Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: Israel bars UN team from Palestinian areas

Israel bars UN team from Palestinian areas 
 
 
 
Israel resumes Gaza blockade; Egypt opens Rafah border
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
GAZA CITY/ LAGONISSI, Greece/AMMAN: Israel again sealed off the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday in retaliation for a rocket attack the
previous day in breach of a truce in and around the impoverished
Palestinian enclave. 
Military authorities closed the three border crossing points that had been
used mainly to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza since Israel imposed
a blockade after the June 2007 bloody takeover by the Islamist Hamas
movement. It wasn’t immediately clear when border crossings would reopen. 
“We’ll review the situation at the end of the day and then take a
decision,” said Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner. 
On Monday a rocket landed in an open field in southern Israel, causing no
damage or casualties, according to Israeli police. No one claimed
responsibility for the attack. An Egyptian-mediated truce agreement
between Israel and Hamas entails a gradual easing of the blockade, but the
border crossings have been closed most days since June 19 in response to
rocket attacks by Gaza activists. 
Hamas has insisted it is respecting the truce and trying to prevent other
armed groups from firing rockets at southern Israel by vowing to arrest
those responsible for the attacks. 
Palestinians and UN officials have said Israeli soldiers had also violated
the truce, firing shots across the border into Gaza several times,
wounding at least two people. 
In the latest incident on Tuesday, a Palestinian woman, Aisha Ataya, 35,
was shot in the foot near the border east of the southern town of Khan
Yunis, according to Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency
services. 
Witnesses said the woman was hit when Israeli troops posted along the
border opened fire on a group of farmers. 
Meanwhile two people were lightly wounded on June 24 when three rockets
were fired at southern Israel. The attack was claimed by the Islamic Jihad
movement, which later agreed to abide by the ceasefire. 
Last Thursday a rocket fired by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed
group loosely linked to the Fatah movement of secular Palestinian
president Mahmud Abbas, hit near the Israeli town of Sderot. Hamas briefly
held the Brigades’ spokesman after the attack. The Islamist rulers of Gaza
say that, by keeping border crossings closed, Israel is not keeping to its
part of the truce. 
“The closure of the crossings by the Zionist occupation (Israel) is an
obstruction to the terms of the period of calm and is aimed at
blackmailing the Palestinian resistance factions,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi
Barhum told AFP. 
Israel claims it has always allowed enough supplies into Gaza to avert a
humanitarian disaster, but international organisations say the sanctions
have exacerbated poverty and destroyed the local economy. 
On Tuesday, Egypt opened the Rafah border, the only Gaza crossing that
bypasses Israel, to allow 350 Palestinians, including people in need of
medical care, to leave the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas officials.
Egyptian officials said it would remain open for two days. 
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed hope that a
lasting peace deal with Israel could be reached before the end of the
year, ahead of a meeting with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak late on
Tuesday.
Abbas, who joined Barak and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at a Socialist
International conference in Greece, said his government would work to keep
alive a June 19 truce between Israel and the militant Islamic group Hamas.
“Israel will live in an island and sea of peace if Israel withdraws from
Arab and Palestinian territories,” Abbas told the conference.
“We witness some steps in this direction which may stop this violence and
bloodshed... Now there has been an agreement and we hope it will be kept.
We want to keep this truce going.”
“We hope that before the end of this year, and this is a hope, we can
reach a true agreement for the end of the occupation and violence ...
between Israel and Palestine,” Abbas said before his closed-door meeting
with Barak.
In a related development, Israel has barred a UN human rights committee
from visiting the Palestinian areas on a fact-finding mission, the leader
of the group said on Tuesday.
“Israeli authorities did not allow us to visit the Palestinian
territories,” said Prasad Kariyawasam, head of the UN panel, adding that
“no reasons were given by Israel because they do not recognise our
mandate.”
Kariyawasam told a news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman that
despite the ban by the Jewish state, the committee has interviewed
Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds.
Some were interviewed by telephone as several witnesses were prevented
from travelling to Amman or Cairo, he said.
“The international community has a moral and legal obligation to ensure
that all international human rights and humanitarian law standards are
fully implement at all times,” Kariyawasam said.
The three-member panel, which has already visited Egypt and plans to go to
Syria later on Tuesday, expressed serious concern about the conditions of
Palestinians in the occupied areas.
It warned against “the deteriorating human rights and humanitarian
situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, the grave situation in
the Gaza strip, the impact of the separation wall on the human rights of
Palestinian people, and the continuing settlements policy,” according to
Kariyawasam.
 
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 response to rocket attacks by Gaza activists.
Ma infatti non si può andare avanti così... come si dice: <<il medico 
pietoso fece la piaga purulenta>>. Bisogna riprendere Gaza: l'esperienza 
di restituirla è fallita. Quei qassam cominciano ad essere fastidiosi. Io 
penso che 1 - 2 settimane bastino per rimuovere quel nido di serpenti. Si 
strillerà un po' nei giornali ma poi con le olimpiadi in televisione 
finisce tutto. Riempiamo un po' le carceri con 4 - 5000 terroristi e gli 
altri si calmano. Magari intensificando ed indurendo sul posto 
l'intelligence riusciamo anche a trovare e liberare Gilad Shalit una 
volta per tutte e lo riportiamo a casa, povero ragazzo.
-- 
<<L'età della pietra non è finita perché sono finite le pietre>>.