Netanyahu Give Testimony In Assault in the Ship

Jerusalem  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to testify Monday on his version of events that led to deadly attacks against aid ships Gaza purposes. Testimony prime minister will be delivered in front of an Israeli commission investigating the deadly attack in late May that. Netanyahu became the first of three high officials who will give sworn testimony this week about the incident, which the Israeli navy commandos stormed the six vessels that help to break through the blockade against the Gaza Strip, which killed nine Turkish activists and injuring dozens of other passengers.

May 31 operation that sparked a diplomatic crisis and global calls for an investigation.Investigative panel that will hear sworn testimony from high-level decision makers involved in the commando raid, including the Prime Minister of Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, in a series of public hearings that began on 9 August.

However, the committee’s mandate would be limited to the study of international legal issues, and they will not investigate the decision-making process that led to the deadly operation.Public hearings will be held in a hall in Jerusalem.Israeli officials said the panel will listen to Barracks sworn testimony on Tuesday and Ashkenazi in the next day. Israeli commandos raided ships in the fleet assistance to the Gaza Strip on 31 May. Nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activist killed in the attack on one ship.

Israel-Turkey relations plunged to its lowest level since the two countries reached a strategic partnership in the 1990s due to the incident.Turkey summoned its ambassador from Tel Aviv and canceled three planned military exercises after the raid. Turkey also twice rejected the Israeli request for military aircraft using the airspace.

Severe violence in the pre-dawn raid Monday (31 / 5) by Israeli troops occurred on the boat Turkey, Mavi Marmara, who led the fleet of aid to Gaza.Israel argued that the passenger-passenger ship was attacked the troops, but the organizers claimed that the fleet of the Israeli troops started shooting as soon as they landed.

After the attack, Egypt, who reached peace with Israel in 1979, it opened the Rafah border to allow aid convoys into Gaza – widely seen as an effort to counter critics of the Egyptian role in the blockade.Cairo, in coordination with Israel, allowing only limited in its border crossing since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Under increasing pressure, Israel then launched an investigation along with two international observers for the attack. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon encourages a separate investigation into the UN with the participation of Israel and Turkey.

Israel also relax the blockade of Gaza by allowing the majority of civilian goods into the coastal territory.Gaza Strip, a densely populated coastal regions, blockaded by Israel and Egypt after Hamas to power nearly three years ago.

Group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June of 2007 after defeating Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a deadly battle for a few days.Since then, these poor coastal blockader by Israel. Any Palestinian entity into two separate areas – the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and West Bank under Abbas government. European Union, Israel and the U.S. enter into the Hamas terrorist organization list.( AFP)

Mavi Marmara pull out of Israel

Haifa, Israel  Turkish passenger ship that became the center of deadly violence during the raid against the Israeli navy ships aim assistance Gaza Strip Israel pulled out of port, on Thursday, an AFP correspondent said.Mavi Marmara taken out from the port of Haifa by a large Turkish tugboat sent to bring back the ship.Two other ships were also detained by the navy during the attack on May 31 would also be withdrawn from the port of Ashdod, southern Israel, on Thursday, the defense ministry said.

Repatriation of the ships were made after a decision taken by the political leaders after a request from Ankara, the ministry said in a statement.”Three Turkish tugs will arrive in Israel today. The crew they will receive three ships moored in Israel along with personal equipment on top of existing ships,” the ministry said, without explaining when the transfer is made. The ships were part of a fleet of six ships which attempted to penetrate the Israeli naval blockade against the Gaza Strip on 31 May. Unclear whether the other three ships were still in Israeli ports.The ship is also believed to aid Rachel Corrie, was arrested at an Israeli port, but the legal steps taken to set him free.Israel became the international spotlight after deadly attacks against aid ships.

Israeli commandos raided ships in the fleet assistance to the Gaza Strip on May 31, which killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists in the attack on one ship.Israel-Turkey relations plunged to its lowest level since the two countries reached a strategic partnership in the 1990s due to the incident.

Turkey summoned its ambassador from Tel Aviv and canceled three planned military exercises after the raid. Turkey also twice rejected the Israeli request for military aircraft using the airspace.Severe violence in the pre-dawn raid Monday (31 / 5) by Israeli troops occurred on the boat Turkey, Mavi Marmara, who led the fleet of aid to Gaza.Israel argued that the passenger-passenger ship was attacked the troops, but the organizers claimed that the fleet of the Israeli troops started shooting as soon as they landed.

After the attack, Egypt, who reached peace with Israel in 1979, it opened the Rafah border to allow aid convoys into Gaza – widely seen as an effort to counter critics of the Egyptian role in the blockade.Cairo, in coordination with Israel, allowing only limited in its border crossing since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Under increasing pressure, Israel then launched an investigation along with two international observers for the attack. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon encourages a separate investigation into the UN with the participation of Israel and Turkey.Israel also relax the blockade of Gaza by allowing the majority of civilian goods into the coastal territory. Gaza Strip, a densely populated coastal regions, blockaded by Israel and Egypt after Hamas to power nearly three years ago.

Group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June of 2007 after defeating Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a deadly battle for a few days.Since then, these poor coastal dibloklade by Israel. Any Palestinian entity into two separate areas – the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and West Bank under Abbas government.The AFP report, the European Union, Israel and the U.S. enter into the Hamas terrorist organization list.(AFP)

Palestinians Still keep Struggling to Rebuild Year After Gaza War

Ruins remain a year after Israel launched Operation

It has been a year since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a 22-day ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.  Palestinian leaders and human rights groups say the assault killed 1,400 Palestinians.  Israel says 1,166 Palestinians died, along with 13 Israelis.  The objective was to stop militants in Gaza from launching the rockets that had terrorized communities in southern Israel for years.The memory of the violence is fresh for Faraj Soumani, 23. He says he watched Israeli soldiers kill his father. “He raised his hands,” he said.  “Then, the Israeli soldiers started shooting straight at him.  They shot him first on his shoulder than at his head. Then they started shooting all over his body.” The family’s home was destroyed. Its main breadwinner was dead. In all, 29 members of the Samouni clan were killed in Israel’s offensive.     Recovery has not been easy despite international donations.  Faraj’s mother, Zahwe, was left to fend for herself and the children.

“We got a little compensation money and help from good people,” she said.  “I tried to rebuild, but discovered that my husband had some debts I had to repay.  I paid off as much as I could.”Zahwe Samouni had little cash left and was unable to find enough construction materials, but she managed to build a two-room cinderblock house. “Almost all the time, we have only bread and herbs to eat, and tea.  But thank God, we have a roof to live under.  That is the most important thing – that we are living in a house,” she added.For the people in the neighboring Israeli town of Sderot, the offensive brought some relief.  “I can tell you it’s more quiet over here, and the people over here feel safer,” said Liat Biton, a Sderot resident. The number of rockets from Gaza falling on the town has dropped sharply since the war.  Residents say they are sleeping better.

But if Sderot residents are enjoying the relative peace, some fear it may not last. “To have a long term solution, you need both sides to be ready to compromise,” she added.  “And as I can see right now, that’s not the situation.” To lift the blockade, Israel demands that Hamas release captured soldier Gilad Shalit.  It also wants a guarantee from Hamas that militants will not use construction materials to build bunkers and weapons to attack Israel.

With his home in ruins, his father dead, and his family hungry, Faraj Samouni says he believes it is time to negotiate a solution.”If there is an agreement, it will be a good thing for the people here, because in this time we have become dead,” she explained.  “Everyone is half-dead.  It does not matter if you shell them because you are shelling a dead body.” In exchange for Shalit, Hamas wants Israel to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
One year after the war, a lasting solution remains only a wish.

The United Nations expert repeats call for threat of sanctions against Israel over Gaza blockade

lift the blockade

The United Nations independent expert on Palestinian rights has again called for a threat of economic sanctions against Israel to force it to lift its blockade of Gaza, which is preventing the return to a normal life for 1.5 million residents after the devastating Israeli offensive a year ago.“Obviously Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade and so what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel,” Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told UN Radio.

“That probably is something that is politically unlikely to happen, but unless it happens, it really does suggest that the United States and the Quartet and the EU [European Union] don’t take these calls for lifting the blockade very seriously and are unaffected by Israel’s continuing defiance of those calls,” he said, referring to the diplomatic Quartet of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which have been calling for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body tending to the needs of some 4 million Palestinian refugees, said today Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because UNRWA was reduced to building houses out of mud after the 22-day offensive Israel said it launched to end rocket attacks against it.

“The Israeli blockade has meant that almost no reconstruction materials have been allowed to move into Gaza even though 60,000 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. So we in UNRWA have been saying ‘let’s lift this senseless blockage,’” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told UN Radio.

“We are the United Nations and we always hope that diplomacy will prevail, and it will prevail above the rationale of warfare. But if you look at what is going on in Gaza, and if you look at the continued blockade and the fact that that blockade is radicalizing a population there, then one has to have one’s doubts.”

In a statement last week, Mr. Falk stressed that the “unlawful blockade” was in its third year, with insufficient food and medicine reaching Gazans, producing further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population.

Building materials necessary to repair the damage could not enter Gaza, and he blamed the blockade for continued breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get through the crossings.Mr. Falk also deplored the wall being built on the borders between Gaza and Egypt.

“I’m very distressed by that, because it is both an expression of complicity on the part of the government of Egypt and the United States, which apparently is assisting through its corps of engineers with the construction of this underground steel impenetrable wall that’s designed to interfere with the tunnels that have been bringing some food and material relief to the Gaza population,” he told UN Radio.

“And of course, the underground tunnel complex itself is an expression of the desperation created in Gaza as a result of this blockade that’s going on now for two and a half years, something that no people since the end of World War II have experienced in such a severe and continuing form.”As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk serves in an independent and unpaid capacity and reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

In a new policy brief, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), entrusted with promoting the integration of developing countries into the world economy, reported that more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now impoverished; 43 per cent unemployed; and 75 per cent lack food security. “In view of the eroded productive base, poverty is likely to widen and deepen unless reconstruction begins in earnest and without further delay,” it warned.

Israel allows passage to top business people and a limited number of Gazans seeking treatment for serious illnesses

,GAZA CITY ,Gaza Strip  A healthy man in blockaded Gaza faked cancer, hoping the deadly disease would be his ticket out of the territory that has become an open-air prison for its 1.4 million residents.

His ploy failed, but several thousand others succeeded in fleeing this shabby sliver of land this year using bribes and fake medical reports, a sign of Gazans’ desperation over growing poverty and misery under the strict border closure enforced by Egypt and Israel since Hamas militants overran Gaza in June 2007.

The blockade has few loopholes. Israel allows passage to top business people and a limited number of Gazans seeking treatment for serious illnesses. Egypt sporadically opens its border for university students and those with residency abroad.

Everyone else is stuck, even as Palestinian polls suggest nearly half the population would like to leave if they could. Deepening the Gazans’ sense of imprisonment, they must now also obtain permission from the Hamas government before attempting to leave, further complicating an obstacle-ridden path to freedom.

Those trying to bribe their way out usually approach middlemen who put them in touch with local doctors, Palestinian health officials or Egyptian bureaucrats and military officials.

Akram Ghneim, 31, an unemployed father of six living off food handouts, told The Associated Press he promised $260 to a Palestinian middleman, who obtained for him a bogus medical report saying he had cancer. Ghneim said he hoped he’d get a rare spot on the list of Gaza patients with life-threatening illnesses who are allowed to enter Israel for treatment.

Once in Israel, he planned to disappear and work illegally. But Israeli intelligence officials, who review applications, rejected him last summer, saying his cancer report was forged.

“This is what the blockade does,” said Ran Yaron, of the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights, which helps bring Gazans into Israel for treatment by lobbing Israeli defense officials.

“Most are frustrated and devastated people.”

Yaron said fakers are a minority, but clog up the system for real patients who have to go through longer checks as a result.

Of more than 7,000 Gazans who crossed into Israel this year to seek medical treatment, some 500 haven’t returned, said Col. Moshe Levi, an Israeli defense official.

Some stay in Israel, while others move to the West Bank, a territory controlled by Israel but partly administered by Palestinians loyal to Fatah, bitter rivals of Hamas.

One Fatah loyalist, a healthy 30-year-old woman, said she was desperate to leave Gaza after being harassed by Hamas officials.

She bribed a Gaza doctor with $100 to certify she had “whatever cancer could only be treated in Israel.” The doctor then paid off a physician serving on a Palestinian committee that certifies medical reports for Israeli military officials, the woman said. She eventually succeed in reaching the West Bank and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being sent back to Gaza by the Israeli authorities.

Israeli intelligence officials investigate Gazans applying to enter Israel to ensure they are not militants and to check whether medical certificates are genuine, but tend to rely on the Palestinian committee to confirm that the patient is actually sick.

The head of the Palestinian committee, Bassam Badri, denied members accept bribes. Omar Masri of the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said the issue was “too stupid for a response.”

But Palestinians who have successfully used bogus transfers said some health officials accept payments, anything from $100 to $500. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the illicit system.

Others pay bribes to get out through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, said a senior Hamas official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to alienate Egyptian authorities.

Payments range from $400 to $5,000, according to Rafah residents familiar with the system, known among Gazans as “Egyptian coordination.”

An Egyptian security official at the border denied Egyptian officers take bribes to allow crossings. He said that three months ago, two Palestinian officials posted on the Egyptian side were removed on suspicion of taking bribes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Depending on the sum, the middleman’s talents and luck, bribe-paying Gazans can sometimes leave immediately through the crossing, with Egyptian officials stamping them through, even when it’s closed, Rafah residents said. Otherwise, bribe-payers wait for one of the official border openings by Egypt, usually lasting for around three days every month or two.

About 2,000 Gazans get through each time the border opens. Only half are on the official list and the rest are handled directly by the Egyptian authorities, said Ehab Ghussein, the Interior Ministry spokesman in Gaza.

Thousands more have applied to leave but don’t make the list, he said.

Numerous tunnels run under the Gaza-Egypt borders in a thriving smuggling trade bringing goods into the territory. But few Gazans use them to sneak into Egypt, because once on the other side they would have no official status and be more vulnerable to Egyptian police.

But even paying bribes isn’t a guaranteed exit strategy.

Hazem Riyashi, 27, says he paid a middleman $1,000 in July to cross through Egypt, hoping to reach the Gulf emirate of Dubai, where his family lives. But the middleman disappeared and has not returned his calls. Riyashi hasn’t given up, and is looking for someone else to pay off.

“I think everybody should leave Gaza,” he said. “Even the air smells cleaner abroad.”