Israel OK's Gaza "Humanitarian Corridor"

Amid Increasing Carnage, Israel Agrees To Suspend Attacks In Certain Areas To Allow People To Get Vital Supplies

(CBS/AP)  Israel says it has agreed to set up a "humanitarian corridor" to ship vital supplies to the people of the Gaza Strip.

The office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says in a statement that the humanitarian corridor idea came from the U.N. Security Council, and he accepted it.

Under the plan, Israel would suspend attacks in specified areas of Gaza to allow the people to get supplies. The statement early Wednesday said the goal was to "prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip."

Israel insists it has allowed enough supplies into the territory during 11 days of conflict, but the U.N. says there is already a humanitarian crisis there because of shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Meanwhile, Israeli mortar shells exploded Tuesday near a U.N. school in Gaza sheltering hundreds of people displaced by Israel's onslaught against Hamas militants, killing at least 30 Palestinians, tearing bodies apart and staining streets with blood.

Israel's military said its shelling was a response to mortar fire from within the school, pressing its assertion that Hamas militants are using civilians as cover. Two residents of the area who spoke by telephone said they saw a handful of militants firing mortar shells from a street near the school.

The carnage added to a surging civilian toll that has drawn increasingly urgent calls for a halt to Israel's offensive against Hamas. Diplomatic efforts, however, have failed to end the bloodshed.

The violence that engulfed the U.N. girls school in the crowded Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza was the deadliest single episode since Israel sent ground forces into Gaza on Saturday.

Israel's troops and tanks pushed into Gaza after a week of intensive bombardment from warplanes in an offensive that has killed nearly 600 Palestinians, around half of them civilians, according to U.N. and Palestinian officials. The offensive was triggered by militant rocket fire on southern Israel. Four Israelis have been killed in continued rocket strikes since the offensive began Dec. 27.

The three mortar shells that crashed down on the perimeter of the U.N. school struck at mid-afternoon, when many people in the densely populated camp were out and about. Many of those who took shelter in the school apparently had stepped outside to get some air, thinking an area around a school was safe.

Images recorded by a cameraman from AP Television News showed crowds fleeing the scene, pavements smeared with blood and battered bodies of the dead being carried off by medics and horrified bystanders. A youth who limped away from the scene was helped along by several others.

Israel entered this conflict saying it wanted to change the situation in Gaza, not necessarily change the regime, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. But Hamas' resistance may be forcing Israel's hand.

"I don't see a very quick resolution of this at the moment and I think it is going to carry on for a little while until, as I said, one of the parties blinks and I don't think it is going to be Israel," said Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad.

The Israelis say only they can know when they have done enough damage to Hamas to stop. But Phillips reports they are fighting another enemy now as well - growing international outrage at the terrible toll this operation is taking in innocent lives.

World powers that tried but failed to get a truce in place before Israel sent in its ground forces warned of the potential for higher civilian casualties if the fighting moved onto Gaza's streets, and Gaza's main hospital has been overwhelmed with wounded innocents. Mortar fire, in particular, is far less accurate than the laser-guided bombs Israel has used throughout the campaign.

The U.N. agency that runs the school said two other U.N. schools in Gaza were struck by Israeli fire since Monday night and demanded an investigation. In the first incident, an airstrike on the Asma Elementary School in Gaza City killed three men who were among more than 400 people taking refuge in the building. In the other, an artillery shell landed inside an empty boys school in Jebaliya.

"There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized," said John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The episode is certain to add to the urgency of truce efforts by leaders from Europe and the Middle East.

"I sincerely hope that for the sake of those who have died that it will not have been in vain, that it will spur everybody into more immediate action to get this cease-fire agreed and just stop horrific violence," Ging said.

Click here to read the latest on international cease-fire talks, from CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk at the United Nations.

An Israeli military statement said it received intelligence that the dead near the school included Hamas operatives, including members of a rocket launching cell. It identified two of them as Imad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar.

Two residents who spoke to an AP reporter by phone said the two brothers were known to be low-level Hamas militants. They said a group of militants - one of them said four - were firing mortar shells from near the school.

An Israeli shell targeted the men, but missed and they fled, the witnesses said, refusing to allow their names to be published because they feared for their safety. Then another three shells landed nearby, exploding among civilians, they said.

CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports the emergency is overwhelming al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza, where there aren't enough ambulances to carry the casualties, who arrive in cars and taxis. The morgue is full.

The hospital's general manager, Hassan Khalaf, insists the vast majority of patients are civilians. He told CBS News about 30 percent of the dead and 42 percent of the injured are woman and children.

(The bodies of three Palestinian children killed by an Israeli tank shell are seen at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Jan. 5, 2009.)

Palestinian militants have frequently fired from residential areas in the past.

Ging said the U.N. agency's staff work to prevent militants from entering the 23 schools it is using to shelter 15,000 people.

"Unfortunately tonight's incident is just another example of how Hamas operate," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "This is not the first time they have exploited a U.N. facility. This is not the first time that they have deliberately used innocent civilians as human shields."

Dr. Bassam Abu Warda, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said 36 people were killed, while the United Nations confirmed 30 deaths.

Majed Hamdan, an AP photographer, rushed to the scene shortly after the attacks. At the hospital, he said, many children were among the dead.

"I saw women and men - parents - slapping their faces in grief, screaming, some of them collapsed to the floor. They knew their children were dead," he said. "In the morgue, most of the killed appeared to be children. In the hospital, there wasn't enough space for the wounded."

U.N. officials say they provided their location coordinates to Israel's army to ensure that their buildings in Gaza are not targeted.

Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, responding to questions about the incident, said the conflict would have many difficult moments.

"This is a difficult operation, it's almost war and in war there are difficult pictures on both sides, on our side there are difficult pictures as well," he said on Israel's Channel 10 television.

Israeli TV news broadcasts gave most of their attention to continued rocket fire on southern Israel. One of the two dozen rockets fired from Gaza on Tuesday wounded an Israeli infant.

There seemed to be little preoccupation in Israel with the deadly scene at the school.

In the past, however, Israeli ground offensives have been cut short when an errant shell or missile hit a civilian center, killing and wounding women and children, leading to an international outcry that forced Israel to stand down.

In 1996, an invasion of southern Lebanon to quell militant rocket fire at northern Israel was aborted after an artillery shell hit a camp of villagers next to a U.N. post, killing about 100 people.

In November 2006, Israeli forces withdrew from northern Gaza after a shell hit a house, killing 18 members of a family, including eight children, setting off a world outcry. Rocket fire at Israel resumed immediately.

Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground operation began, including four killed Monday in a two separate friendly fire incidents. Higher tolls among soldiers could also sap support for the offensive.

A total of 71 Palestinians were killed Tuesday - with just two confirmed as militants, health officials in Gaza said.

Despite international criticism over civilian deaths and calls for a cease-fire, Israeli 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. Israel already has encircled Gaza City, the area's biggest city.

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.

[5HwnBoys]

The UN Gaza school was a weapons dump
Ethel C. Fenig
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs sets us straight about that UN school "blown up" by Israelis killing "innocent civilians."
The UN and the mainstream media are wailing and accusing Israel of war crimes (yes, again) after the IDF returned fire at a UN school from which Palestinians were firing mortars.

The explosives and booby traps installed in the school by Hamas then blew up, killing dozens of people.

Yes, that''s what happens. If Hamas killers fire from a hospital, a mosque, a school which they proudly taunted the Israelis were booby trapped and filled with explosives, they have no right to complain when Israelis return fire and the building explodes.

Where were the UN personnel as Hamas operatives brought in the explosives, installed the booby traps? They were probably helping them. As did the International Red Cross.

Human Wrongs Watch and the oh so sensitive Europeans who are now wailing that civilians are being harmed in Gaza just didn''t notice--or more accurately, didn''t care--when Israeli civilians, deliberately targeted by Hamas and its rockets, were killed and injured.
__________________

[s57g67l]

yourself5 and noloyalisti,
Does Gaza only have borders with Israel for the essentials of life: Food, Medical supplies, water, fuelto be brought in?

What about their "Arab brothers" --Egypt (with whom they share a border) sending any of the essentials of life into Gaza?

[noloyalisti]

Good post yourself5. Typical right wingers. Identify and problem and then create it. And then cry victim. Could We the People possibly be that stupid?

[noloyalisti]

The very first question you have to ask is why Hamas, a democratically elected government feels the need to defend it''s right to exist.

Could it be the apartheid polices of Israel. Or is it locking up a million and a half people in the new Warsaw Ghetto and systematically exterminating them by starvation and illness. Sounds pretty Nazi to me.

[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

[windmaster12]

Wonder when Israel will attack
the Iranian Missle Program? --
Should be soon !!!

Israel will win this battle militarily against Hamas-
But like the Hezbollah fiasco last year-
They will lose this war in the eyes of the world--

Hamas are indeed a$$holes -- All Terrorists are!!!

But a measured response would have given Israel the
moral high ground !!!

Instead, they have acquiesced (By this Carnage) to
become just what they are fighting!!!

More clandestine operations would be far more effective
than the slaughter of women and children!!!

No matter how justified the reasons for these
operations are --
It would be far better to show proper restraint
in power!!!

[tonyb-d-bing]

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, JESUS AND MOSES:
PLEASE VIEW THIS SHORT VIDEO AND PASS IT TO OTHERS

www.shoebat.com

It''s a MUST for those who would like to see an expose%u2019 and voluntary confessions of why a reformed terrorist abandoned fascism/terrorism.

Thanks be to God for this!
(this is from a previous posting)

[tonyb-d-bing]

IRAN PROMISED ''REWARDS'' TO HAMAS FOR DISTRACTION PLOY TO FOCUS ATTENTION AWAY FROM IRAN''S NUCLEAR WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

There are reports coming out, that this whole, long-term Hamas
''rocket attack'' situation
against Israel by Gaza''s Hamas leadership, is designed to focus away from international pressure against IRAN''s continuing development of NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In fact, the current Iranian Islamofascist regime continues to foment all sorts of instability by encouraging and imposing terror and Islamic Law on its own people and on others via intimidation, and by preying upon people''s fears.

What are our world leaders doing to prevent the current Iranian regime and Achmadinejad - its equivalent of Hitler - from producing nuclear weapons?

[abrame]

Palestinian groups that support and carry out politically-motivated violent acts have included:

Hamas

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)

The Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine

Fatah''s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

The Abu Nidal Organization.

When directed against civilians, such violence is frequently labeled as terrorism. [2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_political_violence

[abrame]

Abrame

Why do you keep using the term Palestinian terrorist.
It is Hamas and Israel that are the problem here. As far as I''''''''m concerned put the Israel goverment and Hamas in a room and let them kill each other.
But let the innocent Israel and Palestinian women and children out of it.

Posted by woodjd42

So the next time I refer to "Palestinian Terrorists" you know better than to ASSUME I include "innocent Israel and Palestinian women and children" in that description.

[abrame]

Abrame

Why do you keep using the term Palestinian terrorist.
It is Hamas and Israel that are the problem here. As far as I''''m concerned put the Israel goverment and Hamas in a room and let them kill each other.
But let the innocent Israel and Palestinian women and children out of it.

Posted by woodjd42

So the next time someone refers to "American Presidents" you know better than to include American women and children in that description.

[abrame]

Abrame

Why do you keep using the term Palestinian terrorist.
It is Hamas and Israel that are the problem here. As far as I''m concerned put the Israel goverment and Hamas in a room and let them kill each other.
But let the innocent Israel and Palestinian women and children out of it.
Posted by woodjd42

Apparently you are incompetent with the English language.

"...Palestinian political violence or Palestinian terrorism refers to acts of violence committed for political reasons by Palestinians. Palestinian groups that support and carry out politically-motivated violent acts have included Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO),the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine, Fatah''s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Abu Nidal Organization. When directed against civilians, such violence is frequently labeled as terrorism. [2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_political_violence

[abrame]

Mosab Hassan Yousef Leaves Islam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPz4ffF4oEA&feature=related

[woodjd42]

Abrame

Why do you keep using the term Palestinian terrorist.
It is Hamas and Israel that are the problem here. As far as I''m concerned put the Israel goverment and Hamas in a room and let them kill each other.
But let the innocent Israel and Palestinian women and children out of it.

[abrame]

Palestinian Savages feeding on their own

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLI3hdPg88&NR=1

[abrame]

Palestinian Savages feeding on their own

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naY3WMyayF0&feature=related

[abrame]

Since the practice of iding behind human shields has been outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court the fact is that the only group that we know of, FOR SURE, with a chronic policy of hiding behind Human Shields, are the Palestinians themselves- proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by speeches of their own members of Parliament bragging about their human shields.

http://www.youtube.com/wantch?v=RTu-AUE9ycs

Palesinians often attempt to attribute this cowardly practice to their adversaries, as a pathetic excuse to justify their own crimes and atrocities, and always without any substantial support.

One thing is for sure, though- that the craven Palestinian terrorist have no standing to criticize anyone for using this cowardly terrorist tactic, since they so eagerly embrace this practice themselves.

The Palestinians have truly become their own worst oppressors.

Hiding behind Human shields and slaughtering unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. This is the face of sub-human Palestinian terrorism.

[abrame]

Since the practice of iding behind human shields has been outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court the fact is that the only group that we know of, FOR SURE, with a chronic policy of hiding behind Human Shields, are the Palestinians themselves- proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by speeches of their own members of Parliament bragging about their human shields.

http://www.youtube.com/wa


tch?v=RTu-AUE9ycs

Palesinians often attempt to attribute this cowardly practice to their adversaries, as a pathetic excuse to justify their own crimes and atrocities, and always without any substantial support.

One thing is for sure, though- that the craven Palestinian terrorist have no standing to criticize anyone for using this cowardly terrorist tactic, since they so eagerly embrace this practice themselves.

The Palestinians have truly become their own worst oppressors.

Hiding behind Human shields and slaughtering unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. This is the face of sub-human Palestinian terrorism.