#GazaUnderAttack | Egypt Turns Back Tunisian Plane Loaded With Medical Supplies For Gaza

Courtesy: Twitter.com

TUNIS, (PIC)– Head of Tunisia’s al-Nahda party Rashid al-Ghannoushi revealed on Monday night that Egypt has refused to receive a Tunisian plane bound for Gaza loaded with medicines and medical supplies.

Al-Ghannoushi told Al-Jazeera TV network that the Egyptian authorities had refused to allow the plane to land at the airport nearest to the Gaza Strip, pointing out that it was carrying medical supplies badly needed in the beleaguered Strip.

The plane was supposed to fly back injured people who sustained serious wounds during the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza to receive treatment in Tunisia, he explained.

Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki had declared a week ago his country’s intention to send a plane carrying medicines and medical supplies for Gaza Strip.

Along the same line, the Egyptian authorities continued to prevent a team of European specialized surgeons from having access to Gaza despite possessing the needed papers for that.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Nada, coordinator for the Forum of Palestinian Doctors in Europe, told Quds Press on Tuesday that they have been prevented by Egyptian army from entering into Gaza for the fifth day despite having official permits allowing their access.

The FPDE delegation includes a number of general surgeons in addition to surgeons specialized in vascular surgery and pediatric surgery.

583 Palestinians were killed and 3640 injured in 15 days of Israeli ferocious pounding of the besieged enclave. Hundreds of homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools were demolished during the Israeli airstrikes, navy shelling, and artillery bombardment.

VIEWPOINT: Israeli’s days surely numbered By Finian Cunningham

A Palestinian child, whose house was shelled by Israeli forces in Gaza City, at al-Shifa hospital, Gaza City, July 18, 2014

Despite its huge American-backed military and media firepower, the Israeli regime is all but defeated. The Western-sponsored Zionist entity has lost militarily and morally in the eyes of the world as it pounds mercilessly the besieged civilian population of Gaza.

Regardless of so-called truces, broken as quickly as they are declared, the world has begun to see the real, heinous nature of the Israeli regime and that of its Western sponsors.

Not even its much-vaunted Iron Dome missile system - supplied courtesy of American taxpayers at a cost of billions of dollars – guarantees Israeli security as its population scurry everyday to air-raid shelters and live in constant fear.

Then the callous murder this week of four Palestinian boys playing on a beach in Gaza by Israeli forces and the latter’s sickening attempt to cover-up with its usual lies - that surely is one more death knell for the regime in Tel Aviv.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week reiterated the alleged purpose of Operation Protective Edge as “restoring quiet” from Palestinian rockets.

“We will use as much force as necessary in order to bring back the quiet to the people of Israel,” vowed Netanyahu.

Well over 1,000 Palestinian rockets have been fired on Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, over the past 10 days. And there is no end in sight of the Palestinian arsenal being depleted. Yes, the Iron Dome system has intercepted many of these missiles, but the Israeli military has failed to make this occupying entity any more secure.

Considering the multi-billion-dollar bankrolling of this regime by successive American governments, that amounts to an abject military failure. Indeed, some Israeli military and political sources are now saying that a ground invasion into Gaza may have to be deployed to end the Palestinian resistance - an option that will bring even more military failure and international opprobrium, not to mention economic misery to an already teetering Israeli economy.

In saying all this, it is not meant to appear as bravado. We must remember that the military failure of the Israeli regime comes with a horrendous human price. More than 230 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed in the latest round of Israeli military assaults from land, air and sea. Thousands more have been killed in the past seven years of Israel’s illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Nevertheless, the unassailable fact is that all the American-supplied F16 warplanes, drones, helicopters, navy ships and artillery have once again failed to suppress the Palestinian people and their demand for justice.

Perhaps even more significant is the definitive moral defeat for the Israeli regime and its Western sponsors.

For decades, the Israeli regime has been indulged by Western governments and media to portray itself as an innocent party defending against Arab terrorism. To a large degree, that propaganda illusion succeeded in twisting the minds of the Western public in particular. However, today, more than ever, that fiction is being destroyed by Israel’s own insatiable terrorist bloodlust, and the craven, criminal support that the West bestows.

The world is a very different place from what it was only a mere few years ago, never mind decades ago, because of the emergence of alternative media and global communications. The propaganda lies that were spun previously can no longer be spun effectively today. And the vast majority of ordinary people around the world are waking up to a new, awful reality - that the Western governments are complicit in an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people by a brutal colonial regime that calls itself “Israel.”

This evident, undeniable unfolding horror is forcing people to take a radical new look at the history books and to realise that the Israeli regime is nothing but a criminal and artificial impostor. The violence today is traced all the way back to the original crime overseen by Western governments in the creation of the Zionist occupation of Palestinian lands in 1948.

Western governments and mainstream media may continue to try to spin the same old apologetic narrative that gives the Israeli regime a diplomatic and moral cover. But, thanks to new global communications, that narrative is seen to be glaringly fraudulent, making these Western institutions complicit in ongoing crimes against humanity.

The killing this week by Israeli artillery fire of four young Palestinian boys who were playing innocently on a sandy beach in Gaza may put a shocking definitive end to this criminal complicity.

Washington, the main sponsor of the Israeli regime, has been upholding Israel’s “right to defend itself” from “Palestinian rocket attacks.”

US President Barack Obama this week deplored the deaths of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage.” He, like other Western leaders, propagates the Israeli claim that its forces do not target non-combatants and that any casualties are the “tragic” result of Palestinian militants using the Gaza population as human shields.

But when the Israeli navy unleashed its shells on 11-year-old Mohammed Baker and his three younger cousins, the carnage was captured in photographs and videos by international journalists, who were staying at a nearby hotel. There were many other eyewitnesses to the atrocity, who likewise relayed the horrific scenes of indiscriminate killing of children, using their mobile phones. Initial Israeli claims that they were targeting Hamas militants were immediately seen for what they are - blatant, barefaced lies.

The murder of Mohammed and his cousins was by no means the first such atrocity over the past fortnight, nor over the years and decades of Western-backed Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

But the latest brazen atrocity of shelling four kids playing on a beach serves to expose retrospectively all previous Israeli crimes for what they are. If the Israelis can lie about this gratuitous slaughter, how can they be believed on anything else they say?

The horror of Israeli state terrorism and Western criminal complicity exposed in the eyes of the world is most likely why Netanyahu has been forced into appearing to agree to a second ceasefire this week “for humanitarian reasons.”

As public protests mount all around the world, from New York to Mumbai, from London to Lima, calling for sanctions and prosecutions, the Israeli regime and its Western sponsors know that their historical machinations in Palestine are nearing the end.

The more than six-decade Western-backed Zionist project is facing defeat in every conceivable way - militarily, politically and morally. Its corrupted days are surely numbered.

FC/HJL

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation.More articles by Finian Cunn

Source: Press TV

VIEWPOINT: Fake democracies backing Israeli terror By Jim W. Dean

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Today I pick back up on a theme I will be writing about a lot this year, the abject failure of Western leadership in the 21st century, where the famous cartoon character Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy, and they are us!”

It has gotten so bad that I might have to consult my doctor for his advice on an anti-depression medication I can take each day before starting the daily news. The shocker this morning was reading about France's blocking all pro-Palestinian public demonstrations in support of their fundamental human rights, including the right of self-defense which is enshrined in international law.

The West feels it has the right, for example, to take away Iran's right to peaceful nuclear activity, and it seems the West has a long secret list of other rights it would like to selectively do away with. What we see going on here is more Western governments adopting the Zionist method of dealing with dissent and protest.

How? You just classify it as a security threat, which instantly sets aside any rights one might have thought they had. That is why I used the term “fake democracies” in my title. It was not hype, just an observable fact, which I can easily prove here on only one cup of coffee. And I am not picking on France. Most all the Western countries have an “erase your rights” button they can push whenever they want.

I wish I could say France's reason for banning the protests shocked me, but it did not. 

The pitiful reason given was, “...the serious risk of disruption of public order that such a protest could engender, in a context of heightened tension.” This is the standard subversion used now. Oh my, we have heightened tensions so your rights can be taken away without even a court order or a Parliament representative ruling? Yes they can be. But if we dig a little further, we find the “usual suspects” triggering this theft.

While these pro-Palestinian marchers were themselves peaceful and abiding by all laws and public decorum, the “problem” arose when they were attacked by the Jewish Defense League terror thugs, a somewhat theatrical troupe the Israeli lobbies deploy at critical moments, like this classic psyop I am describing. They wanted the anti-Israel protest shut down, and the shameful French government complied.

Here we have a known terror group like the JDL, an Israeli Intel asset which French counterintelligence is well aware of, deployed to attack peaceful protest marchers, and where the French government does not see its duty to protect the marchers from the JDL. The authorities punished these totally legitimate marchers by banning them all. If this is not one of the most glaring examples of living in a fake democracy, I don't know what is. You all know what I am going to say here...”You just can't make this stuff up!” You could not sell it as a movie script as the red ink rejection note would say “a totally unrealistic theme”.

I tied the terms “fake democracy” and the “Zionist method” together not as a smear, but as a silver bullet. You see, Israel has never had a constitution and no real public push for one that I know of. To have one would have given the Israeli Arab citizens the same rights as the Jewish ones. So to avoid constitutional court litigation over civil right violations, you dodge all of that by having no constitution.

As Israel Shamir told me in an interview here in Atlanta ten years ago, when an Arab family from the interior wants to go to the beach one day in Tel Aviv, soldiers checking their IDs can tell them they can't go to the beach that day. The family protests of course, claiming that they have the right as Israeli citizens to go to the beach like anyone else, but the soldiers take out their instant eraser. The “reason” they give their unfortunate second class citizens is...”for security reasons”. Mr. Shamir smiled and said, “This is a very popular term with Israeli security people.”

Some readers might think I am over dramatizing this issue... hyping this French incident. But no hype is needed. This is a long-running issue that I have written about for years, going all the way back to 9-11, when the Patriot Act popped up, as if out of a Jack in the Box children's toy.

We learned that it was not the result of a 48-hour miracle session of constitutional scholars and top legal minds, but something that had already been prepared years earlier to be ready to use, off the shelf, when the “right incident” came along. Even though this was reported at the time, it caused no outrage from the heartland of the cartoon American republic. I knew then we were in big trouble, and thirteen years has proven me right. Not only were we on the slippery slide, but it had been greased as well.

So now we all watch the grotesque spectacle of the French people being told they cannot peacefully protest against crimes against humanity for the people of Gaza because the French Israeli Lobby has forbidden it. But it gets worse, as Kevin Barrett reports in an earlier viewpoint where he nailed Obama for inviting Muslim leaders to a White House dinner, only to humiliate them with Israeli ambassador and anti-Muslim racist Ron Dermer as a keynote speaker.

Mr. Dermer, like all the other racist Israelis, likes to smear Muslims as coming from a culture of violence. He has described Muslims as having, “a cultural tendency towards belligerency...embedded in its foremost religion.” This of course is window-dressing for bombing Gaza with American planes and weapons in an effort to cure them of this cultural disease.

But at the same time, for those who read Israeli media, it is now the Ground Zero of cultural hatred and violence on the planet. The statements from Zionist public officials inciting revenge for the killings of the three teen settlers are too numerous to review here. Press TV readers are fully aware.

The virulence of Zionist hatred has reached new heights recently with the public statements from a racist member of Israel’s Jewish Home party, Ayelet Shaked. "They [Palestinian mothers] have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,"..."They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.” Thank you Ms. Shaked for laying it all out for us. This may help the non-believers as to who the real culture of violence is.

Dear Mr. President, You really screwed up big time with your Mr. Ron Dermer insult. I know that the White House usually is considerate of guests whom it is hosting. But both Dermer's track record and the orgy of hate coming out of Israel were known to you and your staff, yet you allowed this to happen.

You further embarrassed the country, and the Nobel Peace Prize people with your comment that “no country can allow missiles to rain down on its people”. We know you know the Israelis bombed Gaza knowing that Gaza would respond. We have all been here before.

The Gazans also have a right to not let American F-16s and bombs rain down on their people. You left that part out, sir. The Palestinians have a right to defend themselves, which you have effectively denied them with your comment. So shame on you, and you should send your Peace Prize back.

But that said, I thank you for not having the Aegis missile destroyers on station off of Israel as the heart of the Iron Dome system with their radars. The Israeli system looks like your usual defense contractor fraud scam. We are well aware, at Veterans Today, how poorly it has performed.

But you just left the door open for our Congressional Israeli Lobby sock-puppets to shovel out more corporate welfare money to Israel, which could be better used here at home, or for the long-term PTSD treatment for the Gazan children. Shame on you twice. As for Dermer... he can burn.

JD/NN

Jim W. Dean comes from an old military family dating back to the American Revolution. His father was a WWII P-40 and later P-51 Mustang fighter pilot. Jim's mother was a WWII widow at 16, her first husband killed with all 580 aboard when the SS Paul Hamilton, an ammunition ship with 7000 tons of explosives aboard, was torpedoed off the coast of Algiers. He has appeared on PBS most recently on the Looking for Lincoln documentary with Prof. Henry Lewis Gates and lectured at the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Gordon. His current writing focus is on national security, intelligence, black and psyops, military/Intel history including personal video archives, and the current wars. Jim Dean is the managing editor of Veterans Today. More articles by Jim W. Dean

Source: Press TV

VIEWPOINT: Save Gaza today; tomorrow’s too late! By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Palestinians search through the rubble of a house following an Israeli airstrike that killed 18 people of the same family in Gaza City, July 13, 2014.

Emma Bull was right when she said, “Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.” The timing of Israel’s recent assault on Gaza is not coincidental. It is the culmination of several factors: The Hamas-Fatah unity; Israel’s escalation of illegal construction in occupied territory; the collapse of the peace talks; the success of the BDS movement; and the growing number of Europeans warning against investment in occupied territories.

Israel’s expansionist agenda was at odds with the growing lack of sympathy around the world.  So it pulled out its best card - the victim card. On June 12, three Israeli teens were kidnapped, thought by many to be another Israeli false flag operation. According to Israeli police records, “the voice of MK Shelly Yacimovich (Labor) could be heard who was being interviewed by Israel Radio as the kidnapping took place” (Jerusalem Post).

During the phone conversation, shots were heard while Hebrew language was blaring in the background. A gag order was put on this call. Immediately, Netanyahu launched on a campaign to solicit sympathy for this ‘victimization’ and to invoke outrage from world leaders blaming the kidnapping on Hamas (who denied responsibility), all the while giving the impression that the teens were alive.

Without provocation, on June 17, Reuters reported that Israel cracks down on Hamas “in a mobilisation on a scale not seen in years” to find the abducted shot teens. As sentiments of solidarity toward Israel and disgust toward Hamas increased, victim card in hand, IDF boots marched into Palestinian houses turning them into military observation posts, making arbitrary arrests and putting up road blocks to increase pressure on Hamas.

It took more than two weeks for the very competent IDF to find the dead bodies of the teens in a tiny area – and identifying all the ins and outs of Palestinians households. More sympathy and condemnation poured in as the teens’ bodies were found on June 30. Standing center stage amidst Western media, Netanyahu said, “May God avenge their blood.” Thinking of himself as God, on July 1, arrest raids were ordered, hundreds were arrested and a ‘Hamas member was killed.’ All hell broke loose.

The sympathies and framing of events on the ground by the Western media and sympathies of Western leaders gave justification to the bombing of Gaza. The burning alive of a teenage Palestinian boy got a passing mention in the press. As the death toll in Gaza keeps rising, always, not only must Palestinians defend their lives and livelihoods, but they must also contend with fighting the pro-Israel media narrative.

Meanwhile, the UN utters a pathetic whim but remains idle as bombs are dropped on toddlers.    After all, they take their cue from their paymasters with US contributing 25% to the United Nations (the next largest contributors being Japan (12.53%), Germany (8.018%), the United Kingdom (6.604%), and France (6.112%). Lending their support in fratricide are the Arab leaders as their continued silence echoes the call to genocideby Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked.

As Israel is set for a ground invasion of Gaza, the alarming call of a “holy war” is heard from an Israeli commander who tells his soldiers that they are engaged in a war to “wipe out” an “enemy who defames” God. Jewish extremism has always been concealed, and with it, the dangers. But the threat is very real – and very well understood even by those supporting this growing danger.

A 1997 article reviewing the Israeli Defense Force repeatedly stressed the possibilities of and the need to guard against a religious, right-wing military coup, especially as the proportion of the religious in the military increases. They have been on the increase. In 2009, it was reported, “Israel’s army is changing. Once proudly secular, its combat units are now filling with those who believe Israel’s wars are ‘God’s wars.’” If Israel determines “God’s wars,” none are safe.

World leaders have warned that the conflict could engulf the entire region, but Israel is not heeding their warnings. Perhaps Netanyahu is smug in the knowledge that even if all in the region (and beyond) perish, Israeli Jews, or at least some, will be safe in its Site 911. Site 911, funded by America, due for completion soon, “will have five levels buried underground and six additional outbuildings on the above grounds, within the perimeter. At about 127,000 square feet, the first three floors will house classrooms, an auditorium, and a laboratory — all wedged behind shock resistant doors — with radiation protection and massive security. Each door of the facility will have a detailed description of the mezuzahs written in “in-erasable ink.”

With the growing extremism in Israeli military, their “holy wars” and nukes, it is not just Gaza that is burning – this is a war on humanity and perhaps even human race.  If we do not stop it today, tomorrow may be too late.

SSU/HJL

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is a Public Diplomacy scholar, independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy and the role of lobby groups.

Source: Press TV

Anti-Israel demonstrations held in London

Sources

Thousands of protesters have gathered on the streets of London in protest against Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Press TV reports.

Amid growing global outrage at the Israeli assaults on Gaza, thousands of Londoners took to one of the busiest streets in London demanding justice and freedom for the people of Palestine.

Protesters expressed anger at Israeli aggression and the mainstream media's biased coverage of the events in Gaza.

“More and more young people are coming up to me and saying, ‘look, I’m only believing what I’m seeing with you guys when it comes to the situation on the ground in Gaza, because if I were to watch just one of the mainstream channels, you would think that this is a situation where the sides are equally armed,” Press TV correspondent Amina Taylor said.

This is while on July 15, thousands of people gathered for anti-Israel protests outside the London headquarters of the state-run British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

The demonstrators said the BBC is biased in its coverage of Israel’s onslaught on the coastal sliver.

Protesters say the BBC is smart about the way it shows some Palestinian views and some Israeli views but the media giant’s coverage always seems to blame Palestinians.

Similar protests were held in countries across the world including in Iran, India, the US, Tunisia, Italy, Pakistan and Indonesia.

More than 340 people, including women and children, have been killed and nearly 2,400 injured since Tel Aviv unleashed its offensive 12 days ago.

Gazan homes, mosques and schools are also being targeted by the Israeli army. According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, more than three-quarters of the victims are civilians.

GMA/AB/SS

Source: Press TV

EXCLUSIVE VIEWPOINT: Just free palestine ends Hamas response to Israel's aggression By Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah

photo credit: Press TV

Many of those offering opinions on the most recent Israeli assault on Gaza limit the number of deceased to those killed within the past week, or from the July 2014 inception of what Israel is calling a war, putting the death toll at 209. The fact is that Israel has been killing Palestinians in massacres and other types of assaults and under other pretenses since before 1948 when Israel was “created” by the partitioning of Palestine and later in what Israel calls its war for independence.

In fact, when we examine the Zionist Jewish project in Palestine, it becomes clear that there has never been a period lasting for any significant amount of time when the Palestinian people were not being killed either by the Israeli political and military entities, or by the illegal Israeli settlers. There has never been peace in Palestine for the Palestinians. Aside from that, we must also consider that prior to this recent outbreak of Israeli violence in Gaza, for one week prior, Israel carried out a violent arrest and detention campaign in the West Bank that killed 4 people, wounded 1000 and resulted in the arrests of more than 600 others.

Israel raided villages, stormed homes and kidnapped more than 600 Palestinians, including small children, in what seems now to have been preparation for this current aggression in Gaza. Israel claims it was responding to the kidnapping and deaths of 3 settlers who had served in the Israeli military and may have been active in the military when they were allegedly kidnapped and killed.

Israel has lately stepped up its air assault on the Palestinian people of Gaza, killing 3 more Palestinian people. They have done so with at least the tacit approval of the United States, the UN and EU. These Western powers seem to feel, perhaps along with some Arab governments, that Israel's repeated violations of international law, such as targeting civilians, children, hospitals and private homes, are acceptable, so long as this situation would bring Hamas to a cease fire. Israel's other hope might be that as a result of the tremendous loss of life associated with Israel's assault, the Palestinian people will blame Hamas for their losses rather than Israel, and pressure Hamas to end Israel's violence through an open ended cease fire agreement. Israel has already killed in its recent 2014 slaughter, more than 200 Palestinian people, mostly women and children.

There is something very troubling about the idea that Israel entered into this campaign of violence with the hope of bringing Hamas to a cease fire in a confrontation that Israel initiated. Israel had a cease fire agreement with Gaza, resulting from its 2012 assault, which it violated within days of accepting the agreement, killing 3 Palestinians almost immediately after the cease fire was announced.

The fact that Israel has never honored a cease fire is also troubling, but strangely it seems to be troubling only to those who understand, that unless something significantly different happens this time, we have no reason to expect that a cease fire will change anything. A cease fire without conditions has no real purpose or effects other than buying Israel the needed time to regroup and rearm in preparation for part 2 of its 2014 assault on Gaza, and it will never result in anything that even resembles peace.

What is needed to create a real incentive for Palestine to agree to a cease fire must be more than the standing Israeli ultimatum, which is accept the cease fire or die, considering that on average Israel kills approximately 3 Palestinians per week. Some people have suggested that Hamas might be interested in a cease fire if Israel agrees to lift the siege on Gaza, which Israel did in 2012 and of course never lifted the siege. In fact Israel tightened the siege, giving its newest Arab ally in the region, Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the command to bomb all of the tunnels leading into Gaza that were used to transport a minimal amount of needed food and supplies into Gaza from Egypt, which el-Sisi has done quite effectively.

What has not been mentioned enough yet, is clearly a significant result that is needed, is an end to Israel's 40 years of illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which some refer to as the occupied territories. Now the world should consider that after 40 years of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, along with an incessant and very aggressive illegal colonization program in the West Bank, in violation of international law and UN resolution 242, it is time for Israel to end the occupation.

A former Israeli Mossad chief has suggested that Israel should attempt to open negotiations with Hamas on issues related to the economic embargo. Reason suggests that Israel should not even think about negotiations with Hamas until it ends its illegal occupation. Also, the cease fire or die ultimatum might not be that attractive to people who have had at least 3 cease fire agreements with Israel and never stopped being killed. Palestine has been subjected to ethnic cleansing through deadly violence that includes kidnappings on almost a daily basis and that does not include the massacres that have occurred regularly since 1948.

Ending the Palestine occupation would require more than merely Israel's word that it will relinquish its claimed authority over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It would require the UN creation of an overseeing committee that would work with Israel and Hamas to develop a plan for Israel’s withdrawal and the associated terms of the withdrawal, which must include reparations for Israel's near total destruction of Gaza's infrastructure.

If the world is serious about ending the Palestinian resistance response to Israel's aggression, we must all push very hard for Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its withdrawal to its 1967 borders.

AA/AB

Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah is a political analyst and human/civil rights activist. She is the former editor of the Middle East Affairs Journal (MEAJ) a peer reviewed international journal which focused on the political progress and intellectual and ideological development of the Islamic movements in the Muslim world. She has a Ph.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence and now heads a newly established think tank, The Center for Muslim World Studies. She has been published in many of the major newspapers in the United States such as theBoston Globe, The Washington Times and the New York Times and has lectured at some of the United State's most prestigious universities including Georgetown University, Columbia University in New York and the American University in Washington DC. More articles by Dr. Abd el Fattah

Source: Press TV

Israel raided Gaza to sabotage Palestine unity government

Photo Credit: News24.com

A political analyst says Israel’s relentless onslaught against the Gaza Strip is aimed at undermining the recently formed Palestinian national unity government, Press TV reports.

In an interview with Press TV on Saturday, Sharif Nashashibi said Israel used the alleged abduction of three Israeli settlers as a pretext to launch an offensive against the Gaza Strip with the aim of undermining the Palestinian national unity government.

“Israel’s target was the national unity government from the beginning when the Israeli teenagers were abducted,” Nashashibi said, adding, “There was no doubt it (Israel) was going to do anything it could and use anything as a pretext to destroy the national unity government.”

Israel accused Hamas of kidnapping and killing three settlers that went missing early last month. During the so-called search operation for the settlers, Israeli forces killed several Palestinians and raided a number of homes.

Hamas, meanwhile, consistently rejected the claim, saying Tel Aviv seeks to sabotage the recent reconciliation accord reached between the movement and Fatah, which led to the formation of the Palestinian national unity government.

On July 8, shortly after the discovery of the bodies of the settlers, Israel launched an offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip.

The death toll from the Israeli aggression on Gaza has risen to more than 342. About a third of the fatalities have been women and children. Nearly 2,500 others have been also injured.

The Israeli regime also launched a ground invasion of the blockaded enclave late on Thursday.

Israel had called up 48,000 reserve soldiers for the ground operation and the military said later on Thursday that an additional 18,000 reservists have been also called up to bolster the 48,000 already summoned.

AR/HMV/SS

Source: Press TV