Genocide is taking place in Gaza.
Yesterday, Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians, including a boy in southern Gaza Strip and a 55-year-old man in northern West Bank town of Jenin. Medics confirmed that the Israeli artillery shelling that targeted southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah Monday morning killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy and wounded his brother.
And today morning, the Israeli occupation forces carried out further strikes in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing one Palestinian and wounding two others, one of them is reportedly in serious condition, according to Palestinian security and medical sources.
Following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from an army base in Gaza during a well-planed raid by a group of Palestinian fighters, Israel stepped up artillery strikes targeting the area where most of houses are makeshift.
An average of eight Palestinians, mostly children, is killed daily in Israeli ground and air strikes on Gaza Strip.
Hundreds are maimed, seriously injured or paralyzed, according to Green Left Weekly.
Last week, Israeli strikes killed another three citizens of Gaza and wounded an entire family in Beit Hanoun
The Israeli leadership seems confused what policy should be pursued in Gaza Strip. It has vague ideas about the West Bank, Green Left Weekly's article stated.
Unlike Gaza Stripe, Olmert’s current government views the West Bank as an open space, at least on its eastern side. And thus, when Israel, depending on the ingathering program of the government, “annexes the parts it covets — half of the West Bank — and cleanses it of its native population, the other half would naturally lean towards Jordan, at least for a while and would not concern Israel.”
This method won the vote of most of the Jews in the country, however it cannot be pursued in the Gaza enclave, for unlike Jordan, Egypt managed to persuade the Israelis, in 1948, that the Gaza Strip for them is a liability and will never form part of Egypt.
The result is a million-and-a-half Palestinians are stuck inside Israel — although geographically the Strip lies on the margins of the state, psychologically in its midst.
Gazans are living inhuman living conditions in the most dense area in the world.
UN Relief and Works Agency has been warning lately that living conditions in Gaza Strip have reached breaking point.
Karen Abuzayed, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), was quoted lately as saying that living conditions in Gaza Strip have reached a breaking point due to the withholding of tax and customs revenues by the Israeli government, and the Western aid cut as well as the non-stop Israeli offensive against the devastated Palestinian population.
The destruction of the Gaza Strip's main electrical power plant, and the closure of all entry and exit points had made life more unbearable for Palestinians.
"The strangulation of commerce and trade has ruined the economy, it has brought the institutions of government to a point of near-meltdown and badly shaken the society", Abuzayed said, warning Western power brokers that, contrary to their declared policies "these pressures and tactics have not resulted in a desire for compromise on the part of the (Palestinian) government or the people, or yet the fall of the government, but rather have created mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment".
Palestinians lived relatively better conditions when at least the movement to the West Bank and into Israel for work was allowed. But since 1987, harsher and much brutal Israeli policies had been pursued.
Ironically enough, recent polls showed that most Israelis see Gaza as an independent Palestinian state that Israel has graciously allowed to emerge.
Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas had been going even before the capture of Gilad Shalit. But massive killing had been stepped up since the raid to capture the Israeli soldier and became systematic. Daily killing of Palestinians, mostly children, is no more on the newspapers’ main headlines. One may only learn about those daily crimes from internal pages of the local press.
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/rev...rvice_ID=12167
Kidman