Hamas: The Israeli government's sanctions are a "declaration of war"

Ehud Olmert announced on Wednesday that his government has decided to cut off fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip - only allowing the flow of water to continue. In response to this contravention of the Fourth Geneva Conventions that address collective punishment, a Hamas spokesman said they considered this move a "declaration of war".

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, wasted no time in coming out and insisting that this move by the Israeli government violates international law but, considering the scores of UN resolutions that Israel has defied for decades, it's doubtful that it will suffer any consequences as a result.

Barak also said that Israel is moving closer to a large-scale military operation in Gaza. "Every day that passes brings us closer to an operation in Gaza," Barak was quoted as saying. He said an array of options would be considered before a major invasion.

The PMO statement also said that there would be restrictions on "the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip," but stressed that all steps "will be enacted following a legal examination, while taking into account both the humanitarian aspects relevant to the Gaza Strip and the intention to avoid a humanitarian crisis."

The thing is that there is already a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. To state that you intend to look at your legal standing in imposing such crushing sanctions in order to avoid one is absolutely ludicrous.

Meanhwile, Condi Rice is in Israel for a 24-hour drive-by visit - no doubt to bring the White House's support for Olmert's actions while pretending to be concerned about the fate of the Palestinian people as the US government keeps funneling money to Abbas in the West Bank.

Israeli officials are promoting a proposal that the West Bank and Gaza be viewed as separate entities, and that Israel act more forcefully in Gaza to crack down on Hamas militants.

Senior Bush administration officials said no decision had been made. Some State Department officials argue that the administration could only support such a separation if Israel agreed to make political concessions to Mr. Abbas in the West Bank, with the goal of undermining Hamas in the eyes of Palestinians by improving life in the West Bank.

But it would be diplomatically perilous for the United States to be seen as turning its back on Gaza. Almost half of the Palestinian population lives on the teeming strip of land. A more desperate Gaza could become a breeding ground for Al Qaeda.

“Nobody wants to abandon the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the Gaza Strip to the mercies of a terrorist organization,” said the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack. “We’re certainly not going to participate in extinguishing the hopes of a whole swath of the Palestinian population to live in a Palestinian state.”

The administration has led international efforts to isolate the Hamas-dominated government, demanding that it renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by existing agreements between the Palestinians and Israel.

So, while state department spokespuppets like Sean McCormack say one thing, the Bush administration is doing the opposite by backing Olmert in this latest move. They are already actively participating in extinguishing those hopes by giving financial and military aid to the Israeli government.

Hollow words.

Needless to say, this is not the way to promote any kind of peace process, especially in the broader volatilities going on in the region with respect to Israel's relationships with Syria and Iran. Egypt also joined Syria today in calling for an IAEA resolution to have Israel's nuclear facilities inspected - a proposal, as the article states, that is brought up regularly by Arab states which has often been put off but which, this time, seems to be receiving more of push from those 2 countries. And Syria has every reason to be concerned after Israeli air strikes occurred within its borders just 2 weeks ago - a move finally confirmed by Netanyahu on Wednesday (although no reason for the strike has yet been given).

It seems Condi's cherished November "peace conference" meeting is in jeopardy as Abbas is now under pressure from Fatah not to attend if other Arab states like Syria are shut out of the meeting. The Saudis are also threatening to boycott the conference is it isn't expected to offer anything of substance. By the time November rolls around, it may just be Rice and Olmert playing footsies at the table while everyone else stays home.

They're even fighting over what to call the damn thing:

White House: Int'l Mideast meeting is not a big peace conference

By Aluf Benn, Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents and The Associated Press

The White House said Tuesday the international meeting on the Middle East proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush should not be viewed as a big peace conference and it is too early to say where or when it will be.

However, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday that the meeting would most likely be held in the United States but the participants are still to be worked out.

White House spokesman Tony Snow at first described the meeting as an international conference, but several hours later he backed away from that portrayal as being too ambitious.

And let's play spot the contradiction yet again:

"This is a meeting," Snow said. "I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference. It's not."

Announcing the meeting in a major policy speech Monday, Bush said it would be chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and attended by envoys from Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations. He framed the meeting in the context that the world can do more to build the conditions for peace.

Is it any wonder the Bush administration has been completely AWOL on the ME peace process? Let's face it: Bush's agenda is just to coast until he's done his term while passing this situation, along with Iraq and Afghanistan, to whoever wins the WH in '08. Neocons only know how to start wars, not end them. "Peace" is just a word in the dictionary between "paranoia" and "profits".

And it's clear that the Israeli government wants nothing to do with this talk of "peace":

On Tuesday, Israeli officials welcomed Bush's initiative for an international summit, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin said that "this is not the time to discuss the key issues."

Eisin said the meeting would provide an opportunity to bring together all those who are truly interested in peace in the Middle East. However, she said it is too early to talk about full-fledged peace talks as long as Palestinian violence against Israel continues. A peace settlement would require agreement on such contentious issues as borders, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees and the status of Israel's disputed capital Jerusalem.

"Israel has been very clear. We don't think at this stage you can talk about final status issues, but such a meeting would certainly add to the capability of arriving at the core issues," she said.

Around and around it goes as tensions between the countries in the region grow as a result of the neglect of any viable path to peace.

And I haven't even mentioned Iran, which has reportedly announced retaliation against Israel should its government attack or the assassination of an anti-Syrian lawmaker in Lebanon today.
 

Barak Contemplates Collective Punishment

Via Ha'aretz:

Cabinet likely to back 'punishing' Gaza civilians over Qassams

By Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents

Government sources believe most Security Cabinet members will support increasing financial pressure on the Gaza Strip during the cabinet's meeting in Jerusalem Wednesday, in response to the ongoing rocket fire at Israel.

Sderot parents, meanwhile, intend to demonstrate outside the Knesset building. Sources in the defense ministry said that Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israel Defense Forces Tuesday to examine the implications of temporarily cutting off the Strip from Israeli infrastructure, including electricity, fuel and the supply of basic commodities.

Barak ordered the defense establishment to examine "the operational and legal aspects of steps designed to limit Hamas' rule in the Gaza Strip." Barak told the IDF he wanted to determine the degree to which Israel was obligated to provide services for the Strip.

The call to cut off water, electricity, gas and fuel to the Strip is seen as an alternative - or, if unsuccessful, a prelude - to a broad IDF incursion into northern Gaza. Government sources, however, said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was unlikely to authorize an escalation in Israel's military actions in the region.

It seems to me that there isn't much to "examine". Collective punishment of civilians in territories that your government occupies violates the Geneva Conventions. The inclusion of the issue of collective punishment came about as a response to the actions of the Nazis during WW2.

And, as if that wasn't ironic enough - the following statement actually made me gasp:

Earlier Tuesday, Vice Premier Haim Ramon - one of a growing number of cabinet ministers in favor of cutting off utilities to Gaza - said that Israel should attach a "price tag" to every rocket launched at Israel.

"We will set a price tag for every Qassam, in terms of cutting off infrastructures," Ramon told Army Radio. "Hamas will ... know this in advance. We will not continue to supply 'oxygen' in the form of electricity, fuel, and water while they are trying to murder our children."

The first thing that came to mind when I read that was the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis. The intended action certainly isn't the same but the sentiment is.

The oppressed have become the oppressors and if Israel's government has the equivalent of an Alberto Gonzales who manipulated a so-called legal defence for Bush to condone torture, no doubt the Israeli government can come up with some sort of justification to apply this type of collective punishment to the civilians in Gaza as well.

It really is something that Ramon would defend his belief in collective punishment by stating that he's concerned about the lives of Israeli children while the IDF continues to kill Palestinian children, refusing to cease military actions that clearly place those children in the sites of their weapons, while issuing half-hearted apologies. These killings are war crimes.

See also: Gaza: "The children killed in a war the world doesn't want to know about" and If Americans Knew

Meanwhile, the world does nothing - as usual. Or, in the case of the United States government - with support from both Republicans and Democrats, the Israeli government is getting even more money and arms to continue its illegal occupation while the victims have absolutely no voice.

Who speaks for the dead Palestinian children? And who will protect the civilians that Ramon and Barak want to punish for the actions of Hamas? And the bigger question always is, of course, how does any of this advance the peace process? Or does Israel's government even care about that anymore as it continues to apply failed military "solutions"?

Deciding to cut off essential services shows how desperately unwilling that government is to consider anything other than the concept of "might makes right". That hasn't worked. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results - made all the more brutal when children and other civilians become your publicly contemplated targets due to your own failures.

You'd think they would have learned that from their own peoples' history.

Related:
Land Grab at OG&P
Israel town anger at school attack
 

Abbas Accuses al Qaeda of Supporting Hamas

Forget the fact that Abbas didn't provide any actual evidence of such a claim. That didn't stop him from pulling out the west's bogeyman in an attempt to link them to Hamas. I guess it wasn't enough for the Bush administration to blame Iran. Now they've decided to try and up the ante, using Abbas as their spokespuppet, in an attempt to further demonize Hamas and to justify their interference in Palestinian politics.

In an interview on Monday with the RAI television network of Italy, Mr. Abbas said, “Thanks to the support of Hamas, Al Qaeda is entering Gaza.”
[...]
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said today that Hamas has “no links” to Al Qaeda and that Mr. Abbas “is trying to mislead international opinion to win support for his demand to deploy international forces in Gaza.”

Hamas has always tried to distance itself from Al Qaeda and that group’s agenda of global jihad, saying that Hamas’s own struggle is confined to the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

Because that's what it is confined to.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza keeps getting worse with the west and Israel funding Abbas in the West Bank while Gazans suffer. And on Monday, the UN suspended all of its construction projects in Gaza "citing a concrete shortage it said was caused by Israeli closures of a border crossing".

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funds scores of building projects in the largely impoverished Gaza Strip. It buys its materials from Israeli housing companies and hires mostly Palestinian contractors.

"Some 93 million dollars worth of projects are on hold because cement and other building supplies have run out," said John Ging, UNRWA's director in Gaza, citing the crossing closure.

Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said some concrete was transferred from Israel to Gaza in recent weeks but it was not enough. The suspension of the projects would affect thousands of Palestinians, he and Ging said.

That can only further exasperate the situation. Gunness said there was "a risk of a public health disaster" if the facilities UNRWA had been funding were not maintained.

So, while Abbas is busy doing Bush's work - using the threat of al Qaeda to call for an international force in Gaza which Hamas would only view as being "hostile" - the crisis is at a standstill.

Next week, the Do-Nothing Imperialist Duo - Rice and Blair - are scheduled to make an appearance in the ME to...do nothing again. Meanwhile, Olmert cancelled a meeting he was due to have this week with two members of the Arab League citing scheduling conflicts (no doubt deciding to wait until the imperialists give him his marching orders first).

Just how long will this crisis go on while ordinary Palestinians continue to suffer as politicians refuse to budge and up the rhetoric in an attempt to escalate an already very fragile reality?
 

Gaza Update

Israel sends missiles, tanks into Gaza.

About 200 Gazans, petrified by the chaos in the Hamas-controlled coastal strip, have been camped out for six days in a tunnel reeking of trash, urine and sweat on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing, pleading with Israeli authorities to grant them safe passage to the West Bank.

From a Haaretz editorial: "The pictures at the Erez crossing remind any person who still tries not to forget harsh scenes of locked, sealed gates from the previous century."

The fear that dangerous Hamas operatives might infiltrate into the West Bank is not baseless. But the Shin Bet security service presumably knows how to properly screen those seeking to pass - if that is what Jerusalem decides to do.

In the dark days before the Holocaust, it was similarly argued, not without justification, that the German and Austrian refugees fleeing for their lives could include moles seeking to assimilate into the countries through which they passed and sabotage them.

The lessons of history should never be forgotten.

The Christian Science Monitor has more about the Palestinian refugees.

And, as I predicted last week, Olmert begged for more money from Bush and got it, of course. "At the end of the 10 years, Israel will receive $2.9 billion annually in military assistance from the U.S."

While the dictator strikes again:

The prime minister asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for his assistance in expediting the handling of a number of IDF procurement requests meant to complete the replenishment of equipment and stores used during the Second Lebanon War.

Gates pointed out that though there is no problem with the requests in principle, there is an orderly procedure. However, Bush intervened and directed the defense secretary to expedite approval of the IDF's requests.

The reason Bush did that, of course, is because Ehud Barak is reportedly planning a massive military attack on Gaza and he needs the supplies - hoping to avoid a disaster like the failed efforts of the IDF against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer. So, screw this talk of "process", Gates.

There won't be any talk of "peace" while Barak is around. He was waiting for an aggressive move by Hamas and he reportedly got it.

So, here we have the same scenario: innocent civilians stuck in Gaza, which the Israeli government is reluctant to lift a finger for - even those with pressing medical problems - who will be subject to a sweeping military incursion. How many innocents will die this time? And, more importantly, for what?

Meanwhile, Bush was busy hosting a congressional picnic on Wednesday.

MR. RUFFINS: Well, thanks for having us.

THE PRESIDENT: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers, right out of New Orleans, Louisiana. (Applause.)

MR. RUFFINS: Thank you. Thanks for having us. We're glad to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Proud you're here. Thanks for coming. You all enjoy yourself. Make sure you pick up all the trash after it's over. (Laughter.)

Who's going to end up picking up Bush's trash in the Middle East once he's gone and who will bury the bodies?

Related:

Tony Blair as the UN's Middle East envoy? They're joking, right?

A Leader of Hamas Warns of West Bank Peril for Fatah

And yet another big lie had to be rolled out again:

The Americans say that their effort to aid, train and equip the elite Fatah forces was to protect the crossings to Israel and to deter Hamas, not to start a civil war.

A Secular-Democratic State Solution; The Light at the End of the Gaza-Ramallah Tunnel