Don't forget Gaza

With the UN-sponsored ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah going into effect, Palestinians are apprehensive that Israel might embark on a fresh rampage in Gaza in order to boost the morale of a conspicuously dispirited Israeli public.

In fact, the Israeli army never stopped murdering Palestinians and destroying their homes for even a single day during the war on Lebanon. Palestinian medical sources revealed this week that more than 187 Palestinians were killed, mostly in the Gaza Strip, since the beginning of July.

According to Riyad Awad, director of the Gaza-based Health Information Centre, the killings of Palestinians is becoming a "macabre daily routine". "Not a day passes without the Israeli army killing an average of five or six Palestinians, mostly children and women and other innocent civilians. Israel feels the world is giving it a mandate to kill and maim at will," he said.

On Monday, the day the ceasefire in Lebanon went into effect, the Israeli army exterminated a mother and her two children in northern Gaza when a Merkava tank fired an artillery shell into their home, tearing their bodies to pieces.

Hours later, Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed three civilian homes in Jabalya and Beit Hanun minutes after the Shin Bet -- Israel's domestic security agency -- telephoned the affected families, warning them to leave or be bombed immediately.

The bombing wreaked havoc on each neighbourhood, injuring as many 14 innocent civilians, some seriously.

Ghazi Hamed, the Palestinian government spokesman, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the chances of Israel carrying out "another orgy" of terror and murder in Gaza were more than real. "Israel believes, maybe correctly, that the world that said nothing and did nothing while Israel was systematically destroying Lebanon, slaughtering civilians en masse, would behave similarly if Israel did the same in the Gaza Strip."

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/808/re91.htm