Another predatory design in Nepal: Israeli “Aid” and the Fraudulent Claim of Humanitarian Credibility

[Not only is Israeli “aid” a cynical propaganda ploy, the fact that Israeli “rescue” efforts include fast-tracking the removal of dozens of Nepali infants to Israel, must be examined.  See the bottom of this article for more details. — Frontlines ed.] 

Israel criticized for touting Nepal rescue while Gaza is still in ruins

by Ali Abunimah on Mon, 04/27/2015

Carrying the flag: A photo published by the Israeli army shows its personnel preparing to deploy to Nepal (via Twitter).

The director of Human Rights Watch has criticized Israel for touting its emergency aid efforts for earthquake-devastated Nepal while it continues to block reconstruction in Gaza.

“Easier to address a far away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one of Israel’s making in Gaza,” Kenneth Roth tweeted in reference to Israel’s announcement that it was flying 260 Israeli army medical and military personnel to Kathmandu.

“End the blockade!” Roth demanded. Earlier this month, 46 international aid agencies urged sanctions on Israel if it did not end the tight siege on Gaza that has prevented the rebuilding of a single home in the eight months since Israel’s devastating assault last summer.

“The blockade constitutes collective punishment; it is imposed in violation of [international humanitarian law] and, according to the UN, may entail the commission of war crimes,” the report, signed by Oxfam and Save the Children, among others, states.

Colin Powell’s Lies Stampeded US into Iraq, and now…….

Boehner and Netanyahu’s Lies Press for War on Iran, or no deal on curbing nukes.  AlJazeera digs into the facts with whistle-blower-released Israeli Intelligence Cables, as reported, below, on Democracy Now.  The video (followed by transcript) also contains details of the US-Israeli relations, as well as revealing that the collaborationist Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, had prior knowledge about the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza, but did not reveal or sound the alarm.  A very interesting report, from start to finish.  While Democracy Now leans toward the White House challenge to the Boehner-Netanyahu obstructionist initiative, they do not go into why the Democrat’s US-hegemonic-imperialist interests are expressing some rare tactical differences with Republican-allied-Israel’s regionally aggressive pursuits.  That is a subject for further study and analysis.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Democracy Now, February 24, 2015 — As Netanyahu Tries to Stop U.S.-Iran Deal, Leaked Cables Show Israeli Spies Reject His Nuke Claims

Guest:  Clayton Swisher, director of investigative journalism at Al Jazeera.

In what has been described as the biggest intelligence leak since Edward Snowden, Al Jazeera has begun publishing a series of spy cables from the world’s top intelligence agencies. In one cable, the Israeli spy agency Mossad contradicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within one year. In a report to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Mossad concluded Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The explosive disclosure comes just as the United States and Iran have reported progress toward reaching a nuclear deal, an outcome Netanyahu will try to undermine when he addresses the U.S. Congress next week. We go to Doha to speak with Clayton Swisher, the head of Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, which broke the Iran story and several others in a series of articles called, “The Spy Cables.”

AARON MATÉ: Just days before his controversial speech to the U.S. Congress, an explosive report has raised new questions about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to thwart a nuclear deal with Iran. According to Al Jazeera, Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, contradicted Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within one year. In a leaked cable to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Mossad concluded Iran was, quote, “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The assessment was sent just weeks after Netanyahu went before the U.N. General Assembly with a far different message. Netanyahu held up a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse to illustrate what he called Iran’s alleged progress on a nuclear weapon.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: This is a bomb. This is a fuse. In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages. By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. A red line should be drawn right here, before—before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September of 2012. The Mossad assessment contradicting Netanyahu was sent just weeks after, but it was likely written earlier. It said Iran, quote, “does not appear to be ready” to enrich uranium to the higher levels needed for a nuclear weapon. A bomb would require 90 percent enrichment, but the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, found Iran had only enriched to 20 percent. That number was later reduced under an interim nuclear deal the following year.

That 2013 agreement laid the basis for the ongoing talks in Geneva this week between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. The U.S. and Iran are seeking a framework agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program and impose international monitoring in return for an easing of U.S.-led sanctions before a March 31st deadline. The talks appear to be gaining momentum, with the involvement of high-ranking officials from both sides and leaked details of a plan to limit Iranian nuclear production for at least 10 years. They are set to resume next week.

AARON MATÉ: The advancing talks and the leaked cable come just as Netanyahu prepares for a controversial U.S. visit, where he’ll try to undermine the nuclear deal. On March 3rd, Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on Iran at the invitation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner. The trip has caused a major rift with the White House, to the point where Obama has refused to host Netanyahu for a meeting. Administration officials are also reportedly withholding details of the talks from Israeli counterparts. Speaking last week, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Israel has spread false information about the proposed nuclear deal.

PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: There’s no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There’s no question about that.

The Colonial Condescension of Those Who Ask for a “Palestinian Gandhi”

[The people of Gaza have, in their determined resistance, brought many issues to the fore among its supporters and defenders.  Central to these is the right of resistance itself — “by any means necessary” i.e., with whatever force the defenders can bring to the battlefield.  The forces of self-defense and the struggle for self-determination include moral force, political force, and military force.  Those who claim to support the victims of imperialist and settler-colonial military aggression, but argue against popular military resistance and armed liberation strategies, are denying the very means by which defense is made and by which liberation is won.  In the essay below, Ramzy Baroud of Palestine Chronicle details the background and recent history and “debate” over this issue.  (And, an important, but here secondary, difference with Baroud’s concluding paragraphs which cite ‘Gandhi’s inspiring greatness in the struggle against colonialism’ — this is disputed in India and elsewhere, as, most recently, Arundhati Roy and many others have challenged the iconization of Gandhi as a false anti-colonialist who ushered in an “independent” India without breaking the colonialist cultures and structures and laws of caste, class, and repressive state violence, and without empowering the people who, in their overwhelming majority, live today in the same same oppressive conditions that characterized the period of direct British colonial rule.  But this is a side-point here, which will be further explored separately and soon). — Frontlines ed.]

Gaza’s resistance paradigm
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle

“Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!,” was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich published in Mondoweiss.net on December 21, 2009. That was almost exactly one year after Israel’s concluded a major war against Gaza. The so-called Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) was, till then, the deadliest Israeli attack against the impoverished strip for many years.

Ehrlich was not in the least being belittling by raising the question about the “Palestinian Gandhi” but responding to the patronization of others. Right from the onset, he remarked: “Not that I’m in any way playing into the Palestinian Gandhi dialogue, I think it’s actually pretty diversionary/racist. But sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry.”

Indeed, the question was and remains condescending, ignorant, patronizing and utterly racist. But the question was also pervasive, including among people who classify themselves as “pro-Palestinian activists”.

Now that Israel’s latest war – so-called Operation Protective Edge – has surpassed Cast Lead in terms of duration, causalities, level of destruction, but also the targeting of civilians – the Gandhi question seems more muted than usual. To understand why, one needs to first examine the reason of why Palestinians were demanded to produce a non-violent Gandhi alternative in their struggle for freedom in the first place.

Israel/Palestine: Where “Peace Process” is Sham by Design

“Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream”
— Gilbert & Sullivan, HMS Pinafore

[The ongoing repressive Israeli settler-colonial project on the Palestinian people, facing growing exposure and international opposition, has increasingly brought Zionist ideologues (an echo of American “manifest destiny” expansionists) as well as “soft Zionist” real-politicians to resort to ever-more arrogant and hyperbolic deceptions to prevent their imperial allies from thinking they’ve outlived their usefulness.  At the same time, the collaboration of the corrupt Palestinian “leadership” with the “realities” of imperial power and Israeli settler-colonialism, has spun a very thin theatrical disguise of Palestinian identity and loyalty.  Both the Israeli colonist-settlers and the Palestinian quislings (struggling to extend their credibility in their mutually-symbiotic weakened states) depend upon blasting the mutually-reinforcing lies and deceptions of each other.  The details of this slimy and shadowy faux “opposition” are revealed in this recent article by author Jeff Blankfort.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Palestinian Collaboration Overshadows Latest Talks

“Imagine for a moment, what the reaction would have been in Northern Ireland if the IRA had taken to guarding the streets of Belfast and Derry for Her Majesty’s occupation forces.”

by Jeff Blankfort, Dissident Voice, May 7th, 2014

Shortly after the signing of the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the Jerusalem Post ran a cartoon that depicted a critical aspect of those accords which has rarely been discussed much less acknowledged. In the cartoon, a smiling Yasser Arafat was sitting upright on a stretcher giving a “V” sign. The stretcher bearers were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

Its message was clear: the Oslo agreement had come to the rescue of the PLO chairman whose reputation among his fellow Palestinians had sunk to the bottom of the barrel. The price they were to pay was dear: the legitimizing of Israel’s presence in 62% of the West Bank, what is commonly known as Area C and which Israel is quite likely to annex. Arafat’s representative at Oslo who negotiated the accords that effectively signed away West Bank land to Israel and ended the first intifada was Mahmoud Abbas.

Netanyahu, Obama, and Abbas — Partners in a Theatrical Crime

Now, let’s jump ahead 21 years to the present where the support of West Bank Palestinians for Abbas, Arafat’s successor, has been even lower than it was for the late PLO chair and with good reason: By any definition one chooses, Abbas is a traitor, a collaborator with the enemy. His Palestinian Authority “Preventive Security” police force closely coordinates its activities with Israel’s security forces with the goal of suppressing resistance to Israel’s ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing while leaving Palestinians without a semblance of protection against Israeli raids on West Bank towns and refugee camps. For all intents and purposes, that goal has been achieved.

Tel Aviv Sold Advanced Weapons To Four Arab Countries

by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies Tuesday June 11, 2013 11:20

The British Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has reported that Israel sold, over the past five years, military and security equipment for four Arab countries in addition to Pakistan.

In its report, which deals with military and security equipment exports, the department said that Israel exported the weapons to Algeria, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

“Israel leads global drone exports” (and marketing hype for war crime conspiracies) “as demand rises”

[For the other side of the Israeli/repressive munitions story, which AP will never disclose, see http://israelglobalrepression.wordpress.com/ where you can download the important booklet, “Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression” in English or Spanish.  And for more information on UAV/drone warfare, see http://www.livingunderdrones.org, http://droneswatch.org/, “People & Power – Attack of the Drones: Al Jazeera Documentary” (http://youtu.be/SdQvF5xmKL4), and the recent Frontlines posting  (https://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/india-uav-proves-ineffective-in-anti-maoist-operations/).  All this runs counter to the official US government story: “The US publicly describes its drone program in terms of its unprecedented ability to ‘distinguish … effectively between an al Qaeda terrorist and innocent civilians,’ and touts its missile-armed drones as capable of conducting strikes with ‘astonishing’ and ‘surgical’ precision.” —  Frontlines ed.]

BEN-GURION AIRPORT, Israel – The Associated Press, 7 June 2013

“Israel’s long record of using drones in its region of conflict has turned it into a dominant force in the industry, as the worldwide demand for the morally criticized systems has been soaring”

Drones are seen in a hangar at Israel Aerospace Industries.

Israel has emerged as the world’s leading exporter of the aircraft, putting it in a key position. Global spending on the technology is expected to jump from an estimated $6.6 billion this year to $11.4 billion in 2022, according to the Teal Group. AP photo

In an expansive hangar in central Israel, workers toil on one of the world’s most contentious aircraft, fitting dozens of drones with advanced sensors, cameras and lasers before they are shipped to militaries worldwide to perform highly sensitive tasks.Whereas drones are often criticized elsewhere for being morally and legally objectionable, in Israel they are a source of pride. Israel – a pioneer of drone technology – has emerged as the world’s leading exporter of the aircraft and its accessories, putting it in a strong position as the industry continues to grow.

A report produced by U.S. consulting firm Frost & Sullivan determined earlier this year that Israel is now the largest exporter of unmanned aerial systems, surmounting aerospace giants in the U.S. The report said that from 2005 to 2012, Israel exported some $4.6 billion worth of systems, including aircraft, payloads, operating systems and command and control caravans. U.S. overseas sales for the same time period were between $2 and $3 billion, the report said.

Israel’s Hypocrisy on a Nuclear Middle East

By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the general debate of the sixty-seventh session of the General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/J Carrier]

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2012 (IPS) – When world leaders packed their bags and headed home last week, there was one lingering memory of the General Assembly’s high-level debate: Benjamin Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation of a cartoonish nuclear red line, which hit the front pages of most mainstream newspapers in the United States.

The Israeli prime minister warned Iran against crossing that red line even though the Jewish state itself had crossed it when it went nuclear many moons ago.

As Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Middle East Report, told IPS, “The real absurdity of Netanyahu lecturing the world about nuclear weapons was precisely that – an Israeli leader lecturing the world about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.”

The fact of the matter is that not only is Israel the region’s sole nuclear power, and not only has it on previous occasions all but threatened to use these weapons of mass destruction, but it has since its establishment consistently and steadfastly rejected ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Rabbani said.

“It’s a bit like listening to (Hustler magazine publisher) Larry Flynt denouncing pornography – though to be fair to Flynt, it’s unlikely he will reach the levels of hypocrisy displayed by Netanyahu,” said Rabbani, a Middle East expert who has written extensively on the politics of the volatile region.

Still, most Middle East leaders, speaking during the high-level debate here, seem to have accepted Israel’s double standards on nuclear politics – and with hardly an aggressive response to Netanyahu’s address to the Assembly.

Emirates ‘has security links with Israel’

[This is an interesting story from UPI about the economic and military ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates–a rare subject for news reports in the US press.  But don’t congratulate UPI for their investigative prowess–a critical read of the article will also find this disingenuous statement, offered by UPI as a reason for these Israeli-Arab Sheik relations:  “They have also found a common adversary in Iran, whose expansionist policies and contentious nuclear program are viewed as a major threat by the Arab states in the gulf and by Israel.”  UPI thereby states, without supporting data, that Iran has expansionist policies (and does not mention the truly expansionist Israeli appropriation of Palestinian lands, and the growing Israeli “settlements”).  UPI does not report that the Emirates have turned a blind eye to Israeli expansionism.  And that is not all.  The UPI writer cites the “contentious nuclear program” of Iran (focused on nuclear power as energy, not weaponry) as a mutual concern of the Jewish state and the Sheiks, but, once again, they do not mention the hundreds of “secret” Israeli nuclear weapons already in existence, which is apparently not a subject of concern to the Sheiks–nor to UPI. — Frontlines ed.]

United Press International, Jan. 27, 2012

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 27 (UPI) — The United Arab Emirates, an economic giant and rising military power in the Persian Gulf, is reported to have discreet ties with private security companies in Israel to protect its oil fields and borders.

The Intelligence Online Web site reports that the country’s Critical National Infrastructure Authority has had business dealings with several Israeli firms since it was established in 2007, even though the emirates has no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

“Trade between the two countries, principally in the area of security, amounted to nearly $300 million last year,” Intelligence Online reported Jan. 12.

CNIA is based in Abu Dhabi, the main oil-rich emirate in the federation. It’s the capital of the United Arab Emirates and handles the federation’s military and security affairs.

Thousands of US troops deployed to Israel for missile defense exercise

from WW4 Report, Thu, 01/05/2012

Amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf, the US and Israel are preparing to hold the largest missile defense exercise in the history of the Jewish state. Last month, Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US Third Air Force, based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming exercise, expected to see the deployment of several thousand US soldiers in Israel. The drill will include establishment of US command posts in Israel and IDF command posts at European Command headquarters in Germany.

The US will also bring its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and ship-based Aegis missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of strikes on Israel. The US systems will work in conjunction with Israel’s missile defense systems—the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome. Gorenc will coordinate the exercise, set to start in the spring with Brig.-Gen. Doron Gavish, commander of the Israeli Air Force’s Air Defense Division. (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20)……………..

(for the complete WW4 report, see http://ww4report.com/node/10697)

———————————————

The Guardian (UK), “Iran, US and Israel announce new war games as tensions rise in the Gulf”

Surge in military activity in the region comes amid threat of EU embargo on Iranian oil and possible closure of strait of Hormuz

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, guardian.co.uk,

Friday 6 January 2012

Tensions on the oil shipping lanes in the Gulf have escalated with the announcement of new naval exercises by Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards and news that Israel and the US are planning to carry out extensive joint manoeuvres in the region.

The naval commander for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said the drill in February would be “different compared to previous exercises held by the IRGC”. The Iranian navy finished 10 days of exercises in the Gulf on Monday, during which it tested a range of new missiles. It warned that Iran could close the strait of Hormuz, the narrowest point in the Gulf, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes.

On the same day, the Israeli military said it was preparing for joint exercises with the US to rehearse missile defence and co-operation between the forces. The manoeuvres involve thousands of troops, have been planned for some time and were hailed by Israeli and US officials as their biggest joint drill.

Israeli defense minister pledges closer ties with China’s military

[While some may blather about “politics makes strange bedfellows”, and others will urge turning a blind eye to such things and “pretend there’s nothing wrong”–in an imperialist world where both China and Israel partake and maneuver for powerful imperialist relations, this is only another step in the direction of “making things perfectly clear.”  — Frontlines ed.]

——————————————

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak speaks at a press conference held in the Embassy of Israel in Beijing on June 15. (Chen Lele/People's Daily Online)

Beijing, June 15, 2011–Israel expects to consolidate partnership with China’s military as well as to promote cooperation in technology and economy, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during a press conference held in the Israeli Embassy in Beijing on June 14.

Barak’s last visit to China was 17 years ago as Israel’s chief of general staff. He said what impressed him most is that there has been a huge leap forward in everything he could see in Beijing.

Barak arrived in Beijing for meetings with senior officials, including Gen. Liang Guanglie, the Chinese minister of defense; Gen. Chen Bingde, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, and Vice Premier Li Keqiang.

“In all of our meetings, we looked for ways with people in uniforms to consolidate the relationship between our defense establishments with a variety of common interests, from fighting terrorism to exchanging visits of soldiers and officers. I invited both the defense minister and chief of general staff to visit Israel,” he said.

Wikileaks: Economic Reasons Behind the Siege of Gaza

The Alternate Information Center                                                  Thursday, 10 February 2011

Shir Hever, JNews

The ripple effects of the Wikileaks documents are still being felt, but until recently Israeli officials continued to boast that the documents were ‘good for Israel’.

As opposed to the way the Palestinian Authority (PA) was portrayed in leaked cables, leading to scandalous revelations, for a while Israel suffered no such scandal from the documents pertaining to its conduct. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even came out in support of the leak of the papers, suggesting that the documents can do no harm to Israel’s foreign policy.

He spoke too soon. More recent cables have provided unflattering revelations about Israel’s policies in the Gaza Strip, quoting Israeli officials spelling out their attempts to keep the Gaza Strip on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. They have also described how corruption is rife at the checkpoints through which goods are brought into Gaza.

Yet this information failed to shock. It was already well-known and widely reported by UN bodies, NGOs, scholars and journalists.

One cable, however, does contain some new information and has so far received no coverage at all.

The cable, titled “Shin Bet Talks Gaza Economics,” was written by David R. Burnett, Economic Counselor in the US embassy in Tel Aviv. It describes a briefing given to Embassy officials by senior members of the Israeli Shin Bet*, on how Israel uses the banking system in Gaza to increase the political influence of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza, by attempting to starve the Hamas government of cash.

The Shin Bet informed the US embassy that banks in Gaza know that they must neither allow Hamas members to open bank accounts nor have salaries deposited into existing accounts. If the banks disobey, they will lose their stamp of approval from the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA), a branch of the PA that is under constant pressure by Israel and the US to prevent any dealings with Hamas members. The Shin Bet expressed satisfaction that the Gaza banking system has indeed been cowed into submission.

Middle east, the fire grows: “Israel says ready for Friday protests”

Ma’an News Agency, Jerusalem

10/02/2011

JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli security forces are preparing for “any fallout” from the mass protests in Tunis and Egypt, an Israeli official told the Hebrew-language website Enyan Merkazi.

Police, border guards, army, intelligence forces, and the Mossad are on alert, according to the report.

With Facebook groups calling for protests Friday, against both the Hamas and Fatah governments in the West Bank and Gaza, and Israelis protesting a recent hike in water and electricity prices, the official said there are fears that protests will spread to Palestinian areas in Israel.

Training drills were conducted during the previous week, the officials said, and preparations were made for the rapid closure of main roads across the country.

Forces will be thickest around the Palestinian population centers of Haifa, Accre, Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Jerusalem, and Bersheba, the official said.

Egypt’s Uprising And Its Implications For Palestine

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

30 January, 2011

We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine.

If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (“Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast,” 29 January 2011).

Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” But what Benn does not say is that these two “allies” will not be immune either.

Over the past few weeks I was in Doha examining the Palestine Papers leaked to Al Jazeera. These documents underscore the extent to which the split between the US-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah headed by Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction, on the one hand, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on the other — was a policy decision of regional powers: the United States, Egypt and Israel. This policy included Egypt’s strict enforcement of the siege of Gaza.

Israeli troops kill 66-year Palestinian in cold blood

January 7, 2011 al Jazeera

“]Israeli troops have shot dead a sleeping Palestinian man during a dawn raid in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Family members found Suliman al-Qawasmeh, 66, in a pool of blood in the bedroom after soldiers broke into several homes in the city’s al-Sheikh neighbourhood on Friday. The raid came less than 24 hours after six Hamas fighters who had been on hunger strike in Palestinian jails were released on Thursday. Five of them were from Hebron, and one of them, Wael Bitar, arrested by the Israelis, lived one storey below the victim, residents said. “I was praying when they entered. I do not know how they opened the door. They put their hand to my mouth and a rifle to my head,” al-Qawasmeh’s wife told the Reuters news agency. “I was shocked. They did not allow me to talk. I asked them, ‘What did you do?’ They asked me to shut up.” Later, the Israeli army issued a statement acknowedging that al-Qawasmeh’s killing was unintended. It said he “was present in one of the terrorist’s homes”. An Israeli military spokesman told the AFP news agency: “There is no indication that [al-Qawasmeh] was involved in any terror activity at any stage and therefore we regret the incident.”

Three Wounded in Gaza, Three Arrested in Nablus

21.12.10 – 10:00

The aftermath of an earlier Israeli airstrike on Gaza (PNN Archive) Gaza City – PNN – Israeli air raids on Monday night in Gaza Strip left three wounded, while a predawn incursion into the northern West Bank city of Nablus ended with three Palestinians arrested in the village of Beit Hasan. . In Gaza, local sources said the airstrikes were carried out by F-16 warplanes firing rockets at Palestinians in western Khan Yunes, resulting in two injuries described as “moderate to critical.” A third airstrike occurred in eastern Khan Yunes. All three wounded were taken to al-Nasir Hospital for treatment. Warplanes also bombed the northern Gaza Strip, near Beit Lahiya, and in the southern city of Rafah, targeting tunnel sites. Strikes were also recorded in Gaza City and Beit Jabaliya in the north. Nobody was injured. In related news, a homemade Qassam shell fired from Gaza lightly wounded a 14-year-old girl on Tuesday morning in the city of Ashkelon. The attack is thought to be in retatliation for the Israeli airstrikes. Overnight raids in Nablus targeted the house of Muhammad Salah Abu Zour of the village of Beit Hasan, north of the city. He and his two sons were arrested after troops searched the house and their belongings and left before dawn.