Gaza Strip Hot Potato

Israel Says It Wants No Ties with Gaza
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said Thursday that Israel wants to relinquish all responsibility for the Gaza Strip, including the supply of electricity and water, now that the territory's southern border with Egypt has been opened. "We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it. So we want to disconnect from it."  (AP)
    See also Egypt Won't Take Control of Gaza
Hossam Zaki, the official spokesman for Egypt's foreign ministry, said Thursday of Israeli hints that it was thinking of giving up all responsibility for Gaza now that its border with Egypt is open: "This is a wrong assumption." "The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons," Zaki said. "The border will go back to normal."  (Jerusalem Post)

Israel is rebuked:

UN Human Rights Council Rebukes Israel on Gaza - Stephanie Nebehay
The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday demanded Israel lift its week-long blockade of Gaza. The 47-member council adopted a resolution presented by Arab and Muslim states by a vote of 30 in favor and one against (Canada) with 15 abstentions, and one delegation absent. Britain, France, Germany and Japan were among countries to abstain. China and Russia backed the resolution. Western countries abstained in bloc after criticizing the text as unbalanced for failing to even mention the rockets launched into Israel from Gaza by Palestinian militants. The Israeli army estimates about 250 rockets and mortar rounds have pounded Israel since last week.
    U.S. Ambassador Warren Tichenor warned that the Council session and its "one-sided resolution" would only stoke tensions and erode chances for peace. "The Human Rights Council has far too often been used simply as a platform from which to single out Israel, while too often ignoring the other human rights situations. This unbalanced approach has squandered its credibility." (Reuters)

But who are beating the Palestinians with clubs?

Egypt Fires Water Cannons at Palestinians at Border
Egyptian forces fired water cannons at Palestinians trying to force their way across the Gaza-Egypt border on Friday. Egyptian forces began placing barbed wire near the collapsed steel border wall early on Friday, and witnesses said Palestinians threw stones at Egyptian forces, who responded by beating some Palestinians with clubs. (Reuters)

Who is making out financially?

Poverty-Stricken Gazans Spent $130 Million in Egypt in Two Days
Rami Abdou, an economic analyst, estimated that Gazans spent $130 million in less than two days, a princely sum for the poverty-stricken territory. (AP)

Who is dying?

Israeli Border Policeman Killed in Terror Attack at Jerusalem Checkpoint - Amos Harel, Yuval Azoulay, and Yair Ettinger
Border Policeman Rami Zohari, 20, was killed and a policewoman was seriously wounded in a terror shooting attack Thursday night at the northern entrance to Shoafat, north of Jerusalem. Two Palestinian terrorists had approached on foot, fired at the Israelis, and fled the scene. Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. (Ynet News)

Who continues to be bombed and ignored?

As the United Nations Security Council deliberates over the crisis in Gaza, the Israeli Consulate in New York organized a display featuring 4,200 red balloons - each balloon symbolizing a Qassam rocket fired by Palestinians at Sderot and nearby communities since Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip - in front of UN headquarters on Thursday.

"The object of the display is to highlight the suffering of the residents of Sderot to the world," said David Saranga, the Media and Public Affairs Consul who introduced the idea. "To this day, all efforts at bringing this issue onto the U.S. media agenda have not succeeded. On the contrary, recently the coverage of the suffering of the people in Gaza has increased in the wake of Israel's measures."

Saranga said the purpose of the display is "to emphasize the incessant barrage of Qassam rockets and to call on the international community to stop ignoring what takes place in Israel."

The Town that Measures Life in 15-Second Intervals - Mary Dejevsky
Life in Sderot is measured in intervals of 15 seconds. That is how long people have between the sounding of the sirens and the inevitable explosion. Civic life is almost non-existent. People are on edge, unwilling to plan anything in advance, and fearful of dropping their children at school, lest it is the last time they see them. Shula Sasson explains that 15 seconds is not long enough for anyone except the most agile to get to the safer downstairs from upstairs. "If you have to carry a small child, you haven't a hope." So the upstairs of their house is hardly used. Everyone - seven people - now sleeps in the living room. (Independent-UK)

Sderot: Life Under Rocket Bombardment - Joshua Mitnick
In Sderot, Israel, the rocket alert was drowned out by the noise from the children's party. By the time the first kids dashed to the bomb shelter at the Parent and Child Community Center, it was too late. The Kassam rocket thundered overhead, accompanied by a subtle tremble. "You heard that boom," asked Dalia Yosef, the director of the Sderot Resilience Center, which focuses on easing the psychological toll of the rockets. "It's not that far away." "The worst problem is the lack of certainty. The body and mind are always in survival mode," explained Yosef, a native of Sderot whose parents still reside in the town. "All of the threads of life are being broken," Yosef says of the rocket-induced trauma. "It's hurting a lot more than it seems."
    Katy Cohen spoke of sleeping in the safe room of her apartment with her three children. Holding her 2-year-old son, Cohen said that he wakes up in the middle of the night imagining a Kassam attack. "Every little noise he hears he thinks is a Kassam," said Cohen. "He knows what the 'Color Red' alert is and he knows to go into the shelter." (New York Jewish Week)

Who deliberately targets innocents?  Who puts their soldiers at risk to protect innocents?

The Case Against Moral Inversion
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, addressed the UN Human Rights Council on Jan. 24: "It is, after all, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations, who deliberately fire rockets - over 200 in the past week alone - at innocent civilians in Sderot and other Israeli towns....It is they who reject the very notion of a distinction between combatants and civilians."
    "Israel risks the lives of its own soldiers to avoid harming civilians. To Israel, causing a civilian casualty is an unintended tragedy; to Hamas, it is a cause for celebration. The world knows this. The supporters of those who fire rockets at nursery schools summoned us here to accuse Israel of violating international humanitarian law." (UN Watch)

Who has nefarious plans?

Palestinian Terrorist Groups Planning Attacks from Sinai - Amir Oren (Ha'aretz)
    Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza have used the newly open border with Egypt to send numerous terrorists into Sinai over the last two days with the goal of reaching Israel to commit attacks, Israeli defense officials said Thursday.
    Defense officials said the terrorists in Sinai are most likely to try to strike immediately, and almost certainly within the next two weeks.

Open Border with Egypt Allows Free Flow of Terrorists and Weapons into Gaza (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center)
    The uncontrolled movement of crowds of Gazans in and out of Egypt means that Hamas can now smuggle terrorist operatives and weapons into Gaza with almost no interference.
    Hamas' goal is to force the Egyptians to renege on its participation in the Crossings Agreement of August 2005.

Thank God some are able to see the truth:

Deep Inside the Plucky Country - Greg Sheridan
Alongside the territories is a much under-reported but fascinating and unique country. It's called Israel. The world media makes a mistake by using the same reporters to cover the Palestinian territories as well as Israel. They cover the territories and they only cover Israel as a brooding and malign presence in the territories. Naturally the reporting is one-sided. But it is worse than that. It omits from the equation Israel and the Israelis, and all the countless enthralling and diverse aspects of Israeli politics and society.
    After the 1967 war, when Israel was attacked by a coalition of its Arab neighbors, Israel took territory in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Some of this, Israelis argue, is necessary for security. It has since left Gaza. Israel is constantly urged to go back to its 1967 borders, but the two places where it has done that, in southern Lebanon and Gaza, the result has been disastrous. It was subject to thousands of rocket attacks from southern Lebanon and now every day Kassam rockets are fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli civilian towns, especially Sderot.
    After a three-week visit I left Israel profoundly optimistic about the morale of the society and the resolve of the people, but profoundly pessimistic about the peace process. If there were peace, any compromise on borders might be possible. But too many Arab leaders, and too many Palestinian leaders, are playing for the very long term and still believe that in time they will wipe Israel off the map.
    The most powerful image I saw in Israel was in a small office in the Knesset (parliament) building in Jerusalem. I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labor Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general. He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of two Israeli F-15 fighte rs flying over Auschwitz. "When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz," he says. His grandparents, he tells me, were killed by the Polish farmers they had paid to shelter them. You learn the lessons of trusting other people with your security. Israel will certainly make compromises. But it will not commit suicide. The writer is the foreign editor of The Australian. (The Australian)