The suffering of the people of Gaza may have been overshadowed by events in Egypt but their suffering continues. It has in fact intensified. A number of organizations have demanded lifting the siege of Gaza.
The visit of the Emir of Qatar to besieged Gaza Strip has led to much discussion. Was it merely to express solidarity with the Palestinians or there was a broader political objective?
How do Muslims celebrate Eid under occupation? Eva Bartlett, a Canadian peace activist who has been on several aid convoys, describes her experiences in Gaza under siege.
Haniyeh was planning to visit Cairo on February 26 (after Crescent goes to press) to request Egypt to supply diesel directly to Gaza instead of sending it through the Israeli pumping station. Israel routinely shuts down supplies to punish the Palestinians. The Zionists have also threatened to cut off water to Gaza. That would be catastrophic.
Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that heads the government in Ghazzah, has scored a stunning victory over the Zionist State of Israel. It is not merely the numbers: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier.
The Muslim East (Middle East) has been in the throes of revolutionary fervor for more than six months. Two dictators have been driven from power; others are teetering on the brink while some are also fighting back with mixed results.
“…We were made aware of the orphans, the slums they live in; you witness the Israeli settlements that withdrew from [Gaza]; you witness the old Israeli checkpoints. “It’s an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It’s a crime… I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on.
When news emerged of fighting in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after jumu‘ah prayers on August 14, many observers would have been surprised to learn that it was between Hamas authorities and militants belonging to a Salafi-Jihadi group known as Jund Ansar Allah — “Soldiers of the Followers of Allah”...
The extent of Zionist war crimes in Ghazzah is slowly but surely emerging from the testimony of soldiers involved in the 23-day Israeli offensive launched on December 27, 2008. Much of this evidence was available to those willing to take off their pro-Israeli blinkers and see the smoldering ruins of Ghazzah...
Israeli soldiers. That the Palestinians, the direct victims of Israel’s crimes, and much of the rest of the world knew this because this was so clearly evident from television footage provided by Al-Jazeera and Press TV, Israel and its apologists, especially in the West, continued to insist that Israel not only had the “right” to defend itself against Hamas rockets (regardless of how ineffectual they were) but that Zionist Israel carried its operations with utmost regard to civilian life.
As the Israeli military machine battered Gaza earlier this year, during weeks of the most ferocious assaults on Palestinians seen in decades, it seemed that a major and significant turning point had been reached in the struggle between Zionist expansionism and Palestinian resistance.
Political commentators have advanced numerous reasons for Israel’s onslaught on Ghazzah. From the official Israeli line to stop Hamas rocket attacks to Israeli politicians’ need to act tough before next month’s elections to presenting a fait accompli to the incoming US president have all been trotted out.
Has the internal rumpus within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had an impact on South Africa’s foreign policy? Or is it that an Israel gone mad has led Pretoria to re-assess its ties with the former apartheid sanction-busting state?
The arrogant powers’ apparatus, which does not believe in any human principles, wishes to dominate the sensitive Middle East region that has enormous wealth and is situated in a strategic geographical area and enjoys great economic advantages. The way they want to achieve that objective is through the usurper zionist Israel that occupies Palestine.
For three weeks, as the Israelis subjected Gaza to some of the most brutal total warfare seen since the US assault on Falluja in 2003, most of the Muslim world could do little more than watch in shock and horror. After the Israeli ceasefire, as Palestinians adjust to the new reality of life in the devastation left by the Israeli blitzkrieg, it is possible to place the events of the last month or so in some sort of political context.
On Friday 16 January, while Israel continued its brutal slaughter in Ghazzah, less than a thousand miles away, another foreign army was being forced to withdraw its troops from Muslim land it had also illegally occupied. On that day, to the joy of millions Somalia, Ethiopia was forced to pull its troops from Mogadishu, having invaded and occupied it just over two years earlier. Through a close examination of the conflict, one can draw valuable lessons for Hamas and the Muslim world.
Even by the murderous standards of Zionist Israel, the relentless aerial attacks on Ghazzah rank among the most criminal it has ever perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. At least 30 separate locations in the narrow strip were attacked simultaneously on December 27 as waves of US-supplied F16 planes and Apache helicopters dropped more than 100 tons of bombs.
Ever since the Palestinian Islamic resistance group, Hamas, won the January 2006 elections, Ghazzah has been turned into a concentration camp. Western countries immediately withdrew financial support once Hamas took full control in Ghazzah in June 2007. The aim was to strangle the Hamas-led government; so much for the West’s respect for democracy.
November saw both an intensification of Israel’s low-level war on Ghazzah, and a further murderous tightening of its economic blockade. But hopes for healing the breach between Fatah and Hamas failed yet again, largely as a result of internal political pressures on Fatah and the Israelis. IQBAL SIDDIQUI reports.
The last couple of months have seen a sudden increase in Western attention on Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons programme. The campaign is being led by Israel, whose politicians have openly threatened military action against Iran if the UN agencies fail to pressurise it into stopping its nuclear programme.
