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Kristen Ess: IOF Continues Brutal Attack on Rafah

by Kristen Ess, zmag.org
...
For over 36 hours now IOF have ceaselessly attacked the southern Gaza Strip city and camp of Rafah. The number of dead is around eight or nine known, the number of injured, according to Dr. Ali Mousa, director of Rafah's Abu Yousef Najjar Hospital, is 62 as of 10:30 am Saturday. Other reports are higher. At 2 pm the number of injured is approaching 80. Several more people have just been injured in Hi Salaam.

IOF have demolished 30 homes since Thursday midnight. At noon Saturday thousands of people are in the streets of Rafah taking the last three killed to the cemetary for burial. Added to the names of the known dead today are 19 year old Zaki Asharif, killed at 12:40 pm today, 23 year old Otewi Abu Mosen, and Mabrouk Mohammad Juda, a 19 year old from Rafah City studying english language at Al Aqsa Univeristy. His friend just said, "He is a good student, a good man also."

Of those injured, 23 are not expected by doctors to survive. The normally seven minute trip between Abu Yousef Hospital and the European Hospital is now taking people over two hours by dirt road. IOF have divided the Gaza Strip in four parts for the past week, and one of the new checkpoints blocks Rafah residents from both the European Hospital and the hospital in Khan Younis. NGOs in Gaza City confirm that Gaza City and north of it are cut off from the rest of the Gaza Strip at the oft closed area near Netzarim Settlement, so it also is impossible for the injured to be cared for at the Gaza Strip's largest hospital, which is Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

As of 10:30 am Saturday IOF have demolished 30 homes in Rafah since they began the latest attack on Thursday at midnight. This morning some families in Rafah tried to go inside their homes to retrieve furniture, or anything personal they could carry. They are expecting their homes also to be demolished because IOF are attacking their neighborhoods. According to Mohammad Omar in Rafah, families were unable to reach their homes because IOF opened fire on them.

Eyewitnesses in Rafah continue to see more Israeli tanks and bulldozers entering through Salah Adeen Gate. NGOs and journalists alike concur that IOF intend to continue this brutal attack between 7 and 12 days. Several residents in the Hi Salaam area of Rafah say Israeli soldiers are setting up tents on their land, suggesting a long stay.

The attacks on the Yibna area continue to be the most severe. Mohammad Omar from Rafah reports, "At 12:20 in the night the Apache was over us until 2 am. The drone is always in the sky, since the beginning." IOF demolished his family's home in Block O nine months ago. His uncle was holding a wedding part day before yesterday in his home and IOF began to demolish the house. Two of his uncles are in the hospital. He said, "There are 100s of trees on the dirt road to the European Hospital. You know those old trees, the really old ones, there are hundreds just everywhere. They're destroying everything." Last week when he was being chased by Israeli soldiers for taking pictures he fell and broke his camera. He said, "If I still had my camera I would have first thing taken a picture of the mother who was talking about her kid, the one whose head was blown off. The next picture would be when they were attacking the electricity center, dropping missiles on it." Most of Rafah is without electricity as the heavy attack and invasion continues.

All schools and universities are closed, as is most everything in the city. Some are trying to operate the regular Saturday market as many who have been trapped in their homes are out of food.

Rafah has suffered under heavy IOF attack and invasion for over a year in the latest campaign to build a closure wall 8 metres high and 10 metres deep. IOF have demolished 100s of homes in single areas alone, rendering thousands of Palestinians homeless in the past year.


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Could someone with a brain not clogged full of "we have to defend ourselves" PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on here, and why , more importantly, it is being allowed to continue?
by Scottie
you are confusing discipline with strategy your problem is not with their discipline but with their strategy.
by Angie
Don't tell me I am "confusing" anything.

I said I wanted an answer from someone who is capable of doing same without apologizing for the outrage that is being carried out under "fighting terror", subtitled this time "blowing up tunnels". Leaving hundreds and hundreds of people homeless, leaving them without power -- I'm so damn angry I could spit.

I'm sick to death of the lies that are glibly passed out to the media by Israel as "facts" and echoed in the US media. I'm sick to death of the US refusing to rein in its terrorist state, and of the current US administration's double standards.

This is not about tunnels and smuggling weapons. Egypt has denied same. Right, as if what Egpyt said matters a fig.

Why don't you bear in mind the wall, Scottie, and how it will go right to Rafah. Connect the dots if you can.
That is what this is all about. So kindly don't patronize me again. Just because you are blind doesn't mean others are.

You are the one so fond of blaming everything with respect to Abbas resigning on Palestinian militant groups.

Well, perhaps you need to be reminded once again about the very real concern that Abbas took to Washington with respect to the wall. Remember how GWBush said it was 'a problem"? Then perhaps you can remember as well (it's only been a month or more) how Rice visited the area and expressed dismay about that very same wall?.

Ye'ah, words are cheap in Washington these days, aren't they? When the time for action at the UN came to pass yesterday, guess what? The wall was not a problem, not a concern, and the US, as it always does where Israel is concerned, vetoed the resolution with respect to same.

The US missed another opportunity to make a difference in this hell hole because it dared not antagonize Israel and its friends in the US, hell, not with an election on the horizon.

How can anyone take this administration seriously? They have taken the Israeli art of LYING to such a fine art it's dispicable, and all they can do is sit around and blame the victims.

So kindly do not talk to me about confusing stragegy and discipline.

Later on when I have a free moment I am going to do my "wall" project in an appropriate thread here, and there's two I'm already familiar with. And don't bother, anyone, coming back here and trying to convince myself or anyone else with a brain that this is a "barrier" or a "fence" because to do so is to laugh oneself silly if the reality were not so atrocious. I prefer to believe my own eyes.

However, Scottie, it's a great diversion, isn't it, to keep attention away from the UN Human Rights Report with respect to the wall and what it's really all about and the human rights abuses entailed therein, and as well it has kept attention diverted from the construction of up to 600 additional new homes in the settlements (again, contrary to the so-called road map), and lest we forget the planned expulsion of fifteen "detainees" to Gaza from the West Bank.

Human Rights watchers are horrified, but, then, when did that ever matter to Israel?
by Scottie
>> So kindly don't patronize me again. Just because you are blind doesn't mean others are.

I was making a factual distinction
The israeli army IS diciplined you just look silly if you dispute that.
as to the rest you can argue it out with your idiot corector because Im a bit busy.
by Angie
If you're looking for idiots, you don' t have to go very far. Blessedly I cannot possibly be called one.

I haven't got a lot of time for dealing with people like you tonight, or dealing with anyone for that matter, as I have to get back to work, but let me say this.

Do you really and truly believe this garbage? Do you really and truly, in your own mind, uninfluenced by anyone else, believe what you're saying here? .

Israel needs a wall to prevent Palestinians from sneaking in to kill Israelis? In that case, what are the people of the Occupied Territories supposed to do? Where is their wall? Who is saving them from the Israelis who sneak in under cover of darkness and blow them up in their homes whilst they sleep?

I want an end to this damn mess that's taking up WAY too much space and time and effort, and which is given WAY too much importance vis a vis other and more ghastly conflicts in the world today.

As I've said over and over and over this is not the only damn conflict being waged on planet earth although there are those who'd like to think so.

You talk about militant groups as if they were the only problem here. There was no Hamas in '67 when the occupation began. Ever ask yourself why militants emerged in the Occupied Territories?

Ever ask yourself why the Palestinian peoples would ever want to discuss peace and harmony with the leaders of Israel over the years? The likes of Shamir, Begin, and now Sharon? Terrorists all.

No, sir/madam. It is very clear to me, and I am sure to anyone out there that's not brainwashed, that there will not be a Palestinian state. Israel and the US will see to that. just as every time in the past many, many years whenever peace was a possibility something or someone happened to ensure it would not be.

Ever ask what would have happened had Rabin not been assassinated? Ever ask what would have happened just now if the outposts had been removed? The freeze on settlements carried out as per the road map? No further annexation of land as is the case with the wall?

Start looking at Israel as well as the Palestinians and appportion some of the damn blame here. Israel has the might of its military and the loving hand of the US behind it. What if there were no Sharon in power, no Likud fanatics, no settlers? What if there were no interference from those who have a vested interest in keeping this conflict going from the outside?

Look at someone with the great courage and vision of a Uri Avnery and his Gush Shalom, the jews who march for peace and justice in Palestine, and who march here in Canada, and the US, and the UK. They are not preaching the "poor us, they want to kill us" garbage you're sprouting. They're too busy being human beings and treating the Palestinians as equal human beings.

They go to the aid of Palestinians when the IDF sides with the settlers; they show up in the groves to let their presence act as a safety net for the Palestinian farmers who would otherwise not be able to harvest their crops.

Different leaderships for both sides would be a help. An end to the US blatant preference to Israel would be another. And putting an end to this garbage you're going on with all the time (you plural) would also be a help.

Burying an Israeli and burying a Palestinian, as I've said forever, is equally horrendous. Hearts are broken, innocent lives interrupted, and for what? For what, I ask you?

In 100 years from now everyone currently opposing a Palestinian state will be dead and gone. Everyone wanting a Palestian state will be dead and gone. That includes us, as much as I'd prefer to live forever. And a quest for power, a quest for lands, a quest for control won't matter a tiddly.

The whole dispicable scene breaks my heart.
by anti bullshit
The following line by Angie is quite entertaining:

Saint Angie: "I want an end to this damn mess that's taking up WAY too much space and time and effort, and which is given WAY too much importance vis a vis other and more ghastly conflicts in the world today. As I've said over and over and over this is not the only damn conflict being waged on planet earth although there are those who'd like to think so."

- How ironic, isn't it? Angie is the one posting a screed here about it, thereby perpetuating the mess she helps recreate every now and then and wasting lots of space on this site with her daft nonsense, magnifying the issue's importance at the expense of other world issues she ostensibly wants to focus more on.

Saint Angie: "You talk about militant groups as if they were the only problem here. There was no Hamas in '67 when the occupation began. Ever ask yourself why militants emerged in the Occupied Territories?"

- The PLO (a bunch of "militants") was created in '64, that's 3 years before the 1967 war! I'm sure Saint Angie has an excuse in the ready though.

Saint Angie: "Ever ask yourself why the Palestinian peoples would ever want to discuss peace and harmony with the leaders of Israel over the years? The likes of Shamir, Begin, and now Sharon? Terrorists all. "

- So now Angie has exonerated the pre-Oslo Palestinians for their rejectionism, with BS pretexts of course..

Saint Angie: "It is very clear to me, and I am sure to anyone out there that's not brainwashed, that there will not be a Palestinian state. Israel and the US will see to that. just as every time in the past many, many years whenever peace was a possibility something or someone happened to ensure it would not be. "

- Angie, being brainwashed by Avneri and his ilk, lacks the courage to admit it's the Palestinian side who has been ensuring, and will probably always keep ensuring, there will be no Palestinian state. Besides, if Angie's brain is in gear, she should act on her conclusion and stop wasting her time on trying to create a Palestinian state.

Saint Angie: "What if there were no Sharon in power, no Likud fanatics, no settlers?"

- Angie's perspectives are severely skewed. Likud has been a center-right party for almost a decade now, regardless of Avneri's opinion. And if Sharon weren't in power, it's probable the far Right would be. That would have made Angie a Sharon groupie.

Saint Angie: "Look at someone with the great courage and vision of a Uri Avnery and his Gush Shalom, the Jews who march for peace and justice in Palestine, and who march here in Canada, and the US, and the UK. They are not preaching the "poor us, they want to kill us" garbage you're sprouting. They're too busy being human beings and treating the Palestinians as equal human beings. "

- They're also too busy being defeatists and extending assistance to Arafat, sometimes at the expense of Israel's security.

Saint Angie: "Different leaderships for both sides would be a help. An end to the US blatant preference to Israel would be another. And putting an end to this garbage you're going on with all the time (you plural) would also be a help."

- Angie made a half a step forward only to go one step backwards. The Palestinians need a different leadership alright, but it is incumbent on Angie to take the first steps to put an end to the trash she spews she goes about here ad infinitum.

Saint Angie: "Burying an Israeli and burying a Palestinian, as I've said forever, is equally horrendous. Hearts are broken, innocent lives interrupted, and for what? For what, I ask you?"

- Take that question to Arafat. He's the one who can answer it best nowadays.

Saint Angie: "In 100 years from now everyone currently opposing a Palestinian state will be dead and gone. Everyone wanting a Palestinian state will be dead and gone. That includes us, as much as I'd prefer to live forever. And a quest for power, a quest for lands, a quest for control won't matter a tiddly."

- Not too many people outside Angie's political camp will mourn her departure.
Don't ask me how that happened. I know not.

"I was making a factual distinction. The Israeli army IS disciplined. You just look silly if you dispute that".

Ye'ah, me and millions world wide.
by Scottie
look up disciplined in a dictionary I think your having issues with the definition.
by Angie
Just a quick comment, Scottie, as i'm trying to beat a deadline here. I know what discipline means. End of story.
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