| Al Jazeera, Jan 2, 2008 | |||||||||||
Speculation is mounting that Israel is preparing to step up its assault on Gaza with a ground invasion, after it announced it would briefly open Erez border crossing to allow around 440 foreign residents to leave the territory. Early Friday saw continuing raids on targets in Gaza, a day after the Israeli army began clearing landmines along the border in apparent preparation for a possible ground offensive. Tanks, armoured vehicles and troops have been massing along the border for several days. With the Israeli offensive on Gaza entering its seventh day, the death toll now stands at at least 420 dead with more than 2,100 injured. In response Hamas fighters launched more than 20 rockets into southern Israel on Thursday amd seven on Friday, some landing as far as the port city of Ashdod, more than 30km from Gaza. An Israeli woman was injured in Friday’s rocket fire, the Israeli army said. Hamas leader killed In the latest strikes on Gaza Israeli jets pounded the border town of Rafah in the south of the territory and the Jabaliya refugee camp.
In raids on Jabaliya, a senior Hamas official was among more than a dozen people killed when a single one tonne bomb dropped from an Israeli jet destroyed his house.Nizar Rayyan is the most senior Hamas official killed since Israel unleashed its massive bombardment on Gaza. Palestinian medics said 13 members of Rayyan’s family, including his wife and three children, were killed in the attack. Hamas officials hit back at Israel after the attack saying the assault on Gaza would fail. “The blood of Sheikh Nizar Rayyan and the blood of other martyrs will never be wasted and the enemy will pay a heavy price for the crimes it has committed,” Ayman Taha, a Hamas official said. Rayyan, 51, had refused to take security precautions despite Hamas figures being at risk of assassination. He held a PhD in Islamic studies and lectured at the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip. Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said the killing of Rayyan comes at a time when international organisations are saying Israel’s policy of bombing the homes of Hamas leaders is against international law. “While they may be targeting senior members of the factions and military wings, these organisations say there is no doubt that there are families there and they are in residential neighbourhoods,” he said. “As we have seen in this particular strike, it was a direct hit in the heart of the Jabaliya camp, the most densely populated in Gaza, home to 70,000 Palestinians.”
Israel says its assault on Gaza is aimed at ending persistent Hamas rocket attacks from the enclave, but its offensive has sparked international condemnation and protests around the world.In Jerusalem on Thursday, a coalition of left wing parties and peace groups voiced their opposition to the raids with a protest in front of the Israeli prime minister’s home. The protesters called for an immediate end to the assault on Gaza, saying the escalation of violence was a disaster for both sides. Meanwhile Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has called for an immediate ceasefire from both sides. “Our call to Israel now is to halt its fire and to the other side to stop firing rockets and other attacks,” he said after talks with Egypt’s president in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Desperate Gazans With Israel continuing to pound Gaza, the situation for Gaza residents is becoming increasingly desperate. Most of the 1.5 million people in the densely-populated enclave have no means of sheltering from the raids, and humanitarian groups say supplies of food and fuel are running dangerously low. Hospitals have also reported shortages of even the most basic medicines and say they have no more capacity to deal with the growing numbers of casuaties. On Thursday, however, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, denied suggestions there was a humanitarian crisis in the Strip, adding “and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce”.
Livni was speaking in Paris after talks with the Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, whose call for a 48 ceasefire to allow in humanitarian aid has been rejected by Israel.”Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the Strip … and has even been stepping this up by the day,” the Israeli foreign ministry quoted Livni as saying. However, Karen Abu Zayed, the commissioner for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, said that in eight years of working in Gaza the need for aid had “never been so acute”. “I am appalled and saddened when I see the suffering around me,” she said, adding the UNRWA has made an emergency appeal for $34 million to help the Gaza population. Hasan Khalaf, Gaza’s assistant deputy health minister, described the ongoing assault on Gaza as “an Israeli massacre”. “There is no comparison between what we have and what [Israel] are doing to us. The international community are standing unable to help us, and yet we know they have been helping Israel for tens of years. “Even now they are comparing those getting scared in the south of Israel, and those buried under the rubble after having their houses bombarded.” |
Peace and Justice Post
NEWS, VIEWS & COMMENTS
Peace and Justice Post 
JOEL BRINKLEY: Evidence grows that Israel, with U.S. aid, is preparing to attack Iran
October 11, 2008For the last few weeks, all eyes have been on North Korea, as the nation’s idiosyncratic leadership began reopening a plant that manufactures weapons-grade plutonium. Christopher Hill, an assistant secretary of state, met, to no effect, with North Korea’s leaders in Pyongyang last week – a visit that would have been inconceivable while hawks still dominated the Bush administration.
But, as anyone might guess, the problems in Iran did not suddenly freeze while everyone looked east. In fact several recent developments leave the strong suggestion that Israel is preparing to attack Iran – with significant help from the United States.
The likelihood of an American attack has diminished. American commanders “think it would complicate the situation in Iraq and the region,” John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador, told me. He favors an attack but says “the Bush administration was much more inclined to do it a few years ago.” Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, at State and Defense – relative moderates within the Bush administration – now dominate discussion of issues like this.
Would Washington support an Israeli attack? Recently, the administration has given clear signals that it would not. But then, why did the Pentagon announce last month that it planned to sell Israel 1,000 new GBU-39 bunker-busting bombs? They are small weapons that can be dropped from the wings of the fighter jets in Israel’s air force. Each can penetrate 6 feet of reinforced concrete. If several aircraft hit the same target the total penetration could be much deeper.
Why does Israel need those bombs? Israeli military analysts have been saying they are for attacking underground weapons depots in Gaza or southern Lebanon. Perhaps.
But then, why about the same time did the Pentagon agree to sell Israel sophisticated upgrades for the country’s Patriot anti-missile missiles – and send more than 100 technicians to install them? If Israel attacked, Iran has warned that it would fire volleys of ballistic missiles in response.
And there’s more: Just last week came the news that the United States has deployed an advanced early-warning radar system in Israel for detecting incoming missiles. It is so sophisticated that, for now, U.S. Army crews will be stationed there to operate it.
Bolton and others advised against “reading all of that into this,” as he put it. The United States continually sells military equipment to Israel. Most years the United States gives Israel about $2 billion in military aid, and it must be spent on American arms.
What is more, Abbas Milani, an expert on Iran at Stanford University, told me that the Iranian press of late has been saying “the time is past” when the United States might attack. And while there is some concern about Israel, the Iranian papers correctly note that the country is locked in negotiations to form a new government that aren’t likely to be settled for several weeks. Israel would not attack before a new government forms.
At the same time, though, Israelis certainly saw Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the Iranian president, telling the United Nations last month that “the Zionist regime is on a definite slide toward collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of this cesspool.”
Still, all of this may be a hall of mirrors. The United States may be arming Israel purely for defensive reasons. Israel’s military exercises and blustery threats may simply be the state’s way of warning Iran. On the other hand, the Bush administration’s statements cautioning Israel may simply be an attempt to prevent Iran from blaming Washington if Israel does attack.
In any case, Bolton said, “Israel’s decision will not be based on what the Pentagon wants.” And if Israel does attack, Iran will consider Washington responsible, no matter what the administration has said.
“So if the U.S. is going to be blamed anyway,” Bolton offered, “we ought to go ahead and assist them.”
Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. Readers may send him e-mail at: brinkley@foreign-matters.com
Share this:
Tags:bunker-busting bombs, Bush administration, Iran, Israeli preparations, military exercises, United States
Posted in Commentary, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »