Hunger, sickness, terror, despair and Israeli military violence routinely afflict and kill the entrapped people of Gaza. The new film “Killing Gaza” explains in heartbreaking detail why Palestinians have been risking their lives during seven weeks of nonviolent protests.
The Israeli military has said it fired only at "instigators" involved in attacks on soldiers and was investigating Yasswe Murtaja's gunshot death amid a very hectic environment.
Israeli fire has killed 25 Palestinians, including 19 protesters, in the past week, and Gaza's Hamas rulers say there will be more protests over the decades-long border blockade of the territory.
Richard Falk, who for six years served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, argues in a recent interview that there is no evidence that Israel’s air campaign has decreased rocket fire from Gaza. Likewise the claim that Hamas uses human shields is unfounded and Israel’s siege of Gaza is missing from media accounts of the cause of the current conflict, he contends.
Operation Protective Edge has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians in recent weeks, compared with 56 Israeli soldiers and four civilians. It's long past time for Israel to consider a two-state solution, stop the creeping encroachment of the occupation, and end a blockade that "ensures that ever more Palestinians grow up angry," The Economist writes.
A ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists bound for Gaza was intercepted and boarded by Israeli marines and rerouted to Israel’s southern Mediterranean port of Ashdod, where passengers could face charges of entering Israel illegally.
In a result sure to spark intense debate, Israel’s attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last May has been declared by a government commission to be a legal use of force for self-defense. Israeli commandos killed nine activists attempting to break the blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip.
Avoiding the kind of confrontation that led to the flotilla fiasco in May, a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid ship has docked and unloaded its cargo in Egypt after the Israeli navy forbid it to sail directly to Gaza.
Some six weeks after Israeli troops raided a Gaza-bound flotilla and killed nine people aboard, thus rocking the diplomatic boat with Turkey and other nations, Israel has owned up to some "professional mistakes" that occurred during the clash.
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