.
"Hello my name is..." (school for visually impaired children, Gaza City): photo by Achim Voss, 10 June 2014
[To a killer]
If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
To find one’s identity again.
***
The siege is a waiting period
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.
Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): from Under Siege in A State of Siege (2002), translation by Marjolijn De Jagered
"Who are you?" Gaza City -- school for visually impaired children: photo by Achim Voss, 10 June 2014
Netanyahu instructs Israeli military to intensify assault on Gaza
Israeli PM authorises escalation of offensive as Palestinian death toll rises and rocket attacks from Gaza target Tel Aviv
Israeli PM authorises escalation of offensive as Palestinian death toll rises and rocket attacks from Gaza target Tel Aviv
Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli military to "intensify even further" its assault on the Gaza Strip.
-- Peter Beaumont in Gaza City, The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014
Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries -- for heavy ones they cannot.
-- Niccolò Macchiavelli (1469-1527): from The Prince (1513)
Israel's missiles strike out of the blue, but rockets still rain down
Civilian victims mount as Israel's offensive against Hamas intensifies, with children and an 80-year-old woman among dead
-- Peter Beaumont in Beit Hanoun, The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014
The family of Hafez Hamad, a senior member of Islamic Jihad, were sitting on a pair of low orange divans in the space between two houses when the rocket hit them a little before midnight.
Fired from a drone it slammed into the ground a foot from one of the two sofas, leaving behind a round three-feet-deep hole and five people dead, including Hafez and his 20-year-old niece. "They were just talking, sitting outside their house," says Mariam Hamad, sister-in-law of Hafez. "Usually there is a warning, but in this case the missile struck out of the blue."
She meant a practice known as the "knock on the roof" -– when small projectiles are fired to warn civilians to leave buildings. In other cases strikes have been preceded by a telephone call telling its inhabitants to flee. But such bombing sometimes injures or kills people in neighbouring houses.
In any case there was no knock on the roof for the Hamad family.
Even this early in Israel's campaign against Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza the bodies of the civilian victims are beginning to pile up, children and an 80-year-old woman among the dead from the past two days.
As the Israeli military said it struck about 200 Hamas targets on the second day of its offensive and warned of a possible ground invasion, the rockets militants from Gaza continued to fire were intermittently visible being launched in pairs, threes and even sets of four, their vapour trails climbing into the Mediterranean sky. The Israeli military said more than 60 rockets were fired at Israel on Wednesday, forcing people to take cover in public shelters as far away as Jerusalem. So far there have been no fatalities.
In all, 43 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza. Many, hospital officials claim, have been civilians. Among the total are 15 women and children, amid claims that in four air strikes only women and children were killed. According to an emergency services spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, in one incident a missile struck a house in Al-Maghazi, a beachside refugee camp near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, killing a mother and her four children. Earlier, another two women and four children died in a series of raids to the north and east of Gaza City.
In addition some 370 people have been wounded in the past two days. There have been no Israeli fatalities since the operation began.
For its part Israel has long alleged that the militants "hide" among the civilian population, but what is clear is that targets have included homes and public streets as well as missile sites and buildings associated with Hamas.
Hamad's house had been destroyed before in 2012 by Israeli military forces and been rebuilt.
His family admits he was a member of Islamic Jihad, a group involved in firing rockets into Israel, but claim he had left the militant group. One of his brothers –- who was killed with him -– had cancer, they also claim. "It happened at 11.45," said a cousin, Hamad Hamad, 22, who lives nearby and was one of the first on the scene.
"I heard the bomb and found the blood and bodies. He was the target, but they also killed two of his brothers, Ibrahim and Mahdi, the wife of Hafez and Mahdi's daughter who was only 20."
As he spoke the sound of a drone was audible above.
Among the locations targeted in Gaza have been some 40 houses, many of them listed on Gaza's radio news: an apartment block in New Gaza, a house in Zaytoun, the house of Hafez Hamad in Beit Hanoun.
In truth, there is little left of the house that once belonged to Mustafa Malaka in Zaytoun. A security officer with Hamas, who had been largely unemployed since his wages stopped being paid in the midst of the group's financial crisis in the coastal enclave, he had turned to farming chickens behind his house to make money.
Perhaps, like Hafez Hamad, he had been involved in firing rockets. When the bomb hit his house, say relatives, it injured Malaka but killed his wife, Hana, and three-year-old son, Mohammad. All that is left of the place that they once lived is a six-metre crater, six metres (20ft) wide, filled with rubble and the remains of their possessions –- a shirt hanging from a section of concrete.
Collapsed in the blast was the chicken coop the behind the house, the pullets wandering among the bodies of those killed.
At the Shifa hospital in Gaza, corridors that a day before had been half empty have been transformed into a chaotic scene, packed with relatives, who sit in the stairwells waiting for news, and the wounded.
A youth is brought in by his friends, his head wrapped in a bloody bandage; a young girl, her face and upper body burned, is wheeled urgently past on a gurney by nurses.
In many areas, especially to the north and south of Gaza City where the scrubby fields are used as launching sites for missiles aimed at Israel, the roads have almost emptied, the only sound audible the intermittent thuds of detonations, the whoosh of the rockets and the loud hum of drones and aircraft overhead.
In Gaza City itself, people were stocking up on food, not only for the Ramadan Iftar meal, but against the fear of what might happen next if a ground incursion. Even as the Egyptian government indicated it was involved in attempting to broker a ceasefire, as it has done in the past, Israeli ministers and officials were raising the prospect of widening the campaign to an invasion.
"Despite the fact it will be hard, complicated and costly, we will have to take over Gaza temporarily, for a few weeks, to cut off the strengthening of this terror army," Yuval Steinitz, Israel's intelligence minister, told Israel Radio. "If you ask my humble opinion, a significant operation like this is approaching."
His remarks echoed that of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who said after a meeting of his Security Cabinet: "The army is ready for all possibilities. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing toward Israeli citizens. The security of Israel's citizens comes first. The operation will expand and continue until the fire toward our towns stops and quiet returns."
The government has authorised the army to activate up to 40,000 reservists for a ground operation. An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing Israeli tactical strategy, said the reservists would be sent to the West Bank to allow active duty troops to amass near the Gaza border.
"We will not stop," said Israel's minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovitz. "They'll first receive a hard blow from air and sea, and if a ground invasion is needed, there will be a ground invasion."
But few in Gaza are in any doubt about what a ground operation would mean for civilians. While Hamas might be confident it can "absorb the pain" -- the ground invasion during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 is still fresh in the memory and its damage still visible on many buildings.
In that 22-day long offensive some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including 300 children.
Civilian victims mount as Israel's offensive against Hamas intensifies, with children and an 80-year-old woman among dead
-- Peter Beaumont in Beit Hanoun, The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014
The family of Hafez Hamad, a senior member of Islamic Jihad, were sitting on a pair of low orange divans in the space between two houses when the rocket hit them a little before midnight.
Fired from a drone it slammed into the ground a foot from one of the two sofas, leaving behind a round three-feet-deep hole and five people dead, including Hafez and his 20-year-old niece. "They were just talking, sitting outside their house," says Mariam Hamad, sister-in-law of Hafez. "Usually there is a warning, but in this case the missile struck out of the blue."
She meant a practice known as the "knock on the roof" -– when small projectiles are fired to warn civilians to leave buildings. In other cases strikes have been preceded by a telephone call telling its inhabitants to flee. But such bombing sometimes injures or kills people in neighbouring houses.
In any case there was no knock on the roof for the Hamad family.
Even this early in Israel's campaign against Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza the bodies of the civilian victims are beginning to pile up, children and an 80-year-old woman among the dead from the past two days.
As the Israeli military said it struck about 200 Hamas targets on the second day of its offensive and warned of a possible ground invasion, the rockets militants from Gaza continued to fire were intermittently visible being launched in pairs, threes and even sets of four, their vapour trails climbing into the Mediterranean sky. The Israeli military said more than 60 rockets were fired at Israel on Wednesday, forcing people to take cover in public shelters as far away as Jerusalem. So far there have been no fatalities.
In all, 43 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza. Many, hospital officials claim, have been civilians. Among the total are 15 women and children, amid claims that in four air strikes only women and children were killed. According to an emergency services spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, in one incident a missile struck a house in Al-Maghazi, a beachside refugee camp near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, killing a mother and her four children. Earlier, another two women and four children died in a series of raids to the north and east of Gaza City.
In addition some 370 people have been wounded in the past two days. There have been no Israeli fatalities since the operation began.
For its part Israel has long alleged that the militants "hide" among the civilian population, but what is clear is that targets have included homes and public streets as well as missile sites and buildings associated with Hamas.
Hamad's house had been destroyed before in 2012 by Israeli military forces and been rebuilt.
His family admits he was a member of Islamic Jihad, a group involved in firing rockets into Israel, but claim he had left the militant group. One of his brothers –- who was killed with him -– had cancer, they also claim. "It happened at 11.45," said a cousin, Hamad Hamad, 22, who lives nearby and was one of the first on the scene.
"I heard the bomb and found the blood and bodies. He was the target, but they also killed two of his brothers, Ibrahim and Mahdi, the wife of Hafez and Mahdi's daughter who was only 20."
As he spoke the sound of a drone was audible above.
Among the locations targeted in Gaza have been some 40 houses, many of them listed on Gaza's radio news: an apartment block in New Gaza, a house in Zaytoun, the house of Hafez Hamad in Beit Hanoun.
In truth, there is little left of the house that once belonged to Mustafa Malaka in Zaytoun. A security officer with Hamas, who had been largely unemployed since his wages stopped being paid in the midst of the group's financial crisis in the coastal enclave, he had turned to farming chickens behind his house to make money.
Perhaps, like Hafez Hamad, he had been involved in firing rockets. When the bomb hit his house, say relatives, it injured Malaka but killed his wife, Hana, and three-year-old son, Mohammad. All that is left of the place that they once lived is a six-metre crater, six metres (20ft) wide, filled with rubble and the remains of their possessions –- a shirt hanging from a section of concrete.
Collapsed in the blast was the chicken coop the behind the house, the pullets wandering among the bodies of those killed.
At the Shifa hospital in Gaza, corridors that a day before had been half empty have been transformed into a chaotic scene, packed with relatives, who sit in the stairwells waiting for news, and the wounded.
A youth is brought in by his friends, his head wrapped in a bloody bandage; a young girl, her face and upper body burned, is wheeled urgently past on a gurney by nurses.
In many areas, especially to the north and south of Gaza City where the scrubby fields are used as launching sites for missiles aimed at Israel, the roads have almost emptied, the only sound audible the intermittent thuds of detonations, the whoosh of the rockets and the loud hum of drones and aircraft overhead.
In Gaza City itself, people were stocking up on food, not only for the Ramadan Iftar meal, but against the fear of what might happen next if a ground incursion. Even as the Egyptian government indicated it was involved in attempting to broker a ceasefire, as it has done in the past, Israeli ministers and officials were raising the prospect of widening the campaign to an invasion.
"Despite the fact it will be hard, complicated and costly, we will have to take over Gaza temporarily, for a few weeks, to cut off the strengthening of this terror army," Yuval Steinitz, Israel's intelligence minister, told Israel Radio. "If you ask my humble opinion, a significant operation like this is approaching."
His remarks echoed that of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who said after a meeting of his Security Cabinet: "The army is ready for all possibilities. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing toward Israeli citizens. The security of Israel's citizens comes first. The operation will expand and continue until the fire toward our towns stops and quiet returns."
The government has authorised the army to activate up to 40,000 reservists for a ground operation. An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing Israeli tactical strategy, said the reservists would be sent to the West Bank to allow active duty troops to amass near the Gaza border.
"We will not stop," said Israel's minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovitz. "They'll first receive a hard blow from air and sea, and if a ground invasion is needed, there will be a ground invasion."
But few in Gaza are in any doubt about what a ground operation would mean for civilians. While Hamas might be confident it can "absorb the pain" -- the ground invasion during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 is still fresh in the memory and its damage still visible on many buildings.
In that 22-day long offensive some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including 300 children.
Palestinian children play outside their family's tent in a poverty-stricken quarter of the town of Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip: photo by Cubby Bear Blue, 26 June 2014
Palestinians inspect wreckage of a building destroyed by an Israeli military air attack, Gaza City: photo by Wissam Nassar / Xinhua, 8 July 2014; image by Diario Contraste, 8 July 2014
'Let him cry for his family': inside the Gaza Strip during the 26 December 2008-January 2009 Israeli invasion. Taken by the Palestinian co-ordinator of the International Campaign to end the siege on Gaza. She has titled her photographs: 'Gaza Terrorists'. 'In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends': photo by Free Gaza movement, 13 January 2009
'Some children who will never be able to terrify Israel again': Victims of Israeli air attacks on the Gaza Strip during the 26 December 2008-January 2009 Israeli invasion: photo by Free Gaza movement, 13 January 2009
Israeli Attack on Gaza -- White Phosphorus. Amnesty International: "We noticed various things about this: the burn does not heal; the phosphorus may remain inside the body and goes on burning there, and the general condition of the patient deteriorates -- normally with 10-15 percent burns you would expect a cure, now many such patients die." Other strange injuries were caused by unusual weapons (possibly including Deep Inert metal Explosive – DIME weapons) which doctors did not know how to deal with. "We had eight amputations on one day -– normally, the patients should all have lived, but they all died. We don't understand it," one doctor told the team: photographer unknown; image by Haqq Rocks!, 21 January 2009
Total destruction of home -- Jenny (Gaza): photo by Free Gaza movement, 7 January 2000
There is nothing left -- Jenny (Gaza): photo by Free Gaza movement, 7 January 2009
A ball of fire is seen following an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 9, 2014. Israeli strikes on Gaza killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 100, emergency services said, as the military began an aerial campaign against militants in the Strip: photo by Said Khatib / AFP Photo; image by Mundo33, 9 July 2014
