UN-Truth

Israeli Defense Minister is going for the big one. Late on Thursday night, Barak reportedly ordered all border crossings into Gaza closed.

The AP reported Friday that “Israel’s defense ministry will decide whether to allow individual shipments of crucial humanitarian aid in Gaza, the Israeli officials said, but trucks bearing basic food items and other supplies will not enter for at least the next few days, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss defense ministry policy with the media”.

This AP report is here.

This same AP story was updated about an hour later, with this material added: “It was not immediately clear which supplies would not be allowed into strip, said Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror. The territory, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, receives food and humanitarian supplies from Israel and aid organizations. ‘It’s time that Hamas decide to either fight or take care of its population’, Dror said. ‘It’s unacceptable that people in (the southern Israeli town of) Sderot are living in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual’.”

Life as usual!!!! He can’t be serious.

The same AP story went on: “Dror said Gazans had enough food that no one would go hungry and assured ‘there will not be a humanitarian crisis in Gaza’.”

An even later update of the AP story reported: “About 20 trucks of food scheduled to enter Gaza on Friday would not be allowed through, said Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror. The crossings are routinely closed Saturdays, and may not be reopened Sunday morning if the rocket fire continues, he said”. This updated version of the AP story is posted here.

OK, now it has to be said, he truly knows very well that there already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I have reported earlier what he told me about the shortage of industrial diesel fuel for Gaza’s only electricity-generating plant. I can only report what he says.

The Israelis are buying time to act, until Washington wakes up and the rest of the world reacts.

Haaretz reported Friday that: “Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF on Thursday to more forward with planning a large-scale ground operation in Gaza, but stressed that no such operation has yet been authorized. Barak’s office noted that the army has been planning such an operation for the past several months, so as to be ready for any contingency. Barak also decided to tighten economic sanctions on Gaza’s Hamas government – inter alia, by reducing the amount of fuel allowed into the Strip. In addition, cargo trucks bringing humanitarian supplies into Gaza will undergo stricter inspections, due in part to the fact that two such trucks were recently found to be carrying material that could be used to make Qassam rockets. In addition, Barak said that the IDF would ‘deepen’ its military operations against the rocket-launching crews. ‘It won’t be simple, it won’t happen this weekend, but we will stop the rocket fire on Sderot’, he said, speaking during a tour of the South”… This article in Haaretz is posted here.

YNet reported Friday that “Defense Minister Ehud Barak toured the region accompanied by regional army commanders and vowed Israel would put an end to the Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. The defense minister could not give a timetable for his pledge but said he had ordered the IDF to intensify and deepen its ongoing pinpointed operations against terror cells in the Hamas-controlled coastal territory. The army was also instructed by Barak to continue preparing for a possible wide-scale operation in the Strip while simultaneously tightening the closure imposed on its border crossings. ‘The IDF will continue its ongoing operations and expand them in order to target Qassam launchers, until the rocket fire stops. This will not be simple and will not happen over the weekend, but we will see to it that the attacks on Sderot stop’, Barak said. At present time only authorized personnel and goods are allowed through the crossings, but Barak’s instructions call for all movement in or out of Gaza to be halted. Only humanitarian cases will be allowed special consideration. Israel’s supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza will also be cut back under the defense minister’s orders. The measures approved by Barak will, for now, only be in effect for several days and are intended to increase pressure on terror groups and sever connections between Israel and Gaza as much as possible … Meanwhile United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was ‘deeply concerned at the current escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel, as well as in the West Bank’. In a written statement issued by his office, the UN leader said he was ‘troubled by the heavy bloodshed, particularly the killing and injuring of civilians on both sides and the potential for further casualties unless the situation is de-escalated’. Ban called for an immediate cessation of Palestinian attacks into Israel, and for maximum restraint on the part of the IDF”. The YNet story is published here.

The NYTimes reported that “Another rocket had fallen in a nearby street [in an older part of Sderot, where there are no "safe rooms"] a short while before [on Thursday evening], outside the home of Shula Dahan, 56. Her 19-year-old son was in the apartment at the time but was not hurt. ‘We have no protected space; they’ve turned us into a human shield’, she said of the government, adding that there had been no electricity in her neighborhood for hours after a rocket hit a high-voltage cable [a day before]. In Gaza City, too, residents had electricity for only a few hours of the day. In response to the rocket fire, Israel has reduced the amount of fuel delivered to Gaza, leading to a rationing of power there.
The NYTimes story is here.

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians