terrorist groups all over Gaza. For your safety and that of your family you are asked to stay away from terrorist elements and from places where terrorist operations occur. Please continue abiding by our orders.”

Red Cross workers said their telephones were flooded with calls from residents of the Beach refugee camp who had received large numbers of the calls and leaflets. The callers wanted to know if they should evacuate their homes and if so to where.

A Beach camp car mechanic named Hamdi Eki, 47, was asked why he did not leave after receiving such a call. “I have nine children,” he said. “Where can I go? I prefer to die at my own house.”

Some Beach camp residents did leave but ended up in other neighborhoods or camps that had received similar warnings.

Israel has come under increasing international criticism for the growing number of civilian casualties of this war and for complicating efforts by aid and rights groups to help those caught in the cross-fire. Israel says Hamas fighters hide consciously among civilians, in mosques and schools and under clinics.

Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who has studied both the Kosovo and Lebanon conflicts, said he was concerned that Israel was not paying enough attention to international legal requirements for “distinction and proportionality — first, to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and second, whether an attack will have a disproportionate effect on the civilians in the area.”

Even if a target is legitimate, he said, “you can’t drop a 500-pound bomb in an area crowded with civilians.”

This was also the first conflict he could remember when civilians could not flee the war zone — Gaza’s borders are shut both to Israel and to Egypt, and civilians, he said, “are fish in a barrel.”

“Our conclusions are preliminary but evidence is suggesting serious violations of the laws of war, which require investigation,” Mr. Abrahams said.

That is also true of Hamas, he said. “We need to know more about what Hamas is doing on the ground,” he said. “For example, we know Hamas has stored weapons in mosques, so when Israel targets a mosque, we don’t scream war crime.”

Regarding force protection, he said it “must be balanced by distinction and proportion. A violation by Hamas shooting from a mosque or school doesn’t give the Israeli Army carte blanche to return fire in the name of force protection with everything and anything it has.”

Groups like his are also concerned about the Israeli use of white phosphorous, which creates smoke on a battlefield, at low altitudes or crowded areas, because it can burn like a kind of napalm.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/wo...ideast.html?hp