How could this be happening on Brugarta Street in Oslo? What was this inferno in the sky outside the neat, peaceful Spectrum Hotel? How had the Israeli missiles managed to follow one Palestinian journalist all the way to Norway?
 

Highly Respected Israeli Writers & Historians Plea to the World URGENT!! ALL EYES ON GAZA DISENGAGEMENT What May Come After the Evacuation of Jewish Settlers from the Gaza Strip A Warning from Israel By URI DAVIS, ILAN PAPPE, and TAMAR YARON July 15, 2005, ISRAEL: We feel that it is urgent and necessary to raise the alarm regarding what may come during and after evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967, in the event that the evacuation is implemented. We held back on getting this statement published and circulated, seeking additional feedback from our peers. The publication in Ha'aretz (22 June 2005) quoting statements by General (Reserves) Eival Giladi, the head of the Coordination and Strategy team of the Prime Minister's Office, motivated us not to delay publication and circulation any further. Confirming our worst fears, General (Res.) Eival Giladi went on record in print and on television to the effect that "Israel will act in a very resolute manner in order to prevent terror attacks and [militant] fire while the disengagement is being implemented" and that "If pinpoint response proves insufficient, we may have to use weaponry that causes major collateral damage, including helicopters and planes, with mounting danger to surrounding people." We believe that one primary, unstated motive for the determination of the government of the State of Israel to get the Jewish settlers of the Qatif (Katif) settlement block out of the Gaza Strip may be to keep them out of harm's way when the Israeli government and military possibly trigger an intensified mass attack on the approximately one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, of whom about half are 1948 Palestine refugees. The scenario could be similar to what has already happened in the past - a tactic that Ariel Sharon has used many times in his military career - i.e., utilizing provocation in order to launch massive attacks. Following this pattern, we believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz are considering to utilize provocation for vicious attacks in the near future on the approximately one and a half million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip: a possible combination of intensified state terror and mass killing. The Israeli army is not likely to risk the kind of casualties to its soldiers that would be involved in employing ground troops on a large scale in the Gaza Strip. With General Dan Halutz as Chief of Staff they don't need to. It was General Dan Halutz, in his capacity as Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who authorized the bombing of a civilian Gaza City quarter with a bomb weighing one ton, and then went on record as saying that he sleeps well and that the only thing he feels when dropping a bomb is a slight bump of the aircraft. The initiators of this alarm have been active for many decades in the defence of human rights inside the State of Israel and beyond. We do not have the academic evidence to support our feeling, but given past behavior, ideological leanings and current media spin initiated by the Israeli government and military, we believe that the designs of the State of Israel are clear, and we submit that our educated intuition with matters pertaining to the defence of human rights has been more often correct than otherwise. We urge all those who share the concern above to add their names to ours and urgently give this alarm as wide a circulation as possible. Circulating and publishing this text may constitute a significant factor in deterring the Israeli government, thus protecting the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip from this very possible catastrophe and contributing to prevent yet more war crimes from occurring.

Or was it some nightmare collage of all the bullet-ridden nights at home in Bader Camp in north Rafah near the Rafeh Yam Israeli settlement? The noise was relentless: the missiles, the shells that filled the night sky with flames, the screaming of women and children, explosions and bombs, all coming from the direction of Rafeh Yam. I tried to put the puzzle pieces together: the flight to Cairo, the long trip through Egypt, the longer wait at Rafah crossing, forcing my sluggish mind to work against a background of ambulance sirens, the shouts and klaxons from the fire trucks. Automatically, I reached for my mobile phone, one certain, familiar object in the chaos. The lighted screen said 10:24 pm. Finally the shouts at the door made it all snap into place. Of course I was home—welcomed a few hours ago by my family, and now by the familiar lethal Rafah lullaby of missiles and rockets. The media routinely call these events "clashes" but the word doesn't begin to do justice to the din, the confusion, the strange feeling of alert numbness. Tuesday night's firefight was typical of the new violence sweeping through Gaza. It was a double conflict of sorts. For over a week, various militant factions had been firing Qassam rockets at Gaza's illegal Israeli settlements in retaliation for Israel's resumption of targeted assassinations [0] of militants from Hamas and other factions. Since the Bader camp, a new neighborhood of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)  houses, is just across a fortified road from the Rafeh Yam settlement, it was inevitable that as the fragile truce unraveled over the last two weeks, sooner or later, Palestinian militants would decide to use the neighborhood as a launch site. Often, civilian residents throughout Gaza, well aware of the devastating return Israeli fire, tell the fighters, "Please—not here!" And often the militants do their best to oblige. In this case, UNRWA had told the residents—who had already lost their homes once to the Israeli bulldozers—to do their utmost to keep militants from operating in the new neighborhood. If the Occupation Army razed the new houses, UNRWA would not rebuild. Such draconian pronouncements are unusual for UNRWA, but the UN agency, like every other non-governmental organizations associated with the United Nations (NGO) in Occupied Palestine, can function only to the extent the Israeli Occupation allows. So when the Hamas fighters arrived, residents shouted, begged, pleaded till they moved off to the nearby sand dunes, but their two mortars still drew an inferno of missiles from Rafeh Yam onto the neighborhood. But then, even the smallest children in Rafah know that the Israeli war machine doesn't need logical reasons to destroy a house, a street, an entire neighborhood. If pressed, they may cite tunnels, or militant activity, or the ever useful "security reasons," but basically, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) destroys whatever it wants, whenever it wants. After a few months of cautious hope after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a cease-fire in February, over the last ten days, horror and chaos again mired Palestine. Blood, fire, and fear once again define "normal" in Gaza. It is back to the grim business of counting the dead, counting the injured, phoning the medics and hospitals to try to learn the names of the casualties. For the Palestinian civilians, it is back to sleepless nights trying to judge how close the shooting and bombing is, or trying to sleep at closed Israeli checkpoints.

Where did it start this time? Should we go back to the suicide bombing last week in Netanya? The Israeli Army has been routinely arresting members of militant factions and staging incursions into areas under Palestinian control despite the supposed cease-fire and the planned withdrawal from Gaza and a few areas in the West Bank. The young militant who carried out the Netanya bombing said he was "responding" to the Israeli crimes in the West Bank. Of course, IOF activity only increased after the Netanya attack on July 12th, while in Gaza, the militant factions increased their Qassam ^[1] launches in—yes, that word again—"response." Drawing, of course, ever harsher "responses" from the Israeli Army.

Thursday night, July 14th, an Israeli woman, Dana Glakowitz 22, ^[2] who lived in Sderot near the Gaza border was killed by a Qassam strike as she sat on the porch of her home. The Palestinian Interior Minister declared a state of emergency and ordered the PA police to stop the militants from firing on Israeli settlements within Gaza and towns in the Negev near the border. The IOF immediately closed the checkpoints, dividing Gaza into three sealed sections and shortly after midnight launched four rocket strikes on Gaza within an hour. Three were in northern Gaza, one on a cemetery in Khan Younis that the Israeli military claims was being used as a launch site by the militants. In Gaza City the headquarters of an Islamic charity was destroyed—the IOF claimed it was "pro-Hamas."

There were heavy clashes all that night between PA (Palestinian Authority) police and masked militants, with cars carrying Hamas members attacked and, in retaliation, militant assaults on police stations and police cars. Tragically, in the Zeytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, two bystanders, a teenager and a child, were killed during a firefight between militants and the PA police. It was the most serious internal conflict among Palestinian factions in recent years.

With the dawn, the police-militant battles wound down and eventually ceased, but civilians in Gaza City were burning tires in an effort to blind the Israeli unmanned surveillance drones. In mid-afternoon, the Israeli helicopters resumed extrajudicial assassinations by rocket attacks an hour apart on two cars carrying Hamas members—one near Nablus in the West Bank, and one in Gaza City. In the Gaza City air strike around 4pm, four Hamas members were killed, their white Volkswagen reduced to barely-recognizable rubble, and six pedestrians were also injured. Eyewitnesses said body parts and shredded flesh of the four passengers were scattered over a wide area.
 

Gaza City civilians gather around the wreckage left after the Israeli Army resumed "extrajudicial assassinations" this afternoon. The charred mass in the foreground is all that was left of a Volkswagen carrying four Hamas members that was destroyed by at least two rockets fired from Israeli Army Apache gunships. Six pedestrians were also injured in the attack.

Witnesses reported Israeli troops and tanks massed at the sealed borders. Israeli public opinion was sharply divided, as hardliners urged Sharon to a ground invasion at once, while cooler heads suggested President Abbas be given time to get the situation under control. Further complicating matters was an illegal demonstration of thousands of right-wing Israelis, determined to march into Gaza to reinforce those settlers determined to resist the evacuation. Thousands of Israeli troops are busy holding them at bay. Egyptian diplomats arrived in Gaza City to meet President Abbas and the heads of the various militant groups to reach new agreements to preserve the cease-fire.

 

For five days, the Abu Holi checkpoint was closed, while a six-meter trench was dug to halt traffic near the Netzarim settlement in central Gaza. Normal travel slowed and stopped entirely as people waited for hours in the blazing July sun for the brief—usually 30 minute—opening in the evening. At the Netzarim trench, women, children, medical patients, elderly people, all took the chance of being shot by the Israeli snipers stationed in the nearby concrete tower as they trudged about 3 kilometers over sand and rock. The situation was even more dangerous at Abu Holi checkpoint where on Monday, July 18, a Palestinian teenager, Raghed el-Abed el-Masri, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in the sniper tower guarding the checkpoint. Initially, the Israeli Army said they had fired "warning shots in the air," but not at the cars, when Palestinian traffic attempted to cross without permission. However, Dr. Ibrahim Masadar, director of the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, said Raghed had been shot in the back, the live bullet exiting through his heart and chest. The Occupation forces spokesman conceded that Palestinian Civilian Authorities had complained that the 14-year-old had been killed, as well as several others injured in the same incident, and said they were "still investigating." The Israeli authorities have also reinstated a travel ban on Palestinian men and boys between the ages of 16 and 35 from leaving Gaza through the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only route to the outside world. In north Gaza, the Erez Crossing into Israel has been sealed as well, preventing some 7000 Palestinian workers who have permits to travel to their jobs in the industrial zone, from getting to work. All of these restrictions are considered "collective punishment" and are forbidden by international law. Tuesday, in and around Jebalia, there were further clashes between Palestinian security forces and militants, with 13 wounded. Predictably, perhaps, each side blamed the other, while in nearby Gaza City, Abbas and the militants seemed to be reaching agreement.

July 7, 2005: A number of Israeli bulldozers and tanks invaded the western part of Rafah Refugee Camp, and left only after heavy shooting. Ess am Al Abed, 21, was taken to Abu Yousuf Al Najjar hospital where doctors reported he had two bullet wounds in his left leg. In the Tal Al Sultan neighborhood, also in western Rafah, twenty well-equipped Israeli soldiers, backed by armored vehicles, came from the nearby Israeli settlements and tried to enter the neighborhood. Gunfire was exchanged with militants. In the Al Mawasi camp, which is cut off from the sea and from the rest of Gaza by Israeli settlements, se ttlers, backed up by anti-disengagement supporters from Israeli and overseas, tried to occupy houses in Al Mawasi and burn the Palestinians' fishing boats. The Israeli army separated the scuffling groups, but according to witnesses and the press, beat the Palestinians while dealing fairly gently with the settlers. That same weekend, some forty militants from the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the armed wing of the ruling Fatah party, took over the Palestine Legislative Council office building in Rafah. Although they were masked and carried rifles, their four-hour "occupation" was non-violent. The action was a protest against the authorities' foot-dragging on fulfilling its promise to find jobs for the militants. Late in June, a Bedouin soldier serving in the Israeli Army was convicted of manslaughter in the death of photographer and peace activist Tom Hurndall in Rafah two years ago, and received a 20-year prison sentence. Hurndall's father, a British attorney, conducted his own investigation of events in Rafah and had the backing of the British government in pushing for a serious investigation. After the verdict, he told reporters that the case had underlined a culture of impunity for Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza. "We are concerned that there is a policy which seems to be prevalent in Gaza among the Israeli soldiers and army that they feel able to shoot civilians really without any accountability whatsoever. So there are two issues here: one, the apparent tacit policy that seems to be in place that the Palestinian civilians are fair game; and that there is no accountability."   The Israeli human rights group Btselem said that innocent Palestinian victims were much less likely to receive justice, saying that Israeli forces had killed at least 1,722 Palestinians not involved in hostilities but in only two cases were soldiers convicted of causing the death of a Palestinian. Rafah residents, particularly those in areas near the Israeli settlements, are braced for difficulties during the coming evacuation, as at least some of the settlers seem bent on offering violent resistance. Shooting from the settlements toward Palestinian civilians is a common occurrence. No one is sure if the Israeli army will seal off Gaza to prevent the settlers from gathering reinforcements, but border closures always mean shortages and hardship for everyone in Gaza. --MO

In any case, both sides withdrew their armed fighters from the street, realizing, many hoped, that a Palestinian civil war would help no one but the Israeli hard-liners. And while the powerful discuss, debate, talk with the press, and jockey for power, the men, women, and children of Gaza brace themselves for a long and frightening summer.

Mohammed Omer is a regular contributor and photo journalist to Couples Company and brings the Palestinian perspective missing in American Media.  In 2004 the Israeli Occupation Forces killed his seventeen year old brother and  five other relatives during "Operation Rainbow". In addition to devoting his free time to the thousands of homeless families and children in Gaza as an aid worker, Mohammed fights for his nation's freedom with the pen and lens. His work can be seen at http://www.rafahtoday.org
 

Israeli Tactics for occupation Since the beginning of the Second Intifada, the IOF has shown its very real military options and it is clear it prepared to exercise them long before the fighting began. The IOF spokesman provided some of the possible details of such Israeli contingency plans to reoccupy large parts of the West Bank in a statement June 1997. Many of these details tracked closely with the plans tested in “Operation Field of Thorns,” a plan the IOF spokesman had made public in September 1996, and Israel began to apply many of these measures in September 2000. They include: • Mobilization and deployment of armored and other land forces in the face of a massive Palestinian rising. • Massive reinforcement of IDF troops at points of friction. • Use of armor and artillery to isolate major Palestinian population areas, and to seal off Palestinian areas, including many areas of Zone A. • Use of other forces to secure settlements, key roads, and terrain points. • Use of helicopter gunships and snipers to provide mobility and suppressive fire. • Use of extensive small arms, artillery, and tank fire to suppress sniping, rock throwing and demonstrations. • Bombing, artillery strikes, and helicopter and combat aircraft strikes on high value Palestinian targets and infrastructure, to punish Palestinian elements for attacks. • Search and seizure interventions and raids into Palestinian areas in the Gaza and West Bank to break up organized resistance, capture, or kill key leaders. • Penetrations into Palestinian-controlled territory to destroy buildings and houses from which attacks have originated or to prevent future attacks, and to uproot trees from which mortar attacks have originated. • Selective assassinations of suspected leaders and instigators of conflict, including, through stand-off tactics such as drones and remote-controlled explosive devices. • Use of military forces trained in urban warfare to penetrate into cities if necessary – most probably in cases where there were Jewish enclaves like Hebron. • Arrest PA officials and imposition of a new military administration. • Isolation of key Palestinian cities and towns and use of surrounding IDF troops to turn them into military cantonments. • Introduction of a simultaneous economic blockade with selective cuts offs of financial transactions, labor movements, and food/fuel shipments. • Selective destruction of high value Palestinian facilities and clearly of strong points and fields of fire near Palestinian urban areas. • Use of Israeli control of water, power, communications, and road access to limit the size and endurance of Palestinian action. • Regulation and control of media access and conduct a major information campaign to influence local and world opinion. • Carrying out “temporary” withdrawal of Israeli settlers from exposed and strategically low value isolated settlements like Hebron [or Gush Katif – se]. • Creation of fences, security zones, bypasses, and other measures to separate Israelis and Palestinians. • Forced evacuations of Palestinian from “sensitive areas.”   Source: Anthony H. Cordesman,  "Israel versus the Palestinians: The “Second Intifada” and Asymmetric Warfare" Page 183-184 (Interesting to Note: Operation Field of Thorns shares the same time frame and dates for the initial creation of the PNAC report (September 1996) by Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Perle and other Neocons on reshaping the Middle East for then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...the very plan outlining the US's current foreign policy today: Oil, Israel and Logistics.  This plan required a New Pearl Harbor and the toppling of Saddam.  Funny, it was released in 2000 as well. Coincidence?)

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[1] Editor's Note: A common misconception Americans have is believing the "Qassam rockets" to be similar to our missiles. They are not. These are guerrilla weapons created from scrap and assembled in an ordinary kitchens, quite crude and  barely 1 1/2 yards in length. These rockets can be carried by one man. Though the most sophisticated weapon used by the Palestinians against the Occupation Forces these are not "high tech" weapons.  They cannot be guided or targeted. The maximum range of a Qassam recorded is 5 kilometers, (approximately 3 miles). 
Israeli public relations photographs Qassam rockets in such a way to create an artificial scale:  large in the foreground to make them appear bigger than they are. It is a classic propaganda stunt.

[2] Editor's Note: All Jewish adults 18-49 are active or reserve military in Israel. Only children, those over 50 or certain Orthodox Jews who consider it against their religion to serve are civilians.