 Silver Belt
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: ข้างในแม่ของคุณ
Posts: 11,461
|
Righteous victims at it again..
Oh, those lovable Palestinians...
The situation has really deteriorated in Gaza, and it looks as though a full-fledged civil war is now inevitable. Hamas seems to be instigating most of the violence as of late, while Fatah seems to be showing a tad bit more restraint, especially as it regards Israel. Hamas has been firing rockets towards incessantly for the last few days, for no other reason than to create a diversion from their terrible behavior towards their fellow Palestinians.
Seriously, I don't know how long it will be until Gaza has more in common with Iraq than it does with the comparatively placid West Bank..I have bolded some interesting parts of the article.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli aircraft launched missiles at Hamas militants in the
Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least five people, after Hamas fired rocket barrages into
Israel in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into increasingly violent Palestinian infighting.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hamas gunmen fatally shot six guards from the rival
Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 Palestinians were killed in Palestinian infighting Wednesday — the bloodiest day since violence broke out in the Gaza Strip four days ago.
The streets of central Gaza City echoed with gunfire and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents stayed home from school and work, huddling in dark homes after electricity to some neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.
At nightfall, Hamas announced its intention to begin observing a unilateral cease-fire, and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah also called on the warring parties to hold their fire. However, similar truces the two previous evenings did not hold.
In four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured — not including the dead from the Israeli airstrikes. Most of the dead have been from Fatah. The violence threatened to bring down the Palestinians' two-month-old unity government — and brought the Palestinians dangerously close to all-out civil war.
Despite Israel's vow to stay out of the fray, its missile strikes added another layer of complexity to Gaza's mayhem, and raised the specter of a large-scale Israeli invasion.
"What is happening in Gaza endangers not only the unity government, but the Palestinian social fabric, the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian strategy as a whole," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Abbas was expected to meet with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in Gaza on Thursday to discuss the situation, Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said. One option was declaring a state of emergency, he said. Abbas also spoke by phone with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in
Syria on Wednesday, and the two agreed to work to end the violence.
Hamas officials said the organization's men launched eight rockets at Israel, following a barrage of around 20 rockets Tuesday. That salvo at the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, wounded five Israelis, one seriously, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
There were no casualties Wednesday, but school was canceled in Sderot and residents huddled in bomb shelters.
Hamas said its rockets were retaliation for Israeli violence, but more likely it was an attempt to draw Israel into the fighting as a way of uniting the Palestinians against a common foe.
Before that attack, Israel launched an airstrike at the Hamas military building in the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian officials and the army said. Medics said four Hamas gunmen were killed and 30 others were wounded. In a rare display of unity, Hamas and Fatah men worked together to evacuate the casualties.
Later in the day, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying a group of Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip, killing one person and wounding two others, Palestinian medical officials said. The attack came shortly after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel "cannot continue to restrain itself" in the face of repeated rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
The army said the airstrike was aimed at a Palestinian squad that had just fired rockets into Israel, and did not strike a vehicle.
Earlier in the day, Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said Israel would not be "dragged into the Gaza Strip the way that Hamas wants. We will choose the time, the place to respond and we will protect our citizens."
In the latest infighting, police from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security force arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials said. The five Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said.
Hamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in a separate clash, and a nurse in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain-dead and on a respirator.
In another incident, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security. Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her apartment and struck her and two of her children with their weapons. One of the children is 14 years old; the age of the other wasn't immediately known.
"They came, they broke the door," she said. "They assaulted my children and they pushed me aside, then they torched the apartment."
Shadi al-Kashir, a building resident, said his father, wife, five children and two sisters had been trapped inside by smoke in the halls and gunbattles raging in the entranceway. "They tried to send ambulances, but the ambulances came under fire," he said. They later managed to escape.
A group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.
Earlier Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak before storming it and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians security and medical officials said. Abu Shbak and his family were not home at the time.
Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, angrily accused Hamas' leadership of the attack, charging that the Islamist group "wanted to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Darfur."
Fighting also raged close to President Mahmoud Abbas' heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight, and the bodies of two Fatah gunmen were sprawled on the street nearby. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present.
More than 30 journalists from different news agencies were holed up at the Gaza offices of Al-Jazeera television, unable to venture outside because of heavy fighting next to the building.
"We are in fact, without exaggeration, in grave danger," said Al-Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, his words interrupted by sounds of gunfire.
Gaza's turmoil further weakened hopes for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite a new push by the Arab world to bring the sides to the table. The offer proposes Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. But negotiations are inconceivable if the Palestinians descend into civil war.
This week's fighting was the worst since Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to share power.
At its core is the unresolved power struggle between Hamas, which won parliament elections last year, and Fatah, which dominated Palestinian politics for four decades. After a year in power and squeezed by an international aid boycott, Hamas realized it could not govern alone and brought Fatah into the government. But the two sides never worked out all their differences, particularly over who would control security forces.
__________________
Cintron/Striking/Freedom >>>>> Sherk/Grappling/Terrorism
|
