Writing The Wrongs: PA Aims for Gaza Seaport

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

PA Aims for Gaza Seaport

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Pro-Arab activists are assisting the Hamas authority to establish a Cyprus-Gaza passenger line in an attempt to permanently break Israeli sovereignty over the Gaza coast.
The "Free Gaza" movement activists reached the coast in two fishing boats last month after the Foreign Ministry decided not to carry out threats to have the Israel Navy arrest them or turn them back. Ministry officials explained they did not want to give the movement an opportunity to exploit Israeli opposition.

Pro-Arab activists want to prove that the landing was not a one-time publicity stunt and that the breaking of Israeli sovereignty was not just symbolic.

Israel has retained control over air and sea routes in the Gaza area following Israel's uprooting of civilians and the military from the region three years ago. and has said it will continue to do so until the Palestinian Authority (PA) can demonstrate it is able to curtail terror. Last year, Hamas overthrew the Fatah-led PA in Gaza.

Israeli intelligence officials have said that Hamas has used sea routes to smuggle explosives and weapons into Gaza and that surrendering sovereignty would given them free reign to bring in advanced weapons.
Israeli intelligence officials have said that Hamas has used sea routes to smuggle explosives and weapons into Gaza.

After the landing of the two boats last month, Hamas awarded a Gaza passport and honorary citizenship to several activists who could not leave the area because they lacked visas and other security clearance to enter Israel and Egypt through the borders with Gaza. One of those remaining is Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

Seven others boarded the boats on a return trip to Cyprus without interference by the Israeli navy.

Kin Okeiv, an activist in the Popular Committee against the Gaza Siege, said that a new Aloha Palestine Aloha passenger ship company is in the final stages of being established to transfer "patients, students and stranded families" out of the Gaza area.

Palestinian Authority Arabs regularly travel to and from Gaza through the Sufa Crossing each week for medical treatment in pre-1967 Israel without a problem once they have received the proper clearance from the government.

Activists said they plan to send another ship to Gaza from Cyprus next week, depending on weather conditions, and then more ships on a regular basis. In addition, a boat from Yemen is set to sail with a crew of Arabs from around the world.

The Foreign Ministry has not announced whether it will try to stop the ships.

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Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

Ted Belman

The US and EU are putting up $2.3 Billion to redevelop Gaza.

Before advancing any money, why don’t they insist

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250.
Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Iranian reformist daily:Hamas hiding forces in nurseries and hospitals

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

The following is the story in today's Al-Ayyam:

Headline: "Iran closes a reformist newspaper, for publishing a report criticizing Hamas"

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009]
Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]
3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]
6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]
543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]
28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]
1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]
Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,
Arthur James Balfour
[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again. - Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal)

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.