Amnesty probes Israel's use of banned white phosphorus in Gaza by Jacques Clement JAN 23,09
GAZA (AFP) – For Amnesty International the evidence was all there: a hole in a burnt-out ceiling, fragments of a shell -- and a substance that bursts into flames at the slightest contact.White phosphorus is an incendiary weapon, but in civilian areas it is banned under an international convention.Amnesty is investigating its use by the Israeli military during a 22-day assault against the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.On Monday, January 5, Israeli artillery bombarded the outskirts of Beit Lahiya town in the northern Gaza Strip.Sabah Abu Halima and her family rushed to the top floor of their house, to shelter in a corridor without windows and escape any flying glass.Two weeks later in the same location, Chris Cobb-Smith, a British weapons expert, recounts what happened next:Here the white phosphorus comes through the roof, detonates as it hits the wall and distributes the pieces of white phosphorus within the house, and that's the explanation for the severe burning that you see around, he says.Since last weekend, Cobb-Smith has criss-crossed the Gaza Strip with an Amnesty delegation investigating the Israeli army's use of phosphorous bombs, which burst into flames on contact with oxygen.Such weapons are regulated by the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, more specifically by Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons, which bans them in civilian areas.Five civilians were killed and four wounded, including Sabah Abu Halima herself, when her Beit Lahiya home was hit.It hurts me terribly, my skin is burning. I don't sleep any more, neither day nor night, she said in the burns unit of Gaza's Shifa hospital. Halima may be evacuated to Egypt along with the three other members of her family who were wounded.
Gaza hospitals have been inundated with victims of white phosphorus, which they don't know how to treat as the substance has never been used in the Gaza Strip, says Elizabeth Hodgkin, who worked as a Middle East researcher for Amnesty from 1994 to 2002.At Shifa hospital, survivors recount how their wounds began smoking when they washed them or took off their bandages, as white phosphorus remains active for a long time and continues to burn when you try to smother it.It explodes on contact with the air and is used by armies mainly to create a smokescreen or to mark targets for aerial bombardment, says Cobb-Smith, a former British army soldier.There is absolutely no military, tactical reason for the use of white phosphorus in this environment, he says.I believe it's just being purely used as a weapon of terror to frighten, to intimidate people. Obviously it's going to cause physical harm as well because it can kill people and it can destroy property.Amnesty, which considers its use in heavily-populated areas a war crime, has found many phosphorous particles in civilian areas, including Gaza's Al-Quds hospital, says Donatella Rovera, the head of the Amnesty team.She called for an investigation by the United Nations into alleged crimes committed by both sides in the Gaza war. Eventual sanctions would depend on the political will of the countries which have influence, essentially the United States and the European Union, Rovera says. Israel has not denied using white phosphorus but at the same says that it does not use weapons banned by international conventions.However, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the army was investigating the possible use of a phosphorous shell in Beit Lahiya.
Guns silent as Gaza edges back to normalcy By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer JAN 23,2009
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Gaza residents headed for Friday communal prayers and Israeli naval guns were largely silent as grief and shock began to mix with a palpable sense of relief in the coastal strip pounded by weeks of Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults.Gazans filled mosques without fear of Israeli strikes for the first time since cease-fires were declared by Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers Sunday. Residents had endured weeks of non-stop gunfire along Gaza's coast after Israel launched a devastating offensive in late December.Near two destroyed Gaza City mosques on Friday, men spread carpets on sandy ground to prepare for open-air prayers. In the main market of the Jebaliya refugee camp, large crowds shopped ahead of prayers and restaurants fired up huge vats with meat, cooking on wood fires because of a shortage of gas.Fruit merchants boasted shipments of apples and bananas from Israel. One owner said it was the first time in five months he'd been able to sell fresh apples.The three-week Israeli offensive killed 1,285 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Thirteen Israelis were also killed during the fighting, according to the government.Despite signs that life was beginning to return to normal in Gaza, the six-day-old truce remained fragile, and the sides' main demands for a durable cease-fire deal were unmet.
Israel insists on guarantees that Hamas will stop smuggling weapons into Gaza and halt its rocket fire on southern Israel, while Hamas wants Gaza's borders open to ensure delivery of vital supplies.President Barack Obama addressed both stands on Thursday, saying his administration supported implementation of a credible system for stopping smuggling and calling for Gaza's borders to be opened for aid shipments, with appropriate monitoring.Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians, Obama said. I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days, and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who have faced suffocating poverty for far too long.Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told The Associated Press during a visit to Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday that he was unimpressed by Obama's comments.
It is a real pity what Obama has said, because his statements were a repeat of what the previous president, George W. Bush, has said, Abu Zuhri said.What has actually happened was a form of self defense against Israel's colonization. What Obama should have said was how he could pressure Israel to stop its colonization in Palestine. If he said that, we would really appreciate it.Abu Zuhri said Hamas would keep up its fight against Israel. As we are being colonized, it is our obligation to defend our motherland, he said. We want to free all Palestine, not just Gaza.Hamas' leaders, who claim they won the fight against Israel, appear firmly in control of Gaza and now insist the money needed to reconstruct the devastated territory must go through them. This puts the United Nations and donor countries in a difficult position since Hamas refuses to discuss peace with Israel and is listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and Europe.Israel, for its part, is coming under fire internationally for what critics say was its use of disproportionate force during its Gaza offensive.After several cases in the past in which lawsuits were filed abroad against Israeli officers, Israel's government is taking steps to protect military officials from legal action stemming from the Gaza operation.Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed a government team to make legal preparations for such action. The team will begin work next week, said Shiri Crispin, a spokeswoman for Israel's Justice Ministry. She would not give more specific details.For the same reason, Israel's military censor issued new orders this week forbidding media from publishing the names or photographs of officers between the rank of company commander and battalion commander. The officers can only be identified by the first letter of their name and their unit. In an interview published Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv, Olmert defended the Gaza operation. He said he cried when he heard about the death of the three daughters of Palestinian physician Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, an incident that was widely covered in Israel because the doctor trained in Israel and has many Israeli acquaintances. I cried when I saw this. Who didn't? How could you not? Olmert said. But Olmert criticized accusations about Israel's cruelty, saying Israel did what it needed to do to stop incessant rocket fire at its civilians and protect its troops. When you win, you automatically hurt more than you've been hurt. And we didn't want to lose this campaign. What did you want, for hundreds of our soldiers to die? That, after all, was the alternative, he said.
Associated Press writers Karin Laub and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City contributed to this report.
Happy with wartime leaders — and Netanyahu, too By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jan 23, 3:22 am ET
JERUSALEM – With a general election less than three weeks away, Israel's bruising offensive against the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers has revived the flagging approval ratings of the country's wartime leaders.But polls suggest it might not be enough to deny the premiership to their main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish former prime minister who opposes his government's U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians.Whoever wins will have to put together a coalition government and wide splits in Israeli society will mean another badly fragmented parliament that could doom the new regime to a short life.February's election will be Israel's fifth in a decade. The constant political turmoil has interfered with attempts to move Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts along, as Israel frequently does not have a strong enough government to make significant moves.Polls show Defense Minister Ehud Barak, head of the center-left Labor Party gained the most from the Gaza offensive. In a Jan. 14 poll, Barak's personal approval rating climbed to an all-time high of 70 percent, up from 53 percent two weeks earlier, pollster Camil Fuchs said.The head of the governing Kadima Party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, scored a 51 percent approval rating, up from 47 percent. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also rose in the public's estimation, to 46 percent from 14 percent a few months ago and 33 percent in the previous poll, Fuchs said. Olmert turned in his resignation in September because of burgeoning corruption investigations.
The Israeli public firmly backed the 22-day war, mounted to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel from Gaza. Israeli casualties were relatively low, at 13, compared with some 1,300 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza health officials.Israelis vote for parties, not for candidates. Seats in the parliament are divided among the parties in proportion to the votes they get, and the leader of the largest party is chosen to form a new government.The perceived successes of the offensive have not diminished the popularity of Netanyahu's Likud Party, surveys show. A poll Fuchs conducted immediately after Israel ceased fire on Sunday put Likud as front-runner with 29 of parliament's 120 seats.Kadima, led by Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, would win 26. Labor would get 14, up from as few as six before the war but not nearly enough to let Barak reclaim the premiership he briefly held a decade ago.More important, Israel's bloc of hawkish parties polled stronger than dovish parties — just as it did before the war — winning 64 seats. That would be enough to crown Netanyahu premier as head of a hardline coalition government.The poll conducted for the Dialog company surveyed 560 people and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.A separate survey by the New Wave polling company, published Thursday, gave Likud 35 seats, a gain of two from it's last poll on Jan. 7. Kadima had 25, down two, and Labor was unchanged at 15. The hawkish bloc accounted for 65 seats. Pollsters questioned 623 people and the margin of error was 3.9 percentage points.Conflicting emotions about the war could explain why there was no shift on the hawk-dove divide, said political science Professor Avraham Diskin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Many Israelis were disappointed that their government halted the onslaught before receiving assurances the rocket fire and arms smuggling into Hamas-ruled Gaza would stop.People overwhelmingly supported the war but at the same time there is a sense among the public of a mission not completed and these two things pull in opposite directions, he said.A separate Fuchs poll taken Sunday buttressed political analyst Efraim Inbar's claim that most Israelis see a big missed opportunity.On Sunday, after the cease-fire was declared, 41 percent of those surveyed said they thought the war had failed — equal to the number of those who said it had succeeded. Three days earlier, Fuchs said, 78 percent of respondents thought the offensive was successful.
Netanyahu had long attacked the government for not crushing Gaza militants. But analysts said he played a smart hand by lining up behind the government during the offensive and defending it in interviews against international criticism of the steep Palestinian death toll. He was perceived as a very statesmanlike figure, said Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Now that campaigning can begin in earnest, Netanyahu might be able to woo voters disillusioned with the cease-fire, Inbar said.
Israel rules out opening Gaza border if Hamas gains By Adam Entous Adam Entous – Thu Jan 22, 8:12 pm ET
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel has all but ruled out fully reopening border crossings with the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas rules the enclave or stands to benefit from easing of the restrictions, a top adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.Hamas has made a shaky ceasefire, which ended Israel's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, conditional on Israel lifting its blockade, which, the adviser made clear, would not happen anytime soon.The Islamist group, which won a 2006 Palestinian election and seized control of the Gaza Strip 18 months later after routing President Mahmoud Abbas's security forces, has been shunned by major Western powers for refusing to recognize Israel and renounce violence.Speaking a day after Olmert spoke by telephone to U.S. President Barack Obama, the adviser expressed confidence the new administration in Washington would maintain George W. Bush's policy of refusing to deal with or talk to Hamas.The adviser spoke to a small group of reporters at Israel's military headquarters in Tel Aviv, on condition of anonymity.The adviser said Israel would allow the "maximum" flow of food, medicine, oil and gas to the Gaza Strip to help its 1.5 million residents recover from the offensive, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, but a wider range of goods, including steel and cement needed for rebuilding, would have to wait.Israel believes the restrictions will give it leverage to pressure Hamas to free Gilad Shalit, a captured Israeli soldier. Diplomats and aid agencies say the restrictions will doom Gaza's reconstruction, estimated to cost at least $2 billion.
Olmert's adviser said Israel's underlying goal was to deny Hamas control over border crossings that could help it cement its hold on power. If opening the passages will strengthen Hamas, we won't do it, he said.European powers have called on Israel to reopen the border crossings fully.The adviser said he doubted Hamas would agree to let Abbas's security forces, backed by international observers, return to the border crossings, as Israel and Egypt have proposed.
ABBAS QUELLED WEST BANK RIOTS
He said Abbas's forces did something remarkable in the West Bank by containing riots and demonstrations during the war in Gaza but added that they were not ready for Gaza.It's a limited force. And in order to take it to Gaza, I think they need first more training, more forces, and this is something that takes time.Even if Hamas agreed to let Abbas's Palestinian Authority run the crossings, Israel believes Hamas would maintain control behind the scenes and take over within days, he said.It's all nice, as an idea. But at the end of the day, if the PA (Palestinian Authority) will not go back to control Gaza, the issue of passages will be controlled by Hamas, no matter how, in what disguise you'll give it, the adviser said.This will cement the ability of Hamas to rule, and to rule the passages, he added.Western diplomats and Palestinian officials complained that Israel was already throwing up obstacles to Gaza's recovery.This week, Israel told the United Nations and other aid groups planning for the rebuilding that they must apply for project-by-project Israeli approval and provide guarantees none of the work will benefit Hamas. Israel has also prevented Abbas's government in the occupied West Bank from transferring cash to the Gaza Strip to pay Palestinian Authority workers and others in need of assistance.
Olmert's adviser denied preventing cash shipments but acknowledged the big dilemma facing Israel on reconstruction. The main focus now is how to allow all the needed goods, and I don't think that cement or metal is the needed goods now for the population, the adviser said, referring to materials Israel fears Hamas will use to make more weapons and bunkers. The adviser said the goal was a mechanism that would ensure that credit for reconstruction does not accrue to the Iran-backed Hamas, which announced on Thursday that it would distribute up to 4,000 euros ($5,180) in cash to families hard hit by Israel's offensive. One potential disadvantage of funneling international reconstruction aid through the Palestinian Authority was that Hamas would be spared the financial burden of rebuilding, he added. Hamas could then use its resources to rebuild its military capabilities. (Editing by Tim Pearce)
Obama lays out vision for Middle East peace by Jo Biddle Jo Biddle – Thu Jan 22, 4:58pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama vowed Thursday to aggressively pursue Middle East peace as for the first time since taking office he laid out his vision for ending the age-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In a sign of his determination to act quickly, Obama and new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named veteran negotiator George Mitchell as a high-profile special envoy to the region.Mitchell, who helped forge a peace deal in Northern Ireland, will travel to the Middle East as soon as possible armed with a commitment to seeking to secure two states living side by side in peace, the new president said.It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Obama added on his first visit to the State Department since his inauguration on Tuesday.In his most comprehensive comments since Israel launched its deadliest ever assault on the Gaza Strip on December 27, Obama mourned the situation of the Palestinians caught in the recent conflict in the impoverished territory.I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days, and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza.Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water and basic medical care, and who have faced suffocating poverty for far too long.Just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis, is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.
But he also warned Hamas militants, who seized control of Gaza in 2007, that they must halt rocket fire on southern Israel and that Washington would continue to support Israel's right to defend itself.For years Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, Obama said.To be a genuine party to peace ... Hamas must meet clear conditions, recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and abide by past agreements.Obama had signaled his intention to put the Middle East conflict high on his agenda when he phoned Arab and Israeli leaders on his first full day in office on Wednesday.And earlier Thursday Clinton also worked the phones and called Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, promising to work toward a durable peace in the Middle East, Palestinian officials said.Obama pledged Mitchell would be leaving as soon as possible for the region to help shore up the fragile Gaza ceasefire. He would also work to secure a wider peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.The new president urged Israel to open up the border crossings into Gaza to allow aid and commerce to start flowing and for relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them.Obama added he would support an international donors conference set to meet in Egypt next month to raise funds to rebuild the devastated Gaza Strip.Palestinian officials have estimated the damage from Israel's 22-day offensive against Hamas militants at some two billion dollars.Medics said 1,330 people died and 5,450 were wounded. According to the Palestinian Authority some 4,000homes were razed and 17,000 damaged. Obama also vowed that the United States would support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.Mitchell, renowned for his negotiating skills honed in Northern Ireland and the Arab-Israeli conflict, immediately pledged my full effort in the search for peace and stability in the Middle East.The president and Clinton believe, as I do, that the pursuit of peace is so important, that it demands our maximum effort, no matter the difficulties, no matter the setbacks.Mitchell, 75, acknowledged there were many reasons to be skeptical about the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But the president and the secretary of state don't believe that. The key is the mutual commitment of the parties, and the active participation of the United States government, he said.
Israeli envoy leaves Egypt after discussing lasting Gaza truce by Hala Boncompagni –Thu Jan 22, 3:39 pm ET
CAIRO (AFP) – Israeli envoy Amos Gilad held talks on Thursday with Egyptian officials on clinching a lasting truce with Hamas expected to focus on stemming arms smuggling across the porous Gaza-Egypt border.The defence ministry negotiator headed home after spending several hours in Cairo where the state news agency MENA had said he was to meet with senior officials to discuss consolidating the ceasefire in Gaza.
There was no immediate comment on the secret talks' outcome.Gilad, a reserve general, visited Egypt at least twice during the Israeli war on Gaza. Last year, he was Israel's pointman in talks that led to a six-month Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas that expired on December 19.Egypt had also invited Hamas for separate talks on Thursday to shore up the fragile ceasefire that took effect on January 18, but the Islamists will only send a delegation to Cairo on Sunday, the foreign ministry said.
Hamas postponed the visit to allow for more consultations between Egypt and Israel on durable ceasefire that would be acceptable to both sides, a senior official told MENA.During the 22-day Israeli blitz on Gaza which killed 1,330 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met separately with Israeli and Hamas officials to negotiate a truce based on a three-point proposal by President Hosni Mubarak.The January 6 proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire, opening up the isolated territory's crossing points and resuming Palestinian reconciliation talks.But the thorniest goal will be to find a permanent solution to the root causes of Israel's blitz of Gaza, which include arms smuggling into Gaza.Israel warned anew on Thursday that the military could launch fresh attacks attacks against the network of tunnels it says are used to smuggle weapons under the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt.For the tunnels, nothing will be as it was before, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said. Things must be clear -- Israel reserves the right to react militarily against the tunnels once and for all.An AFP journalist reported from the Egyptian border that hundreds of Palestinian smugglers have resumed work on the tunnels.Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 with the stated aim of halting rocket attacks from Gaza. It says the rockets are smuggled in through tunnels under the Rafah border -- the only Gaza crossing that bypasses Israel.
Cairo hopes that with a deal to secure the border, Israel will lift the punishing blockade it imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized the territory from its rival Fatah in a bloody showdown 18 months ago.Israel said it stopped the offensive on Sunday after securing a deal with the United States to clamp down on arms smuggling, but Egypt has said it is not bound by the agreement.Britain, France and Germany have also offered to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza, with London saying it was ready to provide naval support.Egypt, which refuses to have foreign observers on its soil or foreign forces patrolling its waters, insists that weapons are smuggled to Gaza by sea and not through tunnels.On Wednesday, Livni pressed Israel's concerns about weapons smuggling with EU foreign ministers in Brussels. They, in turn, sought assurances that humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza. The European Union has almost 30 monitors at the Rafah terminal but they have rarely been able to work as Israel has often kept the crossing closed, citing security concerns. Diplomats said the numbers could be doubled. But Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal insisted on Wednesday that there were two more battles with Israel left to be won. We achieved our aims by forcing the enemy to halt its aggression and to withdraw, Meshaal said from his base in Damascus. But two more battles are left to win: to lift the blockade and open the crossing points (with Gaza), especially at Rafah which is our gateway to the world.
Clinton calls Palestinian leader on Mideast peace Thu Jan 22, 1:21 pm ET
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – New US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to work toward a durable peace in the Middle East in a first telephone call Thursday with the Palestinian president, a spokesman said.She spoke of the need to support president Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to reach a durable and just peace as quickly as possible, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.President Abbas reiterated his backing for the peace process and promised to make every effort to achieve peace, his spokesman said.President Barack Obama phoned Abbas on Wednesday in what the Palestinians said was the new US leader's first call to a foreign leader.We consider that these two calls in 24 hours show the new administration's intent not lose time and the importance it gives to this issue, Abu Rudeina added.At her Senate confirmation hearing a week ago, Clinton pledged to work immediately to pursue Arab-Israeli peace following an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip that has ended in a fragile truce.The previous US president George Bush oversaw the re-launch of the Israel-Palestinian peace process in November 2007 but little progress has been made since.
Qaeda urges attacks in US, Britain to avenge Gaza war Thu Jan 22, 12:46 pm ET
DUBAI (AFP) – A prominent Al-Qaeda figure, Abu Yahya al-Libi, on Thursday urged Islamist militants to launch attacks in the West, naming the United States and Britain, to avenge Israel's onslaught on Gaza.Sacrifice what you can to deliver to the capitals of the infidel West, the criminal America, and the agent tyrants a taste of what they deliver to our brothers and our oppressed brothers and people in Palestine, Libi said in a videotape posted on the Internet, according a translation by SITE monitoring group.Deliver to them the bitter taste of war, tragedies of displacement, and the bitterness of terror, he said.It is time for this criminal state, and I mean Britain, to pay the price for its historic crime, which we have not and will not forget, added Libi, blaming Palestinian suffering on Britain's Balfour Declaration of 1917 which promised a homeland for Jewish people.Libi, who is a Sharia committee official within al-Qaeda, said that alleviating the suffering of Palestinians will not come through protest or demonstrations, but through physical action against the enemy, US-based SITE reported.The videotaped message, titled Palestine... Now the Fighting is Fierce is the third message by a member of al-Qaeda leadership within three weeks, calling to avenge the Israel's devastating offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on January 14 called in an audiotaped message for Jihad, or holy war, to stop Israel's aggression on Gaza, while al-Qaeda number-two, Ayman al-Zawhari, explicitly called on January 6 for attacks everywhere on the interests of the Zionist crusader campaign on Gaza.
Gaza tunnels back in business By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jan 22, 5:30 pm ET
RAFAH, Gaza Strip – After shoveling sand from their tunnel Thursday, the smugglers hoisted the prized cargo out of the narrow shaft: bags of potato chips — a minor luxury for Gazans tired of bland U.N. humanitarian rations.All around them, other smuggling crews were getting merchandise flowing again through dozens of similar tunnels only days after a cease-fire in Israel's devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip.The tunnels linking Gaza and Egypt are back in business, despite the hundreds of tons of bombs and missiles that Israeli troops rained down on them.The air reeked from spills of newly smuggled fuel being poured into plastic barrels as winches powered by noisy generators hauled more goods out of the wood-lined openings in the ground.At other shafts, workers were still raising only dirt as their colleagues labored underground to dig out cave-ins caused by the Israeli bombardment. Egyptian border guards manned watchtowers barely 100 yards away.Their fast recovery underlines the difficulty of stopping the smuggling and reinforces Israel's fears that Gaza's Hamas rulers will use the tunnel network to bring in weapons to rearm after the offensive.I fixed the damage in three days. We're functional since this morning, said Abu Wahda, who like others involved in the trade refused to be identified by anything but his nickname because of his smuggling activity.
By noon, the winch had pulled out 12 refrigerator-sized sacks of goods. Abu Wahda said the 1-yard-high passage under Gaza's soft sands was not fully reinforced yet and was dangerous for his eight workers currently underground shuttling the cargo from the Egyptian side.But the worst danger comes from the sky, if they bomb again, he said. A youth was posted nearby to watch for Israeli planes.Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday that Israel is willing to reopen hostilities if the bombings weren't enough to stop the smuggling.If we need to do additional military operations to stop smuggling, it will be done, she told Israel Radio. Israel reserves the right to act against smuggling, period.Ending the smuggling — along with stopping Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel — was a key Israeli objective for its offensive, which killed 1,285 Palestinians, most of them civilians, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted.The Israeli military said it destroyed 60percent to 70 percent of the tunnels before Sunday's cease-fire. Israel estimates there were about 300 tunnels before the offensive.Smugglers in Rafah, a southern Gaza border town where nearly all the tunnels are dug, told The Associated Press that there had been about 1,000 tunnels operating before the bombardment, and that up to 90 percent of them were destroyed.Most of the tunnels were dug after Israel and Egypt sealed off Gaza following Hamas' violent takeover in June 2007.Because of the tunnels, Rafah was among the places most bombed in Gaza. An AP reporter and photographer counted one missile or bomb — each estimated to be about one ton — dropped up to every five minutes through much of the night Jan. 16, and then during parts of Jan. 17, up to about 10 minutes before the Israeli-declared cease-fire began. Abu Rahman said there were no casualties in his area because all residents had fled after Israel dropped leaflets warning they would bomb near the tunnels.
Rafah city officials said 40 percent of Rafah houses were damaged and 250 destroyed, causing about $100 million in damage. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says 50people died in Rafah, including 39 civilians.While Israel says Hamas uses tunnels to bring in weapons, residents say most tunnels are used to get around the Israeli blockade and import scarce commodities: fuel, clothes, building supplies, cigarettes, even the potato chips Gazans craved after a month of surviving on war rations and U.N. handouts. The tunnels, about 45 feet beneath the surface, usually run for up to 800 yards from Gaza into Egypt, where their entrances are usually hidden in homes. Abu Wahda and other smugglers who spoke to the AP on Thursday insisted they have never brought weapons for Hamas. They said Hamas directly operates its own tunnels in areas inaccessible to outsiders. One smuggler, Abu Bilal, said he'd be happy to bring Hamas weapons, but frankly, the resistance never asks us to.Hamas doesn't comment on whether it brings weapons and cash through the tunnels, but considers them a legitimate business. People won't need the tunnels if the border (is) opened, Ehab Ghussein, the spokesman for Hamas' Interior Ministry, told AP. The smuggling is surprisingly overt on the Gaza side. Hundreds of workers were operating Thursday in a mile-long stretch of battered tents and fake greenhouses, each with a tunnel operating or being dug inside. Dozens of other tunnel entrances were open and unhidden. Amid the frantic activity, a fire broke out in a smuggled fuel shipment, although there was no immediate report of injuries.
There's even a makeshift snack shop servicing them, named The Underground Crossings. Its owner, Mahmoud Baroud, reopened soon after the cease-fire began and expected at least 200 customers for lunch Thursday. We even do deliveries if they're too busy, he said, stirring fried onions. With so many tunnels out of service, the laws of supply and demand have driven prices up, said one smuggler, known as Abu Rahman. Sacks of goods such as potato chips, clothes or cigarettes that went for $40 each before the offensive could now go for as much as $400, he said. Abu Rahman was still rebuilding his tunnel, eager to get back in business to pay off the debt he took on for the passage's $120,000 construction. It should take about a month. We're going as fast as we can, he said. His tunnel was heavily damaged by airstrikes on Jan. 17, the offensive's last day. Ten workers were shoveling underground Thursday to repair it, using a compass to dig straight and cell phones to coordinate with a relative of Abu Rahman who oversees the entrance on the Egyptian side. Like most owners, Abu Rahman belongs to one the prominent Rafah clans that have family members on each side of the border. Once it is ready, his tunnel should bring in about $2,000 a day, one-tenth going to his workers, and the rest for Abu Rahman and his partners.
Including workers and their families, 80 people depend on the tunnel for their livelihoods, Abu Rahman said. I don't think it's illegal. We need it to eat, he said. The activity is so mainstream that tunnels must now be registered with Hamas to account for the number of employees and to ensure nobody under 18 goes underground, the smugglers said. Hamas even requires owners pay $20,000 to families of employees who die in the tunnels, they said. Ideas for stopping the smuggling have focused on increasing Egypt's abilities to uncover and destroy them — with U.S. or European technical help. Egypt has rejected any international monitoring force on its side of the border as a violation of its sovereignty. But Abu Rahman laughed off the threat of Egyptian police clamping down. If they were serious about it, they could close all the tunnels in a day, he said. Egyptian security officials, however, say they are actively conducting raids on homes suspected of housing tunnels. Two were detected Thursday and the homeowners were held for questioning, one security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of Egyptian regulations. The official said a third tunnel collapsed, injuring a Gazan inside. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit insisted earlier this month that Egypt was doing its best to close the tunnels. But he called those who believe weapons are smuggled in through tunnels are deluded, saying Hamas' weapons come by sea. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Gaza and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.
One state is the way forward to peace in Mideast: Kadhafi Thu Jan 22, 8:38 am ET
NEW YORK (AFP) – A combined one-state solution is the best way forward for Israel and the Palestinians to finally put an end to perpetual war, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi wrote in The New York Times Thursday.The history of Israel/Palestine is not remarkable by regional standards -- a country inhabited by different peoples, with rule passing among many tribes, nations and ethnic groups; a country that has withstood many wars and waves of peoples from all directions. This is why it gets so complicated when members of either party claims the right to assert that it is their land, Kadhafi wrote.After the surge in deadly violence in Gaza, Kadhafi argued that everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward.A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions, Kadhafi said.The Libyan leader argued that a two-state solution inevitably would create an unworkable security threat to Israel, while partitioning the West Bank into Jewish and Arab areas, with buffer zones between them, also would not work.Buffer zones symbolize exclusion and breed tension. Israelis and Palestinians have also become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically, Kadhafi wrote, so the compromise is one state for all, an Isratine that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel, Kadhafi added, noting that there are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel.In the latest casualty toll, Gaza medics said the recent Israeli offensive had killed 1,330 people, at least half of them civilians including 437 children. Another 5,450 were wounded, including 1,890children.
Israel warns it can hit Gaza tunnels again Thu Jan 22, 3:22 am ET
JERUSALEM, (AFP) – Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned on Thursday that Israel reserved the right to attack smuggling tunnels on the border of Egypt and Hamas-run Gaza Strip.For the tunnels, nothing will be as it was before, Livni told public radio. Things must be clear -- Israel reserves the right to react militarily against the tunnels once and for all.If we have to act, we will do so, we will exercise our right to legitimate defence, we will not leave our fate ... to the Egyptians, nor to the Europeans nor to the Americans, she said.During its massive 22-day offensive on Hamas in Gaza, Israel bombed hundreds of tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border, destroying 150 of them, according to Defence Minister Ehud Barak who on Wednesday issued a warning similar to Livni's.If we are forced to, there will be more attacks, Barak said on public television.During the operation that we have carried out in the Gaza Strip we have destroyed 150 tunnels, including some which were targeted several times, he said.The tunnels are used to smuggle supplies and weapons into the coastal strip that Israel has kept sealed to all but basic humanitarian supplies since Hamas seized power in June 2007.Israel declared a ceasefire to its offensive after securing guarantees from Cairo and Washington on securing the enclave's porous border with Egypt.In the days following Sunday's ceasefire, hundreds of Palestinians have set about repairing the tunnels damaged by Israeli bombings.
EU wins Israeli assurance on Gaza aid but not on crossings by Lorne Cook Lorne Cook –Wed Jan 21, 6:37 pm ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – European Union nations won assurances Wednesday that Israel would do its utmost to allow humanitarian aid into the war-torn Gaza Strip but no guarantees that border crossings would be opened.At talks in Brussels, EU foreign ministers also urged Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni to build on a weekend ceasefire that brought an end to the massive military assault against Hamas that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.There are clear assurances from Foreign Minister Livni that everything will be done from the Israeli side to have effective humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said after the meeting.
The Czech Republic holds the EU's rotating presidency.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his EU counterparts had told Livni: Open the gates. It is absolutely indispensable. We cannot continue as if the ceasefire did not exist.Some 5,300 people were also wounded in Israel's land, sea and air assault, Operation Cast Lead, launched on December 27 in the impoverished coastal strip to stop Hamas firing rockets at Israeli civilians.Around 4,100 homes were destroyed and 17,000 damaged.
Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.
Livni, a frontrunner in elections on February 10, insisted that the assault had been a legitimate defence against a terrorist organisation, and welcomed the EU's support in stopping arms being smuggled back to Hamas.Talking about the need for a sustainable and durable ceasefire means also full cessation of smuggling of weapons and re-armament of Hamas in the future, she told reporters.This is something that we're working on with different member states of the EU.The EU is proposing to bolster its monitoring mission in the Rafah Terminal, the only crossing the Palestinians have to the outside world, on the border with Egypt, to try to help stop Hamas bringing in new weapons.The bloc already has a team of almost 30 monitors there but it has rarely been unable to work as Israel has often kept the terminal closed, citing security concerns. Diplomats said the numbers could be doubled.We are ready to monitor, we have said that, but for the moment the gates are shut, said Kouchner. That's not possible. You can't just be satisfied that rockets are not fired and pretend that nothing else is happening.On the political front, the ministers rejected suggestions that it was time to talk to Hamas even as exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said the time had come to lift a ban on contacts with the Islamist movement.The particular issue is not Hamas, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.In the long term, there will have to be a solution among the Palestinians so that we get a Palestinian government that is effective in the West Bank and Gaza at the same time, that's the issue, he said.
His Luxembourg counterpart Jean Asselborn said: We already have a dialogue with Hamas through Egypt.But it remains unclear how the group that runs Gaza can be by-passed, even though it figures on the EU's blacklist of banned terror groups. It's time to start slowly to reflect on how we get all the parties around the same negotiating table, conceded Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb. Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair said Wednesday that the diplomatic Quartet -- the EU, UN, Russia and United States -- would deal with Hamas if the Islamists accept a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The EU has done this in the past, talking only to non-Hamas ministers. But Livni insisted: What is needed is a coalition against terror and not something that ends by an agreement with them.
