Israel Creates ‘No Man’s Land’ in Gaza, Shrinking Strip by 40 Percent

[cpwm17]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/as-israel-enforces-its-buffer-zone-gaza-shrinks-by-40-per-cent.html

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BEIT HANOUN, Gaza — This narrow strip of land that used to be called “the Gaza Strip,” already one of the more densely populated places on Earth, is growing dramatically smaller. The Israeli military, relentlessly and methodically, is driving people out of the 3-kilometer (1.8 mile) buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gaza’s territory.

What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gaza’s eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. Apartment blocks are fields of rubble, and as I move through this hostile landscape the phrase that keeps ringing in my head is “scorched earth.”

It’s not like Israel didn’t plan this. It told tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee so its air force, artillery and tanks could create this uninhabitable no-man’s land of half-standing, burned-out buildings, broken concrete and twisted metal. During a brief humanitarian ceasefire some Gazans were able to come back to get their first glimpse of the destruction this war has brought to their communities, and to sift through their demolished homes to gather clothes or other scattered bits of their past lives. But many were not even able to do that.

When Rania Haels got within 60 feet of the debris that was once her family home in Al Shajaya on Saturday, a machine-gun on top of a nearby Israeli Merkava tank started firing. Probably these were warning shots pumped in her direction, but the 42-year-old mother of seven ran for her life. Now she stays with her family in an overcrowded parking garage in Gaza City and spends her days sitting in a public park full of refugees displaced by the Israeli push. Normally these would be festive times, the end of Ramadan is at hand and celebrations akin in spirit to Christmas festivities are beginning. But holidays have a way of intensifying tragedy. There is no place for Haels’ family to gather to give gifts and eat Palestinian sweets. There is, in fact, no place for them at all.

More ethnic cleansing against an already ethnically cleansed and imprisoned population.

[cprise]

1. - Keep This Kicked -

[LittleBlue]

2. Looks like a prison

Apartheid in the 21st century.

[morningfog]

3. And the Palestinian land shrinks. How long until Israel claims it outright?

[malaise]

11. One piece at a time

It won't ne long - look for new 'settlements'.

[Swede Atlanta]

16. Bingo....as soon as this wave of violence is over...and it will eventually be over....

Israel will immediately start new settlements on the land. There is no doubt in my mind this has been their plan since the very beginning.

Anyone who thinks Israel is America's friend is deceiving themselves. Israel only cares about one thing - more, more, more and if they can get it from us in the form of billions in aid every year or steal it from the Palestinians so much the better. The land Israel is on today was a gift to the Jews after the Holocaust. It wasn't the UN's land to give to the beleaguered Jews. The UN stole it from Palestinians who had been living there for in some cases hundreds of years. Just stole it.

Kind of reminds me of how the U.S. government stole our part of the North American continent and gave it to white settlers and threw the indigenous peoples onto reservations.

Maybe that's why the U.S. government, especially conservatives, get along so well with Israel. They both love to steal things that aren't theirs and take them for themselves or give it to "their" people.

[Bettie]

19. And once they move settlers into the 'buffer zone'

The buffer zone will have to become larger to accommodate security for the settlers.

Or, maybe they're just planning on killing everyone in Gaza now. There was a time I wouldn't have believed this, but that time is long past.

[alfredo]

21. It used to be referred to as "one furrow at a time." The first time I heard that was

from an Israeli border guard. He told me that Nescafe was called "Miracle coffee" because Nes is Hebrew for miracle. He also carried his fatigues in his trunk so he could change into them, after a night of bar hopping so he could say he's been on maneuvers. He'd actually roll around in the dirt for added realism. He was a good drinking buddy. He was almost as wild as some of the Aussies I met. I don't think his wife was fooled.

[ReRe]

17. Look at the map...

... they're going to drive them right into the sea, OR they are going to kill them all by attrition bombing before they get to the sea's edge. Not only are they NOT going to relinquish any land back to the Palestinians, they are taking more land from the Palestinians. They are shearing down the Gaza Strip!. Next thing we know, they will be building Israeli housing in that buffer zone.

[countryjake]

4. Precision pinpont bombing...

1-minute time lapse of an entire neighborhood being reduced to rubble.

[arikara]

5. I can't watch it

I read some of those twitter things from those poor Palestinians last night. I just feel so sick. Every time I see that prick netanyahu on the news I want to throw something at it. I don't want to hate but its really hard to not.



And our stinking right wing asshole government in Canada is firmly in bed with the Israeli satans, both harper and our idiot premier in BC, christy clark.

[countryjake]

10. Read the Israeli tweets...

Here's where I found that video:

https://twitter.com/Elizrael

Elizabeth Tsurkov describes herself as "passionate about human rights" and a graduate student at Tel Aviv Univ. on her Twitter page. Most of the stuff that I've posted here during this past month has come from her tweets and she has been quite fair in her reports, placing the blame squarely on the political right-wing of her Israeli government, where it belongs.

The tweets of Palestinians break my heart, too, but I won't stop following them. I was reading Mohammed Omer's twitter the other morning while listening to Binyamin Netanyahu speaking on CBS's Face The Nation and I almost broke our television.


It's tweets like this that keep me watching and reading and posting:

We will remember those who shut their eyes covered their ears and closed their mouths.

found on Dima Eleiwa's Twitter feed accompanied by this photo:



https://twitter.com/DimaEleiwa/status/493908071702208512/photo/1

[cpwm17]

24. Unfortunately people like Elizabeth Tsurkov are the ones emigrating out of Israel in large numbers.

That does not bode well for Israel, or its neighbors.

[countryjake]

25. Yup, and leaving nothing but a racist hatred behind.

Once And For All! Uri Avnery's column 26/07/14
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1406281947/

What will remain?

THE HATRED between the two sides has grown. It will remain.

The hatred of many Israelis for Israel's Arab citizens has grown considerably, and this cannot be repaired for a long time. Israeli democracy has been hard hit. Neo-Fascist groups, once a fringe, are now accepted in the mainstream. Some cabinet ministers and Knesset members are outright fascist.

They are acclaimed now by almost all the world's leaders and repeat parrot-like Netanyahu's most threadbare propaganda slogans. But millions around the world have seen day after day the terrible pictures of devastation and death in the Gaza Strip. These will not be eradicated from their minds by a cease-fire. Israel's already precarious standing in the world will sink even lower.

Inside Israel itself, decent people feel more and more uncomfortable. I have heard many utterances by simple people who suddenly talk about emigration. The choking atmosphere inside the country, the awful conformism of all our media (with Haaretz a shining exception), the certainty that war will follow war forever – all this is leading young people to dream about a quiet life with their families in Los Angeles or Berlin.

In the Arab world the consequences will be even worse...

[awoke_in_2003]

12. Jesus. nt

[Buns_of_Fire]

15. "Measured responses" are not Israel's strong suit.

With the imposition of their 3km "buffer," the more cynical of us might even think that they're doing this just to clear land for new settlements -- which, of course, will require a new buffer be set up a few more kilometers further into Gaza.

[alfredo]

22. Beachfront property is very desirable.

[cpwm17]

23. No plans for settlements in the near future

Settlements interfere with Israel's mass-murder campaigns.

They can wait a couple of years to again fabricate another excuse for another mass-murder operation to make the Gaza Strip less inhabitable. Perhaps they can attack during a US election cycle and possibly at a time the Palestinians are offering a peace agreement, which is the typical time Israel goes on the attack.

Israel is approaching the final solution. It may take several more cycles before they are done -- or maybe several decades. That is, unless the world acts to stop them.

The morally and intellectually challenged will never figure out the obvious fact that Israel is the aggressor. Some people are just not very smart.

[U4ikLefty]

27. Why did I watch that? Now I'm more pissed!!!

Note to self: don't click on Gaza threads at bedtime

[countryjake]

28. I watch it now every time I hear some right-winger...

spewing their lines about rockets, tunnels, terrorists, to remind myself of the horrible reality of what is actually going on over there. It keeps me from destroying our tv.

Pinpoint-my-ass has become my new catch-phrase.

[U4ikLefty]

29. I will be using this video at work tomorrow. Thanks

They have the usual talking points, but when they see pictures & videos like this, they walk away.

As much as it pisses me off I am grateful for those who take & post these for us to see.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. So who is it again --

who is getting "pushed into the sea"? Fuckers.

[KamaAina]

7. Next up on Radio Gaza, Billy Joel!

[ReRe]

20. When are we going to...

... start the Anti-Apartheid concerts in Israel and Gaza? Where's Billy Joel on that? Paul Simon? Name some others...

[Spazito]

8. Geez, the theft of Palestinian land just keeps growing...

it is beyond appalling.

[Katashi_itto]

9. K&R!

[Uncle Joe]

13. This is grotesque.

Thanks for the thread, cpwm.

[randome]

14. The Final Solution. Fuck religion. All of it.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[JackRiddler]

18. A horror.

Note they've also grabbed the Rafah border crossing.

[Purveyor]

26. kick. Thanks for posting. +1 eom

[Scootaloo]

30. I hope all the DU'ers cheering this are proud of themselves n/t

[cpwm17]

31. It boggles the mind that people can think like them

They have been educated and they still defend this.