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Gazans Wounded in Israeli Strike
At least 11 people have been injured in an Israeli air strike at an airport in southern Gaza, Palestinian medical officials and witnesses said.
Ths strike came after a day of clashes in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron and other places. (Reuters) The strike targeted Gaza's defunct international airport, located
near the town of Rafah, late on Friday, witnesses said.
The Israeli army told Al Jazeera that the attack targeted "a terror site" and said its pilots confirmed that the target was hit.
It also confirmed that it hit two smuggling tunnels and a weapons manufacturing site in another strike 24 hours earlier.
Al Jazeera's Casey Kauffman, reporting from Gaza, said Israel called the strike a reaction to rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel a day earlier.
"It's the second night of attacks in the Gaza Strip," he said.
"The Israelis say it is in retaliation for the rocket attack, but ... the group that claimed responsibility for the attack [on Israel] says [the rocket attack] is in reaction to what's perceived as [Israeli] aggression and provocation in the West Bank."
Fierce clashes
The two days of strikes come after clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli police in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Palestinians fought running battles with Israeli police in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the latest clashes since Israel announced the construction of 1,600 new homesin East Jerusalem.
Israeli security forces used tear gas against hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters following Friday prayers in Hebron.
Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from Hebron, said heightened tensions throughout the past week have erupted into open confrontation.
"The situation has quietened down, but there were fierce clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli soldiers," she said.
"The amount of tear gas used in the city is just quite unbelievable and a dozen injuries have been reported in the occupied West Bank."
There were similar altercations at Bilin and Nilin, sites of weekly Palestinian protests against Israel's West Bank "security barrier".
Hebron is home to about 160,000 Muslims, but some 500 Israelis and Jews live in a small settlement in the centre of the city, with a heavy Israeli security detail.
There were also skirmishes in East Jerusalem as Israeli police were also on high alert in Jerusalem where they prevented men under the age of 50 from entering the al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said prayers at the compound passed without incident and Jerusalem was generally calm.
"A lot of people are angry at what is taking place in Hebron and are coming out to show solidarity," Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, said.
"It is all of course mounting tension over what Palestinians here see as a restriction of their basic rights."
Charged atmosphere
An already charged atmosphere intensified this week as a rebuilt 17th-century synagogue was opened in the Jewish quarter of the Old City, a few hundred metres from the compound.
Many Palestinians view Israeli projects near the mosque compound - a site holy both to Jews and Muslims - as an assault on its status quo or a prelude to the building of a third Jewish temple there.
Israel had sealed off the West Bank following previous clashes at the East Jerusalem site known to Muslims as the al-Aqsa mosque compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Clashes at the same site in September 2000 triggered a wave of unrest in the Palestinian territories that became known as the "Second Intifada [uprising]".
The latest violence had led some in the region to speak of the possibility of a "Third Intifada".
Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Fatah official, said on Friday the party "does not seek a third intifada," after continuing unrest in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
But he also warned that the Palestinian people "have the right and the duty to defend themselves and the Islamic holy sites".
The unrest comes as the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators- an informal group including the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia - called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.
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25 Comments so far
Show AllSome comments:
The air raid on Gaza didn't happen in vacuum. The article failed to mention that it came as a response to unmentioned rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilian targets, (which killed one person in Israel.) Hence - Palestinians were the ones who initiated this round of violence.
Another fact that Al-Jazeera "forgot" to mention is that the 17th-century synagogue in the Jewish quarter was destroyed by the Jordanian legion in 1948, and not in the 17th century.
from the article, which you seem not to have read...
[Al Jazeera's Casey Kauffman, reporting from Gaza, said Israel called the strike a reaction to rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel a day earlier.]
And again you blame all Palestinians for the actions of a few people. A group of people who claim to be members of Al Queda at that. For all you know the people who launched that one rocket may not even be Palestinian, but you're quite happy to damn everyone of them aren't you.
You are a damnable bigot.
Not to mention the fact that the LAST time The Government of Israel claimed it had uncovered a Cell of Al Qaeda terrorists in the occupied territories, they were in fact Mossad agents posing as the same.
I mentioned well over a week ago that Israel was trying to provoke a response from the Palestinains when it imposed its "shutdown" and that if such an incident ever occurred (The firing of a rocket be it STAGED or otherwise) that the Zionists would point to it as proof that the Palestinians inherently violent and could not be negotiated with.
The tactics used by Israel become more and more transparent to the World at large which is why Israel subjects itself to international ridicule by hiring people to spreads its message.
[The tactics used by Israel become more and more transparent to the World at large which is why Israel subjects itself to international ridicule by hiring people to spreads its message.]
I still don't think they're hiring people. They get the 'true believers' to volunteer their time and efforts. And in general their efforts are not worth any money. I'm sure they've got some professional public relations firms working for them, but the run of the mill poster on CD isn't getting paid for what they write.
Where did I blame all the Palestinians for the attack?
Read my comment again, Saturnalia. You may see that I wrote: "Palestinians were the ones who initiated this round of violence." and NOT "ALL THE Palestinians..."
I must admit, though, that I missed that line where Al-Jasira said that the air raid was a response to (some, not all) Palestinian rocket attacks.
[The article failed to mention that it came as a response to unmentioned rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilian targets, (which killed one person in Israel.) Hence - Palestinians were the ones who initiated this round of violence.]
Your own words. Let me repeat them.
[Palestinians were the ones who initiated this round of violence.]
Not qualified by the word 'some' or by 'terrorist' or by any other mitigating words that would have prevented the accusation I hurled at you. What you said is no different from those who blame all Jews for the actions of the Israeli government. Or those who blame all Catholics for the actions of the priests who molest children. Or those who blame all of 'group x' for whatever ills that may have befallen their wretched lives. You're in quite some slimy company, dear.
As GWNorth pointed out, there is no proof of exactly who fired that rocket in the first place. Israel is and has been looking for an excuse to launch a second version of their Operation Cast Lead, what's to stop them from staging an operation that makes them look like the victim. After all that's a common tactic for those who would seek to launch wars of aggression, or extermination.
You're arguing sentence construction and English comprehension.
Would you agree that the following sentence: "Newton was hit by apples" is not the same as "Newton was hit by ALL THE apples"?
"Saturnalia drank water" is not the same as "Saturnalia drank ALL THE water"?
The same logic applies to "Palestinians started the violence" appose to "ALL THE Palestinians started the violence."
Nevertheless, to avoid any further misunderstanding, I would like to clarify that I don’t blame ALL THE Palestinians for the renewal of violence. (just a few Palestinians.)
You are a moron ...enough said.
[You're arguing sentence construction and English comprehension.]
In your first post on this thread you argued that the article didn't mention the rocket fired from Gaza. I pointed out that the article did indeed mention such a rocket attack. Your ability to read is fair game when you make a statement that is demonstrably false.
I acknowledged that in my post from March 20th, 2010 8:10 pm.
letto: you are old enough to remember the september 17, 1948 murder of count folke bernadotte by ben gurion's confidente and valet, a mr. cohen. you know that the swedish count's only crime was agreeing to accept a u.n. mission to visit the middle east and then recommending boundaries for the new state of israel. because his suggestions circumscribed ben gurion's notions of a greater israel, six jewish terrorists mudered him as he sat unarmed in his u.n. vehicle. bullets through the heart killed the very man who was successful in sparing the life of many jews and others in the nazi camps. hollywood has made many movies glorifying israel and linking its birth to the holocaust, but count folke's death proves the two were not linked, and that israel was just a land grab by folks who were mostly eastern european or russian by birth, blood, and geneology. if the holocaust had meant anything to them, they would have spared the life of the man who tried to free the jews from the death camps. but they didn't. no one was prosecuted for killing the good swedish count, and now streets all over israel are named for those who conspired to kill him. funny, too, that the new state of israel soon adopted a statute of limitations for first degree murder, when it does not recognize any statute of limitations for 90 year old nazis, some of whom are being tried in european courts today. these gaza bombings stem from the same mentality that killed bernadotte for his mere recommedations. palestine has no air force or anti- aircraft weaponry, yet you would sanction the bombings of civilian areas and condemn goldstone for pointing out the war israel has been making against gaza's civilian infrastructure. we should have never sold a single jet to the israelis, as we have let a nation of only 7 million destabalize a region that is of critical geostrategic importance to the united states of america. george marshall was right, and harry truman was wrong. we have let this enfant terrible keep the world on the edge of its seat, as we have to sweat out every day wondering if israel will bring the superpowers into a confronation, or use its own nuclear weapons to start up world war 3. ben gurion lied to j.f.k. about israel's nuclear intentions, as is documented in j.f.k.'s own library. israel is a rogue state. chomsky is right. it needs to be downsized to bernadotte proportions with its security then internationally guaranteed.
It was not rocket ATTACKS. It was ONE ROCKET, and it did indeed kill one person in a greenhouse. The attack came AFTER Israeli PIG incursions once again, and now whole groups of innocents are being punished again. And, if you want to talk about events that occurred in 1948 let's start with the bombing of the King David Hotel by Jewish Terrorists. Let's talk about The Stern Gang and Irgun. Let's talk about the Nakba.
Kent Shaw: "if you want to talk about events that occurred in 1948 let's start with the bombing of the King David Hotel by Jewish Terrorists. Let's talk about The Stern Gang and Irgun. Let's talk about the Nakba."
OK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
The 1948 war was initiated by the Arab side after rejecting UN resolution 181. The intention of the war was to massacre the Jews of Palestine.
" Azzam Pasha, the Arab League Secretary, declared on Cairo radio: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Israel won the 1948 war, and as a result, 700,000 Palestinian who lived in Israel become refugees (A.K.A - the Nakba), and 850,000 Jews who lived in Arab countries also become refugees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands
The King David hotel was a military target. It had the British military headquarters in Palestine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
"The hotel was the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan."
Israel is not interested in peace. Every time someone comes along to negotiate yet another peace settlement, the Israelis insultingly either make an announcement, precisely timed, they are expanding their settlements, or they bomb Palestine, precisely timed to foul the negotiations.
The primary reason and obstacle to the peace process is fear of AIPAC. All Presidents in the past including Obama have succumbed to this fear because AIPAC can make or break candidates for re-election, this is where a great portion of the funds come from. Israel, ultimately, does not care about the danger it puts Americans in in the Middle East.
Well darn,
I guess this means Joe Biden's going to be late to dinner again. It's understandable though for Israel to dispatch Supersonic F-16's against a town of teenagers throwing rocks. What's the average age of Gaza? Sixteen?
Oh, and I forgot. Some kid launched a firework also and it' didn't even kill an Israeli. Perfectly understandable for Israel to drop bombs on an unarmed civilian population; I understand completely.
Teenagers with rocks are such a constant threat to the existence of Israel. It's always best to dispatch jet fighters with 2000 pounders and heat-seeking missiles vs. children.
You can never be too careful.
TJ
Agreed. And while Israel keeps the Palestinian stone-throwing teenagers from overrunning the mid-east, the mighty US military using the latest in stand-off weaponry and psyops keeps the world safe from Afghani goat herders.
Yup, you can never be too careful.
ThomasJefferson: "Oh, and I forgot. Some kid launched a firework also and it' didn't even kill an Israeli."
What does it matter if the person who was killed by the Palestinian rocket attack was an Israeli or not? Are you a racist, ThomasJefferson?
The victim's name was Manee Singueanphon, 30, from Thailand.
MOST DEADLY -- MOST UNGODLY
Most deadly nation always rules, since the beginning
of civilization it has always been that way.
All the self-righteous garbage from Israel, all the fake
morality from Empire USA, for China will be our next
nation to worship, the next god-king over all the earth.
DICTATOR CIVILIANS -- IN A WAR ZONE
ISRAEL MILITARY -- USING HUMAN SHIELDS
“The article failed to mention... rocket attacks from
Gaza against Israeli civilian targets... Palestinians
were the ones who initiated this round of violence.”
Israeli civilians in the war zone, why?
The 30 mile strip of land around Gaza has belonged to the people of Gaza since BC 532, does not Gaza have the right to bar all Israeli civilians and military from entering their war zone?
For no nation on earth has a right to keep their civilians in a war zone, especially a war zone belonging to another nation.
And that brings us to the real issue in this 1948 invasion and unending occupation, do civilian voters with a dictator mindset, do they have the right of self-defense?
For dictator civilians in a war zone, so fool as to think they have the right of self-defense, how more corrupt and self-righteous can a fake morality be?
*Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
This reminds me of Ramtha. He started his life in dire straits and was given a sword with amazing properties. It is said he invented war as we know it. The downtrodden palestinians could use some of this kind of assistance. I thought civil disobedience would work with the Israelis as they are educated and civilized. Rachel Corrie showed me that civil disobedience failed her so it is with great sadness that i call forth a weapon like Ramthas to even the odds just a little bit.
You're calling for a 'magic' solution to the problem? Bwa ha ha! Call for Harry Potter for all the good that will do...
Letto:
Great source of accurate info, that Wikipedia. Bosh!
If you read the facts and order of events in 1948, Israel was attacked by Arab nations because they broke their deal with Truman from the get go. The deal being to cease slaughtering Palestinians, in exchange for entry into the UN. That is why when the Arabs attacked. The Israeli's been lying and distorting the facts and playing up the victim ad nauseum since. Also why they love to trash the UN, because even though they thumb their nose at all international laws, they know full well that they are an illegitimate state.
Back when politicians and government officials had some integrity, the actions of Israel after Truman went along with them was so egregious to people in the US State Department, some high officials actually walked out of the UN after Truman let this slide. They resigned in protest that very day. All they wanted was for the Israeli's to stop the killing before UN membership. Seems pretty reasonable, don'tcha' think? The Israeli's are backstabbers who thrive on corruption.
The reason Truman agreed to this 62 year old black mark on humanity is it was an election year and he wanted the Jewish vote. Things don't change much, do they? Selling out the country to maintain their own lust for power.
Bastards.
freepressmyass, are you saying that Azzam Pasha, the Arab League Secretary (in 1948), did not declar on Cairo radio: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." ???
PR-IMAGE OF ISRAEL:
a hapless victim-of terrorism, of military attack, of implacable and irrational hatred (“anti-semitism”)
UGLY REALITY:
Israel has had a substantial role in initiating and perpetuating violence and conflict but the “strategy” has been to blame the victims for Israeli aggression and state terror.
Sir John Troutbeck, May 18, 1948; writing five weeks after the Deir Yassin massacre:
“It is difficult not to see that Zionist policy is anything else than unashamed aggression carried out by methods of deceit and brutality not unworthy of Hitler”
(The British witnessed Zionist terror and ethnic cleansing in 1948 but did nothing to stop it ... For a detailed description see Ilan Pape: THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE)
ANALYSIS:
To maintain the self-serving dogma of Israel’s “innocence” (state terror is always presented as “defense”) it is essential to avoid crucial documentation and silence or at least denigrate all sources that undermine these false assertions.
Unfortunately (for Zionist propaganda) some prominent Israeli politicians have given criticial historians the opportunity to find out what really happened by writing down their thoughts and feelings about historic events:
The Diary of former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett is a major source of evidence for a conscious policy of deliberate, unprovoked cross-border attacks, in which advantage was taken of superior military power and a servile western propaganda machine, with the intent of destabilizing neighboring states and provoking them into military responses. Sharett was ... often shaken by the ruthlessness of the military establishment and worried about the moral deterioration in Israeli society in the 1950s:
"In the thirties we restrained the emotions of revenge. . . . Now, on the contrary, we justify the system of reprisal ... we have eliminated the mental and moral brake on this instinct and made it possible ... to uphold revenge as a moral value.... a sacred principle" (p. 33).
"...the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and so many clashes we have provoked;"
the "narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of our military leaders" [who] "seem to presume that the State of Israel may-or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle."
Where Israeli state terrorism is acknowledged in the United States, it is almost invariably described as "retaliatory," hence not criminal even if regrettable.
... In Qibya 66 civilians were massacred in October 1953 in the first major operation of Ariel Sharon's Unit 101. There was no known connection between the villagers of Qibya and any terrorist actions against Israel. Israel angrily denied charges that its military forces were responsible for this massacre, pretending that the "retaliation act" was carried out by "border settlers in Israel, mostly refugees, people from Arab countries and survivors from the Nazi concentration camps..."
Commenting on this fabrication in his diary, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett observed that "Such a version will make us appear ridiculous; any child would say that this was a military operation," as was tacitly conceded much later. He writes that in the cabinet meeting following the massacre,
"I condemned the Qibya affair that exposed us in front of the whole world as a gang of bloodsuckers, capable of mass massacres regardless, it seems, of whether their actions may lead to war. I warned that this stain will stick to us and will not be washed away for many years to come."
Sharett obviously underestimated the power of Israel’s PR and media control: Systemic falsification of “history” through pro-Zionist “commentary”, “dynamic silence” and the “echo effect” (see the videos “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land”, “The Iron Wall” and “Palestine is still the Issue”)
1 .The Israeli political /military establishment never seriously believed in an Arab threat to the existence of Israel. On the contrary, it sought and applied every means to exacerbate the dilemma of the Arab regimes after the 1948 war. The Arab governments were extremely reluctant to engage in any military confrontation with Israel, yet in order to survive they needed to project to their populations and to the exiled Palestinians in their countries some kind of reaction to lsrael's aggressive policies and continuous acts of harassment.
In other words, the Arab threat was an Israeli-invented myth which for internal and inter-Arab reasons the Arab regimes could not completely deny, though they constantly feared Israeli preparations for a new war.
2. The Israeli political/military establishment aimed at pushing the Arab states into military confrontations which the Israeli leaders were invariably certain of winning. The goal of these confrontations was to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming the Zionist state into the major power in the Middle East.
3. In order to achieve this strategic purpose the following tactics were used:
a) Large- and small-scale military operations aimed at civilian populations across the armistice lines, especially in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, then respectively under the control of Jordan and Egypt. These operations had a double purpose: to terrorize the populations, and to create a permanent destabilization stemming from tensions between the Arab governments and the populations, who felt they were not adequately protected against Israeli aggression.
b) Military operations against Arab military installations in border areas to undermine the morale of the armies and intensify the regimes' destabilization from inside their military structures.
c) Covert terrorist operations in depth inside the Arab world, used for both espionage and to create fear, tension and instability.
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/rokach.html#FOREWORD
For more historical evidence see the works of Jewish historians Ilan Pape, Avi Shlaim, Norman Finkelstein etc. For a very revealing analysis of Zionism see Joel Kovel:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Overcoming%20Zionism#
Sharett's words are still highly relevant today (when the greatest terrorist is the Prime Minister ...)