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Abbas Puts Peace Talks on Hold as Israel Continues Military Offensive in Gaza •
Thousands of Jordanians Hold Anti-Israel March •
Israeli's Use of "Holocaust" Has Fallout •
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Israel Pulls Troops Out of Gaza
BBC News
Monday 03 March 2008
Most Israeli troops have pulled out of northern Gaza after days of fighting
that has left more than 100 people dead and drawn protest worldwide.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas claimed victory over Israeli forces and
mounted a rally in Gaza City.
Five militants were killed in Israeli air strikes overnight, while several
other Palestinians were found dead as Israeli forces withdrew.
Israel said the operation was launched to defend itself against rocket attack.
Medical sources say at least 112 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday,
when Israel intensified its campaign in Gaza.
Three Israelis have died - a civilian killed by a rocket on Wednesday, and
two soldiers since.
There has been widespread international alarm at the scale of the Israeli action
and West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has formally suspended
contacts with Israel in protest.
Street Protests
On Monday, Israeli armoured vehicles left the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern
Gaza, scene of some of the bloodiest ground fighting.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon told Army Radio: "This operation
has run its course. The main goal of the Israeli government... is to end the
firing [of rockets] at targets in the south.
"There were dozens of deaths among the Hamas terrorists - this is certainly
deterrence."
Israeli aircraft made at least eight different strikes early on Monday, killing
five Palestinian militants, Palestinian sources said.
However, a spokesman for militant group Hamas told Reuters: "The enemy
has been defeated."
And the barrage of rockets fired at Israel was not stopped, with more than
25 being launched on Sunday, and several reaching Ashkelon, a city of nearly
120,000 people, the Israeli military said.
At least two more rockets struck Ashkelon on Monday after the Israeli withdrawal.
Hamas called a rally in Gaza City following the withdrawal, while a number
of funerals were scheduled for those killed in the fighting.
In the West Bank, there have been demonstrations against the Israeli raids
in Hebron, Bethlehem, Qalqilya, and the villages around Ramallah.
A number of protesters were reported to have been injured in clashes in Hebron,
and a teenager was shot dead near Birzeit university in Ramallah.
Israeli forces closed off the village of Nea'leen near Ramallah, while they
carried out an operation.
"It Needs to Stop"
The administration of US President George W Bush joined international calls
for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, saying: "The violence needs to stop
and the talks need to resume."
With US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice due to arrive for talks with the
Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a US state department official said: "We're
encouraging Israel to exercise caution to avoid the loss of innocent life."
The European Union criticised what it called Israel's ''disproportionate use
of force'' and also demanded an immediate end to Palestinian militant rocket
attacks on Israel.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, one of Israel's few Muslim allies,
said there was "no humane or legal justification for the attacks on Gaza''.
Mr Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, blamed Israel for the suspension of
talks on all levels.
"In light of the Israeli aggression such communication has no meaning,"
he said.
A spokesman for Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Arye Mekel, said the
Palestinian decision was a mistake and expressed hope negotiations would resume.
Mr Abbas restarted the talks after a conference in November in the US city
of Annapolis.
Go to Original
Abbas Puts Peace Talks on Hold as Israel Continues Military Offensive
in Gaza
By Isabel Kershner
The New York Times
Monday 03 March 2008
Ashkelon, Israel - Israeli-Palestinian violence spilled over from Gaza
to the West Bank on Sunday, and a spokesman for the Western-backed Palestinian
president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, said contacts with Israel had been temporarily
suspended "in light of the Israeli aggression."
These developments were likely to mar further a visit by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice to the region that is to start Monday.
Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more rockets into Israel on Sunday, including
some imported, longer-range ones that hit this Israeli coastal city and the
desert town of Netivot, despite days of harsh Israeli military action against
the rocket launchers and the continued presence of a large Israeli ground force
in northern Gaza.
The rockets caused damage to property but no serious injury, said Micky Rosenfeld,
an Israeli police spokesman.
At least 10 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Sunday by Israeli fire, local
hospital officials said, bringing the number of Palestinians killed since Wednesday,
when the latest surge in hostilities began, to more than 100.
Israel says that most of those killed were armed militants, but Palestinian
officials say that more than half were civilians, including several children.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza early Monday killed five militants, Hamas said.
The Israeli military said its aircraft were aiming at weapons storage and manufacturing
facilities, The Associated Press reported.
A spokesman for the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, said Sunday
that 35 members of his group had been killed. About nine militants from smaller
groups like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees were also reported
among the dead. Hamas, the militant Islamic group, took control of the Gaza
Strip last June after routing the pro-Abbas forces there. Its military wing
has claimed responsibility for most of the recent rocket fire.
In the West Bank, as protests broke out against the spiraling death toll in
Gaza, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian boy, Mahmoud al-Masalmeh, 14, near
Hebron and dispersed stone-throwing demonstrators in several other areas.
Regarding the death of the youth, near Hebron, an Israeli Army spokeswoman
said that there had been "very violent disturbances" in the area
and that soldiers had opened fire on two Palestinians who were acting suspiciously
near the West Bank barrier in the course of the disturbances, hitting at least
one of them.
Two Israeli soldiers who were killed in the fighting in Gaza on Saturday were
buried in Israel on Sunday.
The increase in violence started Wednesday when five members of the Qassam
Brigades were killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. Israeli military
officials said that the squad had intended to carry out a special operation
against Israel, possibly involving infiltrating the border and capturing a soldier.
Militants in Gaza responded by firing barrages of rockets at Sderot, killing
an Israeli civilian, the first such fatality in months. On Thursday they started
launching longer-range, manufactured Katyusha-style rockets at Ashkelon, a city
of 120,000 people about 10 miles north of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials described the firing of the longer-range rockets as a serious
escalation of the conflict, and they mounted a ground and air campaign in northern
Gaza that left more than 60 Palestinians dead on Saturday.
In Gaza City on Sunday, two more bodies were pulled out of a house that was
bombed by the Israeli air force the day before, bringing the number of fatalities
there to six. One member of the family was known to be a member of the Qassam
Brigades. Ahed Atallah, a family member who was not in the house at the time,
said that only he and a married sister had survived.
Late Sunday afternoon, militants fired two more missiles into Ashkelon, one
of which damaged a house, the police said. The residents escaped unharmed.
Three hours earlier, Meram Levy, 30, a mother of two young children, was carrying
shards of broken glass out of her apartment after a longer-range rocket had
landed outside before dawn on Saturday, shattering all the windows.
"At night I'm very scared," Ms. Levy said. She and her husband
are now sleeping in shifts, she said, to listen out for the alert on the city's
new public address system.
The popular Ashkelon marina was also hit by a rocket on Saturday afternoon,
lightly wounding two local residents. Pini Biton, who owns a restaurant at the
marina, said the militants in Gaza had "crossed all the red lines."
The outdoor cafes and bars there were empty at lunchtime Sunday, despite the
fine weather.
The fact that the rockets had reached Ashkelon made Israelis realize that "they
can get anywhere," Mr. Biton said.
Before dawn on Sunday, the air force struck three targets in Gaza that the
army spokeswoman described as Hamas headquarters and weapons-storage facilities.
Among the targets was a headquarters of Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza,
Palestinian and Israeli officials said. It was empty at the time.
The air force also struck against armed militants in northern Gaza on Sunday
afternoon, said the army spokeswoman.
A senior Israeli military official said the army was trying to hit the sites
where rockets are stored, many of which are located in or near civilian homes.
Abu Obeida, the Qassam Brigades spokesman, told reporters in Gaza that his
group would continue firing rockets.
In remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert responded to international criticism of Israel's actions in
Gaza, saying that "nobody has the right to preach morality to the State
of Israel for taking basic action to defend itself."
Mr. Olmert also seemed to reject the argument by Mr. Abbas that peace talks
cannot carry on in the shadow of the events in Gaza. "The more that Hamas
is hit, the greater the chances of reaching a diplomatic agreement and peace,"
Mr. Olmert said. He added that beyond their public statements, "the Palestinian
leadership with whom we are trying to make peace understands this."
--------
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Taghreed
El-Khodary from Gaza City.
Go to Original
Thousands of Jordanians Hold Anti-Israel March
Reuters
Sunday 02 March 2008
Amman - Crying for revenge with suicide attacks, thousands of Jordanians marched
in the capital of the pro-U.S. kingdom on Sunday to protest against Israel's
Gaza offensive that had killed more than 100 Palestinians.
About 10,000 protesters, mainly from Jordan's mainstream Muslim Brotherhood
and smaller opposition groups, took to the streets in one of the country's most
vocal and largest anti-Israeli demonstrations in recent years.
"O Hamas, O Hamas, bring the suicide bombers ... Victory to Hamas and
defeat to the Jews and Americans," chanted the crowds, who called on the
Islamist militant group to resume suicide attacks and intensify rocket strikes
against Israel.
Israel's deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling
out in 2005 provoked angry reactions among Jordanians, many of whom are of Palestinian
origin.
A 21-month-old girl, two other civilians and three militants were killed in
the latest fighting in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, raising the Palestinian death
toll in five days of bloodshed to more than 100, including about 60 civilians,
medics said.
Israel said it was acting in self-defence to curb cross-border rocket attacks
by militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and threatened to intensify
its ground and air campaign despite allegations it was using excessive force.
Defying government curbs on street marches, thousands have taken to the streets
inside many of Jordan's squalid camps and poor districts of the capital under
the watchful eyes of the authorities to show solidarity with their brethren.
Jordanian officials have been alarmed by Israel's military offensive and worry
it could derail U.S. backed peace moves between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
They fear it broadens the popularity of the Islamist movement among a majority
of poor Jordanians, many of them living in refugee camps and disenchanted with
the U.S.-led Middle East peace process.
The demonstrators lambasted Arab rulers, accusing them of complicity with Israel
and standing idly by as ordinary Gazans are killed.
"Shame on you, Shame on you rulers. You have betrayed your people ...
Open the borders and let us fight the Jews," youths chanted.
--------
Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, editing by Sami Aboudi.
Go to Original
Israeli's Use of "Holocaust" Has Fallout
By Ashraf Khalil
The Los Angeles Times
Sunday 02 March 2008
Palestinians and others pounce on minister's
use of the word 'shoah' for Gaza operations to criticize Israel's actions. Aides
says he only meant to imply a disaster.
Jerusalem - The Hebrew word shoah, or holocaust, is not used casually
in Israeli society. Occasionally, it is employed to denote a massive disaster.
This weekend, though, Arab politicians and international pro-Palestinian activists,
seizing on a comment by an Israeli minister, are calling the bloody Israeli
incursion in the Gaza Strip a holocaust.
In what may prove to be a significant miscalculation, Israeli Deputy Defense
Minister Matan Vilnai on Friday used the term in warning of more military action
in Gaza.
By allowing constant rocket barrages from Gaza on nearby Israeli cities, the
Palestinians, Vilnai said, were "bringing upon themselves a greater shoah
because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether
in airstrikes or on the ground."
As the three-day death toll in Gaza climbed toward triple digits, senior Hamas
leader Khaled Mashaal accused Israel of "implementing a real holocaust
against the Palestinian people for the past 60 years. What is happening today
in Gaza is a new holocaust."
The nongovernmental Palestinian Information Center issued a statement calling
Vilnai's words "the first indirect admission by an Israeli official that
what Israel is conducting against the Palestinians in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip is a holocaust, albeit a slow-motion one."
Given the Arab reaction and the rising Palestinian death toll, Vilnai's use
of the word is proving controversial within Israel as well.
As one Israeli commentator put it on a weblog: "This is a disastrous case
of the foot-in-mouth disease, all too common among the contemporary breed of
Israeli politicians. Terrible timing, too."
Vilnai's aides released a statement saying the former career army officer had
only meant to imply a disaster. Others defended him as a victim of sloppy out-of-context
translation.
Tom Gross, a media affairs columnist for the conservative National Review Online,
said there was a major difference between "a shoah" and "THE
shoah."
"It is like confusing a 'white house' with 'The White House,' " Gross
wrote.
At the very least, Vilnai's comment has opened a new front in the Middle East
rhetorical war, with critics of Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories
apparently seeing it as license to use the word at will.
Critics have compared the Israeli government to the Nazis and termed the barrier
being built through the West Bank an "apartheid wall." But they generally
avoided invoking the word "holocaust" in describing the plight of
the Palestinians.
But Saturday, even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a bitter
rival of the Islamic movement Hamas, called the Israeli incursion into Hamas-run
Gaza "more than a holocaust."
In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef issued a statement
condemning the Gaza operation and adding, "I will quote the Israeli Defense
minister as describing it as a holocaust."
Mashaal, the senior Hamas leader, used the term multiple times while speaking
to reporters from Damascus, Syria, where he lives in exile. He accused Israel
of exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to "blackmail the world"
and justify its actions in the Palestinian territories.
"Israel wants to exaggerate the Holocaust when it comes to numbers and
make from it a tragedy such that no other can have their own tragedy,"
he said. "The Palestinian people are the victims, and Israel is the hangman
and killer."
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ashraf.khalil@latimes.com
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