BEIRUT, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) — Hasan Nasrallah, chief of Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah, on Sunday urged Egypt to open Rafah crossing to allow food, water, medicine and weapons to reach Gaza where has been under intensive Israeli offensive, Al-Manar TV reported.

“The Egyptian people should take the streets in millions to force the regime to open the crossings,” Nasrallah was quoted as saying.

Israel prepares for possible Gaza invasion
By DION NISSENBAUM
McClatchy Newspapers

Israel began preparing Sunday for a possible ground offensive into the Gaza Strip as its air force continued to pummel the Hamas-controlled region with dozens of new missile strikes in a “shock and awe”-style operation that killed more than 280 Palestinians in the first 24 hours.

The Israeli military campaign, an attempt to destabilize the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, is the biggest and deadliest there since Israel seized control of the Mediterranean region from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israeli fighters have hit dozens of targets, including a mosque across from Gaza City’s main hospital, police offices, private homes, the Hamas television station and the central prison compound, where dozens of Palestinian inmates were locked in jail cells.

As Palestinians held scores of funerals across the Gaza Strip, Israel began calling up more than 6,500 reservists and moving more tanks to its Gaza border, signs that the Israeli military may be preparing to send in ground forces as the next phase of the campaign.

[Read the report]

by Marc J. Sirois, The Daily Star, 29 December 2008

It is too early to know how far the Israeli government will press its murderous onslaught against the Gaza Strip, but one thing has been clear from the moment the first bomb was dropped: The great majority of those with a responsibility to acknowledge, expose and/or condemn the vicious and cynical nature of the assault will fail to do so.

Even before the attacks began on Saturday, most Western media outlets – those with the widest reach and therefore the greatest influence – were already parroting the rote Israeli line that whatever happened would be “in retaliation” for rocket fire from the enclave. They helpfully reminded us, too, that it was Hamas – the party that rules Gaza – which “ended” a six-month cease-fire.

[Read the article]

‘Little Baghdad’ in Gaza – Bombs, Fear and Rage

By Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, 28 December 2008

There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue.

Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent.

Mustapha Ibrahim saw all this on Saturday at one in the afternoon, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza. As a field investigator for a human rights organization, he thought he’d been immunized, but nothing prepared him for what he saw. Wounded people whose situation was less than serious were asked to leave Shifa, in order to free up beds.

Dr. Haidar Eid is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University. He, too, saw the bodies and the wounded on Saturday. Also the children whose limbs had been amputated.

“To pick a time like this, 11:30 [A.M.], to bomb in the hearts of cities, this is terrible. This choice was intended to cause as large a massacre as possible,” he summed up.

[Read the article]

Laila El-Haddad, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008

We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there — so it has become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe and whether the severity warrants an “international outcry” or whether the animals can continue to suffer in their cages for a while longer.

We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly. We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile, we reach him. He has just returned from al-Shifa hospital — we hold our breaths.

[Read the article]

Related:
Gaza City hospital a gruesome scene; shocked families pick through body parts to identify loved ones

International Witnesses speak out from Gaza

“Israeli missles tore through a children’s playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath – many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza”

– Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movement

‘Israeli ministers war criminals’

Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka, who participated in a rally in Nazareth, called for a general strike by Israel’s Arab community in protest of the operation in Gaza.

“Following this offensive, the world should punish Israel and impose a siege on it, because if the Gaza blockade is the result of the firing, then Israel fired in one day what the Palestinians have fired in five years,” he said.

“I call for the indictment of Barak on war crime charges in Gaza,” he said. “Barak is attempting to win votes in exchange for Palestinian blood, yet it’s not only Barak; all Israeli government ministers are war criminals.”