AS MERESTUI SERANGAN ISRAEL KE JALUR GAZA

Blessed by Washington, Israeli Crime Against Humanity Continues, Killing 315 Including Babies and Women, Destroying Universities and Prisons

29/12/2008 (Hari ke-3)

Fueled by hatred and racism the Israeli crime against humanity aimed at exterminating the unarmed and starving Palestinians has continued with the blessing of the Bush administration for the third day.

The three-day death toll rose to 315, including seven children under the age of 15 who were killed in two separate strikes late Sunday and Monday, medics said. Israel launched the deadliest aggression against Palestinians in decades on Saturday.

Israel's air force obliterated the material symbols of Hamas power on the third day of its overwhelming assault on Gaza on Monday, striking a house next to the Hamas premier's home, devastating a security compound and flattening a five-story building at the major university in Gaza.

However, analysts believe that Hamas’ moral power, as a symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation and Israeli crimes against humanity, is gaining strength by the day.

Palestinian rockets usually fired at Israel in retaliation to Israeli oppression blockades on Gaza have reached new destinations that have never thought they would before the latest Israeli assault on Gaza people.

On Sunday, Hamas missiles struck for the first time near the city of Ashdod, twice as far from Gaza as Ashkelon and only 25 miles from Israel's heart in Tel Aviv.

On Monday, a medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed a man and wounded several others. It was the second fatality in Israel since the beginning of the offensive and the first person ever to be killed by a rocket in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000.

Israel widened its deadliest-ever air offensive against the starving people of Gaza on Sunday, pounding smuggling tunnels and government strongholds, sending more tanks and artillery toward the Gaza border and activating thousands of reservists for a possible ground invasion.

Israel's intense bombings — some 300 air strikes since midday Saturday — wreaked unprecedented destruction in Gaza, reducing entire buildings to rubble.

After nightfall on Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing a 14-month-old baby, a man and two women, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain told the Associated Press.

In the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian residents said a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said one Palestinian working with UN and eight trainees were among the dead.

Israeli aircraft also bombed the Islamic University and government compound in Gaza City and the house next to the residence of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in a Gaza City refugee camp. Haniyeh, in hiding, was not home. The refugee camp hosts hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes and towns in the territories that are now called the state of Israel.

Shlomo Brom, a former senior Israeli military official, said it was the deadliest force ever used in decades of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, reported the Associated Press.

The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a "crime against humanity."

In the most dramatic attacks Sunday, warplanes struck dozens of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, cutting off a lifeline that had supplied Gazans with commercial goods. The influx of goods had helped the people of Gaza defy an 18-month Israeli blockade.

Sunday's blasts shook the ground several miles away and sent black smoke high into the sky.

Earlier, warplanes dropped three bombs on one of Hamas' main security compounds in Gaza City, including a prison. Moments after the blasts, frantic inmates, their faces dusty and bloodied, scrambled down the rubble. One man, still half buried, raised a hand to alert rescuers.

Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said more than 290 people were killed over two days and more than 800 wounded.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which keeps researchers at all hospitals, said it had counted 251 dead by midday Sunday, and that among them were 20 children under the age of 16 and nine women.

Although the White House was mum about the situation in Gaza on Sunday after speaking out expansively on Saturday, Washington blessed the Israeli crime in Gaza and clearly supported it.

On Saturday, The White House said only Hamas could end the cycle of violence by putting a stop to the rocket fire on Israel.

"These people are nothing but thugs, and so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said at George W. Bush's Texas ranch, where the president is preparing to spend the new year.

"If Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel, then Israel would not have a need for strikes in Gaza," Johndroe said. "What we've got to see is Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel."

"The United States hold Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire; we want the ceasefire restored. We're concerned about the humanitarian situation and want all parties concerned to work to make sure the people of Gaza get the humanitarian assistance they need," said Johndroe.

Despite the destruction, Hamas and the Palestinian resistance in general remain confident that Israel will in the end be defeated.
A Hamas leader in exile, Osama Hamdan, said the movement would not relent. "We have one alternative, which is to be steadfast and resist and then we will be victorious," Hamdan said in Beirut.

Also in Beirut, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah resistance movement, said he would not abandon Hamas, but did not threaten to attack Israel. Hezbollah defeated a 33-day Israeli aggression after which the Zionist state accepted defeat that led to the resign of its military chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense.

Meanwhile, the carnage inflamed Arab and Muslim public opinion, setting off street protests across the West Bank, in an Arab community in Israel, in several Middle Eastern cities.

In Tripoli, Libya, thousands of demonstrators gathered on Monday at Mortars’ Square and condemned the Israeli aggression on Gaza and then moved on and surrounded the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli demanding the Egyptian government to open its borders with Gaza and allow medical aid and assistance to reach the suffering Palestinians.

Some of the protests turned violent.

In occupied Palestine, Israeli troops quelling a West Bank march killed one Palestinian and seriously wounded another.

A crowd of anti-Israel protesters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul became a target for a suicide bomber on a bicycle. In Lebanon, police fired tear gas to stop demonstrators from reaching the Egyptian Embassy.

Egypt, which has served as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between Hamas and its rival Fatah, has been criticized for joining Israel in closing its borders with Gaza. The blockade was imposed after the Hamas takeover in June 2007.

In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a callup of 6,500 reserve soldiers, raising fears of an impending ground offensive. Israel has doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and also deployed an artillery battery

Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, after 38 years of full military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt the resistance.

Israeli leaders said they would press ahead with the Gaza campaign, despite enraged protests across the Arab world and Syria's decision to break off indirect peace talks with the Jewish state. Israel's foreign minister said the goal was to halt Gaza rocket fire on Israel for good, but not to reoccupy the territory.

(The Tripoli Post)