28 June 2006

Apartheid Israel Crusades Through Palestine

"Khaled Meshaal initiated the whole attack. We will take care of him." So promises Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize winning 'dove' in his description of how Apartheid Israel plans to prosecute Operation "Summer Rain."

Similar claims were echoed by others, including Justice Minister Haim Ramon. "He is definitely in our sights... he is a target," Ramon told Army Radio. "Khaled Mashaal, as some who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target."

The Palestinian leadership responded to these threats by warning Apartheid Israel against attacking Syria, where Meshaal lives, and made assurances that no military action undertaken by Apartheid Israel against the people of Palestine will change its demand for a prisoner swap that liberates the Palestinian women and children detained by Apartheid Israel. Speaking in Lebanon, Hamas' representative there, Osama Hamdan, said:
They have to think thoroughly about the consequences (of killing Mashaal), which could be bigger than they imagine.

Our position does not change: We have said there is a national interest to achieve through discussing a mechanism to win the release of prisoners in the occupation jails in return for the soldier.
Hamdan added that:
If Israel does not negotiate, the militants will take it as a message "that they should capture more soldiers so that the Israelis will speak to them... the message for the resistance is to kill soldiers, even if they have the opportunity to capture them."
The Palestinian leadership makes this threat of escalating their attacks on Zionist colonialists and occupiers, amidst a growing outcry over the abduction of Australian colonialist Eliyahu Yitzhak Asheri. Ha'aretz reports:
The Popular Resistance Committees held a press conference on Wednesday, during which a spokesman for the group displayed the national identification card of Itamar settler Eliyahu Yitzhak Asheri.

Asheri has been missing since Sunday, and the PRC has maintained for two days that it has abducted the youth.

Earlier Wednesday, a PRC spokesman told Al-Jazeera satellite TV that the settler would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if doesn't stop its raid on the Gaza Strip, which began in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

In an earlier statement, the PRC said "we are running out of patience."
Israel Radio reported that Mohammad Abdel-Al, a spokesman of the PRC, said the release of more information would depend on Israel. "The Zionists are looking for any information. We remind them there is nothing for free," he said. Middle East Online reported the PRC claim that, "Unless the aggression stops, we will kill the settler."

While threats bounced back and forth between Palestinians and the Zionist occupiers, military operations began throughout the region.

The Daily Star announced that Egypt, ally to the Zionist aggressors, "deployed 2,500 extra troops along the border with Gaza to prevent an influx of Palestinians if Israel invades. It also imposed a night-time curfew on local residents."

Before launching the operation, Apartheid Israel's Prime Minster Ehud Olmert consulted his ally Mahmoud Abbas. Ha'aretz reports that, Apartheid Israel "ordered Palestinian security forces deployed near Rafah to leave their positions. The IDF then confirmed its forces had crossed the border," commencing the operation with attacks properly considered collective punishment against Gaza's only airport, the main bridges, and the electrical network leaving 700,000 without power and affecting water supplies.

Promising that "we do not intend to reoccupy Gaza. We do not intend to stay there," Olmert claimed falsely that, "We have one objective, and that is to bring Gilat home."

And thus began Apartheid Israel's futile military operation.
IDF troops penetrated one kilometer into the southern Strip, deploying tanks and armored vehicles in open areas east of the border town of Rafah, including the disused international airport at Dahaniyeh, Gaza's only airport...

Ahead of the ground invasion, an Israel Air Force aircraft attacked three bridges in central Gaza late Tuesday night. An IDF official said the attack was meant to prevent miltants from moving Shalit to different locations within Gaza....

IAF aircrafts also attacked a Gaza City power station after midnight Tuesday, cutting power to much of the area, Palestinian security officials said.
The Jerusalem Post reports on additional air raids launched by Apartheid Israel:
Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas training camp in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Wednesday afternoon, witnesses said.

The two missiles fell about 200 meters apart, one in an empty training camp for Hamas, witnesses said. The other rocket hit an empty field nearby, and witnesses said they saw militants running away from the missile. Ambulances had no immediate reports of injuries.
But as if to underscore the abject futility of this campaign, the report added that:
At nearly the same time, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Gallant told reporters in a press conference that kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit was still in the Gaza Strip.

Five minutes after the press conference, a Kassam rocket landed a few hundred meters from where reporters were standing.
Anticipating the attack, Middle East Online reports that the Resistance:
Had erected earthen mounds across roads and sealed off entrances to refugee camps in parts of Gaza, one of the most densely populated regions on earth.

Men, women and children packed into cars and a horse-drawn cart fled into Rafah from areas to the east as Israeli troops entered the territory while armed gunmen prowled the streets.
Ha'aretz also reported the Palestinian leadership's call for armed resistance:
In the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, not far from the border fence, armed militants took up positions before the troops moved in. The militants told residents to leave the area.

A leader of Hamas exhorted its fighters to confront the IDF troops. "Fight your enemies, who came to their deaths. Grab your rifles and resist," Nizar Rayan said in a radio message.
More than any moment in the last several decades, Apartheid Israel's latest attack on Palestine and its lack of a serious military objective spells out the weakness, alienation, and isolation of the Zionist state vis-a-vis the question of Palestine.

Perhaps that explains the latest calls to use a murder attempt on Khaled Meshaal in Syria to change the dynamic and expand the terrain of struggle.