I don't even know where to begin on this one. Israel is running amok and doesn't care who it kills or destroys. I have way more links on this than I can deal with. Here are a few.

Israel's failed-state strategy
Olmert's smashing of Gaza reveals his greatest fear: A viable Palestinian government he'd have to negotiate with.
by Juan Cole

On Thursday, Israeli tanks and troops invaded northern Gaza, encountering fierce small-arms fire and some rocket attacks from armed Gazans. Twenty-one Palestinians, mostly militants, and an Israeli soldier were killed. It was the largest Israeli troop presence in the territory since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal of August 2005. Late Thursday, Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siam called on Gazans to "prepare to repel the Israeli attack" -- the first time a Palestinian governmental official has called Palestinians to arms since the crisis erupted. The day's battles continued the cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians that has simmered for months but exploded during the past two weeks. Israel's grossly disproportionate response to a tit-for-tat Palestinian guerrilla raid during which two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third abducted has pushed the impoverished Gaza Strip to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, smashed the barely functioning Palestinian Authority, and threatened the Middle East's fragile peace. The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that "we have no one to talk to" a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.

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Tomgram: Sandy Tolan, Déjà Vu in Gaza

Under the pretext of forcing the release of a single soldier "kidnapped by terrorists" (or, if you prefer, "captured by the resistance"), Israel has done the following: seized members of a democratically elected government; bombed its interior ministry, the prime minister's offices, and a school; threatened another sovereign state (Syria) with a menacing overflight; dropped leaflets from the air, warning of harm to the civilian population if it does not "follow all orders of the IDF" (Israel Defense Forces); loosed nocturnal "sound bombs" under orders from the Israeli prime minister to "make sure no one sleeps at night in Gaza"; fired missiles into residential areas, killing children; and demolished a power station that was the sole generator of electricity and running water for hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Besieged Palestinian families, trapped in a locked-up Gaza, are in many cases down to one meal a day, eaten in candlelight. Yet their desperate conditions go largely ignored by a world accustomed to extreme Israeli measures in the name of security: nearly 10,000 Palestinians locked in Israeli jails, many without charge; 4,000 Gaza and West Bank homes demolished since 2000 and hundreds of acres of olive groves plowed under; three times as many civilians killed as in Israel, many due to "collateral damage" in operations involving the assassination of suspected militants. "Wake up!" shouted the young Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer from Gaza on San Francisco's "Arab Talk" radio in late June. "The Gaza people are starving. There is a real humanitarian crisis. Our children are born to live. Don't these people have any heart? No feelings at all? The world is silent!" For the Palestinians, Omer's cry speaks to a collective understanding: That the world sees the life of an Arab as infinitely less valuable than that of an Israeli; that no amount of suffering by innocent Palestinians is too much to justify the return of a single Jewish soldier. This understanding, and the rage and humiliation it fuels, has been driven home again and again through decades of shellings, wars, and uprisings past. Indeed Omer's plaintive words form a mantra, echoing all the way back to the first war between the Arabs and the Jews, and especially to 5 searing mid-July days 58 years ago.

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12 July 06

RIGHT NOW: Israeli tanks and bulldozers are in the Middle of the Gaza Strip, no movement is allowed. In theose first few minutes tanks and bulldozers pushed into the middle of Gaza controlling Salah Al Deen St. which is Gaza's main street. Five people have been killed and many others injured. This is the first time that Israeli tanks and bulldozers reached into the middle of Gaza, reoccupying the former Jewish settlements and carrying military attacks since the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, or what is known as the "Gaza disengagement plan". Gaza is under occupation. There is no electricity, no water and everything is obviously under Israeli control and now it's time for Israeli soldiers to control wether to let this ambulance go to the hospital to rescue victims, or to keep them waiting until they die bleeding. This has been happening all day today!

A wounded child in the hospital in Gaza

  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

My life in Gaza

I am already starting to lose track of days and nights, of how many bombs have dropped. Since the main power plant was destroyed, we have had to live with no electricity. What we do get is patchy, and barely enough to recharge our mobile phones and our laptops so that we do not lose all touch with each other and with the outside world. As a physician, I fear for our patients. Twenty-two hospitals have no electricity. They have to rely on generators, but the generators need fuel. We have enough fuel to last a few days at most, because the borders are sealed so no fuel can get in. The shortage of power threatens the lives of patients on life-support machines and children in intensive care, as well as renal dialysis patients and others. Hundreds of operations have been postponed. The pharmacies were already nearly empty because of Israeli border closures and the cutoff of international aid. What little supplies were left have gone bad in the absence of refrigeration. Food too is spoiling without refrigeration, and food supplies are low. West Bank farmers threw away truckloads of spoiled fruit after sitting for days and then being denied Israeli permission to enter Gaza. Children grow hungry as we watch the food that could nourish them thrown into the garbage instead. More than 30,000 children suffer from malnutrition, and this number will increase as diarrhea spreads because of the limited supply of clean water and food contamination. As a mother, I fear for the children. I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms and artillery shelling on my 13-year-old daughter. She is restless, panicked, and afraid to go out, yet frustrated because she can't see her friends. When Israeli fighter planes fly by day and night, the sound is terrifying. My daughter usually jumps into bed with me, shivering with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. My heart races, yet I try to pacify my daughter, to make her feel safe. But when the bombs sound, I flinch and scream. My daughter feels my fear and knows that we need to pacify each other. I am a doctor, a mature, middle-aged woman. But with the sonic booming, I become hysterical.

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Morning Came

Morning came and we found that 90 of the nation's best men were captured by Israel from their homes in the night. Our mayor, who was released from four years in prison just a month ago. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration, as do his people here, political allies and opponents alike. And our vice mayor, too. The last time I talked with him, earlier this week, he was struggling a lot with chronic back pain. I wonder where they are now. If they have been fed today, or tortured. If they will sleep on beds tonight, or not at all. If they will be home tomorrow. If we will never see some of them again alive.

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Israel’s Infrastructure Warfare

Israel is now openly engaged in infrastructure warfare, the wanton destruction of the basic platforms of human survival. The bombing of the electric power plant has thrust the world’s most densely populated area into darkness; cutting off the vital flow of energy to hospitals, assistance centers, and the pumping stations which provide the city’s water. At the same time, Israel has bombed large sections of the main roads, government buildings, water lines and bridges. The Associated Press said, “Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed the Gaza Strip and began razing farmland east of Khan Younis”.

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Analysis: Health care crisis in Palestine

Mired in political and economic turmoil, the Palestinian healthcare system is in a grave state of crisis ill-equipped to absorb the latest spasms of violence in the territories. Even the most basic medications are hard to come by and become scarcer as time goes on, Dr. Rasmi Abu-Helu, assistant professor of medical technology at Al-Quds University, pointed out in a recent presentation. The crux of the problem is financial, he said, noting that much of the international community has cut aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government since its election victory in January. "It's not only Israel, but the entire Western world," he said. "Nowadays I don't think there's any international aid getting inside."

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  thanks to Juan Cole

Israeli army in for the long haul in Gaza Strip

Israel faces the prospect of a long-term reoccupation of parts of the Gaza Strip after Palestinian rockets for the first time struck a major Israeli city, escalating a crisis that began with the capture of a single soldier.

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An Experiment in Human Despair
The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of Gaza

First, Israel is determined to continue its campaign of impairing the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern. This has nothing to do with the recent election of Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority. Israel's official policy of unilateralism -- ignoring the wishes of the Palestinian people -- began long before, when Yasser Arafat was in charge. It has continued through the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, a leader who is about as close to a quisling as Israel is likely to find.

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Now Israel is attacking Lebanon. How far will this escalate?

Israel Hits Lebanon After Troops Snatched

Israel bombed and shelled southern Lebanon and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years Wednesday after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers. The fighting killed eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese.

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Hizbullah ups the ante
by Helena Cobban

So today, Lebanon's Hizbullah raised the stakes in the rapidly evolving confrontation between Israel and the militant Arab organizations on its borders-- and it also demonstrated its own continuing operational prowess, daring, and inventiveness-- when it sent a squad into action against an Israeli tank operating apparently just inside Israel, killing three of the tank's crew members and snatching two others into captivity. When the Israeli military responded by sending other tanks into Lebanon, one hit a landmine killing four more soldiers inside it. Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers comes, of course, a couple of weeks into the crisis Israeli society is already facing as a result of Hamas's capture of an IDF soldier in Gaza. I can easily imagine that many Israelis are in a turmoil of emotion. Though their army has killed around 70 or so Palestinians-- many of them civilians-- in the past two weeks of military actions, Palestinian society shows few signs of "cracking" politically, in terms of backing down on the demand of the PA government leaders that Israel agree to a widespread release of Palestinian detainees in return to the safe release of Gilad Shalit. (This is, of course, very similar to the "sumoud" shown by the Lebanese public when Israel tried to bomb it into political submission back in April 1996. Other people might recall the response of Londoners to the Blitz.)

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1 killed, dozens hurt as Katyushas fall in north; Israel imposes sea and air blockade on Lebanon
Hezbollah: We'll strike Haifa if IAF attacks Beirut

Lebanon asks U.N. to broker cease-fire
Guerrillas’ rockets hit Haifa; Iran denies role in Israeli soldiers’ capture

Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.

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