July 7, 2006

ISRAEL PENETRATES DEEPLY INTO THE GAZA STRIP KILLING PALESTINIANS AND DEMOLISHING THEIR PROPERTIES. THE ISRAELI ARMY ESTABLISHES A SECURITY ZONE AFTER MISSILES ATTACK ON ASHKELON. THE WORLD CONDEMNS THE ISRAELI ATTACKS AND INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS ARE EXERTED TO SOLVE THE ISSUE OF THE ISRAELI SOLDIER. PRESIDENT PUTIN PROMISES ABBAS TO DO EVERYTHING TO ACHIEVE "RAPID NORMALIZATION" OF THE TENSE SITUATION IN THE GAZA STRIP. Israeli tanks moved deeper into Gaza Strip and its forces killed at least 21 Palestinians yesterday in the bloodiest day since the Jewish state invaded Gaza on June 28 over a soldier's capture. During Thursday operation, one Israeli soldier was also killed and five were injured. Throughout the day, Israeli aircraft targeted Palestinians with missile strikes, while Israeli tanks took up positions between tightly packed homes. Apache helicopters hovered overhead, firing flares and machine guns to support ground forces engaged in fierce skirmishes with Palestinian fighters. Israel said it decided to step up the offensive, launched last week in response to the capture of the Israeli soldier, after Hamas activists fired two upgraded rockets into the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. No one was hurt, but the rockets were the first to reach the city of 110,000, infuriating Israeli leaders. In the worst incident, nine Palestinians were killed, including two Hamas activists, and at least 24 wounded in an Israeli bombardment on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, medics said. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas-led government has been directly targeted in the offensive, slammed the assault as "collective punishment" on his people and demanded international intervention. The massive predawn land and air assault on Gaza sent terrified residents scurrying from their homes with babies and belongings. "We woke up and the tanks were right there. There were fighters in our garden. We had to flee to protect the children," said one father, fleeing a Beit Lahiya neighborhood with his wife and four children. In northern Gaza, ground forces, armored vehicles and sappers advanced up to five km in a bid to expand a unilaterally declared security zone aimed at preventing rocket attacks on Israel. The Palestinian death toll is the highest in a single day since Israeli forces killed 16 people in October 2004 in a raid on a Khan Younis refugee camp. Ignoring international outcries for restraint and diplomacy, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) overnight reoccupied a belt of the northern Gaza Strip it called a buffer zone, including the sites of three former Jewish colonial settlements, amid Palestinian, Arab and Islamic diplomatic efforts to stop the Israeli invasion. President Mahmoud Abbas last Wednesday chaired an emergency meeting for the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Gaza City. The Committee decided to be in held until the current crisis is over and set up a national committee to manage the crisis, chaired by Abbas and comprising representatives of the government, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the national and Islamic political groups and the civil society. The PLO called on the international community to take active measures to put an end to the Israeli aggressions, which will lead to a humanitarian crisis, according to a statement released by the official news agency, WAFA. The PLO stressed national unity. Abbas has decided to temporarily suspend a controversial referendum on the "prisoners' document" scheduled for July 26, according to the Al-Quds daily last Wednesday. Meanwhile, Arab and Islamic nations renewed a drive at the United Nations for a Security Council resolution demanding that Israel immediately pull out of Gaza and release all Palestinian officials it has kidnapped. Ambassadors from the 57 nations making up the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) met in New York to adopt a statement condemning Israel's "large-scale military assault" in Gaza and its arrest and detention of Palestinian officials. The bloc called on the UN Security Council to "act promptly" to pressure Israel to "cease its aggression" against Palestinian civilians and seek emergency aid for Gaza. Arab and Islamic groups at the UN had approved a draft resolution proposed by delegations of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. The two groups presented the draft resolution to the Secretary of UN Human Rights Council to make it an official document to be submitted last Thursday to the Council's extraordinary meeting to study Israel violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories. The draft calls for stopping the Israeli military attack on Gaza Strip as well as halting the Israeli continued violations against Palestinians, and condemning Israeli arrests of the Palestinian officials and ministers. The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has sent letters to the international parties at the Quartet Committee- UN, US, Russia and the European Union- and to the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana condemning the Israeli oppressive practices against the Palestinian people, the OIC said in a statement. Palestinian envoy Nabil Sha'ath met with Arab League Secretary-General Amre Mousa in Cairo and called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and the formation of a committee to face the current crisis caused by Israel. The same day Palestinian Justice Minister Ahmad al-Khalidi saidthat the Palestinian government is filing a war crimes lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Meanwhile Israel's Political-Security Cabinet held an emergency meeting on Wednesday, after a Qassam rocket landed inside the Israeli southern town of Ashkelon, 10 kilometers from the border with Gaza Strip, which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned as "a very serious incident, which constitutes an escalation of unprecedented gravity." The Cabinet authorized Olmert and "Defense" Minister Peretz "to instruct the security establishment to continue its preparations for prolonged and graduated security activity," according to a communiqué released after the meeting. The Cabinet also decided to strike at Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. After the meeting, and under covering fire from helicopter gunships, tanks moved into an area including the rubble of three of the Jewish colonial settlements evacuated when Israel redeployed from Gaza last summer after 38 years of occupation, Reuters reported. Israeli air strikes on northern Gaza Strip overnight and early Thursday killed four Palestinians, including a policeman. UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, on Wednesday urged Israelis and Palestinians to "step back from the brink," warning that their escalating confrontation could soon turn explosive. "The situation is dangerous and could be explosive. The secretary-general urges all concerned to step back from the brink," Annan's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement, issued in Ghana where Annan was visiting. The new United Nation Human Right Council (HRC) met in New York and denounced the Jewish state's military actions in Gaza, which they said were in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. The decision was taken to hold the HRC's special session upon a request by 21 Member States of the Council at the end of is first session, which concluded on Friday. The session was to reconvene Thursday to begin considering a draft resolution on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, with a view to a vote. Addressing the Council at the invitation of the Arab Group, John Dugard, Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in Palestine, said recent actions in the Middle East, where an Israeli army post was attacked and one of its soldiers kidnapped, did not "warrant the disproportionate retaliation they have prompted" and called attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Palestinian areas. Dugard also accused the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, consisting of the UN, the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union, of failing to address what he called Israeli's violations of international human rights law. Separately the European Commission external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said that, "The Israeli military must stop collectively punishing Palestinians and putting civilian lives at risk." The European Union in a statement urged Israel to free Hamas officials, including eight Cabinet ministers and 26 MPs, and show restraint in its military campaign to force Palestinians to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier. Switzerland said also that Israel was violating international law in its Gaza offensive by inflicting heavy destruction and endangering civilians in acts of collective punishment banned under the Geneva Conventions. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also urged Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Wednesday to get back to the negotiating table to try to end the recent escalation in violence. Blair told the House of Commons both sides could be condemned but only talks would ultimately resolve outstanding issues. Earlier in the week the Russian President Putin promised Palestinian counterpart Abbas to do everything to achieve "rapid normalization" of the tense situation in the Gaza Strip, a statement from the Kremlin's press service said. The EU has accused Israel of using "disproportionate" force and making a humanitarian crisis worse during operations in the Gaza Strip. In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was "high time" for Hamas to return an Israeli soldier whose capture has sparked an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. She called on both the Israelis and the Palestinians to exercise restraint. On Friday Israel consolidated its hold on northern Gaza, as air strikes killed at least three Palestinian. "The EU condemns the loss of lives caused by disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defence Forces and the humanitarian crisis it has aggravated," Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said in a statement. Meanwhile an Israeli minister suggested that if Corporal Gilad Shalit, captured 12 days ago, was released, Israel may be prepared to consider future prisoner releases. A spokesman quoted Interior Minister Avi Dichter as saying that Israel "knows how to carry out a release of prisoners as a goodwill gesture". Until now Israel has said it will not negotiate a prisoner swap, originally suggested by Hamas as a solution to the crisis. Earlier Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya called for international intervention to stop the Israeli offensive. Mr Haniya, who belongs to Hamas, called it a "crime against humanity". He said the Israeli push was "a desperate effort to undermine the Palestinian government under the pretext of a search for the missing soldier". The interior minister in the Hamas-led government, Said Siyam, has urged all the administration's security forces to fight Israeli troops. In a statement read out by his spokesman, Khalid Abu Hilal, he called on them to do their duty by "resisting this treacherous invasion and aggression of the cowardly Zionists". A Palestinian was shot dead in clashes with Israeli troops in a refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus At least one Palestinian teenager died as a result of Israeli fire following an incursion in Jenin, reports say. In the last few days Israeli police have arrested 749 Palestinians they say were living in Israel illegally, as well as several Israelis said to be employing them Many of those killed in the air strikes and heavy fighting in northern Gaza are civilian victims. Friday morning's air strikes targeted armed Palestinians, it said. One Hamas member was killed and three others were wounded when Israeli forces opened fire on them from an aircraft in the early morning, Hamas and hospital officials said. Later two Palestinians were killed in a missile strike. The Israeli offensive began largely in southern Gaza in an attempt to free Cpl Gilad Shalit, after he was captured on 25 June. But troops moved deeper into the north of the territory after rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Ashkelon. In New York, the UN Security Council has debated a draft resolution demanding an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of detained Palestinian officials. The draft was presented by Qatar on behalf of the UN's Arab Group, but appears doomed in view of opposition from the US, which has the power of veto. Meanwhile Hamas expressed surprise at the Israeli refusal to a prisoner exchange. Earlier in the day, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said that if it had release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit, then Israel would do so. An associate of his later clarified that he meant that only if Shalit was returned unconditionally and the Kassam rockets stopped, then there would be a calm that would enable Israeli goodwill gestures such as releasing Palestinian prisoners. In any case, the Prime Minister's Office insisted that Dichter was not speaking for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who maintained that Shalit be released unconditionally. Hamas rejected suggestions from an Israeli cabinet minister on Friday that some Palestinian prisoners could be freed as a "goodwill gesture" if militants released a captured soldier and stopped rocket firing. "Our people have no faith in goodwill gestures," Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told Reuters. "There is no talk at the moment about the missing soldier, we are talking about 30 Palestinian martyrs and 100 wounded in an Israeli military aggression against our people." Israel has launched an offensive to try to recover captured Corporal Gilad Shalit and end cross-border rocket attacks. At least 36 Palestinians, the majority militants, have been killed since then. Israeli ministers have also made numerous veiled threats suggesting they will be prepared to assassinate senior members of Hamas if attempts to release Cpl Shalit fail. Earlier this week, Hamas said it had been informed by western diplomats that Israel had drawn up a 13-man hit list, headed by its Damascus-based leader, Khaled Meshaal, and Mr Haniyeh. Nasser Shaer, Haniyeh's deputy, went into hiding last week. On the other hand the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz has received a telephone call from President Bashar Al-Asad of Syria. During the conversation, they discussed regional and international developments, notably the situations in the Middle East as well as the fraternal relations between the two countries. Meanwhile President Bashar al-Assad received a telephone call from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the Palestinian issue, the official SANA news agency reported. The report did not give further details of the conversation, but described it as dealing with "the situation on the Palestinian arena and efforts exerted to lift suffering and siege imposed on the Palestinian people". A spokesman for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed allegations that Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu,Erdogan's foreign policy advisor met with Hamas leader Mashaal during his visit to Syrian capital Damascus. In response to the questions, the PM's spokesman Akif Beki said on Thursday that Ahmet Davutoglu did not meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal during his visit to Damascus earlier this week. Beki noted that Davutoglu only met with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to convey Turkey's message regarding the kidnapped Israeli soldier, and that he returned to Turkey without meeting any officials from Hamas, the ruling party in Palestine. President Bashar al-Assad underlined Syria's "standing with full force by the side of the Arab Palestinian people in his ordeal in front of the Israeli oppressive machine" Heading a meeting of the National Progressive Front, President Assad spoke about efforts that Syria is exerting to support and advocate the Palestinian people and make their national dialogue a success. " The aggressive Israeli stances and the falsified accusations it is directing to the national forces on the Arab arena will not but make us more insistent on the Arab rights and more committed to our positions," the President said. President Assad renewed emphasizing back to the political process and development of relations with Iraq on the basis of securing the Iraqi National Unity and achieving withdrawal of the occupation forces expressing "Syria's readiness to extend all aid in this respect." At the end of the meeting, President Assad emphasized the importance of the NPF parties in boosting the national unity and deepening the Arab national thinking to the people on the basis of openness and enlightenment as to go with our history, culture and values. King Abdullah II expressed his deep concern over the escalating situation in the Gaza Strip, and its negative impact on the living conditions of the Palestinians. During a telephone call with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the King said that events in the Gaza Strip will increase the humanitarian suffering that the Palestinians have been facing for months as a result of the halt of international aid. King Abdullah voiced Jordan's readiness to provide aid to the Palestinian people and receive aid from Arab countries to be dispatched to the Palestinians through the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization. President Abbas for his part, briefed the King on developments in the Gaza Strip. He expressed concern over the continuing Israeli military escalation against the Palestinians. In Lebanon President Emile Lahoud strongly condemned Israeli military operation against the Gaza Strip. In a statement, Lahoud said Israeli offensive was part of its coercive strategy based on violence and oppression and its breach of all international norms and resolutions. "Lebanon, which has also suffered from Israeli occupation of parts of its territory, share the Palestinians sufferings and plight," Lahoud said. The President underlined that protecting Arab rights could only be done through resistance "which remains a legitimate tool for peoples trying to regain their territories and rights." Lahoud also criticized the world community for keeping silent and not reacting to Israeli hostilities. "The world stood in silence when Israel's massacres resulted in the death of hundreds of Palestinians. The world community was neither affected by the killings nor by the screams of Palestinians children who live under continuous siege," he added.