"Gaza's sole power plant has stopped working due to Israeli shelling
last night, which damaged the steam generator and later hit the fuel
tanks which set them on fire," Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil told AFP.
An AFP reporter saw huge fires raging near the plant Tuesday
morning, noting that fire department vehicles were still unable to
reach the area.
The damage of the power plant exacerbated the heavy damage to
civilian infrastructure in Gaza already inflicted during the 22 days of
the Israeli offensive aimed at stamping out terrorist rocket fire and
destroying attack tunnels.
Besides the power plant, Gaza also purchases electricity from Israel,
but many of the supply lines have been badly damaged by the recent
fighting, Sheikh Khalil said.
"Five out of 10 of the Israeli electricity lines into the Gaza Strip
were also damaged because of Israeli shelling, and maintenance still
cannot reach the areas and fix them," he explained.
Israel blamed Hamas fire for damaging some of the supply lines. Two weeks ago, Israel said that a Hamas rocket hit the power line that supplies electricity to Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah.
It's not clear when Israel Electric Company workers will be able to
repair the system, but they are apparently in no rush to do so. Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked the IEC not to risk the lives of
its employees in trying to restore power to the affected sector in Gaza, an operation that could take hours.
One suggestion for action against Gaza that has come up numerous times in Israel – including from MKs – is cutting off electricity to Gaza, which Israel is still supplying.
The article also says that power to Gaza has been reduced by 90% and yet somehow they still have electricity 12 hours per day. Boo. Hoo.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tank fire hit the fuel depot of the Gaza Strip's only power plant on Tuesday, cutting electricity to Gaza City and many other parts of the Palestinian enclave of 1.8 million people.
A thick column of black smoke rose from the facility, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs, and the fuel containers were in flames.
"The power plant is finished," said its director, Mohammed al-Sharif.
He said the local fire brigade was not equipped to extinguish the blaze.
An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment and said she was checking the report.
The plant had already been hit last week and was working at a reduced capacity of about 20 percent, allowing only a few hours of electricity a day for Gaza's residents.
Maybe they should have thought of that before they started shooting rockets and digging tunnels.
You will recall that on Sunday, a Hamas rocket knocked out Gaza's power station, through which Israel supplies some 30% of the Strip's electricity. At the time, the government of Israel ordered the Israel Electric Corporation not to restore power.
Incredibly, on Monday, Israel Electric Corp. (with government approval) outfitted its workers with bulletproof vests and sent them out to repair the power station.
After a day without power, electricity was restored to
some 70,000 Gazans when the Israeli government gave the Israel Electric
Corp. the green light to repair a high-power line damaged by a rocket on
Saturday.
...
The IEC employees dispatched to repair the damage were
accompanied by Israel Defense Forces soldiers and outfitted with
bulletproof vests. They wore special helmets as well to minimize the
threat of shrapnel injuries.
Remember six years ago when Hamas got caught holding a cabinet meeting during a 'blackout' when it was broad daylight outside (look closely at the curtains)? Well, now much of Gaza really is plunged into darkness and it's their own doing. A 'Palestinian' rocket gone astray knocked out Gaza's power station on Sunday and Prime Minister Netanyahu has now ordered The Israel Electric Corporation (a government company) not to fix it.
Seventy thousand Gazans from Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah were in
the dark Sunday night after a Hamas rocket hit the power line that
supplies electricity to those places. It's not clear when Israel
Electric Company workers will be able to repair the system, but they are
apparently in no rush to do so. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has
asked the IEC not to risk the lives of its employees in trying to
restore power to the affected sector in Gaza, an operation that could
take hours.
As Operation Protective Edge enters its seventh day, many Israelis are demanding that the country take
more aggressive action against Hamas in order to put a halt to the
seemingly endless missile attacks from Gaza. One suggestion that has
come up numerous times – including from MKs and Ministers like Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon – is cutting off electricity to Gaza,which
Israel is still supplying. The Hamas missile, which hit one of the high
tension wires that move power from Israel to Gaza, apparently made that
a moot point, at least partially.
The Palestinian Authority currently owes the Israel Electric Company
NIS 1.5 billion ($525 million) in unpaid bills for electricity. An
examination of that debt by business daily Globes shows that the relative amount owed by Gaza was NIS 220 million ($62 million).
Last month, the IEC filed a petition with the High Court demanding to
be allowed to shut off electricity to the Palestinian Authority until
the debt was paid – or to allow the IEC to seize customs and aid
payments collected on behalf of the PA to pay off its debt. That case is
still pending.
Meanwhile, the IEC is still supplying electricity to Gaza, under orders from the government.
With all that's going on, Israel is continuing to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing point. That means that no human shields will go hungry.
Despite the ongoing rocket fire by Gaza terrorists,
Israel has not halted the entry of trucks into Gaza – and on Thursday,
some 200 trucks carrying food and “basic supplies” entered Gaza. The
government said that the trucks were allowed to pass through for
“humanitarian purposes,” and were inspected and found not to be carrying
any items or equipment that could be used to attack Israel.
The trucks are said to be carrying a greater than normal
supply of food, officials said. According to sources, the IDF and
Defense Ministry officials urged the government's Coordinator of
Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Yoav Mordechai, to
allow an increased amount of supplies into Gaza, so that residents would
have enough to eat in case the IDF begins a ground assault against
Hamas.
The trucks enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is
often targeted by Gaza terrorists for missile attacks. The workers at
the crossing are all Israeli, and have been given special safety
instructions by the Home Front Command, officials said. It should be
noted that one of the terror tunnels destroyed by the IDF several days
ago was located right next to the Crossing.
With that, officials said, the IDF has pulled two “gestures” granted after the conclusion of Operation Pillar
of Defense in 2012. Palestinian Arab farmers have been banned from
tending to their fields which abut the security fence around Gaza, and
cannot approach within more than a few hundred meters of the fence. In
addition, fishing boats have been restricted to within three kilometers
of the Gaza coast.
The IDF has also allowed 240 Palestinians with foreign citizenship to
leave Gaza, at the request of their governments. Among them are
citizens of the US, Sweden, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. They will be
allowed to leave the country, or to travel to Palestinian
Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria.
It goes without saying that the IDF has not taken steps to cut off
Gaza's electricity, which is supplied by Israel, as numerous ministers
and MKs have demanded. IDF officials said that among the reasons for
allowing the shipments to continue and the power to flow was to prevent
Hamas from painting a picture of a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, in
which people have no food, water, or power.
According to former National Security Adviser Yaacov Amidror, the only way to stop the rocket fire is to retake Gaza.
"We’ve never had a crushing blow that hurt the other side’s the ability to launch missiles," Amidror told Channel 10 News,
adding that he believes the only way to achieve complete quiet is to
"retake Gaza and be there for six months to a year to clean it out."
Amidror, who in the past headed the Research Department of Israeli
military intelligence, explained that the extent of the IDF’s operation
in Gaza depends on “how much we are willing to pay for quiet in the
south.”
He estimated that an operation retaking Gaza would require three to
13 days. “Then we would have to remain there between six months and a
year, in order to clean up Gaza. Only then will we be in a situation
where they won’t fire at Israel,” said Amidror.
He stressed that the price of such a military operation would be
dozens of casualties, but added, "I think eventually there will be no
choice. If we cannot force Hamas to ask for a ceasefire by attacking
from the air, we may have to go into Gaza.”
Well, yeah, but it's not like they weren't shooting at all before we left Gaza either, although then most of the shooting was focused on the Jews who lived in Gaza. I'm not sure what he means by 'cleaning it up' but it's sure going to require a lot more than cleaning the streets.
So we have two choices: Rule Gaza or suffer from rocket fire from Gaza. Kahane was right. The only way to have real peace and quiet here is to pay the Arabs to leave. Maybe we need to admit that reality too.
Gaza's only power plant ground to a halt again on Friday, only 12
days after being brought back online following a 7 week shutdown due to
fuel shortages. The shutdown was announced by Gaza's electricity firm,
reports AFP.
An official of the company claimed "the plant stopped working on
Friday morning due to a lack of fuel caused by Israel's closure of the
Kerem Shalom crossing." He added that electricity would now be supplied
for only 6 hours a day instead of the normal 12.
While officials from the territory's Islamist rulers were quick to
blame Israel, in reality Egypt is largely involved after having shut
down the tunnels into the Sinai that were used to illegally smuggle
fuel. Gaza's power plant was initially shut down on November 1 under the
Egyptian siege.
Egypt has accused the Hamas terrorist organization which rules Gaza
of promoting terror in Egypt through the Muslim Brotherhood, which it is
an offshoot of. Hamas denies the charges, although Egypt is continuing to act against the terror group.
As for the Kerem Shalom crossing, it reportedly was closed Tuesday after Gaza terrorists fatally shot an
IDF civilian worker. The crossing had been used to deliver fuel
purchased from Israel by the Palestinian Authority, using money donated
by Qatar.
Gaza usually has three sources of electricity. Israel provides 125
megawatts of power directly through electric lines, the Gaza power plant
provides 80 MW and Egypt directly provides about 17 MW.
Since Egypt curtailed the tunnel trade to Gaza and Hamas refused to pay
market prices for fuel, allowing the power plant to shut down on
November 1, the amount of electric power available for Gaza went down
from about 222 MW to 142 MW. Now that amount has been further reduced by
another 12%, and Israel is now the only party providing power to Gaza.
The media has been silent about this. I wonder why.... But that hasn't stopped the usual suspects from blaming Israel anyway.
In other news, the 'Palestinian Authority' has asked the Israel Electric Company to forgive about half of its NIS 1.1 billion in debt, and to spread out payment of the other half over the next 20 years. The Israeli taxpayer is expected to pick up the costs.
But give them a 'state' and they'll start behaving like responsible children. Right....
This is rich: Hamas wants to buy electricity from Israel
While the world has been silent, Gaza is being besieged by Egypt. As a result, the Hamas terror organization is seeking to purchase electricity from Israel. Hamas already buys one third of its electricity from Israel.
Imad al-Daelis, economic adviser of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said
that talks were underway to increase the volume of electricity Hamas
purchases from Israel, after 3 weeks of an Egyptian siege on the
terrorist state.
...
In an interview with Anadolu Agency, Daelis stated
that "[t]he agreement with the Israel Electric Company to supply
additional power will help solve the crisis and will need to use the
unused power plant due to lack of fuel needed to run it."
He said the Hamas government submitted its proposal in this regard
Israel's Electric Company through the private sector - and that an
agreement has been made - but this also requires the restoration of
local power grid at a cost of millions of dollars.
Egyptian politician Imad Hamdi, from the Egyptian Popular Front, has
criticized the move, calling Hamas hypocritical. Hamdi pointed out that
Hamas is guilty of using Israel's resources despite denying its very
existence, and stated that Hamas is not effective as a resistance
movement against Israel.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's granddaughter was treated unsuccessfully at a Petach Tikva hospital this week.
I really wish these people would get straight in their minds whether or not they are boycotting us.
There's soon going to be a blackout in Gaza, and this one might be for real. The reason you haven't heard about it yet is that they're still looking for a way to blame Israel.
Gaza's lone power plant shut its generators on Friday due to a fuel
shortage, a move that will likely increase already long blackout hours
in the impoverished coastal territory run by the Islamist Hamas group.
Chairman
of the Gaza Energy Authority Fathy Asheik-Khalil said the plant, which
serves almost half of Gaza's 1.8 million people, went offline after fuel
became too scarce.
Gaza residents have endured around eight hours of daily blackouts in
recent years because of fuel shortages. The Gaza Energy Authority said
the power plant's closure means Palestinians could suffer 12 hours of
daily blackouts.
The fuel supply steadily decreased after Egypt in
June stepped up a campaign to demolish smuggling tunnels along its
border with the enclave which were a major import conduit.
The
Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial rule in
the West Bank, pledged last week to deliver fuel to Gaza without a usual
tax, allowing the rival Hamas government to buy 400,000 liters of fuel a
day.
But the Authority cancelled its offer of a tax exemption,
Khalil said in a statement, making it difficult for the Gaza authorities
to afford the fuel. The Authority did no elaborate on why it decided to
reimpose the tax.
In addition to the power plant, which produces
up to 65 megawatts, Israel feeds the strip with 120 megawatts and Egypt
pours in 27 megawatts. The Palestinian Authority says it pays Egypt and
Israel for their inputs.
You don't think Hamas is shutting down the power plants to squeeze more money out of the 'western-backed Palestinian Authority' do you?
We shouldn't give Hamas 60% of their electricity. Look what they do with it when they have it.
The
lawyer submitted the lawsuit in its lawsuit, that Egypt exports of
electricity to the Gaza Strip at a time when the Egyptians suffered from
constant interruptions of electric current, and without regard to the
suffering of the Egyptians in the last period of power outages.
The lawsuit said that the production of electricity in Egypt is very
expensive because of the consumption of large quantities of Egyptian gas
in the process of producing electricity, which requires the need to
provide electricity to the Egyptian people, and take advantage of it
rather than exported to the outside and the people in greatest need.
The total amount of electricity supplied by Egypt to the Gaza Strip of
28 MW only, while the need for the Palestinian city of Rafah alone of
electricity of 35 MW.
Despite the small amount of electricity Egyptian Aloradh of the Gaza
Strip, but that if the cut will have much impact on the electricity
consumed by the Gaza Strip, which amounts to 400 MW peak.
The Israeli occupation authorities bombed the only power plant in the
Gaza Strip in 2006 following the capture of Palestinian resistance to
the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, enter the sector in the ongoing crisis
is on the horizon for signs resolved.
That's it - blame the Joos. Who built that power plant in the first place? With the billions of dollars in aid provided to the 'Palestinians' in the last seven years, why hasn't Hamas rebuilt the plant?
By the way, cutting off electricity from Gaza has been discussed in Israel many times. Unlike the Egyptians, we could never get away with it.
I am sure that those of you who grew up in the '70's remember Dandy Don Meredith singing 'Turn out the lights, the party's over' once each Monday Night Football game was out of reach. The same could be said of Gaza today.
The third picture of the series at the top should look familiar - I posted it on Wednesday. I found the other two pictures later on. They're ridiculous.
Elihu Richter argues that it's time for Israel to turn out the lights in Gaza. The party's over (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).
It is wrong, pathetically so, for Israeli leaders to say that its goal in Gaza is to reduce (tzimtzum in Hebrew) the number of rocket and terror attacks. Israel’s goal – even if not immediately attainable – should be elimination of these attacks, and its policy should be one of Zero Tolerance for Terror (ZT4T) directed against the entire population. These rockets attacks need to be recognized for what they are: genocidal terror, because its aim is to intimidate, terrorize and kill members of an entire population defined by their national, religious, ethnic or racial origin.
It is no easy decision to cut off electricity from a land mass with population of some two million people. But it is even worse to tolerate rocket terror attacks turning everyday life upside down for some million citizens in Israel’s south – already killing three – and to wait for more rocket attacks reaching every farther north. This reach is the equivalent of some 40 million of 300 million US citizens subjected to daily rocket attacks. These rocket attacks are from the area ruled by Hamas, their chosen elected political representatives.
Rocket attacks from Hamas ruled Gaza directed against Israel’s population are Crimes against Humanity. Even Richard Goldstone, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and BTselem said so after Operation Cast Lead – but not in the eight years of rocket attacks preceding it – when, by being by and large silent, these NGO’s were in effect complicit bystanders. to Hamas’s rocket attacks.
But Israel cannot wait for the wheels of justice to turn. The wheels are rusty. There is next to no international justice and if the wheels do turn, it is not certain they would turn in the right direction. I call upon the government of Israel to immediately initiate proceedings to bring Hamas’s leaders and their operatives to justice for these crimes. But there is the court of international public opinion, and this is where the battle to eradicate terror from Gaza will be won or lost.
The case for cutting off the electricity to Gaza is that it does not produce the staged photo-ops of blood (or ketchup) which genocidal terrorists use to drive their agenda’s asymmetric warfare, lawfare and wordfare. Yes, the population should be given advance warning, so that hospitals can get their generators up and running. But there is a certain coherence to cutting off the electricity to a region whose leaders are making life hell for a million Israelis.
Scholars of genocide and mass atrocity crimes know that these outcomes result from human choice and bystander indifference. It follows that what happens in the next few days, weeks and months will be determined by the degree to which public diplomacy will make the case for holding the perpetrator, Hamas, accountable for this latest round of crimes against humanity – the rocketing of civilian populations with intent to kill, maim, injure, destroy and intimidate. But what the bystanders do or do not do may be even more important: The US has to make aid to Egypt conditional on it reining in on Hamas.
MK Danny Danon's (Likud) website was hacked on Thursday afternoon, shortly after he announced that he had more than 5,000 signatures on a petition he posted calling on the Israeli government to stop supplying electricity and water to Gaza.
"Hamas owes NIS 103 million to the State of Israel for electricity,
and instead of paying back the debt, they shoot missiles on Ashkelon,"
he said. "It cannot be that Hamas can shoot at the power plant that
provides them with electricity."
Minutes after the Likud MK's announcement, his website was hacked.
Visitors to Danon's site saw the headline "Team Kuwait Hackers,"
along with a photo of missiles and another of Ahmed Said Khalil Jabari,
the senior Hamas figure killed in an IAF strike on Wednesday night. In
addition, a song in Arabic played automatically when the site was
opened.
"If extremist hackers broke into my website because of the petition, we must be doing something right," Danon stated.
Not really. If we were doing something right, the government led by Danon's party would not need to be petitioned to take this action. They would do it on their own.
With Israel facing electricity shortages and possible brownouts this summer as a result of Egypt cutting off our natural gas supply, isn't it a bid odd that we continue to supply electricity (for free!) to Hamas-ruled Gaza alongside the Egyptians? Well, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan thinks it's more than odd. He wants to put a stop to it.
Speaking in an interview with Army Radio, Erdan said that Gaza has its own power stations and legally, it is not clear that Israel is responsible for supplying power to Gaza, especially after Israel's 2005 disengagement from the terrotory. Gaza's power plant provides electricity to two-thirds of its population. Power is also supplied to the Gaza grid through power lines from Israel and Egypt.
Erdan said that it is "absurd" that Israel should experience power shortages while the "terror entity next to us will get electricity that they don't pay for." The Energy and Water Ministry expects shortages in Israel between June and September.
The environmental protection minister said that the four percent of power supplied to Gaza could prevent outages in Israel at times of peak usage.
Erdan stated that while "water and energy are supposed to be outside the conflict" if their is no choice and Israel needs the energy than he sees no legal obligation to provide Gaza with the electricity.
Yes, it's absurd. But when has that ever mattered in the Middle East?
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, March 26.
1) The Perils of Lara
When we last found Lara Friedman, the Director of Policy and Government Relations of Americans for Peace Now, she was in Doha Qatar attending the International Conference on Jerusalem at the end of February. This was an Arab League event dedicated to fighting the "Judaization" of Jerusalem.
Speakers at Sunday’s opening session, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, one after another laid out laundry lists of criticisms of Israel — many of them regrettably marked with exaggerations. All also spoke a great deal about Muslim and Christian attachments to Jerusalem and the importance of defending the holy sites and communities associated with both religions. However, only one speaker, Michel Sabbah, formerly the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, mentioned any Jewish connection to the city. This is a serious problem. If President Abbas cannot acknowledge Jewish claims in Jerusalem, even as he asserts Palestinian claims (a problem Yasser Arafat suffered from), he should not be surprised if it is more difficult for Israelis and Jews, wherever they are, to believe that he can be trusted in a peace agreement that leaves Jerusalem sites precious to Jews under Palestinian control. If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace. Their framing of the future of Jerusalem as a zero-sum game only makes it more likely that Israel will continue asserting its current power over East Jerusalem to hinder the vision of two states living in peace with a Jerusalem as a shared capital. All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians. Here I do need to acknowledged the one person the entire day who I heard speak in a serious, credible way on this matter: veteran Palestinian diplomat Afif Safieh. In closing one of the afternoon sessions, Safieh emphasized the international consensus around the idea that in Jerusalem it is necessary to reconcile two national narratives — Israeli and Palestinian — and three religious narratives, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. Safieh made clear that he thought this was still possible with a two state solution with two capitals in Jerusalem, an Israeli capital in the west and a Palestinian capital in the east.
Note the tone. It is not one of anger but of disappointment. Never mind that she had just heard the President of the Palestinian Authority effectively violate the agreements the PA had signed with Israel.
There were four committees that met and delivered final reports at the conference. The Civil Society committee was the only one of the four that mentioned anything like this. And while I didn't agree with every word of the entire report, I think this report's framing is thoughtful, constructive and pro-peace -- framing anchored in tolerance and recognition of the equities of all parties in Jerusalem. I can't say for sure how the report of this committee would have come out if I had not been there and had not spoken up. I am confident that it would not have looked like this. For those who demand that we refuse to engage with people who hold different points of view, my experience in Doha is a powerful reminder of how small-minded such an approach is.
This is the her great victory. She got her working group to issue a statement that didn't totally deny Jewish history! Wow! I challenge you to find any reference to this declaration at the conference's website. The website's only acknowledged statement is called the "Doha declaration." Here's how it starts:
International Conference for the Defense of Jerusalem has praised the proposal of HH the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani calling for approaching the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution on forming an international commission to investigate all the actions taken by Israel since the 1967 occupation in Arab Jerusalem, in order to erase its Islamic and Arabic identity.
Friedman's been very clear. She went as a private individual, not as a representative of APN. APN said that they had nothing to do with the conference. But it's very clear that she was invited to Doha because of her affiliation which is listed at the conference's website. She was used by the Arab League to be a token "Zionist" at the conference. That her views were ignored and that the views expressed were antithetical to peace did not bother her too much.
Dayenu. Enough with the handwringing and self-righteous declarations that boycotting fellow Jews is wrong. If the Jewish community is looking for a kosher stamp on a settlement boycott, it should look directly at Israel and follow the lead of engaged, unapologetically patriotic Israelis who are taking a stand by boycotting settlements, including prominent academics and artists and Peace Now, which last year launched its campaign: So sue me, I'm boycotting settlement products. These Israelis know that settlements are an existential threat to Israel. They're fed up waiting for Israeli leaders to come to their senses and end this suicidal policy. They’ve given up hoping that the international community will pressure Israel on this issue. They're voting with their feet -- and their pocketbooks -- against settlements. For those who argue that boycotting settlements won’t make any difference politically or economically, the Israeli right’s reaction to boycott efforts says otherwise. Indeed, the pro-settler lobby and its Knesset partisans are terrified of settlement boycotts -- so much so that they passed an openly undemocratic law criminalizing them. As a result, in Israel today it's legal to boycott everything but settlements.
First of all note the tone. It's not disappointment, but outrage with, perhaps, at little hatred thrown in for good measure. Oh, and she uses a Hebrew word.
It's interesting that Friedman calls Israelis who agree with her view of settlements to be patriotic. I believe that election results show that maybe 20% of the electorate (including Arabs) would be patriotic by her standards.
Really, I'm not bothered by her boycotting settlements. I am much more bothered by her giving cover to Israel's enemies and pretending that there was some noble purpose in doing so. Friedman's outrage directed at Israelis who disagree with her contrasts sharply with the seeming understanding she extends to Israel's enemies. How she calls herself a "Zionist" is beyond me. Over this past month, Friedman has thoroughly discredited herself. APN must take the next step now and cut all ties to her.
2) Fisking Fisk
In the blogging age the term to "fisk" has come to be defined as "pointing out the factual mistakes in a reporter's work." The term derives from Robert Fisk, an anti-Israel, anti-Western writer who "reports" for The Independent. Now it appears that Fisk has received the ultimate fisking.
3) The baby libel For a while now, Gaza has been suffering from power outages due to a dispute between Hamas and Egypt. It has gotten precious little press, presumably because Israel could in no way be blamed for it. Elder of Ziyon has been covering this ongoing story and noted last week that Hamas was blaming everyone else, but Gazans were catching on. Hamas used the energy crisis to blame Israel for the death of a baby, but the AP caught on. Anti-Israel writer, M. J. Rosenberg (defended by J J Goldberg as someone who loves Israel) has also blamed Israel for the baby's death. The New York Times has finally seen fit to report on Gaza's energy crisis:.
At the request of the Palestinian Authority, which has no access to Gaza, Israel allowed some 450,000 liters of fuel to be trucked through its Kerem Shalom border crossing on Friday, when it is usually closed. Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli authority responsible for the crossings, said that amount would be enough for no more than two days.. Over the last year, Hamas stopped paying the Palestinian Authority for Israeli-supplied fuel and relied on cheaper fuel smuggled through tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egypt border. In recent months Egypt has tried to end the practice and to have Gaza import fuel from Egypt legally, also via the Israeli border crossing, a request that Hamas refused. Hamas wants the fuel to arrive directly from Egypt to Gaza.
Question: If Israel could have been blamed for the gas shortage, would the New York Times have waited so long to report on it?
Israel trying to stop next flotilla of fools by bargaining with itself
Israel is appealing to the United Nations and to various countries from which 'activists' are likely to depart to stop a repeat of last May's Mavi Marmara fiasco.
In recent weeks, Jerusalem has engaged in a large-scale diplomatic effort aimed at pressuring heads of states in countries from which ships are expected to sail, to discourage their citizens from taking part. The hope is that such an effort will head off a large-scale "sequel" to last year's flotilla. Furthermore, in the event that another military raid is called for, this time Israel wants to be able to claim that every possible effort was made to stop the ships peaceably.
Among other officials, senior Israeli diplomats have initiated discussions with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, to persuade him to take steps to prevent the departure of the flotilla.
But unfortunately, Israel is also bargaining with itself by opening the Gaza border even more than it is already.
At the same time, security officials are discussing a possible relaxation of the siege on the Gaza Strip. The main advocate of such a move is Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, coordinator of government activities in the territories. He believes that loosening restrictions on the entry of goods would be an effective response to allegations that Israel is infringing the basic rights of Gaza residents, and would defuse many of the claims made by the flotilla organizers.
All that's going to do is encourage them even more. After all, if they get something for nothing, imagine what they can get for something.
Israel should cut Gaza off completely until such time as Gilad Shalit is returned. And it should continue to maintain the naval blockade because we have seen even recently that attempts to smuggle weapons into Gaza continue.
I had a good laugh from this Maan report on the visit of French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
During the evening, she met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before dinner with Defence Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu told her Israel will work to end Gaza's dependency on his country.
"During their conversation ... Netanyahu said that Israel would strive to disengage from the Gaza Strip with regard to infrastructure utilities like electricity and water," a statement said, providing no further details.
Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but still supplies some 70 percent of the strip's electricity, with the rest being provided by Egypt and local power plants.
It was not immediately clear where Gaza would get its electricity if Israel cuts supplies.
Come on folks - we all know where Gaza will get its electricity if Israel cuts supplies: The 'international community' will pay for it. Your tax dollars will pay for it.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
