


A month of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Ghazzah and the West Bank, killing over 40 Palestinians, mostly civilians, culminated with Israeli troops moving into southern Ghazzah on June 28, as Crescent was going to press.
The state of insecurity and political conflict that occurred in the Ghazzah Strip last July is regarded by most observers as a dangerous development in the Palestinian situation, and as a threat to the international and regional status of the Palestinian cause...
Yasser Arafat survived the latest, and perhaps greatest, challenge to his authority in Ghazzah last month, when Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei withdrew his resignation on July 27...
While Palestinians across the world commemorated the 56th anniversary of the Nakba on May 15, Palestinians in Ghazzah were on the verge of another nakba as Israeli troops engaged in an orgy of violence in Ghazzah that left at least 45 dead and about 300 homes destroyed, rendering an estimated 3,000 people homeless...
Dr Abdul Aziz Rantisi, who was appointed head of Hamas in Ghazzah following the martyrdom of Shaikh Ahmed Yassin in March, was himself assassinated by the Israelis on April 17. His car was hit by seven missiles fired from Israeli helicopters near his home in Ghazzah...
Even by modern standards, the last month has been spectacularly bloody in the scale of the political violence seen. It opened with the Ashura killings in Iraq and Pakistan, in which several hundred Shi’a were slaughtered...