The Egyptian forces harshly used force to disperse demonstrators, arrested hundreds and beat hundreds others. Many citizens have come from all governorates along with activisits across the political spectrum to attend the demonstration in front of the Egyptian Press Syndicate but the Egyptian forces turned the place into a military barracks and dealt toughly with the demonstrators.
In the same context, Egyptian security forces arrested also on Wednesday afternoon 18 Muslim Brotherhood members. The detainees- from the governorate of Al Fayum- were on their way to take part in a demonstration that Egyptian national powers for holding today at 3.00PM to voice their protest and rejection to unjust Zionist assault on Palestinian Gaza Strip.
DAMASCUS, (PIC)– Khaled Mishaal, the political bureau chief of Hamas Movement, is to meet on Wednesday with visiting Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Damascus, well informed Hamas sources revealed on Tuesday.
The Israeli daily Ha’aretzreports that the IDF, long planning for such an operation, received final authorization the morning of Friday the 26th. That day, Major General Amiram Levin (res.) spoke on IDF Radio and conveyed the flavour of Israeli military doctrine regarding the then impending attack: “The whole issue of fighting against and bringing down the Hamas regime is a mistake and very difficult to achieve. What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide.”[1]
[…]
As for the diplomatic component of this assault, there is little question that the timing was cynically calculated in an effort to reduce international pressure. Some are happy with the results. Ha’aretz military correspondent Amir Oren, for instance, writes that “Israel’s timing of the offensive is actually pretty good: Both the paratroopers and the Golani brigade, which was going to replace them, maintained a high level of preparedness while most of the international inspectors in the region went home for Christmas – only 15 remain in Gaza.” A similar dynamic has compounded the effects of Israeli restrictions in limiting the presence of foreign media correspondents.
JOINT ADVOCACY INITIATIVE
The East Jerusalem YMCA
YWCA of Palestine
BREAK THE SILENCE AND ACT TO STOP THE MASSACRES IN GAZA
As the World celebrates Christmas and prepares to welcome the New Year, Israel hit the Gaza strip with most vicious and deadliest air strikes since 1967 killing almost 388 people amongst which are 46 children and 16 women, and injuring over 1,750 others. The Israeli officials had the nerves to announce that this is just the beginning and the worst is yet to come!
We at United Palestinian Appeal have a simple sign near our computers. It reads: What have we done for Gaza today?
For 18 months, since Israel imposed a near-total blockade of Gaza, we could answer that question, however humbly, with news of another modest grant – $30,000 to provide hot meals for a thousand malnourished kindergartners, $40,000 to purchase supplies for healthcare clinics, $50,000 to train young people in first aid.
Last Saturday we had no answers.
Hours after the jets screamed in, dropping 100 tons of bombs and claiming more Palestinian lives in one day than in the worst year of the first Intifada, we spoke with a physician at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He detailed the tragedy:
Gaza / PNN – In the fourth day of massacre on Gaza Israeli forces the death toll has reached 385 with the number of injuries at 1,700 as of 8:00 pm.
On Tuesday evening Israeli forces renewed the bombardment of the southern Gaza Strip’s Rafah. The Israelis claim to have destroyed several tunnels. An Israeli military spokesperson also said that rumors it was seeking a “cease-fire” are untrue.
On Tuesday evening Arab and western media reports indicating the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was seeking to stop operations in Gaza were denied. Also denied were reports that Hamas was seeking a “renewal of the calm.”
In the north’s Gaza City as sun set Israeli planes fired into the Al Zeitoun and Sabra neighborhoods destroying a workshop and a dairy.
Targets are vast while those hit include children and families in mourning. Israeli forces dropped a missile which partially destroyed a house that was hosting a gathering of mourners. Speaking to news crews a man with blood coming from his forehead said, “We will all be martyrs.”
Violence at Gaza protest in Yemen UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
19:11 Mecca time, 16:11 GMT
Demonstrators in Beirut, Lebanon – angry over Egypt’s response to Israel’s raids on Gaza – attacked the Egyptian embassy, throwing stones before police used tear gas to disperse them.
Protests have also been held outside the Egyptian embassy in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
Egypt has come under heavy criticism from Arab and Muslim countries over its refusal to re-open its border crossing with the Gaza Strip at Rafah over the past year, thereby aiding Israel’s blockade of the territory.
Mubarak announced on Egyptian television on Tuesday that the Rafah crossing will not be fully re-opened until Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, regains authority in the territory.
Updated @1324 on 30/12/2008 Before Our Very Eyes
Israel’s Attempted Endgame in Gaza
By Jennifer Loewenstein, CounterPunch, 29 December 2008
From the 7th floor of his high-rise apartment building looking out over Gaza City on Saturday night, S. describes the view as “a sea of blackness”. The familiar twinkling of lights that defines the contours of a city after dark is missing, as if the place itself had been erased from the earth. Without electricity, without cooking gas or automobile fuel; without heat to warm the winter-chilled flats across this stretch of land, or generators to back up the hospitals and clinics; without supplies for schools and universities, for personal and collective health and hygiene, or for repairing any part of this broken down hovel of a strip; without water to drink or cook with or bathe in, without reading lamps and, lately, without the candles or other substitutes used for light, people are making haste to adjust yet again to the latest set of conditions imposed upon them as the US-backed siege of Gaza closes in on another dying December day.
Their resilience is inspirational but painful. Tomorrow S. will head down to Rafah, to the border city, where kerosene is still available albeit for quadruple the normal price –or more: A system of nearly 800 smuggling tunnels running from Rafah, Gaza to Rafah, Egypt, controlled by a few savvy black-marketeer families and up to now tacitly supported by Israel, appears to be nearing collapse as well as everything else. Rumors of an Israeli Air Force strike that would doom the last remaining big business venture in the Strip have helped shut them down, even the ones licensed by the Hamas government, which got its share of goods for the best prices as the once-illegal smuggling industry turned for a brief period of time into Gaza’s only reliable all-purpose supply-line. On Sunday the rumors caved in on the tunnels as bulldozers and bomber jets blasted them flat. Now the supply line has been cut, the siege persists, the US condemns Hamas, refusing to ask for Israeli restraint. In Rafah, the demise of the tunnels – like the recently re-fortified border closure on the Egyptian side of the Crossing—has an ominous finality about it that should give us pause before we turn our faces away.
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