BBC: Gazans despair over blockade

Many Gazans are dependent on food aid

“People in Gaza are waiting in lines for almost everything, and that’s if they’re lucky enough to find something to wait for,” says Bassam Nasser, 39.

An aid worker in Gaza City, he, like so many others there, including the UN relief agency, says living conditions are the worst he has ever seen in the strip.

“People queue for two or three hours for bread, but sometimes there’s no cooking gas or flour, so no bread.

“People wait in line for UN food handouts, but sometimes there aren’t any. The suffering is reaching every aspect of life.”

As well as working for an American development agency, Mr Nasser is a Gazan, and a father.

“I’ve got three young children. It’s difficult to explain to them that it’s not my fault we don’t have electricity and that it’s not in my control.”

Read moreBBC: Gazans despair over blockade

Israel sends tanks into Gaza

Jerusalem Israeli tanks entered the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian militants and undermining a tenuous truce. The tanks, backed by a bulldozer, drove 500 metres into the strip and levelled earth near Rafah, Gaza’s southeastern border crossing with Egypt.

Israel said that the operation was mounted to uncover explosives, while the Palestinians accused Israel of trying to increase violence. The latest fighting began two weeks ago and there is now a near-daily cycle of mortar attacks on southern Israeli towns and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. At least 17 Palestinians have died, and several Israelis have been wounded.

Read moreIsrael sends tanks into Gaza

Israel blocks foreign media from Gaza

JERUSALEM: Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for a week, in a move media have assailed as a serious violation of press freedom.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said the restrictions were imposed because Palestinian militants have resumed their rocket fire from Gaza, in violation of a 5-month-old truce. The only people allowed to enter and leave Gaza under the policy are international aid workers and Palestinian patients seeking medical treatment outside the territory, he said.

Because the Islamic militant Hamas group that rules Gaza “is not doing anything to stop the rockets firing into Israel, the decision is that only humanitarian movement is allowed,” Lerner said.

Journalists dismissed that explanation as implausible and said current hostilities did not justify the ban on access.

“It is absolutely essential that international journalists be allowed to enter the territory and deliver their news reports to Israel and the rest of the world,” said a statement from the Foreign Press Association, which represents international media covering Israel and the Palestinain territories.

Read moreIsrael blocks foreign media from Gaza

UN says Gaza running out of food


The UN says it feeds about 750,000 needy people in the Gaza Strip [EPA]

“They are telling children in Gaza that they have to respect rights universally. How can we tell those same children, ‘Oh by the way you have to respect rights of people in Israel but they are actually stopping us giving you food?” Christopher Guness, UN aid agency spokesman

The UN relief and works agency has said it will run out of food within the next 48 hours as the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel continues.

Christopher Gunness, the agency’s spokesman, told Al Jazeera the people in Gaza were being put through not just a “physical sense pf punishment but also a mental one”.

“That’s how serious it is. We feed 750,000 people in Gaza and these are some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the Middle East,” he said on Wednesday.

“Something very unusual is happening here. This is becoming a blockade against the UN itself.”

Read moreUN says Gaza running out of food

Hamas fires rockets at Israel after 6 killed


Palestinians carry a man who was wounded in an Israeli army raid, into hospital in Deir El Bahlah in the central Gaza Strip, early Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Israel launched an airstrike on Gaza early Wednesday after its troops clashed with Hamas militants who fired mortars into Israel, leaving six Palestinians dead. It was the first battle since a June truce mostly quieted violence in the volatile territory.(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Hamas militants pounded southern Israel with a barrage of rockets Wednesday, hours after Israeli forces killed six gunmen in a fresh bout of violence that threatened to unravel a five-month-old truce that has brought relief to both Gaza and southern Israel.

The clashes began late Tuesday after the Israeli forces burst into Gaza to destroy what the army said was a tunnel being dug near the border to abduct Israeli troops.

Despite the outbreak of violence, both Israeli authorities and officials with Gaza’s Hamas government said they wanted to restore the calm that has largely prevailed over the past five months.

After the Israeli incursion, Hamas gunmen battled Israeli forces and Gaza residents reported the sound of explosions, gunshots and helicopter fire. One Hamas fighter was killed, prompting a wave of mortar fire at nearby Israeli targets.

An Israeli airstrike then killed five Hamas militants preparing to fire mortar shells. Hamas responded with the barrage of rockets.

Read moreHamas fires rockets at Israel after 6 killed

Israel launches deadly airstrike in Gaza


Medical workers wheel a wounded man to hospital in the central Gaza strip on Tuesday after clashes.

GAZA CITY (CNN) — Israel launched an airstrike Tuesday night on southern Gaza after clashing with Hamas militants in central Gaza, Palestinian sources and Israel Defense Forces said.

Four were killed in the airstrike, which occurred east of Khan Younis, Palestinian sources said. They said a drone and an apache helicopter could be seen.

Read moreIsrael launches deadly airstrike in Gaza

Military intelligence: Iran halfway to first nuclear bomb

Have a look at the related articles from the Jerusalem Post:

“Column One: Israel must bomb Iran’s nuclear installations”

Warmongers ahead!?

Israel has according to Jimmy Carter around 150 nuclear weapons. Even if Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon, is this reason enough for an attack? If so, then maybe someone should have been attacking Israel for developing 150 of them. And not just Israel is beating the war drums: Ron Paul: I hear members of Congress saying “if we could only nuke Iran”.

So Israel and/or the US might nuke Iran to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? How can you even come up with such madness? Are there so many potential Hitlers walking the face of the earth these days?

The US have told Israel recently several times not to attack Iran, but that could be just a ruse. And who sold Israel just recently 1000 smart bombs? ‘U.S. to sell Israel Air Force smart bombs for heavily fortified targets’

Politicians and military ‘experts’ may call this a ‘surgical strike’, but any attack on Iran will cause WW III. Basta!
___________________________________________________________________________

Military intelligence: Iran halfway to first nuclear bomb

Iran is halfway to a nuclear bomb, and Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria are using this period of relative calm to significantly rearm, Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, the Military Intelligence’s head of research, told the cabinet Sunday during a particularly gloomy briefing on the threats facing the country.



Ahmadinejad: We’ll stop any attacker

Baidatz said there was a growing gap between Iran’s progress on the nuclear front and the West’s determination to stop it. “Iran is concentrating on uranium enrichment, and is making progress,” he said, noting that they have improved the function of their 4,000 centrifuges.

According to Baidatz, the Iranian centrifuges have so far produced between one-third to one-half of the enriched material needed to build a bomb.

“The time when they will have crossed the nuclear point-of-no-return is fast approaching,” he said, though he stopped short of giving a firm deadline. Last week in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, however, he put the date at 2011.

RELATED

Read moreMilitary intelligence: Iran halfway to first nuclear bomb

Scottish activist films Israeli navy shooting at Gaza fishermen

Claims of 14 deaths in previous incidents

A SCOTTISH human rights activist has filmed the Israeli navy firing machine guns at unarmed Palestinian fishing boats in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

The footage, taken on September 6 by Andrew Muncie, who is from the Highlands, shows an Israeli gunboat engaging fishing boats while international observers hold their arms in the air and scream for them to stop firing.


Source: YouTube

No-one was injured in the incident, but Palestinian fishermen claim 14 colleagues have been murdered at sea by the Israeli navy since the onset of an economic blockade imposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Israel says patrolling these waters is a vital security measure to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza.

Read moreScottish activist films Israeli navy shooting at Gaza fishermen

Ex-Dutch Prime Minister accuses Israel of terrorism


Ex-Dutch prime minister and Israel critic Andreas Van Agt (Cnaan Liphshiz)

The emotion in Andreas Van Agt’s voice as he lambastes Israel’s behavior seems puzzling for a man of his status. It is especially intriguing when one is reminded that this blue-eyed professed idealist is an astute statesman who presided as the Dutch prime minister for five years, until 1982.

“My involvement in the Middle East is certainly unusual,” Van Agt confessed in an interview with Haaretz at his home in Nijmegen, where he discussed Israel, the Palestinians, European foreign policy, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.

Currently, Van Agt is writing a book about the Israeli-Arab conflict. In December he launched an info-site (www.driesvanagt.nl) about the subject, in which he accuses Israel of brutal treatment of the Palestinians, violating international law and implementing racist policies.

Among other illustrations, the site contains one snapshot of a graffiti slogan said to have been sprayed by Jewish settlers on a Hebron wall, reading: “Arabs to the gas chambers.”

Last year, Van Agt spoke as keynote speaker at a controversial solidarity rally with the Palestinian people in Rotterdam, where he lamented the Dutch boycott of Hamas, calling it wrong “and even stupid.” He has also been outspoken in accusing the Israel Defense Forces of acting like a terrorist organization.

“In my country, people are highly surprised by my demeanor. Some even say it should be ascribed to my advanced age; that I’m not fully in my right mind anymore,” the 77-year-old says with a snicker while sitting under the outdated portrait of the Queen, which hangs on the wall of his modern-style, taupe-colored den.

Read moreEx-Dutch Prime Minister accuses Israel of terrorism

Your last chance: Israel’s warning

ISRAEL’S Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has warned the radical Islamic movement Hamas that the truce due to take effect today is the last chance to avoid a massive military incursion into the Gaza Strip.

In an exclusive interview with the Herald – his first interview with the Australian media in four years – Mr Olmert said the people of Gaza were “pissed off with Hamas” and sick and tired of the years of violence.

Since Israel withdrew from Gaza three years ago, the 250,000 residents who surround Gaza have been subjected to almost daily rocket attacks from Palestinian militants.

“You think the people of Adelaide would put up with this?” demanded Mr Olmert. “Or the people of Brisbane?

“I think the strategy of Hamas, which does not want to recognise Israel’s right to exist in the first place, and the extremism, and the fanaticism, and the religious dogmatism is the enemy of peace. We are at the end of our tolerance with regard to terror in Gaza.”

Read moreYour last chance: Israel’s warning

Israeli Ministers Mull Plans for Military Strike against Iran


The Israeli Air Force is known for its “inventive solutions to military problems,” says Bruce Riedel, a Middle East expert who has strong contacts to Israel. “Israeli military planners tell me it is mission doable.”

The Israeli government no longer believes that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. A broad consensus in favor of a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities — without the Americans, if necessary — is beginning to take shape.

Dani Yatom, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, was invited to attend a NATO conference in Brussels last year. While reviewing the agenda, Yatom, a retired major general, was surprised to see that the meeting was titled “The Iranian Challenge” and not “The Iranian Threat.”

When a speaker with a French accent mentioned that a US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be the most dangerous scenario of all, Yatom said, politely but firmly: “Sir, you are wrong. The worst scenario would be if Iran acquired an atom bomb.”

Yatom, 63, has spent most of his life in the military. He was a military adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and, in the mid-1990s, was named head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Nevertheless, Yatom, a member of the Labor Party, is not some reckless hawk. Unlike most Knesset members, he flatly rejects, for example, a major Israeli offensive against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

But Yatom’s willingness to strike a compromise ends when he is asked what he considers to be the best response to the Iranian nuclear program. “We no longer believe in the effectiveness of sanctions,” says Yatom. “A military operation is needed if the world wants to stop Iran.”

When Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister, expressed similar sentiments 10 days ago, they were viewed, especially in Europe, as the isolated opinions of a card-carrying hardliner seeking to score points with the electorate in a bid to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In truth, however, there is now a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities has become unavoidable. “Most members of the Israeli cabinet no longer believe that sanctions will convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to change course,” says Minister of Immigrant Absorption Yaakov Edri.

The one question over which Israel’s various political groups disagree is the timing of an attack. The doves argue that diplomatic efforts by the United Nations should be allowed to continue until Iran is on the verge of completing the bomb. That way, Israel could at least argue convincingly that all non-military options had been exhausted.

Read moreIsraeli Ministers Mull Plans for Military Strike against Iran

Israeli officials: We will invade Gaza before truce deal takes effect

Israeli army officials told the Jerusalem Post news paper that the Israeli government will conduct a medium range ground offensive targeting Gaza before any truce deal with the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza takes effect.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert - File 2008
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert

The officials said that it’s likely the operation will be approved this coming Tuesday during the meeting between the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense Minister Ehud Barak.

According to army officials, Israel does not want to appear weak, by accepting the truce deal while Palestinian resistance groups are still firing home made-shells from Gaza toward nearby Israeli areas.

Read moreIsraeli officials: We will invade Gaza before truce deal takes effect

Israel ready for Military Operation in Gaza

Gaza decision in days

Army is ready for Gaza operation, waiting for Olmert to make final decision

“The sand in the hourglass is running out,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak promised Thursday in a meeting with municipal leaders in the Gaza region.

His words could be understood to mean that a significant IDF operation in Gaza is in the cards, and that we are not talking about months or weeks from now, but rather, something that will take place within days. The military blow, he said, will come before the lull.

Barak is attempting to blur his message and refrain from giving Hamas any clues, but it appears he already decided – even before the cabinet meeting and consultations with other ministers – that a truce with Hamas without a military blow that precedes it is no longer a realistic option.

It appears that on this issue he is in agreement with the prime minister. The IDF chief of staff also decided that there is no other way but a military operation, even though the political leadership is unable to point to a required diplomatic achievement that would stem from this high-risk military move.

The army would perhaps prefer air attacks accompanied by some ground operations against a very large number of Hamas targets. Yet this is not very realistic, because for such activity to take place military intelligence and the Shin Bet are supposed to provide hundreds of high-quality targets, and this, how shall we put it, is not quite working out.

What is left is to take over problematic areas on the ground, using the air power lever, in the hopes that developments would not require a reserves call-up and full occupation of the Strip.

On Thursday, we still saw contacts between the Defense Ministry and the Egyptians regarding the answers Israel is supposed to provide to the truce offer and regarding a trip by top defense official Amos Gilad to Egypt. For the time being, Gilad is not going anywhere, Hamas is not giving any good reason to believe in the truce, and the IDF is on alert ahead of various types of operations in the Strip.

We are talking about phased activity, the plans are in place, and the army is practicing at this time. If the activity expands to occupying significant parts of the Strip for long periods of time there is also a plan for a reserves call-up.

Hamas must be laughing

The IDF is prepared to engage in fighting vis-à-vis Gaza within a short period of time. What are we waiting for? Why does it have to take days? We’ve already been there. Bush came and went, and the 60th birthday celebrations are over. So what’s the excuse now for not taking off the gloves against Gaza? The Shavuot holiday? Indeed, that’s a good reason not to spoil the people’s mood and the trips to the Negev. But Shavuot will be followed by summer vacation and then by Rosh Hashana. We can always find reasons to postpone tough decisions.

(Madness alive and well. – The Infinite Unknown)

Read moreIsrael ready for Military Operation in Gaza

Israelis open fire on Gazan protesters

Six Palestinians demonstrators, who were among thousands peacefully protesting the siege on Gaza, have been injured by Israeli fire.

Thousands of people took to streets to join a rally called by Islamic Hamas movement to demand Israel to lift its crippling blockade on the sliver.

The protesters marched from the cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis in southern Gaza towards the Sufa crossing, calling for the end of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

The demonstrators waving Hamas flags chanted anti-Israeli slogans, condemning the regime for committing a holocaust in Gaza.

Read moreIsraelis open fire on Gazan protesters

Carter says Israel has arsenal of 150 nuclear weapons

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has said Israel holds at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a U.S. president has publicly acknowledged Israel’s atomic arsenal.

Asked at a news conference at Wales’s Hay literary festival on Sunday how a future U.S. president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally.

“The U.S. has more more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry … not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Carter also condemned Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth,” according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Carter said in reference to the situation of Palestinians in Gaza that, “There is no reason to treat these people this way.”

The 83-year-old was subjected to criticism on a recent visit to Israel for his meetings with officials from Palestinian militant group Hamas as well as his trip to Syria where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.

He has also in the past branded a “crime and an atrocity” the Israeli blockade of Gaza, imposed in response to ongoing rocket attacks launched from the territory.

Related articles:

  • Our debt to Jimmy Carter
  • Ex-U.S. President Carter answers questions from Haaretz Editor-in-Chief
  • Jimmy Carter: Israel’s ‘apartheid’ policies worse than South Africa’s
  • Last update – 21:23 26/05/2008

    Source: Haaretz.com

    Middle East: Beating the Drums of War

    “In a regional war scenario, Israel will deal mainly with Lebanon and Syria while the U.S. and Britain will deal mainly with Iran. [51] The help of Turkey and NATO will definitely be needed by Israel, America, and Britain in such a war. Ankara and NATO will also be involved in both fronts. [52]

    NATO has already built a presence on the western borders of Syria and Lebanon and inside Afghanistan on the eastern borders of Iran with forward positions. Israeli officials such as Shaul Mofaz have also stated, in no uncertain terms, that if they launch an attack on Iran, the U.S. and NATO will come to the aid of Tel Aviv.”

    _________________________________________________________________________________________

    Israel, Syria, and Lebanon Prepare the “Home Fronts”


    The Levant could be the starting point of a major international conflict with global ramifications and which could quickly spin out of control. Such a conflict could even involve the use of Israeli or American nuclear weapons against Iran and Syria. Syria has additionally declared that it is preparing for an inevitable war with Israel despite the fact that it believes that the chances of a war in 2008 are slim. (They are not slim at all. – The Infinite Unknown)

    Read moreMiddle East: Beating the Drums of War

    A human rights crime in Gaza

    By Jimmy Carter
    First Published 5/6/2008

    The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.

    This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.

    Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank are now imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional ten who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.

    Regardless of one’s choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions in delivering water, food, electricity, and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees.

    Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the encapsulated area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicized killing of a woman and her four little children last week, this pattern was illustrated by a previous report from B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organization: 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians who didn’t take part in the fighting, and 25 were under 18 years of age.

    Read moreA human rights crime in Gaza

    Israel Causes UN Food Aid Relief For Gaza to Halt

    Fuel shortage forces UN to halt Gaza food aid

    The UN is to halt food handouts for up to 800,000 Palestinians from tomorrow because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade.

    John Ging, the director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said there had been a “totally inadequate” supply of fuel from Israel to Gaza for 10 months until it was finally halted two weeks ago. “The devastating humanitarian impact is entirely predictable,” he said.

    A shortage of diesel and petrol means UN food assistance to 650,000 Palestinian refugees will stop tomorrow, and aid from the World Food Programme for another 127,000 Palestinians due in the coming days will also be halted.

    “The collective punishment of the population of Gaza, which has been instituted for months now, has failed,” said Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East.

    Gaza’s streets have largely been emptied of cars, except for those running on the last reserves of fuel, or on cooking gas or used vegetable oil.

    Gaza will be high on the agenda at a meeting of donors to the Palestinians in London next Friday. Last year, after Hamas seized full control of Gaza, Israel imposed an economic blockade, preventing exports and allowing in only limited supplies of food, fuel and aid.

    Recent militant attacks on Gaza’s crossings, strongly condemned by the UN, have meant a tightening of the closures.

    Hours before Gaza’s sole power plant was to shut down, Israel pumped in 1m litres of industrial diesel, enough to last the plant around three days.

    Read moreIsrael Causes UN Food Aid Relief For Gaza to Halt

    Obama, Clinton pledge to defend Israel against Iran


    At the debate, Barack Obama (R) said: “An (Iranian) attack on Israel is an attack
    on our strongest ally in the region, one whose security we consider paramount. “

    PHILADELPHIA (AFP)—The Democratic White House hopefuls vowed Wednesday to defend Israel against any Iranian attack but differed on how to engage the Islamic republic over its nuclear ambitions.

    At a televised debate ahead of next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable.

    Both called for diplomacy but Obama went further in renewing a promise of “direct talks” at a leaders’ level with Tehran, along with other US foes.

    Iran should be presented with “carrots and sticks,” the Illinois senator said, while stressing “they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons.”

    “We cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power,” Clinton said, ruling out any summit talks and condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for raising doubts about who really carried out the September 11 attacks of 2001.

    Read moreObama, Clinton pledge to defend Israel against Iran

    Report: Syrian reservists called up for fear of Israeli strike

    London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper quotes sources in Damascus as saying Syria views Israeli media reports, IDF commanders’ statements as incitement, attempt to prepare public opinion for war. According to report, Syrian army on heightened alert, conducting wide-scale drills

    Syria is preparing for a comprehensive Israeli strike which will be combined with an attack on Hizbullah, sources in Damascus have told the London-based Arabic-language al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.

    The sources, which refused to reveal their identity, reported that Syria was closely monitoring the movement of Israeli forces along the northern border.

    The newspaper reported Wednesday that Damascus viewed the Israeli media reports and statements made by senior Israel Defense Forces officials as incitement and attempts to prepare the Israeli and global public opinion for a war against Syria.

    The sources added that the Syrian forces were conducting wide-scale military maneuvers and have called up reservists in preparation for an Israeli attack.

    Read moreReport: Syrian reservists called up for fear of Israeli strike

    U.N. chief condemns Israel after Gaza clash

    gaza-ukreuterscom.jpeg

    GAZA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using “excessive” force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.

    Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called on Gaza’s Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.

    The 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the blockaded, 45 km (30-mile) sliver of coast, enjoyed a relative respite early on Sunday from Israeli air strikes and raids. Two Israeli soldiers died in a ground assault on Saturday. An Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in a border town on Wednesday.

    “While recognising Israel’s right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children … I call on Israel to cease such attacks,” said Ban.

    Read moreU.N. chief condemns Israel after Gaza clash