Yesterday, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, from where they had withdrawn 9 months ago. Isralei forces have Access for journalists was restricted in anticipation of the invasion. Israeli forces arrested a third of the Palestinian parliament, and have Several organizations have issued statements condemning it.
Here are some news and statements on the invasion.
Derechos Human Rights strongly condemns the invasion, the restrictions on press freedom and the violations to the democratic process.
Israeli Troops and Armor Surge Into Gaza
By Laura King and Ken Ellingwood
The Los Angeles Times
Wednesday 28 June 2006
The Jewish state presses for release of a soldier captured by militants. Officials say there is no plan to seize the Palestinian territory.
Gaza City - Israeli troops and tanks, backed by fierce aerial bombardment, punched their way into the southern Gaza Strip early today, hours after Israel declared that time was running out for Palestinian militants to free an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid.
The offensive was by far the largest since Israel unilaterally pulled its troops out of the seaside territory more than nine months ago. In the intervening months, Israel has responded to Palestinian militants' rocket attacks with airstrikes and artillery barrages.
But this is the first time since the withdrawal that large concentrations of Israeli forces have entered the restive, densely populated coastal territory.
The attack began late Tuesday when Israeli warplanes blew up a bridge in central Gaza, with loud booms reverberating across Gaza City - a move Israeli military officials said was meant to prevent the captors of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, from moving him.
Later, two other bridges and a power plant were struck, sending billows of white smoke into a night sky lighted by flames and flares.
The air offensive in effect sliced Gaza into three sectors and knocked out power to large swaths, though electricity was restored at least temporarily in Gaza City and other northern areas. There was no immediate word on any Palestinian casualties or the number of Israeli troops that crossed into Gaza.
Military analysts said the incursion was the first phase of an operation that would intensify, possibly to include targeting Hamas leaders, unless Shalit is released.
"We are trying to make it clear to the Palestinian Authority and terrorist organizations that we're very serious about this and about Cpl. Shalit's safety and quick return home," said Capt. Noa Meir, an Israeli military spokeswoman.
Officials said Israel did not want to seize the Gaza Strip, which it occupied for 38 years.
"We have no interest in returning to a place we have left. We seek dialogue, not a bloodbath," Israel's infrastructure minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said early today. "If they return the soldier, sit down at the negotiating table - we're out. There's nothing for us there."
In the hours before the strike, Palestinians girded for attack, topping bulldozed mounds of sand along urban thoroughfares with barbed wire and laying what appeared to be homemade explosives in the expected path of Israeli tanks massed just across the border.
Against the backdrop of battle preparations by both sides, the Palestinians' ruling Hamas movement and the rival Fatah faction announced Tuesday that they had tentatively agreed on a political platform that could lead to negotiations with Israel.
However, the move appeared to be more of an effort to present a symbolic united front at a time of crisis than to genuinely alter the hard-line stance that has led to the Hamas-dominated government's diplomatic and economic isolation. The Islamist Hamas movement emphasized that it was still not willing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
The offensive was sparked by an audacious cross-border raid Sunday in which Palestinian militants captured Shalit and killed two other soldiers. Two of the Palestinian attackers were killed.
The consortium of Hamas-linked groups claiming to hold Shalit warned Tuesday against any attempt to rescue him, saying it would result in failure and bloodshed. That was a chilling and probably deliberate reminder to Israelis that the last time Palestinian militants managed to seize an Israeli soldier, in 1994, he was subsequently killed in an Israeli rescue raid.
"The soldier is in a secure location to which the Zionists' reach does not extend," Mohammed Abdelal, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of three groups thought to have taken part in the raid, told reporters in Gaza City.
The purported captors have demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners who are female or younger than 18 in exchange for information about Shalit, but have provided no proof he is alive.
Israel said no prisoner exchange was being contemplated.
Israeli military sources said they believed Shalit was being held in southern Gaza, a stronghold for militant Palestinian groups that have engaged in abductions of foreigners and Palestinian political rivals.
The Israeli troop incursion was concentrated east of the southern border town of Rafah. But the scale and intended duration of the military push were not clear.
In the initial offensive, Israeli soldiers did not enter Gaza City or its immediate environs, where in some neighborhoods masked militants flooded the streets and mosque loudspeakers called on people to resist.
"Take up your rifles and fight!" a senior leader of Hamas' military wing, Nizar Rayan, said in a broadcast exhortation.
Complex mediation efforts led by Egypt continued Tuesday. Because Shalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, French diplomats were also involved, but they were close-mouthed about their role.
The United States also urged restraint on Israel's part.
"There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the situation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters en route to Pakistan.
Seeking to step up the pressure on the Hamas government, Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza on Monday. Combined with a naval blockade, the closure has effectively barred the importation of food, fuel and other goods. Israeli media reported that government leaders also were considering cutting off electricity and water.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Israel was asking governments to withhold donations to the Palestinian Authority until the soldier is freed.
Peres also said it appeared that Hamas' political leader, Khaled Meshaal, a hard-liner who is based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, was responsible for Sunday's attack - the most explicit public accusation against Meshaal from a senior Israeli official.
"It's clear that Khaled Meshaal gave the order for this operation, and he wants to destroy prospects for peace," Peres told reporters after visiting Shalit's parents in the Galilee region.
In the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday, the mood was one of anger and defiance, with many saying that Palestinians should not free the Israeli soldier without getting something in return.
Atop makeshift barricades of sand, concrete blocks and debris, young Palestinian boys played with toy rifles. Aerial drones and other aircraft could be heard circling overhead, and Israeli gunships were visible through the heat haze offshore in the Mediterranean.
Adding to the jittery atmosphere, a car exploded Tuesday close to the Gaza City residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was not in the building at the time.
One man, described as a Hamas militant, was killed and several others were wounded. Palestinians called it an assassination by Israel, but the Israeli military denied any involvement.
The announcement of a political agreement by Hamas and Fatah came after weeks of negotiations, and after Abbas said last month that he would put the question of whether to recognize Israel to Palestinian voters in a referendum.
Under the tentative agreement, Abbas would be empowered to hold negotiations with Israel but any agreements reached would require the approval of the Hamas-dominated parliament.
The document appeared to fall far short of international and Israeli demands on Hamas. Israel dismissed the accord as a "diplomatic non-starter."
The negotiations over a Hamas-Fatah political pact and the capture of Shalit have laid bare the divisions within Hamas.
The group's military wing, thought to report primarily to exiled leaders in Damascus, said it took part in the raid that brought about the soldier's capture. The Hamas-led government, meanwhile, urged that the soldier not be harmed.
"We … don't want to reach a situation of bloodshed," government spokesman Ghazi Hamad, who speaks fluent Hebrew, told Israel's Army Radio.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz said during a visit Tuesday to the agricultural community of Kerem Shalom, where the Palestinian attack took place, that Israel had no choice but to respond decisively to a raid on its soil.
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King reported from Gaza City and Ellingwood from Jerusalem.
Wednesday 28 June 2006
Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Israeli forces arrested one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet and 20 lawmakers early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers.
Israeli warplanes also buzzed the summer home of Syria's president, accused by Israel of harboring the hard-line Hamas leaders its blames for masterminding the kidnapping.
Palestinian witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered northern Gaza before daybreak Thursday, adding a second front to the Israeli action in Gaza that began early Wednesday when thousands of Israeli troops crossed into southern Gaza.
The Israeli military denied it moved into northern Gaza.
Adding to the tension, a Palestinian militant group said it killed an 18-year-old Jewish settler kidnapped in the West Bank. Israeli security officials said Eliahu Asheri's body was found buried near Ramallah. They said he was shot in the head, apparently soon after he was abducted on Sunday.
Army Radio said the arrested Hamas leaders might be used to trade for the captured soldier. Israel had refused earlier to trade prisoners for the soldier's release.
Palestinian security officials said eight ministers of the 24-member Hamas-led Cabinet and 20 lawmakers were arrested, among them Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti.
No deaths or injuries were reported in the Israeli actions. But the warplanes knocked out Gaza's electric power plant, raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis. The Hamas-led government warned of "epidemics and health disasters" because of damaged water pipes to central Gaza and the lack of power to pump water.
Although the Israeli action was sparked by the abduction of the soldier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government also is alarmed by the firing of homemade rockets on Israeli communities around Gaza and support for Hamas in the Arab world, especially from Syria.
In a clear warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israeli airplanes flew ovecr his seaside home near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria, military officials confirmed, citing the "direct link" between his government and Hamas. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved in the low-altitude flight, and that Assad was there at the time.
Syria confirmed Israeli warplanes entered its airspace, but said its air defenses forced the Israeli aircraft to flee.
In Gaza late Wednesday, Israeli missiles also hit two empty Hamas training camps, a rocket-building factory and several roads. Warplanes flew low over the coastal strip, rocking it with sonic booms and shattering windows. Troops in Israel backed up the assault with artillery fire.
The area's normally bustling streets were eerily deserted, with people taking refuge inside their homes.
Witnesses reported heavy shelling around Gaza's long-closed airport, which Israeli troops took over. Dozens of people living near the airport fled to nearby Rafah.
The militant Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades said it fired a rocket with a chemical warhead at the Israeli town of Sderot Wednesday night, the first such claim. The Israeli military said it did not detect a rocket fired then. Al Aqsa is linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction.
In Rafah, Nivine Abu Shbeke, a 23-year-old mother of three, hoarded bags of flour, boxes of vegetables and other supplies. "We're worried about how long the food will last," she said. "The children devour everything."
Prior to the latest incursion into northern Gaza, the Israeli army dropped leaflets warning residents of impending military activity.
Dozens of Palestinian militants - armed with automatic weapons and grenades - took up positions, bracing for the attack.
Anxious Palestinians pondered whether the incursion, the first large-scale ground offensive since Israel withdrew from Gaza last year, was essentially a "shock and awe" display designed to intimidate militants, or the prelude to a full-scale invasion.
Olmert threatened harsher action, though he said there was no plan to reoccupy Gaza. Abbas deplored the incursion as a "crime against humanity."
The Israeli assault came as diplomatic efforts to free the 19-year-old Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, bogged down with Hamas demanding a prisoner swap and Israel refusing, demanding Shalit's unconditional release. Shalit was abducted by Hamas-linked militants on Sunday and is believed to be in southern Gaza.
"We won't hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family," Olmert declared.
Abbas and Egyptian dignitaries urged Assad to use his influence with Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas leader exiled in Syria, to free Shalit. Assad agreed, but without results, said a senior Abbas aide.
As for Mashaal, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the hard-line Hamas leader, who appears to be increasingly at odds with more moderate Hamas politicians in Gaza, is in Israel's sights for assassination.
"Khaled Mashaal, as someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target," Ramon told Army Radio.
Israel tried to kill Mashaal in a botched assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. Two Mossad agents injected Mashaal with poison, but were caught. As Mashaal lay in a Jordanian hospital, King Hussein of Jordan forced Israel to provide the antidote in return for the release of the Mossad agents.
The United Nations and European Union on Wednesday urged both Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and, echoing a statement from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to give diplomacy a chance.
The White House kept up its pressure on Hamas, saying the Palestinian government must "stop all acts of violence and terror." But the U.S. also urged Israel to show restraint.
"In any actions the government of Israel may undertake, the United States urges that it ensures that innocent civilians are not harmed, and also that it avoid the unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure," said White House press secretary Tony Snow.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged restraint in a phone call to Olmert, saying he had spoken with Assad and Abbas and asked them to do everything possible to release the soldier. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on the U.S. to assume its role as "honest broker" and to make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict its top priority in the Middle East.
Hamas' negotiators' tentative acceptance Tuesday of a document that Abbas allies claimed implicitly recognizes Israel appeared beside the point a day later, with Israel saying no political agreement can substitute for Shalit's freedom.
On Wednesday, Palestinian militants braced for a major strike, fanning out across neighborhoods, taking up positions behind sand embankments and firing several rockets into Israeli communities bordering Gaza. Civilians stockpiled food, water, batteries and candles after warplanes destroyed the coastal strip's only power plant, and main roads linking north to south.
Gaza's economy was already in the doldrums before the Israeli assault, a result of five years of Israeli-Palestinian violence and an international aid boycott that followed Hamas' parliamentary election victory in January. The Israeli assault threatened to turn a bad situation into a disaster - underscoring the extent to which hopes have been dashed following the optimism that accompanied Israel's pullout.
Palestinian plans for high-rise apartments, sports complexes and industrial parks in lands evacuated by Israel have given way to despair, with rising poverty, increasingly violent relations with Israel and a looming threat of civil war.
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN ADVOCACY GROUP CONDEMNS GAZA INVASION
June 29, 2006, Jerusalem and Washington, DC: The Alternative Information Center (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization, has demanded that the Israeli army immediately withdraw from Gaza.
A statement released Thursday by the AIC, a partner of the Advocacy Project, describes the invasion as part of a larger plan by the Israeli government to overthrow the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. The statement also calls for the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
According to reports, the Israeli authorities arrested more than 60 Hamas officials Thursday, including Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer.
AIC's statement follows, unedited:
Stop the Attack in Gaza Immediately
The Alternative Information Center (AIC) strongly condemns the Israeli army's invasion of the Gaza Strip. This invasion is a punishment for the results of the democratic Palestinian elections held in January and is irrelevant to the security of the state of Israel and that of its citizens. Moreover, in the course of this invasion, civilians have been, and will continue to be, killed by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian infrastructure has been destroyed and houses demolished. These practices are in violation of the Geneva Convention and should be considered crimes of war.
Since the Palestinian elections, Israel has consistently escalated the military tension, assassinating, injuring and kidnapping Palestinians. Since January, Israel has assassinated 172 Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, 50 of whom were killed during the month of June alone.
Israeli attacks against the Palestinians were especially felt in Gaza, which has suffered massive artillery bombing and a continued siege by Israeli forces. Only a few dozen trucks have been allowed to pass through the Karni crossing each day, to feed a population of over 1.3 million people (who normally require hundreds of trucks per day for a steady food supply). So far, even threats of starvation have failed to convince the Palestinian people to overthrow its democratically elected government.
Israeli attacks on the Palestinian population have nothing to do with the security of Israeli citizens, but rather are part of Prime Minister Olmert's war against a democratically elected government, with the objective to overthrow it.
The kidnapping of 8 Palestinian ministers and 21 members of Parliament, as well as threats to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Hanie, make it clear that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and his Minister of Defense Amir Peretz plan to forcibly topple the Palestinian government.
The current incursion in the Gaza Strip does not concern the safety of POW Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier. This incursion unnecessarily risks Shalit's life and safety. The use of force prior to even considering an exchange of prisoners demonstrates that Israel's political goals are of higher priority than Shalit's life.
The Alternative Information Center maintains that the only way to peace in the region is through the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army and Israeli settlers from all of the Palestinian Occupied Territories, including occupied Jerusalem; the liberation of all Palestinian political prisoners; recognition of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees according to UN Resolutions 194 and 242; and full respect for the individual and national rights of the Palestinian people.
The Alternative Information Center calls on the international community to condemn the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and to demand their immediate withdrawal.
* For the Alternative Information Center, visit http://www.alternativenews.org/
* For AP intern Sarah Sach's blogs from Jerusalem, visit http://www.advocacynet.org/cpage_view/06aic_SarahsBlogs_67_430.html
* For AP's work on civil society in Palestine, visit http://www.advocacynet.org/cpage_view/palestine_palestinehome_16_55.html
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The Advocacy Project is based in Washington DC. Phone +1 202 332 3900; fax +1 202 332 4600. To visit the AP web site for information about our current projects and to make a donation online, please go to: www.advocacynet.org. For questions or comments about the AP and its projects, please email us at info@advocacynet.org.
Israel is also threatening to widen the war, sending war planes over Syria to “buzz” the home of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, whose government the U.S. has been actively working to bring down for more than two years.
The Palestinian population of Gaza, one of the poorest and most densely populated areas of the world, was already suffering severe shortages of food, medicine and other necessities due to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the cut-off of international aid to the West Bank and Gaza, in effect since January 2006. The new Israeli assault has resulted in the cut-off of power, water and food supplies to most of the people in Gaza. The situation constitutes a deliberately created humanitarian disaster.
The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (http://www.answercoalition.org/ ), which has organized the largest anti-war protests in Washington, DC and in other U.S. cities over the past five years, including the historic demonstration of over 100,000 people supporting Palestinian rights in Washington on April 20, 2002, is calling for and supporting protests at Israeli embassies, consulates and U.S. federal buildings, to demand:
The immediate end to the U.S.-supplied Israeli assault on Gaza
The release of all Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails
An end to all U.S. aid to Israel
An end to colonial occupation, support for self-determination for the Palestinian people including the right of return.
No new U.S.-Israeli war against Syria.
A.N.S.W.E.R is also calling on justice-minded individuals and organizations to contact Congress and the White House demanding an immediate end to U.S. aid to Israel. Click here to send your message. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/
The ANSWER Coalition and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation are initiating a protest/press conference at 12 noon at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. For more information, contact ANSWER at 202-544-3389 or or MAS Freedom Foundation at 202-396-1288.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.answercoalition.org/
dc@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
ALERT - ISRAEL/PALESTINE
27 June 2006
Israeli authorities restrict Gaza press access
SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), New York
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a CPJ press release:
Israeli authorities restrict Gaza press access
New York, June 27, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about Israeli government restrictions on journalists attempting to report from the Gaza Strip.
The Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday that Israeli passport holders and dual nationals would be prohibited from entering Gaza. "Due to the current security assessments journalists with Israeli citizenship or those holding a dual citizenship cannot enter the Gaza Strip at the present time," a statement said.
The restriction followed an attack on Sunday by Palestinian militants on an Israeli military post in which two soldiers were killed and a third abducted. Citing security concerns, Israeli authorities that day closed to all media the Erez crossing, the main passage from Israel into the Gaza Strip. The travel ban was lifted on Monday morning after protests from foreign journalists and the Foreign Press Association in Israel.
Authorities have often banned Israeli citizens from entering the West Bank and Gaza, but journalists are typically allowed to cross the border if they sign waivers absolving Israeli authorities of responsibility.
"While we appreciate Israel's security concerns in light of Sunday's attack, there can be no justification for keeping journalists from doing their jobs," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "We call on Israel to put an immediate end to all restrictions on journalists seeking to cover Gaza."
CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.cpj.org
For further information, contact Joel Campagna (x103) or Ivan Karakashian (x104) at CPJ, 330 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001, U.S.A., tel: +1 212 465 1004, fax: +1 212 465 9568, e-mail: mideast@cpj.org, jcampagna@cpj.org, ivan@cpj.org; Internet: http://www.cpj.org
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