Gaza update

The West, as could be predicted, is giving full support to Israel.

The lies of Israel and western media that this is a response to Hamas rocket attacks can be dispensed with simply by watching this documentary made last weekend by Harry Fear, which shows, long before these events, the results of Israeli attacks on Gaza, including the killing of children playing football.

The Palestinians have a right to self-defence, enshrined in international law.The Israeli 'shock and awe' is a response to the Palestians' response to the original confrontation.

This has more in common with the 1939 German invasion of Poland than anything.

-- Seemorerocks, 3.45 am NZT

Live update on the Middle East

From the Guardian

Two year-old Palestinian child killed by air strike'

Hamas health officials say a a two year-old child has been killed by an Israeli air strike, the BBC's Jon Donnison reports.

Reuters, citing the Gaza health ministry, says the death toll in the enclave since the start of the Israeli operation has risen to 15, including eight civilians among them a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and three infants.

Three Israeli troops injured by rocket

Three IDF soldiers have been taken to hospital after being injured by a rocket fired from Gaza into Israel, the IDF says.

It says 245 rockets have been fired since yesterday, more than 80 of which have been intercepted by its iron dome defence system.

Summary

Here is a summary of today’s key events so far.

Israel

• Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza today following the attack yesterday that killed Hamas’s military chief Ahmed al-Jabari. The attack came after a series of rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel over recent days. The Israeli army said 156 targets were hit in Gaza, 126 of them rocket launchers. Thirteen people were killed in Gaza yesterday including a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and two infants, with 130 wounded, according to Gaza’s health ministry. A truce was not on the agenda, Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovitz said. Hamas’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, vowed to “continue the resistance”. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who rules the West Bank but not Gaza, cut short a European trip to return to the West Bank in response to the crisis.

• Three Israelis were killed by a rocket attack from Gaza, the first Israeli fatalities in the present conflict. The deaths came when a four-storey building was hit in the town of Kiryat Malachi, 15 miles (25km) north of Gaza; a four-year-old boy and two babies were also wounded. Israel said 200 rockets had struck Israel since yesterday, 135 since midnight. Eighteen rockets had been shot down today by Israel’s “iron dome” counter-missile missile system, Israel said. Hamas claimed it had fired a one-tonne rocket at Tel Aviv, but there were no reports of an impact in the city.

• Hamas declared a state of emergency in Gaza and Israel did the same in the country’s south. There were reports Hamas was barring foreigners from leaving.

• Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, called Israel’s attacks on Gaza "unacceptable” and said he stood by the Gazan people. The Muslim Brotherhood, with which Morsi is aligned, called for Egypt to sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Egypt has officially requested a meeting of the UN security council to discuss what it described as Israeli aggression on Gaza, the foreign ministry said. After 33 years of peace, the relationship between Israel and Egypt has cooled since the ousting of dictator Hosni Mubarak and this is the first test of relations between Israel and a semi-democratic Egypt. Qatar, Jordan, Iran and Syria also condemned the Israeli operation.

• William Hague placed the blame for the situation on Hamas. Yesterday the Obama administration backed the Israeli airstrikes, a state department spokesman denouncing rocket attacks from Gaza and supporting Israel’s right to self-defence.

• Thousands of mostly young men attended Jabari’s funeral amid gunfire and chaotic scenes.

• An Israeli peace activist, Gershon Baskin, claimed that Jabari had received a draft truce agreement between Israel and Hamas that Baskin had also shown to Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak. He attempted to characterise Jabari as a moderate who had come round to the cause of peace.

Syria

• Turkey sent fighter jets to its south-eastern border with Syria for a second day, following days of Syrian bombing of a town on the Syrian side of the border. There was no sign of fighting there today. Videos purported to show rebel Free Syrian Army soldiers taking control of an army post in the town, Ras al-Ain. These could not be independently verified.

• Activists posted videos purporting to show shelling in the suburbs of the capital today, resulting in at least one death. These videos could not be independently verified.

• France's foreign minister announced that Paris is to discuss supplying arms to Syrian opposition forces with other European capitals in the coming weeks, following the formation of the new opposition coalition on Sunday. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said today that any foreign help to the opposition fighting Bashar Assad's government would represent a "gross violation" of basic principles of international law.

Jordan

• Ongoing riots in Jordan following the government’s decision to increase fuel prices left one person dead today. The death is the first in violence that has spread to several poor towns in the kingdom since Tuesday night.

Jabari killed hours after receiving truce agreement'

Hours before Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari was killed he received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin told Haaretz.

Baskin helped mediate between Israel and Hamas in the deal to release Gilad Shalit.

Baskin told Haaretz on Thursday that senior officials in Israel knew about his contacts with Hamas and Egyptian intelligence aimed at formulating the permanent truce, but nevertheless approved the assassination ...

According to Baskin, during the past two years Jabari internalised the realisation that the rounds of hostilities with Israel were beneficial neither to Hamas nor to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and only caused suffering, and several times he acted to prevent firing by Hamas into Israel.

He said that even when Hamas was pulled into participating in the launching of rockets, its rockets would always land in open spaces. “And that was intentional,” clarified Baskin.

In recent months Baskin was continuously in touch with Hamas officials and with Egyptian intelligence as well as with officials in Israel, whose names he refused to divulge. A few months ago Baskin showed defence minister Ehud Barak a draft of the agreement and on the basis of that draft an inter-ministry committee on the issue was established. The agreement was to have constituted a basis for a permanent truce between Israel and Hamas, which would prevent the repeated rounds of shooting.

“In Israel,” Baskin said, “they decided not to decide, and in recent months I took the initiative to push it again.”

Live updates available HERE

UPDATE

Israeli military spokesperson just said that they are going to disable all communication such as electricity, cell phones, and internet of the Gaza people for the next several days while they lay out a ground invasion.

- HarryFear -  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/operation-pillar-of-cloud

Harry Fear - Operation Pillar of Cloud - Reporting Live from Gaza

• 2 instances of Israelis targeting ambulances

RT Report on Gaza 14.11.2012 Operation Pillar of Cloud