Isareli Military Action in Gaza | The American Task Force on Palestine

Guileless in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Eddy Portnoy - (Opinion) January 5, 2010 - 1:00am

It is difficult not to be impressed by Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza.” A unique journalistic product, Sacco’s latest book offers an in-depth look at disputed events that took place after the Israelis occupied Gaza at the beginning of the aborted British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956. Perhaps these are neglected “footnotes” in the history of this pitiful strip of land, but Sacco makes them central as he assiduously researches the events.

Jews raise voices for brutalised Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Linda S. Heard - January 5, 2010 - 1:00am

Last week in Cairo, Hedy Epstein, a frail 85-year-old American woman, embarked on a hunger strike for the first time in her life to protest the ongoing blockade of Gaza. She has no idea how her body will hold up, she says, but that isn't her priority. She is one of more than 1,300 international participants from 42 countries who flew to Cairo with the aim of participating in the Gaza Freedom March, initially planned to coincide with the first anniversary of Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

Why I back Israel sanctions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Udi Aloni - (Opinion) January 5, 2010 - 1:00am

I find it appropriate that the Israeli public be notified of the emerging movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS), which has been growing at a breathtaking pace. Following bewildered reports published by Yedioth Ahronoth journalist Sever Plocker, who noticed that BDS has moved from the circles of the radical western Left to the circles of the bourgeois centre, I can add that this is now true for Israel-loving Jews as well.

Israel calm but ready to pull trigger, analysts say
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Omar Karmi - January 4, 2010 - 1:00am

A year after the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the ceasefire continues to hold and 2009 saw Israel register the lowest number of incidents of Palestinian-Israeli violence in the decade just ended, according to a report released last week by the country’s internal security agency Nevertheless, Israeli analysts will not rule out another war on Gaza, even if Israeli leaders are wary of the political cost. The question is not whether, but under what circumstances, renewed conflict might break out, the analysts say.

‘No one can take me away from Gaza’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Hamida Ghafour - January 2, 2010 - 1:00am

For weeks the defining image of Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip was a distant haze of smoke rising from the ground, sanitised footage that told nothing of the horrors of war. But in the late afternoon of January 16, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish broke through the silence imposed by the Israeli government’s news blockade and for a few minutes the raw, unfathomable grief of a father whose three daughters and niece had been killed minutes before rang out to the world.

In sharp contrast with Gaza, casualties decline in West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Howard Schneider, Samuel Sockol - January 1, 2010 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM -- The first year in a decade without a suicide bombing, as well as an expanded Palestinian security force, resulted in a decline in the number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties in the occupied West Bank in 2009 -- a contrast to the hundreds of Palestinian lives claimed by last winter's war in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Abbas: Gaza's suffering is our suffering
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
January 1, 2010 - 1:00am

Bethlehem – Ma’an – President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Thursday to spare no effort in supporting Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. “Your suffering is ours – we will continue supporting you. We will offer every possible means of support,” he said, speaking at a ceremony in Ramallah marking the 45th anniversary of the founding of his Fatah movement. He touted the role of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) in supporting Gazans. He said the PA still pays the salaries of 77,000 employees in Gaza, devoting 55% of its budget to the territory.

Backlash over Gaza onslaught chastens Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Vita Bekker - January 1, 2010 - 1:00am

There is little doubt that the wave of nationalism among Israelis following the country’s devastating onslaught a year ago in the Gaza Strip helped Benjamin Netanyahu gain the premiership in last February’s elections. The offensive, launched in a bid to curb rocket fire on Israel’s southern communities from Hamas-ruled Gaza, highlighted the security threats faced by Israel and shifted more voters to right-wing parties such as Mr Netanyahu’s Likud that had pledged aggressive action against Palestinian militants.

Rock by rock, Gaza slowly rebuilds
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Erin Cunningham - December 31, 2009 - 1:00am

In a rare scene in a territory where industry has all but collapsed, a Palestinian worker in the Gaza Strip pounds on fractured slabs of destroyed buildings with a shoddy hammer, dumping the fragments into a machine that then crushes and spits the gravel into a bin. Subsequently mixed with the odd bag of smuggled cement, the rubble of Gaza is transformed by this flagship factory in the north into flimsy but lucrative bricks now used to patch some of the enclave’s war-damaged houses.

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