Flemming Trondsen

Dr. Mads Gilbert (left) during one of the many operations at the Shifa hospital in Gaza, Palestine. Photo: ScanPix.

The Israelis won’t permit the convoy to leave Gaza.

The Norwegian doctors Erik Fosse and Mads Gilbert had planned on leaving Gaza today, and just before 1 o’clock (pm) Norwac’s co-ordinator, John Eivind Jensen, informed that everything was going as planned.

The doctors had intended to take part in a convoy that were to take 10–15 patients out of Gaza City, but this convoy now has been prevented from leaving the area.

-The Israelis won’t let the convoy pass, Dr. Gilbert says to Aftenposten.no.

[Read the report]

I tuned in to MSNBC today as news interpreter, Andrea Mitchell, was inviting Saban Center front man, Martin Indyk, to wrap his opinion that “history plays tricks on people” around Yasir Arafat’s failure to accept Barak’s “generous offer.” I switched off before he replied.

Bill Clinton, Martin Indyk and Dennis “The Menace” Ross held between them not even one iota of sincerity in brokering peace. In its historical context, the Camp David failure was intentional and enabled the ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza today.

Mrs. Greenspan’s historical footnote:
“Old media propagandist who plundered the public trust; her second husband an overseer of financial crimes of epic proportions committed against the people in the darkest of times.”

Helena Cobban writes:

On Dec. 31, the US Military Sealift Command published a solicitation for bids from shipping companies to ship two boats, each containing 168 TEU’s (twenty-foot equivalent container units) of ammunition, from Greece to Israel.

(HT: Danger Room.)

[Read more]

By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, 8 January 2009

Red Cross officials said rescue crews had received specific reports of casualties in the houses and had been trying since Saturday to send ambulances to the area, located in Zaytoun, a neighborhood south of Gaza City. They said the Israeli military did not grant permission until Wednesday afternoon.

In an unusual public statement issued by its Geneva headquarters, the Red Cross called the episode “unacceptable” and said the Israeli military had “failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.”

When rescue workers from the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent arrived at the site, they found 12 corpses lying on mattresses in one home, along with four young children lying next to their dead mothers, the Red Cross said. The children were too weak to stand and were rushed to a hospital, the agency said.

Mr. Obama was so “concerned” by this latest outrage that he leaked the appointment of the unacceptable Dennis Ross as his Middle East envoy.

Both links via As’ad AbuKhalil’s indispensable coverage and analysis of the ongoing atrocities.

Updated @1056 on 8/1/2009:
Jim Lobe has more on Ross and a position that seems to have been created especially for him. He “will not reprise his former role as special Arab-Israeli peace envoy, a post that will be held by someone else”, but will act as “a sort of Middle East ‘czar'” overseeing all matters including US policy on Iran.