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UN Fails Gaza Children, Again

by IOL (reposted)
UNITED NATIONS — Under the yoke of an American veto threat, the UN Security Council has failed, again, to issue a resolution condemning an Israeli aggression on innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, which this time claimed 67 lives in one single day.
"Council members are deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life in southern Israel and Gaza and condemn the escalation of violence that has taken place," the Council said in a statement cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the council chair this month, said members "underscore the need for all parties to immediately cease all acts of violence."

After nearly five hours of hard-nosed consultations, the Security Council failed to adopt a resolution condemning Israel.

Gaza Onslaught in Numbers

Watch Gaza "Terrorists"
At least 67 Palestinians, including many women and children, were killed on Saturday, March 1, in an Israeli land and air blitz against the sealed off Gaza Strip.

The fatalities took to at least 105 the number of Palestinians, third of them children, killed in four days of Israeli raids and air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

Libya, the lone Arab member on the 15-member council, circulated a draft resolution that "strongly condemns the killing of innocent civilians, including children" by Israeli forces.

The text also called for "an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including military attacks and the firing of rockets, and calls upon all parties to respect the ceasefire."

The US refused to accept language on Israel's actions.

"There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

Last January, Washington effectively blocked the adoption of a council statement that would have urged an end to Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip and to rocket firing into Israel.

It claimed Israel was merely exercising its right of self defense in response to the constant rocket firing from Gaza.

More
§Israel kills some more children
by via the Electronic Intifada
Saturday, March 1, 2008 :GAZA CITY, 1 March (IPS) - Tamer was nine, and no child soldier. He did not live in the area from where homemade rockets are launched into Israeli territory. The day he was killed, he was at least two kilometers from the place Israeli troops had entered Gaza, and met with return fire by Palestinian resistance.

His tragedy was that the family home was near Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, close to the area the Israelis have set up as their Kussfim base.

"We were all inside the house when shooting started," Tamer's aunt Etaf tells IPS. "It was right after members of the Palestinian resistance stopped shooting at Israeli troops," she said, pointing towards the scene of those clashes a couple of kilometers away. But the Israelis marched into this area as well, hardly for the first time.

Members of the family decided to crawl out into the rain after a bullet hit a gas cylinder, Etaf said. "But Israeli soldiers continued to fire on us from a tank and Hummer military jeep." After some time, seeing that the gas cylinder had not exploded, Etaf said she crawled back into the house. Tamer followed, but never made it. "I saw Tamer shot, with a bullet in his head."

"He wanted to become a doctor when he grew up," says his mother Sabah Abu Shaar.

Like Tamer, other children are dying, and their mothers' dreams with them. A six-month-old infant named Mohammed al-Bor'i was killed when an Israeli missile crashed into the house Wednesday this week, moments after he'd been fed. The family house happens to be close to the offices of Gaza's ministry of interior, and to the house of de facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Hanyieh.

Read More


March 3, 2008

Excerpt from: "Saturday in Gaza: Two IDF Soldiers Killed Fighting Rocket Launch Crews, 54 Palestinians Killed"

- Steven Erlanger and Taghreed El-Khodary


"On Friday, Hussein Dardouna, 50, was burying his son, Omar, 14, killed by an Israeli strike aimed at a rocket-launching team. "I'm against these rockets, but I am afraid. What can I do? If I protest they will hit me, they will kill me," he said. Hamas said that Malak Karfaneh, 6, died Friday from an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun, but locals said that a Palestinian rocket had fallen short and landed near the house. Israeli officials say that up to half of Palestinian rockets fall inside Gaza." (New York Times)
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