TOPIC: GAZA

Israeli jets and helicopters launched dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight on Monday, just hours after the bodies of three abducted Israeli teenagers were found in a shallow grave near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

The air strikes, ostensibly in response to an ongoing barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, came after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, vowed the militant Islamist group Hamas, blamed by Israel for the kidnapping, would "pay a heavy price".

The United Nations human rights office urged on Tuesday all Israelis and Palestinians to exercise "maximum restraint" as the tension across Israel and occupied Palestinian territory escalated.

Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, who also had US citizenship, went missing while hitchhiking home from their religious schools in settlements on the West Bank on 12 June.

Their bodies were found by soldiers and volunteers in a valley covered with stones and brush on Monday afternoon.

The air strikes, which struck 34 locations in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that Israel says were associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, came as troops on the West Bank killed an 18 year-old Palestinian during a raid in Jenin. Israeli authorities claim the teenager was a Hamas member who threw an explosive device at Israeli soldiers.

In Hebron, meanwhile, it was reported that the Israeli military had blown up the houses of two Hamas members named by Israel as suspects in the abduction Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh – the first punitive house demolitions since Israel halted the practice in 2005. The two men disappeared from their homes shortly after the abduction and have not been arrested.

Following the discovery of the missing Israeli's bodies on Monday, new details about the teenagers' abduction and murder 19 days ago while hitching home from West Bank religious schools have emerged in the Hebrew press, including the fact that investigators believe that the teenagers were killed within a few minutes of getting into a stolen car near Gush Etzion junction.

Israel abducted teenagers
According to Israeli media reports, investigators found a bullet casing and other signs consistent with the youths being shot while sitting in the car, which was was later found abandoned and burned only a few kilometres from where their bodies were subsequently discovered. It is believed the three were shot shortly after one of the youths had managed to call an emergency hotline and whisper that they had been kidnapped after being alarmed that the car had made a sudden u-turn. Their bodies were buried in a field near the village of Halhul just north of one of the entrances to Hebron. Israeli officials believe the abductors had planned to trade the bodies for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Binyamin Proper, who was among the civilian volunteers that found the bodies covered with piles of rocks, told Channel 2 TV that a member of the search party "saw something suspicious on the ground, plants that looked out of place, moved them and moved some rocks and then found the bodies. We realised it was them and we called the army".

The search for the missing teenagers prompted a vast Israeli military operation in the West Bank and the arrest of some 400 Palestinians – mainly Hamas members. The incident has dramatically increased tensions across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Prior to the discovery of the bodies, five Palestinians had been killed during the search operation.

The case, which has received rolling Israeli media coverage, has gripped the Israeli public, prompting mass rallies and a huge outpouring of public sympathy for the mothers of the three teenagers.

The families of Palestinians killed during the search – some of them also teenagers – have complained that the death of their children have been largely ignored in press coverage.

Following the discovery of the bodies on Monday, Netanyahu issued a statement once again blaming Hamas.

"Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay ... [They] were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts."

Israel's economy minister, Naftali Bennett, added his own statement vowing retaliation: "There can be no forgiveness for the killers of children and those who sent them. Now is the time to act."

For its part, Hamas has denied involvement. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Monday: "Only the Israeli version of the events has been published."

"Israel is attempting to make way for aggression against us, against the Hamas ... No Palestinian group, Hamas or any other group, has taken responsibility for the action, and thus the Israeli version can't be trusted," he added.

A ball of fire is seen following an Israel airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza.
A ball of fire is seen following an Israel airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza. Photograph: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images
The Israel media reported on Tuesday morning that Netanyahu had faced splits in his Cabinet in its deliberations over how hard to retaliate both for the murders and the increased in rocket fire.

Senior officials stated both publicly and privately on Monday night and Tuesday morning that Israel was not seeking an "escalation with Hamas", suggesting that despite the rhetoric and the airstrikes in Gaza, retaliation might be limited.Several analysts in the Israeli media, including Amos Harel in Haaretz, have suggested Netanyahu is not keen to get embroiled in a long conflict with Hamas.

Messages of sympathy continued to come from international leaders who also called for calm. In a statement issue by his office, British prime minister David Cameron said: "I am deeply saddened by the news that the bodies of the three Israeli boys kidnapped on 12 June have been found this evening.

"This was an appalling and inexcusable act of terror perpetrated against young teenagers. Britain will stand with Israel as it seeks to bring to justice those responsible."

US president Barack Obama also issued a statement saying: "As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing."

"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.

"From the outset, I have offered our full support to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice, and I encourage Israel and the PA to continue working together in that effort. I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilise the situation. As the Israeli people deal with this tragedy, they have the full support and friendship of the United States

Israeli Premier could go after the Hamas leadership, but analysts advocate targeting Gaza's missile stores

As Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu weighs the options for responding to the murders of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, there is no shortage of advice—especially after the release, on the day the boys were buried together, of the recording of a call one made to police shortly after they were captured. The tape has only further agitated a grief-stricken Israeli public, increasing pressure on Netanyahu to act.

But Netanyahu might exercise restraint. In 1997, during his first term as prime minister, he approved a Mossad operation aimed at killing the Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal on an Amman street, in retaliation for a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel. The plan went awry: The Mossad agents were caught by Jordanian police, and their attempt to poison Meshaal by smearing a poison on his skin left him in a coma. To get the agents back, Netanyahu had to release not only the antidote for the poison used in the botched attempt, but also the jailed spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (killed in 2004 by an Israeli missile).

“You start these things, you never know where you’re going to end,” said Gabriel Ben-Dor, director of the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University. “The Israeli theory is Hamas does not care about its own people in Gaza being hurt, but they care about themselves. So Israel has been going after their [physical] person at times…But this is a dangerous game to play. The answer could be: You are killing our people, we will kill yours. That’s a dangerous policy to renew.”

And Netanyahu has shown no great appetite of late for such aggressive action. “Netanyahu, despite his fiery rhetoric, is a very cautious man, even a hesitant one. He’s been very very reluctant to expand the sphere of operations beyond what’s absolutely necessary. Which is good from the Israeli point of view…he’s a force for restraint,” says Ben-Dor.

Yet having declared that “Hamas will pay” for the teenagers’ deaths, the premier appears obligated to act. The 34 airstrikes Israeli warplanes delivered on Gaza targets on Monday night were not insignificant, but might be only the overture. Right-wing members of his coalition are pressing for a major assault on Gaza, even including ground troops, according to Hebrew news accounts. “The countdown toward a strike on Gaza basically began two days after the teenagers were kidnapped,’’ military correspondent Alex Fishman writes in the leading daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

The problem is that striking Hamas leaders inside Gaza is likely to lead to an answering salvo from Hamas, which has scores of missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and beyond. That reality prompts a growing number of analysts, including Ben-Dor, to advocate targeting the missiles themselves: a multi-day air campaign aimed at destroying existing missile stores, launchers, and the factories where the rockets are made. The time is right, they note, because Egypt has finally cut off smuggling lines from the Sinai by which Iran was able to re-supply Hamas in the past.

“The grim ending of the kidnapping, when coupled with Hamas’s dire situation, create an opportunity for an operation that will achieve a strategic outcome that will endure for a long time,” retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland argues in a Yedioth opinion column. “It would be best not to squander that on a purely punitive and retaliatory operation.”

But others warn that any strike on Palestinian territory will hurt not only Hamas, but also Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate President of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, both condemned the kidnapping and aided Israel’s investigation, at some cost to his public standing.

“It is in the State of Israel’s interest now to distinguish between Abu Mazen and Hamas,” says columnist Nahum Barnea, also in Yedioth. But Netanyahu has rarely taken into account the Palestinian leader’s political fortunes in the past. In fact, in the wake of the teenagers’ deaths, Abbas has even less room to maneuver than Netanyahu.

“There is criticism against him because he collaborated or cooperated with Israel and because he condemned the terror attack,” notes Kobi Michael, former head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s ministry of strategic affairs. “He is criticized by both sides. He is trapped in a very tragic stalemate.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict stood on the edge of a dangerous precipice on Wednesday night after an Arab youth was abducted and murdered in a suspected revenge killing for the deaths of three Jewish teenagers.
Violent clashes broke out in East Jerusalem’s Shuafat neighbourood after a burnt body was discovered in a forest in the city’s Jewish-dominated western sector shortly before dawn. It was said to be that of Mohammed Abu Khiedir, 16, who had been reported missing when his family told police he had been abducted from outside a shop near his home in the area.
The youth - an electrical engineering student at a vocational school - was said by relatives to have been forced by three men into a car as he waited for early morning prayers to begin at a mosque next to his home.
His remains were so badly charred that police declined to show them to the youth’s father, Hussein, the owner of an electrical shop. He was instead being identified using DNA samples from his parents.
The murder drew international condemnation, including from David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who called it “appalling”, and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, who said it was “vital” that those responsible “be held accountable”.
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John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said: “There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people. At this tense and dangerous moment all parties must do everything to protect the innocent.”
It also prompted fears that the long-running Jewish-Arab dispute was entering a violent new phase amid suspicions that the murder was the work of Right-wing vigilantes in retribution for the death of three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found on Monday more than two weeks after being abducted in the West Bank, allegedly by Palestinian militants.
The trio were buried on Tuesday in an emotional funeral attended by tens of thousands of Israelis.
Their deaths have provoked calls by far-Right group for “revenge” against Arabs. A new Facebook page, called The People of Israel Demand Revenge - filled with racist comments and anti-Arab diatribes - had attracted 35,000 followers by Wednesday, including many soldiers.
As the Israelis’ funeral was being held in the central town of Modi’in on Tuesday, mobs of Right-wingers running through the streets of Jerusalem attacked Arabs and shouted racist slogans.
Some asked people with dark complexions “What’s the time?” in Hebrew to establish whether they were Arabs before assailing them, while others chanted, “Death to Arabs” and “a Jew is a brother, an Arab is a bastard”. Five people were injured and police made 50 arrests. There were reports of angry Israelis hunting for Arab workers in a branch of the McDonalds fast food chain.
Two teenage girls carrying a placard in Hebrew reading: "Hating Arabs is not racism, it's values" (FACEBOOK)
Israeli officials stopped short of confirming Wednesday’s murder as a revenge attack but warned citizens against “taking the law into their own hands” - thus appearing to rule out suggestions on Twitter that Mohammed had been killed by fellow Palestinians as part of a criminal or family dispute.
Nir Barkat, the Jerusalem mayor, called it a “horrible and barbaric act” and added: “This is not our way... I call on everyone to exercise restraint.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, ordered a swift investigation to catch the culprits of what he called a “reprehensible murder”.
“The Prime Minister calls on all sides not to take the law into their own hands and noted that Israel is a nation of laws and everyone must act according to the law,” said a statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office.
His comments followed an angry demand from Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, that he condemn the murder in the same way that Mr Abbas himself had spoken out against the abduction and murder of the three Israelis.
“I demand the Israeli government punish the killers if it wants peace between the Palestinian and Israeli people,” the Palestinian leader said.
Wednesday’s clashes in Shuafat left 65 people injured, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported. It also disrupted Jerusalem’s state-of-the art light rail network, with trains ordered to avoid the normally tranquil middle-class neighbourhood as youths threw stones and fire crackers at heavily-armed police, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas.
Palls of thick black smoke rose high above the area close to the local mosque and a petrol station.
Masked men, some wielding axes, smashed the railway’s waiting shelters and ticket machines.
Mohammed’s relatives said he was sitting alone on steps near the mosque drinking water in preparation for the beginning of the Ramadan fast when a brown Hyundai approached with three men inside.
Surveillance footage recorded by security cameras in a nearby shop showed two of the men appearing to speak to him in friendly manner before forcing him into the vehicle, said Bushra Abu Khiedir, the teenager’s aunt.
Witnesses said the car had been driving around the street and circled back three or four times, eventually stopping where the youth was sitting.
“They looked like Mossad or KGB agents, not religious people,” Mrs Abu Khiedir said, basing her accounts on the surveillance footage, which had since been removed by police.
“Regular Israelis are scared to come around here. The way they kept asking questions and the way the car kept turning round in the streets, they looked like they knew what they were doing and had been trained.”
Locals said men in a similar vehicle had tried unsuccessfully to abduct a girl in the neighbourhood two days earlier.
Mohammed’s mother, Suha, 43, called her son a “sweet boy” who was not a trouble maker.
Asked if his abduction could be revenge for the murder of the three Israelis, she said: “My son is very important to me, just like their sons are important to them. My son’s blood will not go for nothing. We need protection. We are surrounded by lunatic settlers who steal our land and are stealing our kids.”

16 July 2014 at 10:23


The so-called Egyptian initiated ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian groups in the Gaza strip appears to have expired following news early Wednesday morning of new airstrikes intended to be carried out by Israel, according to AFP reports today.

This morning at 5am London time, the Israeli army warned some 100,000 Palestinians in the eastern Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes, military sources confirmed.

AFP correspondents saw flyers dropped over the Zeitun neighborhood southeast of Gaza City, and residents there and elsewhere also reported receiving recorded phone and text messages urging them to evacuate by 0500 GMT.

The flyers explained that the army would be carrying out "aerial strikes against terror sites and operatives" in Zeitun and Shujaiya, since "a high volume of rocket fire at Israel" was from there.

The warnings came on the ninth day of Israel's Operation Protective Edge, which aims to stop rocket fire from Gaza 'militants'.

Yesterday, however, An Nahar English reported that Hamas leaders rejected the so-called 'ceasefire' and were defiant that they would continue with their rocket campaign.

According to AFP reports today, a similar message was sent to residents of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza."The evacuation is for your own safety," the leaflet read, warning residents to not return to their homes until further notice.

Similar messages had been sent to Beit Lahiya with a Sunday deadline, causing the exodus of 17,000 people who took shelter in United Nations schools.

Since July 8, militants have fired nearly 1,000 rockets and mortars into the Jewish state, and Israel has carried out around 1,500 strikes against targets inside the Gaza Strip, the army says.

Palestinian medical sources said 205 people were killed in the Israeli strikes. On Tuesday, the first Israeli was killed by a rocket fired from Gaza at the Erez border crossing.

CNN has pulled correspondent Diana Magnay out of her post covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the reporter tweeted that Israelis cheering bombs hitting Gaza, and who had allegedly threatened her, were “scum.”

Magnay was "threatened and harassed" before and during her report, a CNN spokeswoman told The Huffington Post, leading to the reporter's reaction on Twitter.

“She deeply regrets the language used, which was aimed directly at those who had been targeting our crew," the spokeswoman added. "She certainly meant no offense to anyone beyond that group, and she and CNN apologize for any offense that may have been taken.”