Dear brothers,

Further to my previous mail, please send your comments and/or suggestions to the brief write-up of my proposed speech in Japanese as given below:

Wassalam,

Hussain Khan, Tokyo

PALESTINE COMMITTEE, TOKYO, JAPAN

Contact : Mr. Aquil Siddiqi (chairman)

Tel. : 03-3971-5631

Cellphone : 090-8740-7878

Email : aquil0715@gmail.com

Brief Write-up

of the proposed speech at the anti- War rally of Japanese Protest Demonstration on Jan 10, 2009, against Israeli War and Cruelty on Gaza Residents

(This Write-up is in English but my speech will be in Japanese.)

In our Press Conference at Japan Press Center yesteerday on January 9, a Japanese journalist asked a question as to how there can be peace unless Palestinians stop firing rockets at Israel?

l Jimmy Carter , a former US President says that during the last several years of rocket-firing, only 4 people have died in Israel, whereas Israel has killed more than 750 civilians, mostly women and children during the last 13 days of war.

l UN observer Richard Falk says that Israel blockaded Gaza for 18 months, which prompted Palestinans to fire rockets.

l He further says that even during the 6-month of Egypt-brokered cease-fire, only 20% of the food requirements of Gazans was allowed to enter Gaza.

l He further says that Hamas offered 10-year truce and cease-fire and no firing of rockets, but Israel rejected it and says it prepared for this war for the last 1-year.

l Palestinians have been deprived of their country since 1948 by force of Israeli arms and by the support of US and Britain. They have a right to fight back to get back their country. Some historic background of Zionism, as to how Palestinians have been deprived of their homes and of their country.

l Israel has been killing Palestians during the last 60 years of its existence. It is like beating a cat's child by a strong stick and if it tries to react, it is called terrorism of Palestinians.

l All parties, including Israel, Palestinans, Arabs, US and UN have agreed to a 2-state solutions but Israel has built-up settlements for 500,000 Jews in the Occupied Territories since 1967. It has no intention to promote this consensus by going back to 1967 borders, even though it has theoretically agreed to it but not ready to take any practical steps for the solution.

l World is tired of war. Israel should implement above long-term negotiated solution of this problem.

Thanks and Regards,

On behalf of PALESTINE COMMITTEE, TOKYO, JAPAN

Hussain Khan, Tokyo

09033566207, Fax: 0426-76-4982

hussain@nifty.com

Regards,

Hussain Khan

-----Original Message-----

From: Japan Islamic Trust [mailto:info@islam.or.jp]

Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:32 PM

To: Hussain Khan Sahib ,Hachioji

Subject: Fw: ガザに光を！1/10（土）にピースパレードとシンポジウムを開催。

> Peace Walk for Palestine

> Time:　Jan 10th Sat.

> Gathering 15:30 ShibaKoen 23rd Gouchi

> 　　　　3mins walk from OnariMon Station.

> 　　　　5mins walk from Jinbou-Cho Station.

> 　　　　10mins walk from Daimon Hamamatsu Cho Station.

> Access map :http://diddlefinger.com/m/tokyoto/tokyo/384406

> Peace walk: 16:00- 17:30

> Please bring a shining thing such as penlight to the parade.

> NGO' who call for this parade:

> Peace Boat

> Campaign for the Children of Palestine (CCP)

> Japanese International Volunteer Center

> Japanese YWCA

> Ayus Buddhist international help group

> And others...

> Vigil(Candle Service for the victims)

> Time: Jan 10th Sat. 18:00 - 18:30

> Place: Sei Andere Kyokai (Episcopal Church)

> 3-6-18, Shibakouen Minatoku

> TEL 03-3431-2822

> MAP: http://www.nskk.org/tokyo/english/index.html

> Priests from Buddhism, Christianity and Islam will join.

> □━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━□

> 　　　　　　　　　　　　　ガザに光を！　　　　　　　　　　　�wbr>@

> 　　　　　　　即時停戦を求めるピースパレード＆シンポジウム　　　　　　

> 　　　　　　　　　　★１月１０日（土）に緊急開催★　　　　　　　　　　

> □━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━□

From: Hussain Khan, Tokyo [mailto:hussain@nifty.com]
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 8:57 AM
To: 'aquil0715@gmail.com'; 'ardi.plj@gmail.com'; 'info@islamcenter.or.jp'; 'abuzaid83@yahoo.com'; 'amirdost@hotmail.com'; 'abdo_gawad2003@yahoo.com'; 'hussain@nifty.com'; 'm-arifin@nwct.gr.jp'; 'info@islam.or.jp'; 'ddinjp@yahoo.com'; 'walidhf@hotmail.com'; 'mail@icoj.org'
Subject: Background material for my speech at Japanese protest and for Press Conference replies to questioners

Dear brother Haroon,

I could not prepare the write-up, but you can mail the following documents to the Japanese organizers of the Protest. These will be my background materials from where I will speak a few points depending upon the time available.

Please confirm at time and date and place, where I have to make the speech.

Regards,

Hussain Khan

Zionism: A Brief History.(Book Review)

Article from:: Middle East Policy
Article date:: June 22, 2005
Author:: Schwanitz, Wolfgang G.

Zionism: A Brief History, by Michael Brenner, translated by Shelley L. Frisch. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003. 184 pages, including index. $18.95, paperback.

"The moment has arrived to say 'yes' to the Americans," declared Ariel Sharon, "the moment has arrived to divide this tract of land between us and the Palestinians." Surely, a great many readers did not believe their eyes when reading the next sentences by the prime minister in Yediot Aharonot at the end of May 2003. "I have not hidden my position on the issue of the future Palestinian state," Sharon at the age of 75 explained. "I am not less connected to those tracts of land that we will be forced to leave in time than any of those who speak loftily. But you have to be realistic, [about] what can and what cannot stay in our hands." For the first time, an Israeli government has accepted the Palestinian claim to eventual statehood at the end of the American-proposed Roadmap to peace. Some will see this as a change in paradigm, especially if they consult the main historical developments as researched by Munich historian Michael Brenner in his Zionism: A Brief History. Walter Laqueur has called the English version a "brilliant short survey" of a very controversial movement.

Brenner, a graduate of Columbia University, has since the mid-'90s published books about the renaissance of Jewish culture in the Weimar Republic, the Jewish rebirth in Germany after the Holocaust, and the Zionist Utopia and the Israeli reality. Here, in his latest book, six chapters deal with Zionism--in its early phase a kind of "international nationalism"--as a tool for emigration to Palestine, a stick for party discipline, a factor in British Mandatory policy and a pillar of today's Israel. A chapter about Zionism in the current struggle between the West and the Islamic East is missing.

Brenner takes the reader on a historical journey starting on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, revealing the ancient Jewish longing for the Promised Land that gave the modern national movement its name. We learn about American projects such as Ararat, just a stone's throw from Niagara Falls, a Utopia promoted by Mordecai Manuel Noah on the occasion of the fiftieth year of America's independence. Since the echo among Jewry was small, this former American sheriff in the state of New York two decades later developed the profound idea that Jews should return to Palestine. At the same time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai of Sarajevo and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer suggested the redemption of the Diaspora through the colonization of Palestine.

Noah and Alkalai, one a Sephardic and the other an Ashkenazi rabbi, were influenced by the spread of nationalism in Europe. But the assimilation of Jews in Central and Western Europe was well advanced. "As individuals, the Jews must be granted everything, but nothing as a nation," the French National Assembly declared in 1789. Jews should be normal citizens who might be distinguished from others by their religion but by nothing else. This was not the case in Eastern Europe, where social modernization developed slowly. There Jews lived apart from others in their shtetls, speaking Yiddish and nurturing the common wish of their ancestors to return one day to Palestine. As Brenner rightly points out, the concept of these people as citizens of Jewish faith would have been most unlikely in Poland, Romania or the Ukraine.

Thus, Jewish Europe was divided: emancipated in the West, ghettoized in the East. However, all over Europe the idea arose of Jewish liberation, not as a social but as a national question. Theodor Herzl, a classic example of the assimilated Jew, summed up the Zionist aims in his book The Jewish State in 1896. Jewry was to be discovered anew as a nation, leading to a state of its own. The murder of Tsar Alexander II and the Russian pogroms of 1881 and 1905 caused a great wave of emigration to Palestine, a land that for many Jews was just a stop en route to America.

Up to the end of World War I, about 2.5 million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States. Only 70,000 went to Palestine, where they assimilated with Jews from the old yishuv of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Jaffa. A small but significant number of American Jews immigrated to Palestine. The American consul of Jerusalem, Selah Merrill, complained in 1899 to the State Department about these Zionists. Merrill suggested an agreement with the Ottomans over what he called "the Jewish Question." With a migration wave (aliya) the modern yishuv developed first in some agrarian settlements into the left pillar of Zionism, an ideological mixture of nationalism, socialism and communism. In Tel Aviv and the Kibbutz Degania, Hebrew was revived as the common language. This was not accepted without disputes, but Hebraization went on swiftly.

There was both cooperation and confrontation with the local inhabitants. Should Arabs be allowed to work in kibbutzim? Herzl had not envisaged tensions. Later, in his book Old New Land he underlined that Zion is only Zion if tolerance and equality rule there. In his Utopian novel, Rashid Bey states that Jews were welcomed not as conquerors but as cultural mediators. In 1936, Jews already constituted one-third of the population. Bloody conflicts reached their climax in an Arab uprising, called then an intifada. It was a fundamental myth, says Brenner, that Zionist activists talked about "a land without people." The awakening for them was bitter. There was no place for the true interests of Arabs in Herzl's work, claims Michael Brenner. It was the same with David Ben-Gurion. "We can't recognize the rights of Arabs for the land in Palestine," he said at a party congress in 1924, "since they don't work the fields." Khalil Sakakiny made a mockery of this in the paper Filastin: "Welcome, cousins! We are the guests and you are the masters of the house." He hit the nail on the head; the kibbutzim had begun to change the country. Nevertheless, not many immigrants were lured; most preferred an urban life.

As the Nazis came to power, immigration rose. London, on the other hand, tried to maneuver between Arabs and Jews so as not to lose one group of potential supporters in the coming war against the Axis powers. The British not only weakened Lord Balfour's promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, they revoked it. First, the report of Secretary Earl Peel in 1937 suggested a two-state solution. Ben-Gurion reluctantly agreed, since he had obtained approval of his wish for an independent Jewish state. After much zigzagging, London finally released the White Paper of May 1939: there was to be an independent state of Palestine within ten years, and Jewish immigration would be stopped after five years. But Arabs, under the leadership of Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini, did not recognize this historic chance. They rejected the proposal; they wanted the state and the immigration to end at once.

Brenner shows how London's attempts to reduce illegal immigration turned out. Sending the ship Exodus back to Germany in 1947 and blockading Holocaust survivors in Cyprus were acts instrumental in the decision to create a Jewish state. After Menachem Begin's extremists carried out their bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, London turned its mandate for Palestine over to the United Nations. The newly established body decided according to the principle of "two states for two peoples." But the 1948 proclamation of Israel as a state also meant war, since the Arabs and others saw this as an unjustified step. In their traditional (Ottoman) view, the Jews constituted only one of many minorities in Palestine and were not eligible for a state of their own.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Zionism appears not only to have fulfilled itself but to have become outmoded. Brenner discusses both optimistic and pessimistic trends. Inasmuch as Zionism led to a national state, it was a success. But, as it took from the local population both peace and land, it is still just a success on the surface.

Most Jews do not live in Israel. Though it integrated immigrants from all over the world, the majority came from countries with non-democratic traditions or unstable conditions, like Ethiopia or the former Soviet Union. Israelis from developed countries are rare. Indeed, it is now a prosperous state without peace. Its founding terrorism, as at Deir Yassin, played a dark role. The David, says Brenner, that managed to become a surviving Goliath in the wars lost a great deal of credit as an occupation force. As the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz claimed, "Israel lost the Six-day War on the seventh day." How fragile the state is without peace was demonstrated with the assassination of Premier Yitzhak Rabin. After new waves of Palestinian terror, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon came to power. And both of them, for ideological and other reasons, allowed more settlements in the occupied territories, too.

As an outgrowth of European nationalism, Zionism attracted mostly Ashkenazim, who still dominate. Some want to see Israel as a liberal state for all citizens; others don't want to put its Jewish character at risk. Whether or not the era of post-Zionism has begun, Brenner leaves open. He cites Zionists who regard their mission as accomplished only if the majority of Jews live in Israel and if there is no more hatred against Jews. But he also cites those who would like to see Zionism end in a less ideological kind of patriotism and citizenship.

Michael Brenner has written a timely, well-balanced and readable short history of Zionism. But Brenner should have pointed out more specifically the implications of the continuing settlements in the Occupied Territories. Behind it there is the Zionist promise of land in Palestine, then later in Israel and neighboring areas. But there was never a land without people; so Zionism from the beginning was based on erroneous preconditions. Some admission of the error began when Israel dissolved the first settlements in the Sinai after the peace accord with Egypt. A lot more shall follow, as the discussion about leaving the Gaza Strip indicates. No democratic state can claim something for itself that it is not ready to give to all of its citizens and neighbors. This also includes the matter of restitution for Palestinians.

This is the main contradiction of Zionism: on the one hand, the promise to all Jews of a national home with land and a state, even in occupied territory; on the other hand, the inevitable need to destroy this covenant. According to Ariel Sharon's remarks cited at the beginning, the time might now have come for this partial withdrawal. But the Oslo peace process broke down in blood, so one should harbor no illusions. There is still a long way to go. Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, raised this tough question in his memoirs: "Did we not have a special responsibility, if ever we turned out to be victors? What have we done with the vanquished enemy? Have we transformed a struggle for survival into an ethnic-cleansing operation, sending people into exile because we wanted to plunder their land?"

Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

Associate, German Orient Institute, Hamburg

COPYRIGHT 2005 Middle East Policy Council. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

Why Palestinian nation deserves the right to a peaceful homeland

Article from:: Belfast Telegraph
Article date:: January 1, 2009
Author:: EAMONN McCANN

Last Saturday, The Other Israel, a group which exists to proclaim the truth that not all Israelis support the persecution of Palestinians, said this: "This morning, some of us got up with anxiety to listen to the early morning news, and go on hoping against hope for a few more hours. This morning, more than two hundred Gazans, whose names we will probably never know, woke up without guessing that it was their last morning. And also in the Israeli border town of Netivot, the 58-years-old Beber Vaknin got up and went strolling through the quiet weekend streets of his hometown, not knowing that long before sunset he would become part of statistics. A very favourable body count indeed for Day 1 of Israel's newest war - one dead Israeli to 225 Palestinians, as of this hour. Cheers!"

Last Saturday was not typical. The death toll disparity was beyond what's usual. This decade, in round figures, three to four times as many Palestinians have been killed by Israelis as Israelis by Palestinians. Explanations of the disparity differ, depending on who's doing the analysis. What's certain is that the facts don't confirm the common presentation of Palestinians killing as many Israelis as they can, soldiers or civilians, while Israelis pinpoint only military targets and strive to avoid killing civilians.

In Flat Earth News, Nick Davies writes of the power of the Israeli lobby to insist on this picture as the template of coverage: "Some facts become dangerous: to report Palestinian casualties; to depict the Palestinians as victims of Israeli aggression; to refer to the historic ousting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes; to refer to the killing of Palestinian civilians by Zionist groups in the 1940s. Words themselves become dangerous: to speak of 'occupied territories'; to describe Palestinian bombers as anything other than 'terrorists'; to reject the Israeli government euphemism of 'targeted killings'."

Former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn adds: "The story 'concept' in London is still, I am afraid, that Israelis are 'people like us', who should not be shelled every day while they drive their Polos to recognisable branches of Asda or whatever; while Arabs are 'tricky' and 'emotional' and if they weren't all firing rockets and hating Jews in the first place none of this would be happening. This is still the platform off which most Western journalists in London jump. To take a different tack is to run into that wall of 'anti-semitic' or 'unbalanced' reportage that any of us who tries to explain the facts on the ground runs into."

Israeli attacks on Gaza continue to be explained as a response to the firing of mortars and rockets into Israel. It's virtually forgotten that for more than two years Israel has blockaded Gaza, cutting off electricity and fuel at will, preventing the passage of goods and people, depriving hospitals and schools of vital supplies, creating a virtual prison in which a million and a half people crammed into an area one-sixth the size of Co Antrim have been left to fester to death before the eyes of the world.

The blockade followed the emergence of Hamas as the government of Palestine in elections in January 2006 when, on a 71% turnout, the party took 73 seats to Fatah's 46. There wasn't a single report of death, injury or intimidation in connection with the poll. It was as impressive an event as the first election in South Africa post- apartheid, with as much democratic validity as the exercise in the US last November 4.

Has any reader heard a radio or television announcer refer in the last week to Hamas as the elected representative of the Palestinian people? The reaction of the US and the EU to the poll result was to pave the way for the Israeli blockade by imposing sanctions on the territory and demanding that Hamas renounce the 'one-state' policy on which it had been elected in order to facilitate a coalition with Fatah.

The democratic will of the Palestinian people didn't count. Just as the colonists who exterminated the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia first had to declare the continents 'empty territory' in order to provide a narrative cover for genocidal savagery, so Zionism has to erase the history and humanity of the nation it has targeted for annihilation. Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister from 1969 to 1974, put it pithily: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people."

Western interests who profit from the conflict tend to endorse this view. Adam Cherill, business manager of Israel's main supplier of missiles, Raytheon, declared in 2003: "To qualify for self- determination, a people must show some kind of national identity ... What political organisations, social institutions, literature, art, religion or private correspondence express any ties between the Palestinian people to the Land of Israel?"

Not a nation at all, then, and with no entitlement to statehood.

In all the circumstances, the restraint of the Palestinians has been truly remarkable, eloquent tribute to their love of peace and dignified patience.

It is they and Israelis of like mind with groups such as The Other Israel, Courage to Refuse, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Gush Shalom, Bat Shalom, Yesh Gvul etc who will eventually create a single democratic state in historical Palestine in which Jews, Muslims, Christians, secularists and others will live in peace together.

An Unnecessary War

By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, January 8, 2009; A15

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel's withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel's unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.

After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

U.N. Suspends Aid Deliveries to Gaza Strip
Organization Cites Safety of Personnel After Attacks on U.N. Buildings, Convoys

By Colum Lynch, Craig Whitlock and Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 8, 2009; 5:49 PM

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 8 -- Western nations and key Arab states reached agreement in principle Thursday on a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for a cease-fire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, a senior European diplomat said.

The agreed text of the binding resolution says the Security Council "stresses the urgency of, and calls for, an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire."

The United States supports the resolution, but Israel has not yet agreed to it, diplomats said.

A draft of the resolution calls for unimpeded distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza and condemns "all acts of violence and terror directed against civilians." It says a durable cease-fire will require guarantees to prevent the trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza and to ensure the sustained reopening of crossing points.

"In principle there is an agreement," Yahya Mahmassani, an Arab League envoy to the United Nations, told reporters after a day of negotiations.

The Arab League wants the Security Council to vote on the resolution promptly Thursday, but a Western diplomat said a vote could be delayed until Friday, Reuters news agency reported.

Earlier, the United Nations said it was indefinitely suspending all humanitarian aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip, citing a series of Israeli attacks on U.N. facilities and personnel during the 13-day Israeli offensive.

The suspension appeared likely to deepen a sense of crisis in Gaza, where more than half the territory's 1.5 million people live on food aid from the United Nations and where water, power and cooking gas are all in short supply.

The decision came after a convoy of three U.N. vehicles was fired upon Thursday by Israeli forces during a mission to recover the body of a U.N. worker who had been killed in a previous Israeli attack, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Chris Gunness. He said three U.N. workers have been killed by Israeli fire and that aid will not resume until "the Israeli army can guarantee the safety and security of U.N. personnel."

In a separate incident Thursday morning, a humanitarian convoy came under small-arms fire shortly after it crossed into Gaza near the Erez crossing, leaving one Palestinian driver dead and two other people seriously wounded, U.N. officials said. They said the attack occurred just minutes after Israeli forces gave the United Nations assurances that it was safe to travel. Despite the assurances that the United Nations could safely escort the convoy, it came under fire about half a mile from the border, officials said.

Gunness accused Israel of "deliberately targeting" aid workers. He said the locations of U.N. facilities and the movements of its workers are communicated to the Israeli military.

Israeli military spokesman Ilan Tal, a retired brigadier general, said he was looking into the U.N. decision. But he denied that Israel has targeted aid workers. Tal said Israel has facilitated aid to Gaza by pausing its offensive for three hours both Wednesday and Thursday.

"Our intention is to allow for any needed humanitarian aid to come in and to coordinate with all the international organizations," he said.

John Holmes, the chief humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations, said the private trucking company traveling in the convoy that came under fire Thursday morning has suspended its operations in Gaza. It is the only company authorized by both the Israelis and the Palestinians to carry goods across the border crossing.

"The Israeli Defense Forces have accepted that this happened and are investigating," Holmes said.

According to the United Nations, Israeli officials had also guaranteed safe passage Thursday afternoon to the U.N. convoy seeking to recover the remains of a U.N. relief worker killed some days ago in his home. The convoy included two marked U.N. vehicles and an ambulance.

As they approached, unidentified assailants fired three rounds of small-arms fire into the lead vehicle, forcing it to retreat. The U.N. team immediately phoned their Israeli liaison "to seek advice and assistance," an official said. "Regrettably, there was no effective response. They were very much left with 'we will have to get back to you.' "

"We have received no credible explanation" for the Israeli actions, said John Ging, UNRWA's top official in Gaza. Israeli soldiers "have been firing at and are now hitting aid workers" carrying out operations specially approved by the Israeli military. "We cannot rely on the firm commitments given by the Israeli side."

"We are perfectly prepared to take responsible risks in this conflict zone," Ging told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York by video conference. But it is "totally and wholly unacceptable" that Israeli forces are "firing at our workers," he said. "The verbal assurances have run out in terms of credibility. . . . We have lost confidence in the mechanism that is there."

Ging said the International Committee of the Red Cross has informed him that it also will suspend activities involving the movement of staff in Gaza. The U.N. World Food Program is considering a similar suspension.

Ging said the moves do not mean the United Nations is ceasing all humanitarian operations. But he said the organization will be severely limited in what it can accomplish in Gaza.

The suspension of U.N. aid deliveries came after the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children -- emaciated but alive -- in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip, and officials with the agency accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the bombed-out site for four days.

Red Cross officials said rescue crews had received specific reports of casualties in the houses and had been trying since Saturday to send ambulances to the area, located in Zaytoun, a neighborhood south of Gaza City. They said the Israeli military did not grant permission until Wednesday afternoon.

In an unusual public statement issued by its Geneva headquarters, the Red Cross called the episode "unacceptable" and said the Israeli military had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded."

According to Holmes, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, an Israeli military post was stationed just 80 meters away from the bombed building in Zaytoun, but no soldiers had intervened for four days to help or allowed a rescue team into the site.

"We have taken up all these incidents with the Israeli authorities," Holmes said. "We need all these incidents fully investigated."

Holmes said Israeli attacks have placed major constraints on the United Nations, which feeds more than 1 million people in Gaza. Since the crisis began, more than 500,000 people are without water, and about 20,000 are in need of shelter, he said.

At U.N. headquarters, Arab foreign ministers continued to press for the passage of a resolution that would impose an immediate cease-fire and require Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza. The United States has made it clear it would veto such a resolution, according to European diplomats.

In an effort to avoid a deadlock, Britain, France and the United States floated a competing resolution that would highlight the importance of supporting an Egyptian-led initiative to end the fighting in Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly president, Miguel d'Escoto of Nicaragua, announced that he would convene an emergency session of the 192-member body. He charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was delaying action in the U.N. Security Council to allow Israel to complete its military operations.

"I think it is not unlikely that the timing of this particular incident is precisely to be able to do whatever they want to do before President Bush leaves," d'Escoto said. "I think it is not possible that an enemy of the U.S. could have ever done more damage to the United States than President Bush. The image of the United States is at the lowest."

Meanwhile, Israel's offensive against militants in Gaza continued Thursday with intense strikes in the southern part of the territory, near the border with Egypt, a day after Israel's government said it was in "fundamental agreement" with a cease-fire proposal offered by Egypt and France. There was also a brief exchange of fire across Israel's northern border with Lebanon, in which militants in the southern part of Lebanon lobbed several rockets into Israeli territory, and the Israeli military responded with fire of its own.

Although the exchange recalled the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah, Lebanese officials promptly condemned the fire from their side and said they were taking steps to patrol the area more closely. Lebanese Information Minister Tareq Mitri released a statement saying that the government had been assured by Hezbollah -- which serves as a political party in the Lebanese government and is particularly influential in the southern part of the country -- that it was not responsible for the Katyusha rockets that landed near the Israeli town of Nahariya.

Only minor injuries were reported in Lebanon, but the incident illustrated the tension near the border. Schools in Lebanese villages were hastily shut down, and residents reportedly had loaded luggage and belongings into their cars, just in case fighting intensified and they needed to flee north.

The Israeli military downplayed the incident.

"We regard this as an isolated event," said Tal, the Israeli military spokesman. Tal would not comment on who he believed had fired the rockets.

The Israeli strikes in southern Gaza on Thursday were focused on the area around Rafah, a border crossing town that is also the site of a network of smuggling tunnels used by the militant group Hamas to ferry supplies from Egypt.

Under an agreement announced on Wednesday, Israel was to pause attacks between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. local time (6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern Time) so that Gaza residents could emerge for food and other basic supplies.

But humanitarian criticism of the ongoing operation intensified after the Red Cross announced its discovery of several underfed children in a house with a number of dead adults.

When rescue workers from the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent arrived at the site, they found 12 corpses lying on mattresses in one home, along with four young children lying next to their dead mothers, the Red Cross said. The children were too weak to stand and were rushed to a hospital, the agency said.

A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment early Thursday on the specific allegations made by the Red Cross but said in a statement that the military "has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians."

"Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally," the statement added.

The Red Cross said its workers evacuated 18 wounded survivors from the houses in donkey carts. They said ambulances could not reach the site because of earthen barriers erected around the neighborhood by the Israeli military. Red Cross officials said that Israeli soldiers posted nearby tried to chase rescue workers away from the site but that the rescuers refused to leave.

"This is a shocking incident," Pierre Wettach, the Red Cross's head of delegation for Israel and the Palestinian territories, said in a statement. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."

The Geneva Conventions provide that parties to a conflict "at all times" should "without delay" take "all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled." The conventions also say that wounded "shall not willfully be left without medical assistance and care."

The Red Cross said it was able to remove only three of the bodies and had received reports of other casualties in the neighborhood. The agency said that it was trying to return to the site but that negotiations with the Israeli military to guarantee safe passage were ongoing.

Palestinian journalists confirmed that large numbers of wounded survivors, including children, had arrived at Red Cross hospitals in Gaza from Zaytoun on Wednesday. Other details could not be independently corroborated; the Israeli military has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza.

There have been other reports of wounded Gazans who have been forced to wait many hours or even days for ambulances since the Israeli offensive began Dec. 27, including several in the Zaytoun neighborhood.

After Israel said it was in "fundamental agreement" with the cease-fire proposal made by Egypt and France, diplomats from more than a dozen countries continued to discuss details in a bid to stop the conflict.

Israeli officials said they would send emissaries to Egypt on Thursday to hold talks on a potential truce proposed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Parallel diplomatic efforts were underway in New York at the United Nations. But many sticking points remained. The French-Egyptian proposal calls for an immediate cease-fire, followed by talks on securing Gaza's borders and ending an economic blockade that Israel has imposed since June 2007, when Hamas expelled rival Fatah forces from Gaza to seize sole control of the strip.

U.S. officials have supported the French-Egyptian effort but said the basic issues that led to the conflict need to be resolved upfront. "It has to be a cease-fire that will not allow a return to the status quo," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

Israel has vowed to continue its 12-day military campaign until it is satisfied that Hamas will be unable to rearm itself by smuggling weaponry through cross-border tunnels from Egypt. Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets, most of them crude and unguided, into southern Israel since a six-month truce between the group and Israel expired Dec. 19.

The Netherlands, Denmark and Turkey said Wednesday they would be willing to contribute to an international force that would patrol the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent smuggling. Israeli officials said they wanted to ensure that any such force would have the authority to stop arms trafficking.

Hamas officials, who have been involved separately in negotiations with Egypt, reacted coolly to the cease-fire plan.

Ahmed Youssef, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group would not stop firing rockets into southern Israel until the Israeli military withdrew from the Palestinian territory and ended the economic blockade, which has left Gaza's 1.5 million people dependent on smugglers and relief organizations for their basic needs. About 25 rockets landed in southern Israel on Wednesday, wounding two people, the Israeli military said.

The Israeli military observed a three-hour cessation in the fighting Wednesday afternoon to allow relief agencies to deliver about 80 truckloads of emergency supplies. The lull in the violence also gave besieged Gaza residents an opportunity to emerge briefly from their homes and seek food, fuel and medical care.

Gazan medical officials said the pause in fighting led to a drop in casualties compared with other days since Israel launched its ground offensive Saturday. Twenty-nine Palestinians were reported killed Wednesday, bringing the toll to more than 680 since the fighting began, Palestinian health officials said. U.N. officials estimate that about one-third of those killed have been women and children, including three youngsters killed Wednesday when a shell struck a car.

Seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died in the conflict. Four of the soldiers were killed by errant shells fired by Israeli forces.

Whitlock and Witte reported from Jerusalem. Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington and special correspondent Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.

Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza
Israel Accused of Blocking Aid to Wounded

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 8, 2009; A01

JERUSALEM, Jan. 8 -- The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children -- emaciated but alive -- in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.

"Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally," the statement added.

The deaths came to light as Israel continued a military offensive against the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Early Thursday, Israeli officials reported a number of explosions in northern Israel and said they were caused by rockets fired from southern Lebanon.

An Israeli military spokesman said that several rockets had been fired from Lebanon about 7:30 a.m. and that they had landed in western Galilee. One man was lightly wounded. The spokesman said the military returned fire into southern Lebanon, targeting the rocket-launching site.

Officials in Galilee said the rockets -- the first fired into Israel from southern Lebanon since the end of the 2006 war with the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah -- landed around the city of Nahariya.

There was no immediate comment from within Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has threatened Israel with retaliation for its offensive in Gaza.

In the Zaytoun incident, the Red Cross said its workers evacuated 18 wounded survivors from the houses in donkey carts. They said ambulances could not reach the site because of earthen barriers erected around the neighborhood by the Israeli military. Red Cross officials said that Israeli soldiers posted nearby tried to chase rescue workers away from the site but that the rescuers refused to leave.

Meanwhile, Israel said Wednesday it was in "fundamental agreement" with a cease-fire proposal offered by Egypt and France, but fighting continued in the Gaza Strip as diplomats from more than a dozen countries haggled over details in a bid to stop the conflict.

Hamas officials, who have been involved separately in negotiations with Egypt, reacted coolly to the cease-fire plan.

Seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died in the conflict. Four of the soldiers were killed by errant shells fired by Israeli forces.

Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Israel Hits U.N.-Run School in Gaza
40 Die at Shelter That Military Says Hamas Was Firing From

By Griff Witte and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 7, 2009; A01

JERUSALEM, Jan. 6 -- Israeli soldiers battling Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday fired mortar shells at a U.N.-run school where Palestinians had sought refuge from the fighting, killing at least 40 people, many of them civilians, Palestinian medical officials said.

The Israeli military said its soldiers fired in self-defense after Hamas fighters launched mortar shells from the school. The United Nations condemned the attack and called for an independent investigation.

"We are completely devastated. There is nowhere safe in Gaza," said John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip.

The incident -- one of the single most deadly during Israel's 11-day offensive -- underscored the dangers Palestinian civilians face as thousands of Israeli soldiers fight their way across Gaza against an enemy that does not wear uniforms or operate from bases, but instead mingles with the population.

In all, at least 85 Palestinians died in attacks across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, said Mowaiya Hassanien, a senior Gaza hospital official. He said the Palestinian death toll since the start of Israel's massive military campaign stood at 625, with more than 2,900 injured. The United Nations says 30 percent of those killed have been women and children.

Tuesday's attack on the school came only hours after an Israeli missile struck a residential area in al-Bureij refugee camp, injuring seven U.N. workers in a nearby medical clinic, U.N. officials said. Late Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school in Gaza City had killed three members of a family.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the attacks "totally unacceptable."

"After earlier strikes, the Israeli government was warned that its operations were endangering U.N. compounds," he said in a statement. "I am deeply dismayed that despite these repeated efforts, today's tragedies have ensued."

Since the fighting began, the United Nations has opened 23 of its schools as emergency shelters for the 1.5 million residents of Gaza, who are unable to leave the territory. By Tuesday night, the number of displaced Palestinians flooding into the schools had reached 15,000.

Ging, the U.N. official in Gaza, said that all U.N. facilities are clearly marked with flags and that the Israeli military has been given precise Global Positioning System coordinates.

Using unusually strong language for a body known for quiet diplomacy, Ging declared Tuesday that both Israeli and Hamas leaders, as well as the international community, are to blame for the mounting civilian death toll.

"The political leaders who are responsible on both sides have to call a halt," Ging said. "The civilian population is paying a horrific price. We need this right now. Not tomorrow. The civilians in Gaza have international rights to be protected not by verbal protection, but actual protection."

Both Hamas and Israel have rejected calls for a truce.

Speaking in Washington, President-elect Barack Obama commented for the first time on the Israeli offensive, saying that "the loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern to me, and after January 20th I'll have plenty to say about the issue."

The comments contrasted with statements from the Bush administration, which has focused its public remarks on condemning Hamas's role in initiating the violence. Bush has said that only after Hamas has stopped firing rockets should Israel be required to halt its military campaign.

Rockets continued to be launched from the strip Tuesday, with 35 landing in Israel, the military said. A 3-month-old child in Gedera, about 25 miles north of Gaza, was lightly wounded.

Israeli officials blamed Hamas, which has run Gaza for the past 18 months, for the deaths at the schools.

"Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Hamas has deliberately abused a U.N. installation," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israeli military officials said soldiers operating in the area around the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza came under mortar fire and responded by targeting the source: the U.N.-run al-Fakhora School.

"When you're fired at, you have to fight back," said reserve Brig. Gen. Ilan Tal, a military spokesman.

Tal said two known Hamas gunmen were killed in the Israeli strike just outside the school, in addition to members of a mortar squad.

U.N. officials said they did not know whether fighters had been in the school, and wanted the matter investigated.

At the local hospital where dozens of the injured were treated, physician Basam Warda said a large number of the casualties were women and children who had gathered at the school because they considered it a haven from the fighting. At the time of the attack, people were standing outside the gate of the school, where hundreds of families had sought shelter.

"The wounded arrived with multiple fractures, ripped stomachs, amputated limbs," he said. "The bodies were ripped apart."

Warda said many of the wounded had to be placed on the floor and treated there because of a bed shortage. Others were sent to another hospital, in Gaza City. "Some might have died on the way," he said.

Ging called the fighting "the product of political failure" and accused Israel of depriving Palestinians of critically needed infrastructure.

In a report, the U.N. humanitarian office in Gaza said Tuesday that water and sewage systems in the strip were on the verge of collapse because of power outages and that a third of Gaza's residents are completely cut off from running water.

As the sense of crisis in Gaza deepened, Israeli forces battled on both ends of the 40-mile-long strip, and reports from within the territory suggested the military was tightening its grip. Witnesses said that Israel made gains in Khan Younis, in the south, and that there was intense fighting around Gaza City, in the north.

One Israeli soldier was killed Tuesday, bringing to six the total dead since Israel launched its ground offensive Saturday night. Of those, four were killed in "friendly fire" incidents.

Three Israeli civilians and a soldier were killed by rocket fire earlier in the campaign.

In his remarks, Obama said he was "not backing away at all from what I said during the campaign. . . . Starting at the beginning of our administration, we're going to engage effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflict in the Middle East."

Leading the push for a truce in Gaza is French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been visiting Middle Eastern capitals this week, urging an immediate cease-fire.

Sarkozy said the deaths at the school illustrated the need for a nonmilitary solution. "This reinforces my determination for this to end as quickly as possible," Sarkozy told reporters in the southern Lebanese town of At Tiri after learning of the school attack. "Time works against us; that's why we must find a solution."

Sarkozy was also in Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday, in a bid to get President Bashar al-Assad to pressure Hamas into agreeing to a truce. Syria and Iran are two of Hamas's biggest backers.

Assad called Israel's offensive "a war crime." But he also urged a cease-fire.

Hamas, which has never recognized Israel, has vowed to fight on. Israel says it will not stop its offensive until it has international guarantees that Hamas can be prevented from continuing to fire rockets.

As Sarkozy visited Egypt late Tuesday, President Hosni Mubarak said he would propose an immediate cease-fire, followed by talks on the Israeli blockade of Gaza and on ways of keeping arms from being smuggled into Gaza via Egypt.

Egypt mediated a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel this summer. The expiration of that truce Dec. 19 precipitated the latest round of violence.

In New York, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Olmert had responded to Mubarak's initiative with an offer to open a humanitarian corridor into Gaza but did not say whether Israel would participate in talks with the Palestinians. "We are awaiting the Israeli response and we harbor hope that it will be a positive one," Kouchner said.

Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations and special correspondents Reyham Abdel Kareem in Gaza City and Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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