Israel Claims It Has Met It’s War Aims And The Result Is…
Israel called a ceasefire on Saturday, saying it had met its war aims
Anonymous Israeli officials, quoted by AP news agency, said the withdrawal would be completed before US President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday.
UN official John Ging said half a million people had been without water since the conflict began, and huge numbers of people were without power.
Four thousand homes are ruined and tens of thousands of people are homeless.
Unrwa was keen to reopen its schools, Mr Ging said, where 50,000 people were sheltering. Tens of thousands have been made homeless by the bombardment.
At least 1,300 Palestinians, according to Palestinian sources, and 13 Israelis have been killed since Israel launched its offensive on 27 December. Palestinian medical sources say at least 95 bodies have been pulled from the rubble since Israel halted its assault.
Some 400,000 Gazans still do not have running water.
During the Israeli attacks, about two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.5m people were without power, the UN says.
Gaza’s only power plant shut down on 30 December because it ran out of fuel.
On 18 January the plant received 90,000 litres of fuel from the filling depot at Nahal Oz in southern Israel, says the UN.
Since then most Gazans have had intermittent electricity, although some households are still without power due to damage to the grid.
However, the plant is still short of fuel. It needs 450,000 litres of industrial fuel per day to produce its full capacity.
Although most main power lines have been repaired, two lines are still damaged in northern Gaza.
Since 18 January an extra 100,000 people received running water when the electricity supply was reconnected.
Some wells have been refilled and several NGOs, including Save the Children, have distributed drinking water in the Gaza Strip. The UN says supplies could be improved if workers are given safe passage to repair three damaged water mains.
One water main east of Khan Younis has been damaged, cutting supplies to 25,000 people.
Officials have confirmed that all two million litres of wastewater at Gaza City’s treatment plant, bombed on 10 January, leaked into surrounding agricultural land. Pumps at the plant are out of action due to lack of fuel.
A pump that sends sewage from Beit Hanoun to the Beit Lahia wastewater treatment plant is still damaged. According to officials, 30 cubic metres of sewage are flowing into the streets of Beit Hanoun every hour.
Unrwa says it is operating 50 emergency shelters for 50,896 displaced people in Gaza.
The shelters, many of them schools, are overcrowded with only basic levels of support, including food and water.
The shelters, especially those in the north, are in urgent need of non-food items and there is a shortage of more than 23,000 blankets and mattresses.
The UN says construction materials needed to repair and rebuild homes also need to be brought into Gaza.
So what were it’s aims? To destroy the civillian infrastructure? To make yet more people homeless, some for the fourth or more time? To terrorise a population already under stress from the siege of the last 18 months?
Certainly to make all the people in the suburbs of Brazil and Yibna homeless and finally complete the sterile area they wanted between the people of Rafah and the wall they have built around them.
from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7812295.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7836869.stm
here’s the current position of the Red Cross on the use of phosphorous weapons: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/weapons-interview-170109
If you wish to help, these are some of the aid agencies running appeals:
Save the Children Fund: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/32_7306.htm
Red Cross/Red Crescent: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/palestine-update-180109?opendocument
Médecins Sans Frontières: http://www.msf.org.uk/articledetail.aspx?fId=a_paltry_response_20090108&gclid=COnu8qKGm5gCFQtOQgodOwlImg
Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/gaza_crisis.html