Israel Fights On, Gaza Death Toll Tops 500

Military Forces Push Closer To Big Cities In Gaza, Red Cross Declares "Full Blown" Crisis

(CBS/AP)  Israeli shells slammed into Gaza and ground forces edged closer to major population centers Tuesday, taking more civilian lives after Israel ignored mounting international calls for an immediate cease-fire.

In fighting that raged early Tuesday morning, at least 18 people were killed in shelling up and down the Gaza Strip from tanks and naval craft, local hospital officials said. Only two of the dead were confirmed as militants. According to a top U.N. official, at least 500 Palestinians have been killed in the 11-day Israeli military campaign.

CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports the casualties also increased on the Israeli side Tuesday. Israel said three of its soldiers were apparently killed by a shell from one of their own tanks; another Israeli was killed in a separate incident of so-called friendly fire early Tuesday morning. In all, Israel says it's lost five soldiers since the fighting began.

Tanks rumbled closer to the towns of Khan Younis and Dir el Balah in south and central Gaza but were still several miles outside, witnesses said, adding that the sounds of fighting could be heard from around the new Israeli positions. Israel already has encircled Gaza City, the area's biggest city.

Israel launched its offensive on Dec. 27 in a bid to halt repeated Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern towns. After a weeklong air campaign, Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza over the weekend. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 100 civilians, according to United Nations figures.

The rising civilian death toll has drawn international condemnations and raised concerns of a looming humanitarian disaster. Many Gazans are without electricity or running water, thousands have been displaced from their homes and residents say that without distribution disrupted, food supplies are running thin.

In one incident overnight, three people were killed when Israel attacked a U.N. school where hundreds had taken shelter.

"There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized," said John Ging, the top U.N. official in Gaza, blaming the international community for allowing the violence to continue.

"I am appealing to political leaders here and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this," he said, speaking at Gaza's largest hospital. "They are responsible for these deaths."

Israel says it won't stop the assault until its southern towns are freed of the threat of Palestinian rocket fire and it receives international guarantees that Hamas, a militant group backed by Iran and Syria, will not restock its weapons stockpile. It blames Hamas for the civilian casualties, saying the group intentionally seeks cover in crowded residential areas.

The army says it has dealt a harsh blow to Hamas, killing 130 militants in the past two days and greatly reducing the rocket fire. At least 15 rockets were fired Tuesday and one landed in the town of Gadera, about 25 miles from the Gaza border, lightly wounding a 3-month-old infant, police said.

Israeli forces have cut the main Gaza highway in several places, compartmentalizing the strip into the north, south and Gaza City itself and preventing movement between them. Israel also has taken over high-rise buildings in Gaza City and destroyed dozens of smuggling tunnels - Hamas' main lifeline - along the Egyptian border.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross said Gaza was in a "full-blown" humanitarian crisis. Its head of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said the few remaining power supplies could collapse at any moment, leaving 500,000 people without clean water and at risk of disease.

A flurry of diplomatic efforts to forge a cease-fire continued Tuesday. French President Nicolas Sarkozy left Israel after meetings with leaders and headed to neighboring Syria.

Sarkozy immediately set to work trying to convince President Bashar al-Assad to push harder for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

"President Assad should help in convincing Hamas to stop firing the rockets. Syria should help us to convince Hamas to choose the voice of reason and the path of peace and the path of reconciliation," Sarkozy told reporters after his meeting with al-Assad. (Click here to read more on the diplomatic effort in Damascus.)

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stressed to Sarkozy on Monday that any agreement "must contain at its foundation the total cessation of all arms transfers to Hamas," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

Regev noted that Hamas used a previous six-month truce to double the range of its rockets. About one-eighth of Israel's 7 million citizens now live in rocket range.

In New York, Arab delegates met with the U.N. Security Council, urging members to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate end to the attacks and a permanent cease-fire.

But, as CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk reported in the World Watch blog, the Arab foreign ministers' latest attempt at a draft resolution seemed unlikely to gain the crucial support of the United States, as it contained no reference to a cessation of rocket fire.

In Washington, the State Department said the U.S. was pressing for a cease-fire that would include a halt to rocket attacks and an arrangement for reopening crossing points on the border with Israel, said spokesman Sean McCormack. The crossings, used to deliver vital food shipments into Gaza, have been largely closed since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007. A third element of a U.S.-backed cease-fire would address the smuggling tunnels used by Hamas.

President Bush emphasized "Israel's desire to protect itself."

"The situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas," he said.

In Tuesday's fighting, six civilians were killed when a shell fired by an Israeli ship hit their house on the Gaza shore, hospital officials said. Local residents said the gunboat apparently fired at a group of militants next to the house who were preparing to ambush advancing Israeli troops. Two of the militants were killed in the blast.

Palestinians said Israeli attacks intensified before dawn and at least 10 more civilians were killed when shells hit houses on the edge of Gaza City and in the Jebaliya refugee camp, to the north.

[snoop99991]

Note on the holocaust which did happen.
The Zionist founders of Israel and a large American Jewish delegation working with them lobbied the United States Congree and Senate as well as the leaders of many other nations to NOT accept any Europeon Jews fleeing the Germans. (This has been documented in film archives and shown on the history channel as well as being in numerous printed articles). These Zionists stated that they would rather have the fleeing Europeon Jews them die than chose a homeland other than the new nation of Israel. So certain powerfull Zionists and their American backers had a hand in the holocaust as well as the Nazis. Israel was given to the Zionists by the occupying colonists the British in exchange for wealthy Jews pulling their financial assistance from Germany and instead help fund Britains war effort against them.

A great place to find information on this and other
atrocities in which America, its'' allies and other nations of the world have taken part in in is here:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/

PS.. Please don''t shoot the messenger!
Also many Orthodox Jews do not support Israel.
See link here: http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

[letsbgood]

MORE PRESENT FACTS (really important)
11. Hamas took control with power (executed their own people) and corrupted elections
12. Hamas is attacking Israel before and after they took control
13. Israel never aimed at civilians (some unfortunate individuals past incidents)
14. Arab countries killed the Palestinians in their territories when tried to raise their voices
15. After 8 years of getting attacked by Hamas rockets, Israel decided to protect their civilians
16. Hamas is using the Palestinian civilians as a human shield to protect themselves
17. Hamas is using the Palestinian civilians to create hate when civilians killed by Israel
18. Israel is bombing locations where Hamas fired rockets from
19. Israel is sorry when civilians are getting killed but has the right to protect it''s own civilians
20: Hamas is only one of many Islamic groups around the world, who believes in this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

[letsbgood]

SOME PRESENT FACTS (really important)
1. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east
2. Israel is now a fact so only a peace agreement can work
3. Palestinian territories where occupied while defending from surrounded Arab countries
4. No Arab county wants the territories as part of them
5. most Arab countries slaughtered the Palestinians in their territories
6. The Palestinian situation is an excuse for Arab countries to divert hate toward Israel
7. Israel had many attempts for peace but was the only one who really wants it
8. Israel dealt with terrorists (Arafat) when showed some willing to negotiate
9. Palestinians never hide the face that a peace will be the 1st step to occupy all Israel
10. Hamas is a terror organization supported by Iran to harm Israel

[letsbgood]

SOME PAST FACTS (really important)

1. Jewish always lived in Israel that once was their kingdom
2. Jewish where expelled from Israel but some where always there
3. Jewish temples where destroyed and mosques where build on top of it
4. Jewish did not steal Israel from the Palestinian
5. Jewish are back to Israel and rebuild it
6. Jewish are as greedy, nice, good, bad as any other group
7. Due to be hunted, Jewish EDUCATION was a surviving tool
8. Due to EDUCATION Jewish known to be smarter (high positions) and richer (not greedier...)
9. When economy is bad people tend to blame the powerful and rich groups
10. Racist and anti-semi used depressions to grow hater about Jewish people

[jgunther7]

This media reports more than 500 Palestinians killed. That translates to more than 5,000 Palestinians.

[eskorski]

to all the anti semitic posters out there- when you have shown your tolerance for garbage the way you expect jews to then open your mouth. in the meantinme it you and your ilk that watched jews get butchered in the holocaust(they deserved it of course) then denied it happened then claimed that the jews are doing the same thing(which according to you never happened)

[noloyalisti]

Whenever right wingers, such as the leaders of the governments of Israel and the United States claim that others are committing terrorism, it is because they are. Whatever right wingers say, they mean just the opposite. Then everything makes sense.

[wardoglrs]

GOOGLE:
BENJAMIN FREEDMAN SPEAKS: A JEWISH DEFECTOR WARNS AMERICA

[wardoglrs]

There wasn''t one of them who had an ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time. Not one of them! And yet they come to the Christians and ask us to support their armed insurrections in Palestine by saying, "You want to help repatriate God''s Chosen People to their Promised Land, their ancestral home, don''t you? It''s your Christian duty. We gave you one of our boys as your Lord and Savior. You now go to church on Sunday, and you kneel and you worship a Jew, and we''re Jews."

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - would you site your sources for your holocaust information?

[jimmyc1955]

Who are "you people" that you have so blithely lumped me in with?

And exactly what do you mean "so-called holocaust"?

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - Technically Palastine was an land without a government. Since the British had control over the middle east after WWII they did have, under the international agreement of the time, have the power. The UN created the right.

In fact the whole middle east is a disaster mostly due to British arrogance but it was done for noble reasons.

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - So there was no holocaust?

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - Like your other pasted arguments that one is mindless as well.

Certianly Europe remains anti-semitic to this day. But if they just wanted them gone why not ship them to some remote place? Why allow them to repatriate the land they were removed from?

Israel was a gift to appease a guilty ccomplex. Europe stood by and allowed millions of Jews to be slaughtered in the most horrible of fashions and did nothing until that same threat invaded them.

Besides it was the British who rammed the UN mandate through and created Israel. It was a gift to a horribly mutilated people - a gift of mercy.

Only somebody filled with hatred would see it your way.

[questionnews]

At the end of WWll there were jews all over Europe where no one wanted them. The Western Powers did not want the jews in their own country so they decided to create Israel as a solution. In other words, the only reason Israel was created is because NOT ONE nation on the face of the earth wanted anything to do with those people.

Posted by yourself5 at 03:25 PM : Jan 06, 2009

That pretty much sums it up for how other Arabs feel about Hamas. Strange how that seems to be a pattern throughout history.

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - You just posted why Einstein didn''t believe in God. He didn''t defame Judaism or Christianity or any other religon. He spoke for himself.

But that, like your other proofs you have accepted, is not proof of anything but your inability to reason.

[questionnews]

I could go on and on, but time restraints compels me to just give you jews and jew-lovers only a short brief of why I hate the kikes.

Posted by yourself5 at 03:14 PM : Jan 06, 2009

Kikes? How is the use of that word on the CBS board any different that using the n-word when referencing African Americans? Only ignorant bigots use those words and it''s spot on for this guy, but why isn''t it on the censors list? You can''t say *** (gay.s) but kikes is OK?

[jimmyc1955]

yourself5 - Nope you are very definitely a redneck Jew hater.

Your reasoning is specious at best - and compeletly lacking in real facts.

Israel has been in a 60 year struggle for survival - without any breaks, no quarter. They are tiny country outnumbered and outgunned. But their determination and the support of the US has allowed them to survive. They prosper due to hard work and intelligence. They create wealth, live in a pluralistic society with a healthy democratic process and government.

None of those things is true for any other country in the region - not one.

all those are fine reasons to support Jews in Israel. If you can find me one Arab nation more than one of those statements is true about it will be the first I have heard of it.

[onlythereal-]

Let''''s just say that I don''''t like working to see my tax money go to kikes. And the fact of the matter is, Israel receives more money per capita than any country on earth.

Posted by yourself5

YOU ARE SO IGNORANT YOU MAKE ME SICK. MAYBE YOU ARE KKK. WHATEVER THE CASE, YOU NEED TO GO OPEN A BIBLE AND RENEW YOUR SICK MIND. LATER LOSER

[onlythereal-]

Yes, all I have to do is go one CNN or MSNBC and witness the unbridled savagery of the jews. How today they intentionally bombed a school killing over 50. How they are the only nation on the face of the earth that has murder as an integral component of its foreign policy: the so-called targeted assassinations I could go on and on, but time restraints compels me to just give you jews and jew-lovers only a short brief of why I hate the kikes.


Posted by yourself5

It must be nice to just copy and paste you ignorance so much on here. If you are so outraged by what is going on, why don''t you go join Hamas. Do something instead of sitting here and crying like a little girl. Go strap on a bomb and PROVE your loyalty or is that on your next weeks agenda. Maybe you are just another coward and you send somebody else out with a bomb jacket on...maybe you son or daughter. Thats it isnt it.