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Thread: :icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

  1. #41
    VATICAN CITY: Relations between the Vatican and Israel grew tense yesterday when the Jewish state condemned an aide to Pope Benedict for calling Gaza “a big concentration camp.”

    Israel criticized Cardinal Renato Martino as the pope delivered a speech to diplomats in which he spoke out against the use of violence by both Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

    On Wednesday, Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, delivered the Vatican’s toughest criticism of Israel since its offensive in the Palestinian-ruled enclave, calling Gaza a “big concentration camp.”

    “We are astounded to hear from a spiritual dignitary words that are so far removed from truth and dignity,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

    The row over Martino’s remark as well as Israel’s bombing of Gaza have cast a shadow over negotiations for the pope to visit the Middle East in May, a trip some diplomats say is now in doubt.

    In a follow-up interview in Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper yesterday, Martino defended his comments, saying the people of Gaza “are surrounded by a wall that is difficult to breach, in conditions that go against human dignity.”

  2. #42
    As the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza continues to climb, Mohammed Ali, an advocacy and media researcher for Oxfam who lives in Gaza City, will be keeping a diary of his feelings and experiences.

    Are we not human?

    The air, the sea and the earth in Gaza City are now occupied by the Israeli military. They occupy Gazans' minds, nerves and ears too.

    In a bid to stop my children twitching, jerking, trembling and waking at every sound of an attack during their few hours of sleep and their many waking hours, I put cotton wool in their ears - it has not worked.

    I wonder what damage is being done to my children's tiny hearts. Theirs are not as big as mine, they can cope less with the stress that is being put on them.

    IN DEPTH

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    We ran out of fuel for our generator, which meant that we were confined to a small room filled with eleven people, with little light for three days.

    We have not had water either; our well can only pump water if it has electricity which most of the Gaza Strip has been denied since this nightmare started.

    Unlike many other families, we were fortunate yesterday to find 20 litres of benzene to power our generator. No fuel has come in since the onset of this attack on Gaza so we had to pay seven times its usual price.

    We have one day's worth of food left and the nappies I bought two weeks ago are nearly gone. They are not good quality as little has been able to enter this strip of land since the blockade was imposed on us 18 months ago. Bad quality nappies mean unpleasant leakages, and for the last few days the little ones have had to be bathed in freezing cold water.

    My sister who was with us the last time I wrote decided to return home in spite of our protests. She feared that with food reserves running out we might have to eat one meal a day rather than the two we have been having of late. At home she has a little food left, enough to keep her and her family going for a while longer.

    We are now 11, huddled together in my parents' dining room. My brother and I and our families moved there, thinking that the first floor may be the safest option.

    There is a saying in Arabic which says "death in a group is a mercy". I guess if we die together maybe, just maybe, we will feel less of the pain than in doing so alone.

    I have had 8 hours sleep since the beginning of this conflict; we can hear attacks almost every minute.

    I think to myself, if one of us is injured or needs medical attention what will happen? Ambulances are finding it difficult to reach civilians, roads are blocked by rubble, Israeli forces in their path - you could bleed to death.

    Even if they did get to us, maybe we would be bombed on our way to the hospital. If we did reach the hospital there might not be enough room to treat us - there is little medication or equipment or any electricity to fuel the life-saving equipment. We would not even be able to get out of Gaza for the life-saving treatment we needed.

    Hospitals are now running on back-up generators making life even more difficult for the doctors who are trying to cope with the influx of the injured. If fuel runs out for the generators, those on life-saving equipment will perish.

    I heard a woman calling into a radio station today - ambulance services could not reach her and I guess she thought the radio station might be able to do something. She was wailing down the phone "our home is on fire, my children are dying, help me". I do not know what happened to her and her children - I do not want to imagine.

    I spend much of my time thinking that this could be the last hour of my existence.

    As I try to fall asleep, I hear on the radio the numbers of people who have died rising by the hour. I wonder if tomorrow morning, I will be part of that body count, part of the next breaking news.

    I will be just another number to all those watching the death and destruction in Gaza or maybe the fact that I work for Oxfam will mean that I will be a name and not just a number. I might be talked about for a minute and moments later forgotten, like all those other people who have had their lives taken away from them.

    I am not afraid of dying - I know that one day we all must die. But not like this, not sitting idly in my home with my children in my arms waiting for our lives to be taken away. I am disgusted by this injustice.

    What is the international community waiting for - to see even more dismembered people and families erased before they act? Time is ticking by and the numbers of dead and injured are increasing. What are they waiting for?

    What is happening is against humanity, are we not human?

  3. #43
    GAZA CITY — Um Ahmed's children are crying. The Gazan mother gets up to bring some food to feed them, but finds nothing.

    "Do you have some bread," Um Ahmed asks her neighbor.

    "Here you are," answers the neighbor, Um Khaled, extending her hand with a number of bread loaves.

    "If we didn't stand by each others, who will stand beside us?"

    Long queues in front of bakeries have become a normal site in Gaza, home to 1.6 million people, because of Israel's choking siege.

    Only 14 of Gaza's 47 bakeries are operating and are operating at a very reduced capacity, according to the World Food Program.

    Sameya, a mother of seven, was happy to find wheat flour to bake into bread.

    But the happy moment evaporated as she did not find gas to stove the bread.

    "Let's stove it at our neighbor's house," says her husband.

    A few minutes later, the husband returns home with the ready bread.

    "Our solidarity solaces our pains," says Sameya.

    "It is magnificent to stand one hand against injustice and suppression, hungry and siege caused by the Israeli occupation."

    Solidarity

    Abu-Sami gives money to his needy neighbors.

    "We have to work to ease our pains and wounds," he told IslamOnline.

    Abu-Anas has donated clothes and blankets for Gazans taking shelter at UNRWA-run installations.

    "I'm planning to donate more," says Abu-Anas, who owns a carpet shop in Gaza.

    "Many of my friends also donate for the needy families. It's a mercy of Allah to be hand-in-hand."

    Amgad, a pharmacist, has donated dozens of bottles of milk for poor Gazan families.

    "I'm not alone in doing this," he told IOL.

    "Many pharmacists do this. There are doctors who also donate medicines for helping the wounded.

    "Gaza is bleeding and the only cure is to join hands."

    Israeli troops killed 822 Palestinians and injured 3,350 others in two-week deadly attacks in Gaza.

    Thousands of houses and buildings have also been destroyed in the Israeli blitz.

    Abu Ghaleb hosted his relatives at his house, who fled their homes over the Israeli attacks.

    "At these critical moments, standing together will not allow Israel to break our will," says the defiant Gazan father.

    "Our unity will defeat the occupation."

    Source: IslamOnline

  4. #44
    Only Israel can blame the victims
    Iman Kurdi | Arab News


    As I sat watching in horror the televised scenes of carnage from Gaza, and noted that this time the Israelis had hit a school with a UN flag, I wondered at the consequences. How would the Israelis respond, how would they excuse the inexcusable in the eyes of the international community?

    I predicted three responses, all of which have sadly turned out to be true.

    The first is that they would ensure news of the carnage be quickly replaced by headlines about a truce. And sure enough they did. They gave the Gazans a three-hour respite for one day and briefly let fly the idea that they had agreed to the principles of a cease-fire. Western newspapers and TV channels quickly reported the stories, pushing reactions to the latest atrocity to the sidelines. It also neutralized condemnations which finally started to come from the international community.

    President-elect Barack Obama finally broke his silence, for after the school bombing he could not possibly get away with not saying something about how concerned he was by the loss of civilian life. Of course, it was hardly a withering condemnation. Far from it. But those who for some reason expect Obama to take a pro-Palestinian stance must know something about him that I don’t. Nothing he has said so far suggests him to be less of a friend of Israel than his predecessors. The question one must ask about a US president is not does he support Israel but how many Arabs will he allow Israel to kill before saying enough.

    Now that the death toll has exceeded 800 and the injured approach 3,000, the word enough is beginning to be whispered in international circles. But only whispered, we are still far from an all-out call for a cease-fire. We are still in that gray area of “concern.” In other words, world leaders remain content to wait and see. To be fair, some are energetically seeking a cease-fire, witness French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s commendable attempts to broker one. The reality, however, is that the cease-fire will only be negotiated when Israel has achieved its military objectives and when the US steps in and formally says, enough. The only bet you could fairly safely lay your money on is, bar a regional escalation of the conflict, this will happen before Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

    The second response I expected is that the Israelis would blame the victims. And sure enough they did. Apparently they bombed the school because Hamas fighters were hiding there or were even firing rockets from the grounds of the school. The fact is that there is no evidence to support this. Independent sources have verified the nonexistence of Hamas fighters in the bombed school. This has, however, not stopped some commentators and journalists from reporting it as fact.

    Which brings me to the third response I expected as I watched the carnage. I thought just wait for it, in the next couple of days we will see some highly articulate and well-written columns and opinion pieces in defense of Israel which will first, press the guilt button about the Holocaust, second, claim that the Israelis offered the Palestinians peace but the Palestinians turned it down and third, that the Gazans brought it onto themselves when they elected Hamas. And for good measure, they might add a dose of fear about a nuclear-armed Iran.

    Sure enough, this came true. Pick up British newspapers and there are several shining examples of such Israeli-backed propaganda. What sickens me the most though is that not only do they blame the victims, but some of them are perverse enough to say that they “weep” for those who have been killed in Gaza. They “weep” for the children and innocent civilians who have been killed, bombed, burned, and orphaned and then go on to say that they deserved it, it was their fault.

    Is there anything more base than those who blame the victims and yet claim to have a heart that weeps for the dead?

  5. #45
    Gaza: Worse than a crime
    Gwynne Dyer I Arab News


    ISRAEL is not going to show restraint,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the Washington Post on Saturday, after the United States abstained on Friday’s UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

    All last week the speculation grew that Washington was going to defy its Israeli ally for once and vote for the resolution, but literally as the delegates sat down in the council chamber the phone call came from President George W. Bush ordering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain.

    So nothing will stop Israel from hammering the Gaza Strip as hard as it likes — and the situation is unlikely to change with the inauguration of Barack Obama later this month, because he has no intention of squandering his abundant but finite political capital on a quixotic attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. He will spend it instead on goals that have some chance of being achieved, and he will be right to do so.

    Yet the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip will almost certainly end within the next two weeks. International revulsion at the carnage among Palestinian civilians will play a certain role. Any big loss of life among Israeli soldiers, or the capture of even one or two soldiers, would turn Israeli public opinion against the war overnight. And the clincher is that the Israeli election is on Feb. 10. The war is being fought now largely to shift the opinion polls in favor of the ruling parties before the election. However, it must be over, and somehow look like a success, before Israelis actually vote. Good luck.

    The war against Hamas in Gaza looks more and more like the three-week Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, which could hardly be called a success. It will last about as long. It will kill about as many Arabs, probably a thousand or so. And it will end with Hamas, like Hezbollah, still able to fire rockets at Israel.

    This means that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader who was already leading in the opinion polls, is almost certain to form the next Israeli government. He is the ultimate rejectionist, the man who successfully sabotaged the Oslo Accords and effectively killed the “peace process” during his last term as prime minister in 1996-99.

    He rejects the very idea of a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Netanyahu is a glib ideologue who does not understand strategy and sees no reason for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors if the price is giving the Palestinians back their pre-1967 borders. In the long run, therefore, the war is more of a disaster for the Israelis than it is for the Palestinians.

    Israel currently enjoys three huge strategic advantages. It has the strongest army in the region by far, backed by the only modern economy and the only technologically competent population. It has an absolute monopoly on nuclear weapons within the region. And it has the unstinting, unquestioning support of the world’s only superpower. But none of these advantages is forever, and Israel needs to make peace with its neighbors while it still possesses them.

    The existing Arab regimes are willing to make peace with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders, mainly because they fear the further radicalization of their own populations, and perhaps even violent revolution, if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to fester. But the Arabs as a whole have all the time in the world: Sooner or later the wheel will turn and Israel will become vulnerable. If it has not integrated into the region by then, it will be in mortal peril.

    It is the usefulness of this war, not its morality, that Israel should be questioning. Unless Israel re-occupies the Gaza Strip permanently — which nobody wants to do, because it would mean a constant stream of Israeli military casualties — then once the army pulls back Hamas will re-emerge, stronger than ever. The Arab regimes that might make peace with Israel will be further undermined, and Israel gets Netanyahu as prime minister.

    As was said after the execution of the Duc d’Enghien on Napoleon’s orders, the Gaza operation “is worse than a crime. It is a mistake.”

  6. #46
    nahh there wud b Peace there in the region soon .
    will pray tae god for that tae happen

  7. #47

  8. #48
    Ya prayers are the most important... for the peace. every where...

  9. #49
    OSLO — Two Norwegian medics who returned on Monday, January 12, from the bombed-out Gaza Strip compared the Israeli onslaught to the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila in 1982.

    "Gaza in 2009 is becoming a new bloody chapter in Palestinian and Middle Eastern history that is, unfortunately, comparable to Sabra and Shatila," Mads Gilbert told reporters at Oslo's Gardermoen airport.

    Though no definite figures are available, around 2,000 Palestinians were massacred inside the Lebanese camps in September of 1982 by Christian militia under the watchful eyes of their Israeli alley.

    Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen were permitted to enter the two Palestinian refugee camps, in an area under Israeli army control, and slaughter civilians over three days.

    Unlike massacres in some other conflicts, the perpetrators of Sabra and Shatila have not been brought to justice.

    "We hoped we would never see anything like it again," said Gilbert, who worked in Lebanon in 1982 at the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

    More than 917 people have been killed since Israel unleashed its war machine against the heavily-populated Gaza Strip on December 27.

    The high number of civilian casualties and the huge amount of suffering in Gaza is similar to what Gilbert, 61, and his colleague Erik Fosse, 58, had seen back in 1982.

    The two doctors said as many as 90 percent of the wounded they had treated at the Shifa hospital were civilians.

    "Every third person killed and every second person injured is a child under 18 or a woman," said Gilbert.

    "The bombing must stop and the borders must be opened so that civilians can receive food, water and be safe."

    Fact-Finding

    A divided UN Human Rights Council voted on Monday to "strongly" condemn Israel's onslaught, saying it had "resulted in massive violations" of the human rights of Palestinians.

    It tasked 10 UN experts on human rights and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay with two separate probes into the violence.

    It also set up an independent, international fact-finding mission to "investigate all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by Israel."

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked to investigate the bombing of UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip.

    Thirty-three African, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries voted for the resolution.

    Thirteen mainly European states abstained, while Canada was the only country to vote against.

    The United States is not on the Council and steers clear of it.

    Western countries said the text put forward by Arab and African states was too biased and failed to clearly recognize the role that rocket attacks launched by Palestinians played in triggering the offensive.

    Last minute changes failed to overcome the differences after the special session spilled into a second day.

    The European Union's representative said the EU could have supported some elements, but found the text too one-sided despite its concern about human rights violations in Gaza.

    Israel has refused to cooperate with similar fact-finding missions in the past, as well as a UN special rapporteur on the human rights of the Palestinians.

    Israeli authorities last month detained and turned back the UN expert, Richard Falk, upon his arrival at Ben Gurion airport.
    Source: IslamOnline

  10. #50
    Gazans flee burning hospital
    Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:34:50 GMT
    Israel has continued its attacks on Gaza for the 20th day despite worldwide condemnations
    Desperate patients have tried to flee a Gaza hospital as it became engulfed in flames after a Israeli tank fire had set it on fire.

    In scenes of utter panic, patients who had been wounded in the ongoing war in the territory could be seen trying to struggle from their beds, medics and witnesses said.

    Three patients relying on life-support machines and at least three prematurely-born babies were wheeled out of the hospital in their incubators.

    The sound of gunfire could also be heard in the southern neighborhood of Gaza's main city where Al-Quds Hospital is situated.

    Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 4,700 others have been injured.

    HSH/HAR

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