:icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

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Tens of thousands of Gazans in tents
Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:50:17 GMT
Local Palestinian volunteers erect hundreds of canvas tents for the tens of thousands of new Gazan refugees of the 23-day Israeli onslaught.

The tents were provided recently by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the UN refugee agency (UNRWA), The Daily Star reported on Sunday, and added that in recent days the Hamas government has partnered with international aid groups and local charities to set up hundreds of tents in the most devastated areas.

More than 700 tents have been erected in Camp Dignity, which is to house 30,000 who have lost their homes. The camp is just a few kilometers away from the well-known Jabaliya camp, which was established in 1948 for some 35,000 refugees who were provided tents until the UNRWA could build permanent housing.

For Gazan refugees, living in tents stirs memories of the tragedy that began 60 years ago, when the 1948 Israeli war on Palestinians forced thousands into refugee camps.

More than two-thirds of Gaza's 1.5 million residents are UN-registered refugees descended from the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from what is now claimed as Israel in the 1948 war.

The devastating 23-day Israeli onslaught last month has left homes of some 30,000 Palestinians destroyed, again igniting the memories of the 1948 expulsions.

Israel's war on Gaza killed more than 1,330 people, including over 400 children. 5,450 Gazans were wounded.

Israeli military records, along with the personal writings of early Zionist leaders, have documented a deliberate and planned terror campaign that displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel overtop Palestinian land.

Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

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A Turkish state prosecutor has started an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes against humanity and genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The complaint was submitted by the Mazlum-Der rights group, which accuses 19 Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of committing the crimes.

"We submitted the complaint against those who we could prove were in some way responsible for giving orders for the attack on Gaza," said Meryem Sari, an attorney of the group, on Friday.

"The complaint asks that Turkey be given the right to try the people mentioned," she went on to say.

Article 13 of the Turkish Penal Code allows the country's courts to try those charged with committing genocide and torture, even if the crime was perpetrated in another country.

Israel has also been accused by several international rights groups, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, of using banned weapons against the civilian population of Gaza.

Relations between Turkey and Israel have been strained since Tel Aviv launched its deadliest-ever onslaught in the Gaza Strip.

Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off stage at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos during a heated discussion over Israel's 23-day assault on the Gaza Strip.

He told Israeli President Shimon Peres, who had launched a fiery defense of Tel Aviv's attack on the coastal enclave over the past month, that Israel "knows very well how to kill".

At least 1330 Palestinians were killed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead, while thousands of others, many of them women and children, remain hospitalized.

Tel Aviv has strived to justify its devastating assault on Gaza by claiming that it sought 'self-defense' as recognized by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

The UN Charter and international law, however, do not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense in the case of its Gaza operations.
Source: Press TV

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Israel expels Gaza aid ship team
Aid ship in Tripoli, Lebanon, on 2/2/09
The ship set sail from the Lebanese port of Tripoli

Israel has expelled activists and journalists on a Lebanese ship carrying aid for Gaza, who were held on Thursday after Israel's navy seized the ship.

Israeli forces beat and kicked some those on board, said an al-Jazeera reporter on the ship, although Israel said no "acts of violence" occurred.

Israel also denied claims its gunboats had fired on the ship, the latest to try to break the blockade on Gaza.

Israel allowed blood products from the vessel to enter Gaza by road on Friday.

The Israeli military said no weapons had been found on the ship.

Earlier it had said the ship could be a security threat or be used for smuggling banned equipment.

Fifteen people - Syrian and Lebanese nationals - had been transferred to Lebanon and Syria, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told the Associated Press news agency.

Another three, two Indians and one Briton, were in police custody pending deportation, he said.

The former Greek-Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, 84-year-old Monsignor Hilarion Capucci, was among those sent to Syria, reports said.

The former archbishop had served time in an Israeli jail in the 1970s for smuggling arms for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

"The Israeli army confiscated all our videotapes; we were separated from each other, we were blindfolded and handcuffed," al-Jazeera reporter Salam Khader said on the Arab satellite television channel.

"They beat some of us... the soldiers kicked Dr Hani Suleiman [one of the co-ordinators of the ship's mission], in the chest and back."

"During the takeover of the ship, no acts of violence occurred and there was no need to use excessive force," the Israeli military said in a statement.

Activists aboard

Activists said the Togo-flagged Tali ship was carrying medical supplies, food, clothing and toys.

Under an Israeli-imposed blockade, only basic humanitarian items - mainly food and medicines - are allowed into the territory.

The flow of goods into Gaza has increased since the recent Israeli military campaign there, but aid agencies say more goods and a wider range of supplies are essential for the strip's recovery.

An organiser of the shipment, Maen Bashur, said the ship had been confronted by an Israeli military boat 32km (19 miles) off the Gazan coast late on Wednesday.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the Israeli navy had requested the ship head towards Egypt, and only boarded it after it headed back towards Gaza.

Israel pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, but still controls the strips border crossings, airspace and coastal waters.

It initially allowed a number of similar ships to dock, but more recently has begun turning them back.

This was the first time Israeli troops had boarded a vessel seeking to reach Gaza.

Israel ended a three week military campaign in Gaza on 18 January. About 1,300 Gazans were killed, about a third of them civilians. During the fighting, 13 Israelis were killed, 10 of them soldiers.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israel’s Antiquities Authority has begun excavations to construct an underground passage near Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. This was revealed here yesterday by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage.

The excavation is financed by Elad, a religious movement which calls for Jewish settlement and development in Silwan.

Al-Aqsa Foundation said in a statement issued yesterday that the goal of this excavation “is the collapse of mosques and mainly Al-Aqsa to create a Jewish temple there.”

The foundation said that its field teams toured the Silwan neighborhood and observed the excavations which are carried out only fifty meters away from the southern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and only a few meters away from the walls of the Old City.

It added that the excavations are being carried out to create a tunnel under Ein Silwan mosque to link it with a net of tunnels in the area and those under Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The foundation has warned that the use of huge machines pose danger to the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and also endangers the houses of the residents in Silwan.

The Israeli authorities are conducting these excavations in order to construct trade and tourism facilities, and that some of these facilities start underground, said the foundation.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein has criticized the Israeli move saying that “building a tunnel near Al-Aqsa Mosque is a provocation of Muslims emotions.”

Hussein urged Islamic states to take action to stop Israeli excavations in the area.

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Source: Arab News

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Israeli polls block UN aid to Gaza
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:12:24 GMT
A Palestinian woman waits to receive humanitarian supplies from UNRWA headquarters in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza.
The UN aid agency in Gaza, UNRWA, says Israeli elections will prevent the group from aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip until Wednesday.

UNRWA will resume aid deliveries to the population in Gaza on Wednesday due to the closure of crossing points amid general elections on Tuesday, said John Ging, the UNRWA director of operations in Gaza, on Monday.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has agreed to continue aid operations in the impoverished Palestinian sliver since Hamas has returned humanitarian supplies it had seized from UN warehouses last week.

The UN had suspended aid deliveries to Gaza after Hamas seized tones of food supplies and 3,500 blankets.

"The Hamas authorities in Gaza have returned to the UNRWA warehouses in Gaza City and Rafah all of the aid supplies," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.

Hamas has denied the charges, saying that the incident was a result of a misunderstanding between drivers and a lack of co-ordination.

UNRWA distributes food to 900,000 of the 1.5 million Gaza residents.

Meanwhile, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, urged Israel to allow aid supplies and human rights textbooks, to enter the impoverished territory.

"We continue to appeal for common sense to prevail and for priority to be given to the needs, first and foremost, of the children and then the rest of the population," she told reporters following a four-day visit to Gaza, the West Bank and southern Israel.

MT/AA

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Fraud and violence have marred Israel's vote with rival factions accusing each other of conspiring to hijack the results of the Elections.

Police arrested a woman in Jerusalem (al-Quds) after she entered a polling station with forged ballots allegedly belonging to Avigdor Lieberman's YIsrael Beiteinu faction.

The woman confessed that she was asked to distribute the ballots at the entrance to the polling station.

At another voting station in the city's David Yalin Street, a youth entered a polling station and turned over a table containing ballots.

He also stole all of the ballots marked with the Hebrew letter "Gimmel" representing the United Torah Judaism faction, Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

In another incident, supporters of Kadima and its ally Labor clashed with each other. Police arrested a Labor Party activist over the row.

The Election Committee says it has received 68 complains about irregularities.

The Meretz Party filed a complaint claiming that the name YIsrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman was written on the back of its ballots in a polling station in Jerusalem in order to invalidate the ballots.

YIsrael Beiteinu, complained that many polling stations had run out of the party's ballots and the National Union party claimed that its ballots were removed from a polling station in Bnei Brak, the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on its website on Tuesday.

Kadima also reported attempts to tamper with the party's ballots in several cities including Ramat Gan, Ariel, Nes Ziona, Ofakim and Ashdod.

The centrist party also claimed that several Likud activists who were seeking to tamper with Kadima's ballots were arrested by police in four polling stations in Kiryat Bialik.

SB/DT
Source: Press TV

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UN says Israel blocks most Gaza aid
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:02:37 GMT
A Palestinian woman sits outside her house, destroyed by an Israeli air strike, near the border between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says Israel only allows a meager amount of humanitarian aid to enter the impoverished Gaza Strip.

The United Nations strives to provide relief to one million people daily inside a coastal sliver that is home to 1.5 million people, Ban said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Israel, however, is only allowing supplies enough for 30,000 people to get through and only from one crossing, he added.

"We are experiencing serious difficulty in getting all the materials, humanitarian assistance, so it is absolutely necessary that they open the crossings," the secretary general affirmed while announcing plans to launch a probe into Israel's bombing of UN compounds during its war on the Gazan population.

Ban told reporters that although Israel has completely ignored his calls, he "will continue to urge that" Tel Aviv allow more aid into the Palestinian strip.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has largely criticized Ban for being too timid on the extent of an inquiry into Israel's attack on its facilities.

"What is needed is a comprehensive international investigation that looks at all alleged violations of international law by all armed groups involved in the conflict," Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in an announcement.

Khan added that researchers have found clear evidence of war crimes during the operation - in which more than 1300 Gazans have been killed and over 5300 others have been injured.

MT/AA

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CAIRO — The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has accepted an Egyptian-brokered 18-month truce with Israel in return for lifting the crippling Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.

"We have agreed to a truce with Israel for one year and a half," Hamas political deputy chief Moussa Abu-Marzouq told IslamOnline.

"Under the deal, all Gaza's six crossings will be opened and all forms of military action and aggression be halted.

"We will have the right to respond to any Israeli violation of the truce," he said.

An Egyptian source confirmed that Hamas told Egypt that it has accepted the truce deal with Israel.

"Egypt will hold contacts with (Palestinian) President Mahmoud Abbas, faction leaders and the Israeli side to agree on some technical issues before announcing the truce in the coming two days," he told IOL.

The new truce deal will replace a fragile ceasefire declared after last month's deadly Israeli war in Gaza, which killed more than 1,400 people and wounded 5,450.

Egypt has been mediating a long-term truce deal between Israel and Hamas as the two sides refuse to talk to each others.

During the Israeli war, Egypt had proposed a three-point truce plan beginning with an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, followed by meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials to secure a long-term ceasefire.

Egypt also proposed the resumption of Palestinian unity talks.

"A second item of Egypt's three-point ceasefire plan will be realized once the truce is announced," the source said.

"We will then move ahead to implement the third item for achieving Palestinian reconciliation and restoring unity."

Gaza Crossings

An Egyptian source said the deal stipulates an 18-month Gaza truce between the Palestinian factions and Israel.

"Under the deal, all parties will abide by ceasing fire and refraining from all forms of hostilities for a period that can be renewed with the approval of all parties," the source told IOL.

The deal grants the Palestinian and Israeli parties the right for an "immediate response" to any aggression.

It also stipulates the creation of a 300-meter buffer zone on Gaza-Israel border where gunmen are not allowed.

"(In return) Israel will abide by opening Gaza's six crossings to goods and fuel to meet the needs of the Gaza population," said the source.

Israel has been closing all commercial crossings with Gaza since Hamas's takeover, leaving the 1.6 million population without electricity, water and sewage services for up to 16 hours a day.

The truce deal also speaks of deploying Turkish monitors to join their European peers to operate the Rafah crossing, Gaza's sole window to the outside world.

It also allows Palestinian factions, including Hamas, to have members among the Palestinian Authority forces at the terminal under the 2005 border deal with Israel.

The deal also says Egypt is the sole body responsible for monitoring its borders with Gaza without any foreign presence.

Guarantees

Hamas officials said that Egypt has offered guarantees for implementing the truce deal with Israel.

"Cairo has pledged to intervene to stop any Israeli breach," members at Hamas's delegation in Cairo told IOL.

Osama Hamdan, Hamas's representative in Lebanon, said Egypt had offered "reasonable guarantees."

"The truce will open the crossings with guarantees of the passage of needed goods into Gaza," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Hamas said the truce deal does not include any prisoner swap with Israel.

"The deal is not linked to any prisoner swap agreement with Israel," Abu-Marzouq, the group's political deputy chief, told IOL.

He, however, said that Hamas has submitted a list of Palestinian prisoners to Egypt.

"If the Israelis accepted it, the deal could be reached."

Hamas insists on the release of 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in exchange for freeing an Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in 2006.

Israel had insisted that Hamas release the soldier as a condition for ending its blockade of Gaza.

Unity Talks

Egypt has also invited Palestinian factions for dialogue to restore Palestinian unity.

"We received an Egyptian invitation to attend Palestinian dialogue on February 22," Abu-Marzouq said.

"Hamas has accepted the invitation and would act with true intentions to close the Palestinian ranks."

Senior Hamas and Fatah leaders held a high-level meeting in Cairo late Thursday to prepare for the dialogue.

"We have agreed to open a new page in Hamas-Fatah relations to help restore Palestinian unity to stand up to challenges facing the Palestinian cause," said Abu-Marzouq.

A raft of issues were discussed during the meeting, including the thorny issue of political detainees held by both groups.

"We have discussed a number of issues, including media incitement and the reconstruction process."

Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said the two groups agreed to form a liaison committee to prepare for Palestinian reconciliation.

Egyptian mediators have submitted a paper on the main topics on the February 22 dialogue.

The paper talks of forming a national unity government and holding new presidential and legislative elections under the Palestinian Basic Law.

It also speaks about revamping the Palestinian security bodies on 'professional and national' bases and reviving the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Source: IslamOnline

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Two Palestinian ministers are trying to push the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a probe into Israel's war crimes in Gaza.

Palestinian Authority's Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki and Justice Minister Ali Kashan told reporters on Friday that they had given the ICC chief prosecutor documents proving Palestine is a legal state with the right to demand such an inquiry.

"Today we came to deliver a set of documents that shows that Palestine as a state ... has the ability to present a case to the court and to ask for an investigation into crimes committed by the Israeli army," AFP quoted Kashan as saying following a four-hour meeting in the ICC building.

"We will deliver more information about war crimes and crimes against humanity -- not only in Gaza during the last Israeli attack, but also from 2002 until this moment," he added.

Earlier in February, Moreno-Ocampo said he would decide on whether there was such a legal entity as a Palestinian state, which would allow an investigation into war crimes during Israel's military offensive against the Hamas-run Gaza.

According to the Rome Statute, a treaty that created the ICC, only a state could accept the court's jurisdiction -- what the Palestinian Authority has sought.

Malki said documents were provided that show Palestine was recognized as a state by 67 countries with bilateral agreements with states in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

"Evidence of war crimes was among the documents provided," he added

The 23-day Israeli onslaught on Gazans left at least 1,330 Palestinians - including some 460 children - killed and around 5,450 others injured.

[IMG] An Israeli weapons system explodes over a mosque in Gaza International organizations and human rights groups remain concerned over Tel Aviv's use of forbidden arms, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorus, in the Gaza war.

The Palestinian ministers said the Palestinians had been "looking for justice for a very long time".

"What we seek here is justice," Malki said. "We want to create a precedent."

Earlier in the month, Turkish human rights group, Mazlum-Der, accused Israel of directly attacking civilians "with the aim of annihilating them" and employing internationally-banned weapons in the process.

"The suspects, who wanted to wipe out the Palestinian people through systematic attacks, have committed genocide and crimes against humanity," said the human rights group's petition, demanding that several Israeli officials, including President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and army chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi be detained should they enter Turkey.

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Permanent Gaza truce, a catch-22?
Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:46:41 GMT
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says truce is impossible before the release of Gilad Shalit.
Israel has ruled out any truce agreement with the Islamic movement of Hamas before the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Saturday that Tel Aviv would not open crossings into the Gaza Strip without the return of Shalit -- who was captured by Palestinian fighters in a cross-border operation in 2006.

"The position of the prime minister is that Israel won't reach any arrangement on a truce before the release of Gilad Shalit," read a statement from the prime minister's office.

Hamas, meanwhile, demands the opening of all border crossings into the besieged strip in addition to the release of 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

The Gaza Strip has been under a tight blockade since the democratically-elected government of Hamas took power in the sliver in June 2007.

"Either way, the crossings will not be open without Shalit's release. This is a commitment that the prime minister has made and he intends to act accordingly," the Saturday statement added.

Egyptian sources have confirmed the Israeli stance.

Citing the sources, the daily al-Hayat reported Saturday that in the first phase of a prison swap, Israel would release some 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including underage and female prisoners and Palestinian parliament members.

"They will open the crossings completely only after Shalit is released," the report said.

According to the Israeli Radio, should the prisoners be released they would not be allowed to return to either the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.