Gaza: A History of Neglect

While the recent flotilla attempts to end the economic blockade have turned it into front page news, Gaza has been a forgotten add-on for most of its 62 years of existence. For millennia it was simply a part of Palestine occupied by a succession of foreign rulers. On 14 May 1948 the last of those rulers, the British high commissioner, left Palestine formally ending the colonial mandate. (photo:AP)

The Zionists immediately proclaimed an independent Israel. Within 24 hours armies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq launched an attack across the frontier but stopped short at occupying Jewish settlements. The Israelis battle-hardened from fighting Germans and British alike routed the invaders.

When fighting ended in January 1949 Palestine had disappeared from the map. Most went to Israel, the west Bank went to Jordan leaving behind just the tiny strip of Gaza administered by Egypt. The strip was home to thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled across the border or were forced to leave by Jewish settlers.

Egypt’s King Farouk ordered the building of a new palace in Gaza where he could preside over a Palestinian Arab Government. But his grandiose schemes fell apart when Nasser and his Free Officers deposed him in a coup in 1952. Nasser turned his attentions to removing the hated British from the Suez Canal Zone while Gaza reverted to near lawless anarchy and fedayeen raids against Israel.

Four years later the Israelis invaded the strip in the Suez War. It followed a blitz attack on Egyptian forces in Sinai then a diversion south to open up the Gulf of Aqaba. The southern end of the Strip became one of the key battlefields of the war but the Israelis quickly overran the 8,000 Egyptian defenders before taking Gaza City.

After the war Israel told the UN it would keep its troops in Gaza and Sharm el-Sheikh in Sinai. The Americans although sympathetic to Israel, reacted angrily and threatened to cut off aid and end its guarantee of unrestricted oil supplies. With a likely vote on a UN resolution condemning Israel, then Prime Minister Ben Gurion accepted the inevitable and agreed to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza in exchange for access to the Gulf of Aqaba. The war ended the facade there was an independent government in Gaza. Direct control went back to Cairo with a military governor installed in Gaza City.

Gaza changed hands again in 1967 when once again the Strip and Sinai were vital battlefields in the Egyptian flank of the Six Day War. At the end of the war the Israeli Government voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. However Gaza was conspicuously absent from the decision and the arrangement was rejected by Egypt and Syria.

Israeli historian Benny Morris said at least 70,000 Gazans emigrated to Egypt and were forced to sign documents saying they were leaving of their own free will. Israelis moved into the Strip in large numbers taking up one fifth of the land in an already crowded area. Israel finally gave Sinai back to Egypt in 1979 but once again the status of Gaza was not addressed by President Carter’s peace treaty. Egypt did however agree to renounce its territorial claims on the area freeing it to become a part of Palestine, in theory.

Growing Palestinian unrest led to the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993 and a year later to the Oslo Accords which called for the total withdrawal of the IDF from parts of Gaza and the West Bank. It also created the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority for these areas for a transitional period of five years. It was also the first time that Israel and the Palestinians agreed to view Gaza and the West Bank as a single territorial unit. The Oslo Accords were a brave move but ultimately foundered on aspects that had been deliberately put into the ‘too hard basket’: Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, security and border control, and the status of Jerusalem.

Yet there was impact in Gaza. The IDF left Gaza City and the urban conurbation around it and the Palestinian Authority began to administer and police the region in their place. The PA was racked by corruption and mismanagement and by 2000 most of the Strip’s 400,000 residents were frustrated by the lack of progress and the squalid conditions they lived in. The scene was set for the Second Intifada and the fracturing of the Oslo Accords.

After Israeli soldier were killed by a Palestinian mob in the West bank, the IDF launched retaliatory air strikes against PA targets in the West Bank and Gaza. Attitudes hardened on both sides with Israel turning to the right wing Likud Party while Hamas grew in popularity in Gaza. As matters dragged on for years, an exasperated Ariel Sharon decided in 2004 to unilaterally evict all Israelis from Gaza’s 21 settlements. The IDF withdrew a year later. The disengagement did not address wider issues of occupation. Israel still retained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, coastline, infrastructure and power grid.

Nevertheless the withdrawal gave fresh hope to a peace settlement, hopes that were soon dashed again. In Palestine parliamentary elections were held in early 2006 for the first time in 10 years. Hamas stunned the ruling Fatah party by easily winning the election. With Hamas refusing to recognise Israel, the US and EU imposed sanctions on Palestine. Israel also imposed a blockade on the Strip which exists to this day. The election result also led to the “fratricidal war” between Hamas and Fatah and the latter used its greater numbers in the West Bank to wrest back power there. Hamas remained entrenched in the Strip.

They also continued their low-level war against Israel with home-made Qassam rockets a constant irritant in border regions. In December 2008, Israel lost patience and launched Operation Cast Lead with a series of air strikes before a ground-based invasion in which over a thousand Palestinians were killed and most of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed in a three-week campaign. Today the border remains sealed and the IDF strictly controls travel to and from the area.

The end result may to be harden attitudes within the Strip that its future lies not as part of a united Palestine with the West Bank but as a separate country in its own right. It is this reality that no one in the region has yet confronted.

Helen Thomas and the truth about Palestine

Nothing has depressed me more this week than the Helen Thomas affair. If you cannot have a controversial opinion after living on the planet for nine decades then when can you have one?

Thomas had to “retire in disgrace” after she said the Jews should leave Palestine. But she knows a bit about what she was talking about. All her working life she has watched the disaster that has unfolded in the region since Israel’s independence in 1948. In an age where media allow governments to get away with lies about “the peace process” for a journalist of almost 70 years standing to lose her job when she call a spade a spade even when it’s a particularly dirty shovel, is particularly odious.

Where as Palestinians can trace a 2,000 year old link of habitation with their land, the Jewish Diaspora of Europeans, Russians and Africans have been there at most a 100 years. The Jews must reach into their religion to find their ancient connection with Israel. And given how they have battered the original inhabitants into submission, It takes little wonder to imagine a Palestine which is a lot more of a Holy Land without the xenophobes that now administer the country in Jerusalem (a capital recognized by no other country).

Thomas is no fool. She knows she has no power to change facts and knows full well that the Israelis are going nowhere. She has seen first hand how US support and military hardware makes the Knesset well-nigh invincible. With the blessing of every president since Eisenhower (the first of 11 presidents Thomas reported on) Israel have increased their strangehold on Palestine. Thomas could see only too well how they turned the West Bank into a mess of powerless Bantustans and how they have bombed the Strip back into stateless inertia.

So when this knowledgeable near 90 year old is asked a leading question by a Jewish rabbi “Any comments on Israel?” it is hardly wonder she should reply “I think the Jews should get out of Palestine.”

It was the use of the word “Jews” that hung her. If she had said “I think the Israelis should get out of Palestine” it would have been perfectly valid and free from the hoary charge of “anti-Semitism”, a cliché that shows no understanding of what a Semite actually is.

Perhaps Thomas realised this or perhaps she didn’t. She is 89 years old after all. But she did quickly realise was how much an the effect her words would have on the mediated public sphere, given she is a product of it. She chose to fall on her own sword rather than have to constantly justify a position that is so anathema to the US mainstream.

Thomas’s Cassandra-like words exposed her to a path of political deviance. That is unsustainable in any path of American public trust which is based on the media lie that Israel is never wrong.

But she is old enough to remember another event in the same year as Israel’s independence. In 1948, the Russians imposed a wilful blockade on West Berlin aimed at starving it out of political existence. The western powers led by the US defeated it using a combination of outrage and ingenuity.

The blockade of Gaza deserves similar outrage regardless of your feelings about the legitimacy of the Hamas Government. 400,000 people are being systematically starved by a government in a brutal piece of collective punishment. In any other context, this would be called genocide. Shutting an old woman up won't make it any better.

Israel massacres peace activists in the Mediterranean

The Israel Defence Force has murdered at least 16 people after storming ships on the high sea bound for Gaza. The six ships of the flotilla were carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid and around 600 human right activists from around the world who were determined to break Israel’s three year long blockade of the Palestinian territory. Israel had repeatedly said it would not let them in and IDF forces boarded the boats around 65km off Gaza before beginning their killing spree. Free Gaza Movement, the organisers of the flotilla, said the troops opened fire as soon as they stormed the convoy despite the raising of a white flag.

With the flotilla carrying mainly medical and food supplies, most of the world’s governments have condemned Israel’s provocative actions. Israeli police are on high alert across the country to prevent any civil disturbances. Meanwhile in Gaza, the Hamas government held an emergency meeting chaired by premier Ismail Haneya, following the Israeli Television Channel 10 report that 16 activists on the ships were killed and 30 wounded, including the Israeli-Arab Islamic activist Sheikh Raed Sallah (though the Jerusalem Post said he is injured not dead).

The IDF version of events needs to be treated with extreme caution but they said soldiers were attacked with knives and clubs as they boarded the six vessels. It said the violence turned deadly when an activist grabbed a weapon from one of the commandos. “The weapon discharged,” they said ambiguously not making it clear whether the activist fired it or if it went off accidentally.

The six ships of the flotilla sailed under Turkish and American flags and set off from Cyprus yesterday. Israeli forces said they would not allow them to land and the flotilla deliberated slowed down so that any forced landing would happen in daylight hours to maximize the media exposure. Meanwhile at the port in Gaza City, Hamas prepared a welcoming party with marquees and a buffet to greet the flotilla which was expected mid-afternoon today.

The first contact happened 200 kms off the Gaza shore. The IDF contacted the flotilla by radio and told them the Gaza Strip was a closed military zone. They offered them two options either follow the navy to Ashdod Port in Israel or else be commandeered by commandos. "If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade,” the IDF told them. The flotilla radar detected three Israeli ships in the area. After boarding the vessels and going on a shooting spree, the IDF towed the vessels to Ashdod.

The Hamas Government in Gaza said it considered the dead activists "as the martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla, adding that "the world should put an end to the biggest country of pirates.” Meanwhile Gaza premier Ismail Hanaya called the attack an international crime and a political scandal carried out according to an Israeli military order. “I call on the Palestinian Authority to immediately suspend its negotiations with Israel,” he said. He also called for street protects and the Arab states to respond to “end the unfair Israeli siege."

Israel justified its actions saying it already allows 15,000 tonnes of aid into Gaza each week. However the UN said this is just a quarter of what the Gaza Strip needs. Somewhere between 35 and 60 percent of Gaza’s agriculture industry was destroyed by Israel’s three week long invasion in 2008-2009 which left the land contaminated and cratered. This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008 but only five have been successful and none since Operation Cast Lead turned Gaza into a wasteland. The latest action confirms Israel is prepared to thumb its nose at international criticism as it lurches further into right-wing extremist nationalism.

UN to discuss Goldstone Report on Israel's war crimes in Gaza

The UN Security Council has agreed to Libya’s request for an emergency session to discuss a report on Israeli war crimes in its Gaza incursion last year. The closed door talks will take place later today to discuss South African Justice Richard Goldstone’s Report into the war which was produced without the co-operation of Israel. Palestine has approved the talks a week after deferring a UN debate on the matter to March 2010. But Libyan spokesman Ahmed Gebreel said his country had requested the meeting "because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it's too long to wait until March". (photo of Israeli air assault on Gaza on 28 Dec 2008 by Amir Farshad Ebrahimi)

The UN released the report entitled “Human rights in Palestine and other occupied territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” last month. The 575 page report looked at Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and its military air and ground offensive which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. An estimated 1,500 people were killed in the invasion of which just ten were Israeli soldiers (4 of these died from friendly fire) and three were Israeli civilians.

During the 22-day war, Israeli attacks totally destroyed the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Gaza main prison. The report rejected the Israeli justification these buildings were part of the “Hamas terrorist infrastructure” and said they were deliberate attacks on civilian objects. The report also condemned the attacks on six police stations which resulted in the deaths of 99 police officers and nine civilians. Israel deliberately targeted police on the grounds they were considered part of the Palestinian military but the report found they were a civilian law-enforcement agency.

The report found that Palestinian militants launched rockets from urban areas and did not adequately distinguish themselves from non-combatants. However, it found no evidence that mosques or hospitals were used as “military shields”. It also acknowledged Israel made significant efforts to issue warnings for civilians to get out of harm’s way but many of their warnings were not specific and lacked credibility.

It condemned Israel for its flagrant attack on the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) field office which offered shelter to 700 people. The IDF attacked the building with high explosives for several hours despite the fact they were aware of who was there and the fact the compound contained a huge fuel depot. On the same day (15 January), Israel also attacked a Gaza City hospital without warning. The attack caused a day-long fire and panic among evacuated patients.

The report also criticised an Israeli attack on al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to a UNRWA school where 1,300 people were taking shelter. Mortar shells killed at least 35 people in an attack that was “indiscriminate in violation of international law”. The report said 10 out of another 11 attacks on civilian targets had no military objective. The impact was compounded by Israeli refusal to evacuate wounded or permit access to ambulances. It said IDF conduct was “criminal” and constituted “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings.”

The report also condemned deliberate attacks against industrial installations, food production, sewage treatment and housing. Israel also used blindfolded Palestinian shields to enter houses of suspected militants and detained large numbers of men, women and children for the duration of the conflict. The entire mission was carried out according to “Dahiya Doctrine” (also practiced in the Lebanon war in 2006) which involves disproportionate force, maximum disruption and damage and the transformation of civilians into military targets.

The report also considered the continued detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured in 2006 by a Palestinian group. While the report said Shalit was entitled to POW status and is entitled to a visit from the Red Cross, it did not justify the blockade of the Strip as it constituted “collective punishment”. It certainly does not justify the imprisonment of 8,100 Palestinian political prisoners.

The report also accused Gaza forces of targeting five Fatah members who were killed for their political affiliation. It also accused the Palestinian Authority of torture and inhumane treatment of Hamas prisoners in the West Bank. Goldstone considered the West Bank situation as “closely interrelated” to Gaza but Israel refused access for them to visit the territory (they were able to visit Gaza via Egypt). The report said that attacks in the West Bank coincided with the Gaza assault and the IDF killed a number of protesters. Israel has taken no action to punish soldiers and settlers for violence against Palestinians.

The report also blamed Gaza for its persistent rocket attacks. It said that Palestinian armed groups have launched 8,000 rockets into southern Israel since 2001 with a range of 40kms from the border. These attacks have killed three people and injured another one thousand causing a high level of psychological trauma and an exodus of residents from the area. The report said they were indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations in order to spread terror and is contrary to humanitarian law.

The report recommended international legal action against Israel and Hamas for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended the findings are handed to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and also urged the UN Security Council and, separately, the General Assembly, to ensure that those responsible for the crimes are brought to justice.

But Palestinian authorities initially did not support a UN review of Goldstone’s report. A week ago, President Mahmoud Abbas withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the UN Human Rights Council to have the report sent to the General Assembly for possible action. Such a vote may have eventually led toward possible war crimes tribunals. Palestinian officials said Abbas’s decision was made “under heavy US pressure”. The decision was widely criticised within Palestine. Electronic Intifada called it “the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.”

But now a senior Palestinian politician, Yasser Abed Rabbo, has said they had erred by seeking the deferral. "We must say a mistake has been made,” he said. “This mistake should not be underestimated or concealed.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile claimed the report's conclusions would "devastate the peace process". This is a disengenous complaint given that peace talks are currently going nowhere due to Netenyahu’s insistence on continuing with illegal settlement-building in the West Bank. It is Israel who have "devastated" the peace process just as they devastated Gaza ten months ago.

Israel bombs Sudan

The New York Times has revealed Israeli warplanes attacked a truck convoy in Sudan in January. There are also unconfirmed reports of a second attack in February. The Times says the first attack occurred to block a suspected arms delivery to Hamas in Gaza. Depending on which report you read, anywhere from 39 to 800 people were killed in the two attacks. The Times’ sources are two American officials privy to privy to classified intelligence assessments. They say Iran was smuggling weapons to Palestine via Sudan. Sudan has admitted the attacks took place but Israel has yet to formally take responsibility.

The story broke in the most unlikely way. The little known Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem, Sudan’s minister for highways, claimed earlier this week that a “major power” had carried out two previously unknown air strike inside Sudan – one on 27 January 27 and another on 11 February. His comments were reported by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shurooq on Tuesday. They found a local angle saying “a major power bombed small trucks carrying arms” headed towards Sudan’s border with Egypt.

On Wednesday, the Iranian English language PressTV reported that America had carried out the attacks from a base in nearby Djibouti. It said Sudan had confirmed reports that the US Air Force conducted the January strike. It said 39 people were killed in the attack which occurred in the desert northwest of Port Sudan, near the Mount Al-Sha'anoon. It quoted Saleem’s claim that "major power bombed small trucks carrying arms, burring all of them. It killed Sudanese, Eritrean and Ethiopians [passengers] and injured others."

Today, Sudan changed its tune and said Israel was probably responsible. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig said the Sudanese were still gathering evidence at the site, and would not react while the investigation was ongoing. He claimed that the convoys were likely smuggling goods, but not weapons. "We contacted the Americans and they categorically denied they were involved," he said. "We are still trying to verify it. Most probably it involved Israel."

There are conflicting reports on casualties. The New York Times story repeated Saleem’s figure of 39 but they also quoted a second government spokesman who said more than a hundred were killed. However, the Los Angeles Times reported yet another Sudanese government source, Fatih Mahmoud Awad, a Transport Ministry spokesman, who said as many as 800 people died in the two attacks. He said each convoy had more than a dozen vehicles. It is possible that the reports are not conflicting and that the major casualties occurred in the February strike. However, very few details have emerged yet about the second attack.

Both the US and Israel had the motive to carry out the attack. Earlier this year Israel signed an agreement with the US in one of the last acts of the Bush administration. On 15 January, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Washington to sign a memorandum of understanding to marshal an international effort to prevent arms from reaching Gaza. Under the terms of the agreement the US would organise “like-minded” countries to use methods such as interdiction to prevent arms from reaching Gaza.

The Sudanese strikes appear to be the first examples of interdiction. Israeli analysts called it a comfortable strike against a distracted enemy. Israeli security specialist and writer Gad Shimron said Sudan was a “pro-Hamas hostile state”, but was in no position to respond. They're in over their heads with Darfur; the last thing they need is further complications,” he told the Jerusalem Post. Shimron was with Mossad when they entered Sudan in the 1980s for Operation Moses to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. "The air force knows this place [eastern Sudan] well. It flew at low altitudes there during Operation Moses," he said. "It's logical to assume that the weapons were tracked from the minute they left Iran.”

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to confirm Israeli involvement but gave a strong hint overnight when there was "nowhere in the world" that Israel cannot reach. Speaking at a conference at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, he said Israel operates everywhere where we can hit what he called “terror infrastructure”. These were to be found “in close places, in places further away, everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure,” he said. “We hit them and we hit them in a way that increases deterrence.” It is the closest yet that Israel has admitted to an act of war on Sudan.

Below is very brief footage Al-Jazeera acquired of the first bombing aftermath.

Abbas tries to muscle in on Gaza peace talks

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas made a powerplay for Fatah involvement in the Gaza peace talks when met his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Monday. He criticised Hamas saying they promoted conflict with Israel and says they must respect his authority as leader of the Palestinian state. He also warned he will not talk with any group that fails to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Abbas’ party Fatah is the largest faction within the PLO whereas Hamas is not aligned with it.

Abbas’s call comes a week after Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal described the PLO as impotent. Meshaal, who is exiled in Damascus, said the PLO “expresses a state of impotence, abuse and a tool to deepen divisions". Hamas have ruled Gaza alone after defeating Fatah security forces in a five day civil war in 2007. However Gaza's borders have been closed in an 18-month Israeli blockade as revenge for continued Qassam rocket attacks from the Strip. Israel launched a devastating all out attack on Gaza in late December that left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead (a disparity of a hundred casualties to one). The war ended with on 18 January both sides declaring unilateral ceasefires.

Egypt has been mediating between Israel and Hamas in attempt to avoid further bloodshed as well as end the blockade. Mubarak will now walk a delicate tightrope as he holds separate talks with Israeli officials and Palestinians from both Hamas and now Fatah factions. Relations are at an all-time low between the two groups. Fatah accuses Hamas of killing, torturing and beating up Fatah activists in Gaza while Hamas in turn accuses Fatah of helping the Israeli military to strike Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip during the war. While the talks go on, so do the tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Gaza. Gaza resumed rocket fire on Israeli border towns shortly after the ceasefire and in response warplanes launched air strikes across Gaza late on Sunday. Yesterday, one Palestinian was killed and four others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle carrying militants in the southern town of Rafah.

Meanwhile Barack Obama’s new Middle East envoy George Mitchell outlined American priorities for the region. Speaking in Israel last week, he said the new administration wanted to consolidate the truce and immediately address Gaza’s humanitarian needs. His appointment was welcomed by Palestinians who remember his last mission to the Middle East in 2000 when he recommended the Israelis lift the restrictions that prevent the Palestinians building up their economy. But Israeli PM Ehud Olmert told him bluntly that Israel would respond to what he called “every Hamas violation of the cease-fire, be they rocket attacks, strikes along the border fence or smuggling through tunnels.”

Olmert also told Mitchell that Gaza border crossings will not open permanently for the passage of goods unless a deal is reached on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. As The Guardian points out, what Mitchell offers is sustained engagement right from the start of the Obama administration. The British daily says George Mitchell is “someone who will stay with it day after day, as he did in Northern Ireland.” This will be necessary as the history of Gaza’s politics is just as intractable as Northern Ireland’s.

Originally part of the British mandate of Palestine, Gaza came under harsh Egyptian military control after the 1948 war. Its citizens were forbidden from entering Egypt itself but in the 1950s its teeming refugee camps were a breeding ground for the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood network which brought about an which brought about an awakening of political Islam. Some refugees became Palestinian fighters known as “fidayun” and began conducting raids on isolated Jewish settlements near the border. Yasser Arafat emerged as leader of the “fidayun” calling his group The Movement for the Liberation of Palestine (which spelt “fatah” – victory – in reverse).

After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip. The crowded Strip held 850,000 of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories. A third of these were children and the unemployment rate was around 35 percent. For the next twenty years Gaza suffered a form of apartheid under a new occupier while continuing to be ignored at Arab summits. The failure of the PLO to provide protection against harassment propelled many people into the arms of Islamist groups. In 1987 the people’s frustration turned into the intifada (“shaking off”). This involved throwing stones at soldiers, preventing workers from getting to Israeli crossing points and liberating villages for a few days before the Israeli army returned. In response, the IDF bombarded villages with tear gas, charge in large numbers and used steel bullets wrapped in rubber.

Initially the 1993 Oslo Accords were viewed positively in Gaza. There would be no more curfews, or nightly break-ins or harassment on the roads. However as the Israelis imposed border closures it quickly became apparent that Oslo had turned Gaza into a huge prison. In the mid 1990s Israel encircled Gaza with a huge wall, electric fences and guard towers which effectively sealed off the Strip. The second intifada in October 2000 saw the beginning of primitive rocket attacks across the border into Israel.

In 2005, Israel enacted its unilateral disengagement plan to evict Israelis from 21 settlements in Gaza despite intense criticism from right-wing factions. But hopes that this would lead to a permanent settlement soon died. The locals were far from grateful and voted Hamas to victory in Palestinian government elections a year later. They would eventually muscle Fatah out of the Strip. Israel was left guarding a very hostile prisoner that does even recognise the existence of its jailor. Mitchell will need all his considerable skills of diplomacy to sort out the mess.

Defiant Hamas continue rocket attacks under Israeli assault

Gaza militants have defied the Israeli ground invasion and have fired dozens of rockets across the border in the last 24 hours. Five Qassam rockets struck the town of Sderot causing one minor injury and another struck Ashdod but caused no known damage or casualties. A house in Ashkelon took a hit from a more powerful Grad rocket but there were no fatalities. 12 Qassam rockets hit the Sdot Negev area on Saturday; all landed in open fields and caused no injuries. The main impact of these strikes continues to be psychological, as it has been for the last seven years.

The Gaza Strip has been separated from Israel by a security barrier since 1996. In 2005 Israel withdrew its civilian and military presence according to its unilateral disengagement plan, but retained control over airspace and maritime access. The attacks began after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The rockets were the only way that Gaza Palestinians could continue to carry the war into Israel. After Hamas won control of Gaza in June 2007 elections, Israel imposed a blockade on the Strip and its 1.5 million inhabitants. They allowed only basic humanitarian items in and permitted no exports paralysing the economy. The Israeli government declared Gaza a "hostile entity" in response to continued rocket attacks, and said it would start cutting fuel imports. The reduction in fuel supplies and a chronic lack of spare parts has severely impacted sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities. Aid agencies said the situation had become a humanitarian crisis.

Gaza began launching Qassam rockets in 2001. As of February 2008, they have killed 13 people, mostly in the nearby border town of Sderot. There has been no effort at negotiation in that time. Israel refuses to talk to Gaza’s rulers because Hamas in turn refuses to acknowledge the Jewish state's right to exist, will not renounce violence and doesn’t adhere to previous peace agreements signed by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction. Nevertheless as recently as February 2008, Israel’s public attitude was that a large scale ground operation would not put an end to the rocket fire.

But as the frequency has increased, Israeli public pressure had been mounting on the government to stop the rockets. With an Israeli election and a less friendly US administration in the wings, the Israeli government finally believed the time was right to react. In the past week, IDF artillery bombs have killed more than 480 Palestinians and injured 3,000 in Gaza. In same period, four Israelis have been killed and 59 wounded in Hamas rocket attacks. The rockets remain the Palestinians most potent, albeit random, weapon of retaliation.

Qassam rockets are named for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing) which in turn was named for the 1930s Palestinian leader Mojahed Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. Bombmakers supplied the first prototype in 2001 and a year later produced the Qassam 2, an improved version which attacked nearby Israeli settlements and towns. The rockets consist of a warhead, an engine and a tail segment. The warhead is filled with TNT and urea nitrate. They are fuelled by mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate (which is widely available as a fertiliser). Often they are crudely made explosives-packed pipes with metal fins welded onto the end. Qassam rockets are free-flying and lack any guidance system. As a result, they are notoriously inaccurate and many fail to even cross the border into Israel.

The rockets have a range of four to forty kilometres and spread their submunitions over a broad area. A large number remain unexploded and become defacto landmines. But they rarely cause any injuries, and they did not kill an Israeli until 28 June, 2004. The main success of the rockets has been psychological and has created an atmosphere of fear in all of the Southern Israeli border towns. The number of attacks has increased dramatically in recent years. By November, Israel had indicated it had lost patience: PM Ehud Olmert ominously told his audience "The question is not whether there will be a confrontation, but when it will take place, under what circumstances, and who will control these circumstances, who will dictate them, and who will know to exploit the time from the beginning of the ceasefire until the moment of confrontation in the best possible way.” Israel has begun the confrontation but the question will be whether it can control the consequences.

Loveless in Gaza

While the world’s attention is focussed on the Israeli-Lebanese tensions, the war continues on another front. In the early hours of Monday morning, July 17, the Israeli air force bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry Building in Gaza City. The building, already damaged by earlier attacks, has been completely destroyed. A separate air strike gutted the offices of the Palestine security force in the Islamist stronghold of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. This follows an Israeli tank and troop invasion into northern Gaza 24 hours ago. Six Palestinians have been killed in clashes and air strikes.

Israel launched the Gaza offensive three weeks ago after Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier, in a cross border raid a few days earlier. He is the first Israeli soldier to be seized by Palestinians since 1994. The Hamas government demanded that Israel free all Palestinian women and under age prisoners in exchange for the soldier's release. Israel currently has thousands of Palestinians locked up including 95 women and 313 under-18s. Israel refused to deal with Hamas and instead sealed off Gaza. On June 26, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert told a meeting in Jerusalem "This is not a matter of negotiation".

The IDF (Israeli Defence Force) launched “Operation Summer Rains” in response. Within a few days, a large IDF force of infantry backed by tanks formed a ring around Gaza. Israeli forces entered the Southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis on June 28 to search for Shalit. Four Israeli F-16s flew over the Syrian port city of Latakia which is the residence of President Assad in a symbolic move to show up the Syrian leadership as a sponsor of terrorism, and as well protest the presence in Syria of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. The IDF also targeted bridges to cut the Strip in half. They destroyed a power station which provided Gaza with 65 percent of its electricity. On June 29Israel arrested 64 Hamas officials. These included senior Palestinian Authority cabinet ministers and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. The IDF stated that the captured Hamas ministers "are not bargaining chips for the return of the soldier - it was simply an operation against a terrorist organization". The Palestinians described it as “an act of war”.

The captured soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was the gunner on a tank attacked in a pre-dawn raid by militants from a 300 metre tunnel dug under the Gaza border fence. Two other soldiers were killed in the attack. The raid was claimed by the military wing of the ruling Hamas party, Izzedine al-Qassam, with help from two smaller organisations, the Popular Resistance Committees and a little known group called “Army of Islam”.

This was a serious escalation in the tensions between the two sides. Hamas ended an informal ceasefire with Israel earlier in June following the deaths of eight members of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach. The Israeli army said it "regretted" the deaths and called a halt to the shelling. Israel said it has fired thousands of artillery shells into the Gaza Strip in response to armed Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad who have been firing hundreds of “Qassam” rockets (homemade steel rockets filled with explosives) into Israel. Israeli shells have killed about 15 civilians this year, including five children. The Palestinian rockets have not claimed any lives but have wounded several Israelis.

But it would be naïve to believe these are all spontaneous reactive events. Many of these actions such as the Palestinian kidnap, the Israeli response and the seizure of Palestinian politicians were all planned months in advance by the participants. All that was missing was something to spark the inevitable escalation. There is no desire for peace in either the Israeli or the Palestinian leadership.

Meanwhile, the world seems impotent to intervene.