[Marxism] Hamas and many Palestinians defiant as Israel tightens grip

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The original headline of this article in the Times online made Hamas
defiance the centerpiece, implicitly contesting the Israeli claim that the
Hamas regime and movement in Gaza is being effectively destroyed. 

I should, of course, have sent it in then since I suspected the political
axis would change to fit more with the Israeli triumphalist (and partly
election-oriented) claim that the Hamas fighters were cracking under the
Israeli attack. They wouldn't have Hamas to kick around any more after this,
Olmert, Barak, and similar scum were saying.

I should have sent in the article when it had the original and more
politically sound assessment -- that the Palestinians were fighting on under
siege conditions -- but  when I got home after visiting a friend in the
hospital and participating the Jews against the occupation vigil at the
Israeli consulate in midtown New York, I was worn out and -- old fart that I
am -- needed a nap which I took, even though I knew in my bones that the
headline would change, assuming the whole article did not disappear
entirely.

The Jewish antiwar vigil (150 people by my conservative estimate) was a very
positive and useful event, and a completely legitimate expression of widely
felt sentiment in the Jewish community that Israel is way over the line
here.

Nonetheless, I am more comfortable in environments where Arabs, Jews, more
youth, and many others act together against US-Israeli aggression.

So here's the article, with the headline more focused on Israeli power (and,
it is also true, Israeli crimes) rather than Hamas insistence that they will
not be defeated.
Fred Feldman

JERUSALEM - As growing numbers of Palestinians fled their homes for
makeshift shelters, Israeli forces continued to tighten their circle around
Gaza City Tuesday, destroying a hotel that the military alleges Hamas
fighters were using, and conducting sweeps through the city's outskirts. 

Despite international pressure for a cease-fire and mounting humanitarian
worries, there seemed little prospect of a respite as the war entered its
18th day. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said on Israel's Army Radio
that Israeli forces were making progress "in hitting Hamas, its
infrastructure, its regime," but said that forces yet to complete their
mission. "We still have work ahead of us," he said. 

One Israeli officer was critically wounded and two Israeli soldiers suffered
light wounds in last night's fighting, the military said in a statement on
Tuesday. The three were hurt, the military said, after a bomb exploded in a
booby trapped house that they were searching. 

Palestinians in central Gaza City reported hearing numerous explosions on
Monday night, as well as the sound of tanks moving closer to the center of
the city.

The fighting came amid continued diplomacy in Egypt, whose officials were
talking with Hamas representatives about a possible truce. An Israeli
official postponed a trip to Cairo on Monday. It was not clear whether he
would depart on Tuesday.

Humanitarian shipments continued to flow on Tuesday. The Regional Director
for the Middle East of the World Food Programme, Daly Belgasmi, presided
over a shipment at the Kerem Shalom crossing point. The president for the
International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, visited Gaza
City on Tuesday as the Israeli Army continued to press its military
campaign. 

The Israeli military said Tuesday that its forces rained down fire in Gaza
overnight, launching 60 air strikes against targets.

Under growing military pressure, Hamas fired at least two rockets into
southern Israel on Tuesday, far fewer than in some recent days. The missiles
struck the city of Beersheba but there were no reports of casualties.

Israel also said it would order a temporary lull Tuesday to permit around
100 trucks with relief supplies into the beleaguered coastal strip, one of
the world's most overcrowded places. In Gaza itself, relief workers depicted
the plight of many civilians as increasingly dire.

According to the United Nations, about 30,000 people are living in schools
it sponsors and an estimated 60,000 have fled to the houses of relatives.
The figures still represent a small part of Gaza's 1.5 million population
but have doubled in the past four days, United Nations officials said,
raising concerns about the humanitarian impact of a broader war.

"What began as very small, isolated numbers is now turning into a torrent,"
said Aidan O'Leary, deputy director for the United Nations agency that deals
with Palestinian refugees. 

Maj. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman, said units used leaflets
to warn families to leave areas where they planned to operate. Aid officials
say that with Gaza's borders closed, choices for shelters in the
140-square-mile strip are slim and the shelters are not completely safe.
Last week, as many as 43 people were killed near a United Nations school by
an Israeli mortar strike that the military said was in response to a Hamas
attack. The Israeli military disputes the death toll. 

In a televised speech on Monday night, a senior Hamas official, Ismail
Haniya, expressed an openness to a diplomatic solution but reiterated
previous demands that any deal include the opening of Gaza's border
crossings, which Israel and Egypt have kept mostly closed since Hamas
violently pushed out its rival Fatah in 2007. 

"We are not closed to this path," he said of diplomacy, speaking from hiding
in Gaza. 

He praised Hamas fighters as heroes who would be victorious. 

Aid groups, meantime, spotlighted what they said was a growing number of
refugees. When Israeli soldiers moved deeper into the Zeitoun neighborhood
of Gaza on Sunday night, Olfat Jaawanah decided she had had enough. Shrapnel
flew through a window, injuring her son, Ali, she said, and on Monday
morning, she gathered a few blankets and moved her nine children out of
their large house. 

The nearby United Nations school was full - its bare classrooms packed with
families and its toilets smelling foul - so she took her family instead to
her husband's office, in a building belonging to an international
organization in the center of Gaza City. 

According to Mr. O'Leary, about a third of the agency's 91 schools are now
full. 

Movement is complicated by the confusion over when it is safe to leave. When
the Abu Hajaj family received a leaflet last weekend, they took it as a sign
of safe passage. But Majad Abdel Karim Abu Hajaj, a teacher at a United
Nations school, said his mother and sister were killed as they walked
holding a white flag. Their bodies remain where they fell, he said, because
ambulances cannot get to the area. 

Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said she had had
six reports of families stuck in areas now occupied by Israeli troops. 

At times, the city took on a cinematic quality. A woman came with a pan and
dough to Al Nasir hospital, asking for the use of its electricity so she
could bake. A corpse was wheeled in a donkey cart where an ambulance was
afraid to go.

Humanitarian shipments were moving on Monday, and Egypt, under pressure to
do more for Palestinian victims of the conflict, agreed to allow in 38 Arab
doctors and a group of European legislators. 

Palestinians interviewed in Gaza on Monday cited another reason for their
flight: Israel soldiers, they said, are firing rounds of a noxious substance
that burns skin and makes it hard to breathe. 

A resident of southwest Gaza City on Monday showed a reporter a piece of
metal casing with the identifying number M825A1, which Marc Garlasco, a
military analyst with Human Rights Watch, identified as white phosphorus,
typically used for signaling, smoke screens and destroying enemy equipment. 

In recent years, experts and rights advocates have argued over whether its
use to intentionally harm people violates international conventions. 

Major Dallal would not say whether Israel was using white phosphorus, but
said, "The munitions we use are consistent with international law."

Still, white phosphorus can cause injury, and a growing number of Gazans
report being hurt by it, including in Beit Lahiya, Khan Yunis, and in
eastern and southwestern Gaza City. When exposed to air, it ignites, experts
say, and if packed into an artillery shell, it can rain down flaming
chemicals that cling to anything they touch. 

Luay Suboh, 10, from Beit Lahiya, lost his eyesight and some skin on his
face Saturday when, his mother said, a fiery substance clung to him as he
darted home from a shelter where his family was staying to pick up clothes. 

The substance smelled like burned trash, said Ms. Jaawanah, the mother who
fled her home in Zeitoun, who had experienced it too. She had no affection
for Hamas, but her sufferings were changing that. "Do you think I'm against
them firing rockets now?" she asked, referring to Hamas. "No. I was against
it before. Not anymore."

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Jerusalem and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza
City. Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and William J.
Broad from New York.



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