Israel To Resume Gaza Food Deliveries

After Tightening Security Following Rocket Attacks, Israel Ready To Loosen Blockade, Defense Officials Say

(AP)  Israel will allow the resumption of food shipments into the Gaza Strip on Sunday after a four-day halt in response to Palestinian rocket attacks, Israeli defense officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official statement had not been issued, said that a meeting of defense chiefs had decided to allow 80 truckloads to cross.

Israel imposed a partial blockade on the strip when Hamas seized power there a year ago, then tightened it in retaliation for constant rocket and mortar attacks from the territory.

It began easing restrictions last Sunday, after a truce with Palestinian militants took effect but clamped down again after three rockets were fired into Israel on Tuesday, lightly wounding two people.

There were no reported attacks from Gaza on Saturday but the Israeli army and Palestinian officials reported the overnight shooting death of a Palestinian teenager who threw Molotov cocktails at an army patrol in the West Bank.

The military said soldiers entered the village of Beit Umar, near Hebron, shortly before midnight Friday in an operation to stop fire bomb attacks on Israeli vehicles on a nearby highway. The troops shot a militant who threw two molotov cocktails at them, a military spokesman said.

Palestinians said the shots killed Mohammed Alameh, 17, one of a group of youths who fought the soldiers.

The West Bank is not covered by a nine-day old truce between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip but after troops in the West Bank city of Nablus killed two Palestinians, one of them an Islamic Jihad commander, the group launched the three rockets from Gaza in retaliation.

The truce worked out in months of Egyptian mediation began June 19 and is supposed to last initially for six months.

Hamas and an official of the Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both restated support for the fragile cease fire on Saturday.

"We have made every effort to make the truce succeed," Ahmed Qureia, Abbas' chief negotiator with Israel told reporters after meeting Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere in Ramallah. "We call on everybody to make the truce a success."

Hamas Interior Minister Said Seyam said other major militant groups had agreed in advance to the armistice and must not break it unilaterally.

"We went into this truce based on consensus," he said in remarks posted on pro-Hamas Web sites. "If we want to leave it we have to do that based on consensus too."

[seis-6-six]

such a humanitarian lot, these Zionistas,

[acolton1]

You don''t bite the hand that feeds you. Wake UP !

[cfin5]

Take a hint Gaza. No more rockets,....know more food. I think Israel is being very fair and has been extraordinarily patient.

[cdfoxtrot]

Such nice people, the Israelis. Allowing the Palestinians food. Such generosity. Nice people. They deserve their good fortune.

[j-whitman]

earth,,,, Try this one, If it doesn''t work Google MidEast Web GateWay

http://www.mideastweb.org/index.html

[j-whitman]

earth56,,,, Sorry for the continous pasting, but you have to understand the history & zionism -- The problems did not start with Hamas or Arafat... Their beginnings lay within the history & politics.

[j-whitman]

In response to the riots, the British began limiting immigration and the 1939 White Paper decreed that 15,000 Jews would be allowed to enter Palestine each year for five years. Thereafter, immigration would be subject to Arab approval. At the same time, the British took drastic and often cruel steps to curtail the riots. Husseini fled to Iraq, where he was involved in an Axis-supported coup against the British and then to Nazi Germany, where he subsequently broadcast for the Axis powers, was active in curtailing Jewish immigration from neutral countries and organized SS death squads in Yugoslavia. (More about he Arab Revolt or Great Uprising).

[j-whitman]

Fast foward to 1936..... In 1936 widespread rioting, later known as the Arab Revolt or Great Uprising, broke out. The revolt was kindled when British forces killed Izz al din El Qassam in a gun battle. Izz al Din El Qassam was a Syrian preacher who had emigrated to Palestine and was agitating against the British and the Jews. The revolt was coopted by the Husseini family and by Fawzi El Kaukji, a former Turkish officer, and it was possibly financed in part by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Thousands of Arabs and hundreds of Jews were killed in the revolt, which spread rapidly owing to initial unpreparedness of the British authorities. About half the 5,000 residents of the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem were forced to flee, and the remnant of the Hebron Jewish community was evacuated as well.

[j-whitman]

After the war, the League of Nations divided much of the Ottoman Empire into mandated territories. The British and French saw the Mandates as instruments of imperial ambitions. US President Wilson insisted that the mandates must foster eventual independence. The British were anxious to keep Palestine away from the French, and decided to ask for a mandate that would implement the Jewish national home of the Balfour declaration, a project that would be supported by the Americans. The Arabs opposed the idea of a Jewish national home, considering that the areas now called Palestine were their land. The Arabs felt they were in danger of dispossession by the Zionists, and did not relish living under Jewish rule.

[j-whitman]

The Balfour Declaration - In November 1917, before Britain had conquered Jerusalem and the area to be known as Palestine, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. The declaration was a letter addressed to Lord Rothschild, based on a request of the Zionist organization in Great Britain. The declaration stated Britain''s support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, without violating the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities. The declaration was the result of lobbying by the small British Zionist movement, especially by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who had emigrated from Russia to Britain, but it was motivated by British strategic considerations. Paradoxically, perhaps, a major motivation for the declaration may have been the belief, inspired by anti-Semitism, that international Jewry would come to the aid of the British if they declared themselves in favor of a Jewish homeland, and the fear that the Germans were about to issue such a declaration.

[j-whitman]

Britain and France planned to divide the Ottoman holdings in the Middle East among themselves after the war. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 called for part of Palestine to be under British rule, part to be placed under a joint Allied government, and for Syria and Lebanon to be given to the France. However, Britain also offered to back Arab demands for postwar independence from the Ottomans in return for Arab support for the Allies and seems to have promised the same territories to the Arabs. In 1916, Arabs led by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and backed by Sharif Husayn revolted against the Ottomans in the belief that Britain would help establish Arab independence in the Middle East. Lawrence''s exploits and their importance in the war against Turkey were somewhat exaggerated by himself and by the enterprising publicist Lowell Thomas. The United States and other countries pressed for Arab self-determination. The Arabs, and many in the British government including Lawrence, believed that the Arabs had been short-changed by the British promise to give Syria to the French, and likewise by the promise of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. The Arabs claimed that Palestine was included in the area promised to them, but the British denied this.

[j-whitman]

World War I - During World War I (1914-1918), the Ottoman Empire joined Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies. An Ottoman military government ruled Palestine. The war was hard on both Jewish and Arab populations, owing to outbreaks of cholera and typhus; however, it was more difficult for the Jews. For a time, the Turkish military governor ordered internment and deportation of all foreign nationals. A large number of Jews were Russian nationals. They had been able to enter Palestine as Russian nationals because of the concessions Turkey had granted to Russian citizens, and they had used this method to overcome restrictions on immigration. They had also maintained Russian citizenship to avoid being drafted into the Turkish army. Therefore, a large number of Jews were forced to flee Palestine during the war. A small group founded the NILI underground that fed intelligence information to the British, in order to free the land of Turkish rule. The Turks eventually caught members of the NILI group, but the information they provided is said to have helped the British invasion

[j-whitman]

earth56,,,, You can not talk about Hamas or Arafat without first having an understanding of the history.

The Zionist movement became a formal organization in 1897 with the first Zionist congress in Basle, organized by Theodor Herzl. Herzl''s grandfather was acquainted with the writings of Alcalay, and it is very probable that Herzl was influenced by them. The Zionists wished to establish a "Jewish Homeland" in Palestine under Turkish or German rule. Initially, most Zionists were not concerned about the Arab population, which they ignored, or thought would agree to voluntary transfer to other Arab countries. In any case, they envisioned the population of Palestine by millions of European Jews who would soon form a decisive majority in the land.

By 1914, the total population of Palestine stood at about 700,000. About 615,000 were Arabs, and 85,000 to 100,000 were Jews

[j-whitman]

earth56,,,, You are going to have to do some reading on the subject.

Labor Zionism and Socialist Zionism in Isreal are political issues which created the State, & cause problems today,,, Not so much religious.

http://www.mideastweb.org/labor_zionism.htm

[kennedy7955]

Hey Palestinians, the intifada uprising has really worked out for you. Good thinking...

[j-whitman]

earth56,,,, People who blame everything on the Muslems are ignorant, & have no concept of the issues or the Jewish faith or politics.


Labor Zionism and Socialist Zionism -- Has every thing to do with the problems.

Note - The Zionist movement developed against the background of events in Palestine/Israel and influenced them. This account of Labor Zionism is meant to be read together with the brief history of Israel and Palestine and Zionism
Ideology and Philosophy of Socialist Zionism and Labor Zionism

The philosophical outlook of Zionism as well as its early practical development in Ottoman Turkish times and under the British Mandate, cannot be understood without examining the history of Socialist and Labor Zionism. Even before the beginnings of Zionist settlement, Moses Hess, a former friend of Karl Marx, laid the foundations for secular and socialist Zionism in his book Rome and Jerusalem.

[j-whitman]

Mandydryer,,,, Obviously you have no concept of who the Jewish people are nor the issues.

[mandydryer]

Our jewish brothers must stand together against this Gaza scum that threatens us. Join us to stop the **********. www.theseriouspolice.com

[j-whitman]

earth56,,,, Demonization of zionism ?? Zionisim is a problem & it''s not didn''t start in Isreal.. It would help you to have a greater in depth understanding of it. It has everything to do with their politics. Socialist Zionism and Labor Zionism --- It''s more political than religious & very complex, a study on it''s own.

[j-whitman]

earth56,,, Omarr ???