The application for full U.N. member sidesteps nearly two decades of troubled negotiations and risks a threatened American veto.

Nearly two decades after embarking on historic peace talks with Israel, Palestinians prepared to sidestep that troubled route on Friday to seek U.N. recognition of an independent state — hoping to leverage this dramatic move on the world stage to realize their dream of an independent homeland.

Earlier in the week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed an intense, U.S.-led effort to sway him from the statehood bid, saying he would submit the application to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon as planned. A top aide, Mohammed Ishtayeh, said Thursday that Abbas asked Ban and the Council’s Lebanese president this month to process the application without delay.

“We’re going without any hesitation and continuing despite all the pressures,” Abbas told members of the Palestinian diaspora at a hotel in New York on Thursday night. “We seek to achieve our right and we want our independent state.”

To be sure, Abbas’ appeal to the U.N. to recognize Palestinian independence in theWest Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip would not deliver any immediate changes on the ground: Israel would remain an occupying force in those first two territories and continue to severely restrict access to Gaza, ruled by Palestinian Hamas militants.

Beyond that, Security Council action on the membership request could take weeks or months.

Ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now envoy to the group of Middle East negotiators known as the Quartet, acknowledged that Abbas had forced a renewed bout of activity aimed at restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“If this is a tactic in one sense it’s worked brilliantly — people are focused now on what we can do to relaunch a negotiation,” Blair told BBC radio.

The strategy also put the Palestinians in direct confrontation with the U.S., which has threatened to veto their membership bid in the U.N. Security Council, reasoning, like Israel, that statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties to the long and bloody conflict.

Also hanging heavy in the air was the threat of renewed violence over frustrated Palestinian aspirations — perhaps not immediate, because Abbas has vowed to prevent unrest, but possibly down the road if negotiations continue to stall.

Yet by seeking approval at a world forum overwhelmingly sympathetic to their quest, Palestinians hope to make it harder for Israel to resist already heavy global pressure to negotiate the borders of a future Palestine based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.

In recent weeks, international mediators have been furiously trying to piece together a formula that would let the Palestinians abandon their plan to ask the Security Council for full U.N. membership, and instead make do with the more modest goal of asking a sympathetic General Assembly to elevate their status from permanent observer to nonmember observer state. The other part of that formula would include the resumption of negotiations in short order.

The U.S. and Israel have been pressuring council members to either vote against the plan or abstain when it comes up for a vote. The vote would require the support of nine of the council’s 15 members to pass, but even if the Palestinians could line up that backing, a U.S. veto is assured.

The resumption of talks seems an elusive goal, with both sides digging in to positions that have tripped up negotiations for years. Israel insists that negotiations go ahead without any preconditions. But Palestinians say they will not return to the bargaining table without assurances that Israel would halt settlement building and drop its opposition to basing negotiations on the borders it held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza in 1967.

Israel has warned that the Palestinian appeal to the U.N. will have a disastrous effect on negotiations, which have been the cornerstone of international Mideast policy for the past two decades. Netanyahu, who is to address the General Assembly later Friday, shortly after Abbas makes his own address, opposes negotiations based on 1967 lines, saying a return to those frontiers would expose Israel’s heartland to rocket fire from the West Bank.

He also fears that if that principle becomes the baseline for negotiations, then Palestinians won’t settle for anything less, despite previous understandings between the Palestinians and previous Israeli governments to swap land where settlement blocs stand for Israeli territory.

Talks for all intents and purposes broke down nearly three years ago after Israel went to war in the Gaza Strip and prepared to hold national elections that ultimately propelled Netanyahu to power for a second time. A last round was launched a year ago, with the ambitious aim of producing a framework accord for a peace deal, but broke down just three weeks later after an Israeli settlement construction slowdown expired.

Palestinians say they turned to the U.N. in desperation over 18 failed years of peace talks. But Israelis say the Palestinians are to blame for their own predicament and accuse them of going to the United Nations precisely to avoid talks.

RELATED:

Netanyahu: Israel Ready For Painful Compromises For Peace

The poll reveals that 60 percent of Jewish voters approve of the president’s job performance, while 85 percent of Jewish Democrats approved.

Such numbers refute many predictions that Jewish supporters would abandon Obama because of comments made at a May 19 speech instructing Palestinians and Israelis to use 1967 boundaries as the starting point for peace talks.

The NY Daily News Reports:

Former New York mayor Ed Koch and the Republican presidential candidates took turns accusing Obama of abandoning a trusted ally.

Obama insisted his support of Israel was unwavering and that what he was calling for was essentially the same thing that every President since the first President Bush have backed – just not publicly.

Read More At NYDailyNews.com

RELATED:

Israelis Fume At Obama Suggestion Of Border

WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cheering U.S. Congress on Tuesday he was willing to make “painful compromises” for peace with the Palestinians, but he offered little concrete to entice Palestinians back to the bargaining table.

By giving such a high-profile speech before overwhelmingly supportive U.S. lawmakers, Netanyahu was able to demonstrate to Israelis that he retains strong backing in the United States despite his frosty relations with President Barack Obama.

He also moved the needle on territorial compromise, for the first time explicitly saying in his address that Israel would have to give up some West Bank settlements.

But Palestinians immediately rejected his overall peace package, which for the most part was a recycling of previously stated positions that the Palestinians had turned down. One senior Palestinian official even dubbed Netanyahu’s peace blueprint a “declaration of war.”

Speaking before a sympathetic Congress that showered him with more than two dozen sustained standing ovations, Netanyahu said Israel wants and needs peace and would make “generous” territorial concessions. Under any final peace accord, he added, “some settlements will be beyond Israel’s borders.”

But undercutting his overture was his insistence that Israel hold onto major settlement blocs and all of contested Jerusalem, that his country maintain a long-term military presence on the eastern edge of the West Bank and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas scuttle his power-sharing agreement with the violently anti-Israel Hamas militants.

He also restated Israel’s refusal to repatriate millions of Palestinians who lost homes in Israel during the fighting over the Jewish state’s 1948 creation.

Unlike the Americans, Palestinians had no accolades for Netanyahu.

In the West Bank, Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, called the speech “a declaration of war against the Palestinians.”

“This is an escalation and unfortunately, it received a standing ovation,” he said, noting that Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian demands on central issues such as borders, competing claims to Jerusalem and the fate of refugees.

In Gaza, the Islamic militant Hamas fumed that “Netanyahu denied us all our rights.”

“We must work to adopt an Arab and Palestinian strategy based on the right of resistance,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, referring to armed attacks on Israeli targets.

In lieu of negotiations, Abbas is campaigning to obtain U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood when the General Assembly meets in September. Both Israel and the U.S. oppose this strategy, calling instead for the negotiated solution that has been the cornerstone of two decades of peace efforts.

Abbas is to meet with leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah movement on Wednesday to discuss their next move. The Palestinians have developed an alternate strategy to moribund negotiations, largely on hold since 2008, and have said they will seek U.N. recognition of their state in September.

Netanyahu came to the U.S. in a fighting mood, sparring – even before he landed – with Obama, who hours before had expressed support for drawing future borders on the basis of the boundaries Israel had before capturing east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

Netanyahu repeatedly challenged the president’s position, ignoring Obama’s assertion that the territorial markers could be adjusted through mutually agreed land swaps. The Palestinians accept that principle, which would allow Israel to retain major West Bank settlement blocs and help to assure its security.

In his speech before Congress, Netanyahu backed off from this dispute, acknowledging that the president had not called for a return to Israel’s prewar borders. Israeli officials said that was because Obama sharpened his position on this matter, but it is possible Netanyahu felt he could ease the assault because of the tremendous outpouring of support he received in Congress and, the night before, at a meeting of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

That support in the U.S. has allowed Netanyahu in the past to fend off Obama’s demands that he do more to advance peacemaking by freezing settlement construction.

Obama has, in large part, staked his reputation in the Muslim world on finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But he has not been able to draw Israelis and Palestinians back to the bargaining table for sustained talks. The Palestinians are refusing to return as long as Israeli settlement construction continues on lands they want for a future state.

Netanyahu, early in his speech, congratulated the United States for killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, wishing him “good riddance.” He dismissed shouts from an anti-Israel protester as evidence that freedom of speech is alive and well in the United States and is respected there and in Israel.

President Barack Obama leads Israel and the Palestinian Authority into direct talks starting tomorrow aiming for a big prize: a peace deal that will help stabilize the region and thwart Iran’s bid to expand its influence.

Obama is bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together in Washington to seek agreement on security and territorial issues that lie at the heart of their dispute and have defied solution over two decades of negotiation.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has provided openings for regimes seeking to exploit Arab anger for their own purposes, and a resolution could put an end to such maneuvers, said State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley.

Read more at Bloomberg

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Obama Weighs New Peace Plan For Middle East

Obama-Netanyahu Deny US-Israel Problems Exist

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce Friday that Israel and the Palestinians will return to direct negotiations for the first time in 20 months, delivering the Obama administration a small victory in its protracted effort to revive the Middle East peace process, two officials briefed on the situation said Thursday evening.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, have agreed to place a one-year time limit on the talks, these officials said.

Read more at NYTimes

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Obama, Netanyahu Deny US-Israel Problems Exist

Amare Stoudemire Embracing Jewish Roots

If you were a Jew, you’d probably feel like you had to be God’s chosen people because other human beings have always treated you so horribly.

Enslaved in Africa, your top guy Moses, through war and attrition, secures you a homeland called “Israel”.

You more or less keep Israel right up until around 70 A.D. when the same Romans who cosigned on the necessity of the death of that heretic among your people, would eventually decide to name that same heretic the “Son of God”, place the entire blame for his death on you and wipe you out.

So what do you do?

Well, first you scatter then you blend of course, wherever you go, but you keep your same traditions and religion, settling throughout the world but being most visible now in Europe.

Then Hitler comes along.

Text continues after gallery…

RELATED: Farrakhan Charges Jews With “Anti-Black” Behavior

It speaks volumes that a decision was made basically for the Jews that they should have their own homeland. It was almost as if the West understood that another European Hitler could always arise—and probably would—in which case the Jews would need to be protected by, if nothing else, isolation.

And it’s not like the murder of 6 million Jews really seemed to bother anybody but Jews.

I’m not exactly saying that Hitler punked Europe, but if he hadn’t gotten cocky enough to pull a blitz on London, who knows if and when the Allies would have deaded his run towards world domination.

RELATED: Israel vs. Gaza: 985 To 13 & Counting

One might almost imagine that so long as Hitler’s agenda was only the killing of the Jews, everybody would have continued to pretend that they didn’t see anything.

But imagine that you had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews and you were just home chilling when suddenly you get the news that your home won’t be your home anymore.

You see, it wasn’t your home 2000 years ago and the original inhabitants all of a sudden need it back.

“God” had given them that land and it always had and always would be theirs.

At the very least, you might stop and wanna ask somebody “Whose God?”

No one in the White House, the Israeli government or among Palestinian officials is publicly predicting a breakthrough out of the three-way Mideast meeting that President Barack Obama is hosting here. And yet the session Tuesday is seen as a crucial step for Obama.

After seeing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu andPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas separately, Obama is bringing the two together for the first Israeli-Palestinian meeting since Netanyahu took office in March. Taking place on the sidelines of this week’s annual U.N. General Assembly here, just the fact that the meeting is scheduled is big news.

Even if little more than a photo opportunity, it will probably be the most-watched portion of a marathon day of international diplomacy for Obama, a 12-hour sprint through many high-profile global problems and disputes.

In addition to the three-way Mideast talks, Obama meets the Chinese president at a fraught time in the Washington-Beijing relationship; plays luncheon host, as America’s first black president, to sub-Saharan African leaders for talks on boosting opportunities for young people in their poverty-stricken nations; delivers key speeches toformer President Bill Clinton‘s Global Initiative and to a U.N. heads-of-state session on the stalled issue ofclimate change; and ends the day with a U.N.-sponsored leaders dinner.

The Israeli-Palestinian sit-down wasn’t announced until Saturday and comes with the two sides still far apart on what it would take to resume peace talks that broke off in 2008.

U.S. envoy George Mitchell failed last week to bridge the gap between the two sides on the issue of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, putting the long hoped-for three-way meeting in doubt. Obama has askedIsrael to freeze all settlement construction, a condition for Abbas to resume negotiations. But Israel has only committed to a partial halt.

Still, the sides decided to go ahead, even though Obama is considered unlikely to resolve the settlement showdown and announce a relaunching of peace talks.

“We have no grand expectations out of one meeting,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

One reason to have the meeting is the need to get momentum going.

“The U.S. wants to and the U.S. needs to negotiate in public,” said Jon Alterman, a senior fellow in Middle East policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department official inPresident George W. Bush‘s first term. “There’s a perceived need for the U.S. to visibly be involved in making progress on Arab-Israeli issues.”

Obama opens his day with brief remarks to a climate summit convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. As an opener for Wednesday’s main General Assembly meetings, Ban invited all leaders to the climate summit, hoping to generate political momentum for crucial talks in Copenhagen in December on a new global treaty to curb global warming.

Over 100 leaders plan to attend, the largest number ever to discuss climate change.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Obama will “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to addressing the challenge” — something he hasn’t done previously before what she called “the entire global audience.”

Yet Obama appears before fellow leaders with little to show in his own country on the issue so important to him. A source of great disappointment about Obama in Europe, a House bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions was passed in June but has languished in the Senate and probably won’t go anywhere until next year, if at all.

“Clearly, the road is rough ahead,” Rice said. “But I think it is significant that you will have many heads of state … all together and seriously addressing this problem.”

With Chinese President Hu Jintao, Obama has a full plate.

A little more than a week ago, the president penalized China, citing thousands of lost U.S. jobs when slapping punitive tariffs on all Chinese-made tire imports. Though the move appears unlikely to spark a trade war, it infuriated China at a time when Obama wants Beijing‘s help on climate change and nuclear standoffs with Iranand North Korea.

As a veto-holding member of the U.N. Security Council, China’s support is crucial for getting new sanctions against Iran‘s suspected nuclear weapons program. That topic is especially timely given the upcoming Oct. 1 talks between Iran and an international group that includes the U.S. and China.

China also is the world’s third-largest economy, and is participating in the Group of 20 meetings Obama is hosting later this week in Pittsburgh on the economic crisis.

Prodding the international community,President Barack Obama called Friday “for all of us to redouble our efforts” toward separate Israeli and Palestinian states. “The moment is now for us to act,” he declared.

Alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel following his Mideast trip, Obama said: “The United States can’t force peace upon the parties.” But he said America has “at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart.”

The president announced he was dispatching special envoy George J. Mitchell back to the region next week to follow up on his speech inCairo a day earlier in which he called for both Israelis and Palestinians to give ground in the standoff.

Obama says Israel must live up to commitments it made under the so-called “Road Map” peace outline to stop constructing settlements and the Palestinians must control violence-inciting acts and statements.

Fresh from visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama said that while regional powers and the entire international community must help achieve peace, responsibility ultimately falls to Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord.

Merkel, for her part, promised to cooperate on this long-sought goal. She said the two leaders discussed a time frame for a peace process but did not elaborate.

“I think that, with the new American government and the president, there is a truly unique opportunity to revive this peace process or, let us put this very cautiously, this process of negotiations,” Merkel said.

Added Obama: “I think the moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth, which is each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises.”

He renewed his call for Israel to halt West Bank settlement activity and follow through on such previously made commitments, adding: “I recognize the very difficult politics in Israel of getting that done and I’m very sympathetic to how hard that will be.” He also pressed Palestinians anew to dial back anti-Israel rhetoric, saying thatPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ”has made progress on this issue, but not enough.”

While Obama did not address peace-process benchmarks, he told international reporters Thursday in Egypt: “I don’t want to impose an artificial timeline.” He added: “When things stall, everybody knows it … I want to have a sense of movement and progress.”

Touching Friday on an issue that has strained the American-German relationship, Obama also said he didn’t seek any commitments from Germany to take a dozen prisoners when the United States closes its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. German officials have said most should be resettled in America.

Merkel said her country is prepared to “constructively contribute” to U.S. closure efforts and said she was confident of eventually reaching a “common solution” on the prisoners’ fate.

On other matters, Obama said he’s seen “some progress” in bringing economic stability to the world, and said he and Merkel agreed that they must continue to “work very closely together” on the issue. Addressingclimate change, Obama also said “we’re going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions.”

The two leaders spoke to reporters after meeting privately at a castle in this east Germany city that has bitter wartime memories. Starting on the night of Feb. 13, 1945, first British, then American bombers pounded the defenseless and largely non-strategic architectural gem, igniting a firestorm in which 25,000 people died — and in so doing, creating an enduring controversy.

Obama did not address the firebombing, and was in Dresden at the invitation of Merkel, who hails from her country’s East.

Later, Obama was to tour the Buchenwald concentration camp, where an estimated 56,000 people perished. Thousands were Jews — worked to death, shot or hanged by Nazi guards.

In Thursday’s speech in Egypt, Obama issued a scathing indictment of those who question the Holocaust, saying that to do so “is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.”

“Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of the Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve,” Obama added.

It was a pointed message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has expressed doubts that 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and who has urged that Israel be wiped from the map.

“He should make his own visit” to Buchenwald, Obama told NBC in an interview Friday. He added: “I have no patience for people who would deny history.”

Earlier, the president told reporters: “The international community has an obligation, even when it’s inconvenient, to act when genocide is occurring.”

Obama is the first U.S. president to visit Buchenwald, and the stop was personal. A great-uncle helped liberate a nearby satellite camp, Ohrdruf, in early April 1945 just days before other U.S. Army units overran Buchenwald.

Ohrdruf no longer stands. But Buchenwald’s main gate, crematorium, hospital and two guard towers have been kept as a memorial.

Accompanying Obama to the site was Elie Wiesel, a 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, author and Holocaust survivor.

Following the tour, Obama was flying to Landstuhl medical hospital for private visits with U.S. troops recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he was ending the day in Paris — reuniting with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha, who planned a brief holiday in the City of Light after commemorating the 65th anniversary of the Allies’ D-Day invasion in France.

Two men who created waves for President Barack Obama on the campaign trail have appeared together at a suburban Chicago church to promote Mideast peace.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and 1960s radical William Ayers spoke Sunday at First United Church of Oak Park during a forum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Event organizers say the men were invited because of their work on the conflict, not their political fame.

Wright, the former head of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was Obama’s pastor for two decades. But Obama distanced himself from Wright after video clips of the pastor’s more incendiary remarks were widely circulated.

Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground, once served with Obama on a charity board.

The New York chapter of the Council For American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is hosting their annual banquet and fundraiser this Saturday, May 9th at Vanderbilt Hall of the NYU Law School. If you are in the New York City area this weekend, try to check it out!

The keynote speaker, Hatem Bazian, is actually a distinguished Palestinian-American scholar whose work focuses on a topic that has been of immediate relevancy since the late 60s: relations between Israel and Palestine. He was born in the West Bank, amid the conflict, and has been celebrated for his unique approach to scholarship: he is often referred to as an organic intellectual, relating his work more directly the people that it involves rather than speculation alone.

While there is some level of controversy surrounding him, as is expected when your focused research is about such a controversial topic, and he has been referred to as an anti-Semite, this makes it even more interesting to be in his presence to hear his thoughts on the subject.

The other talent that will be featured goes far to showcase the multi-talented and diverse community of professionals that makes up the American-Muslim constituency in this country. Comedian Aron Kader and spoken word artist, Gaith Adhami, will also be in attendance.

Get your tickets now and support minority community efforts in the Metropolitan area! Check the flyer for more info.

WATCH Hatem Bazian speak about Islam & Women:

RELATED:

OPINION: My Muslim President

OPINION: How Black Men Can Relate to the Gaza Strip

Israel‘s incoming prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says his government will seek a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The comments appeared to be aimed at easing concerns that the hardline Netanyahu will try to freeze past peace efforts once he takes office.

Netanyahu told a conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday that peace is an “enduring goal” for all Israeli governments, including his own.

He says he will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority and work to develop their economy. He says the Palestinians must understand that his government will be a “partner for peace.”

Late Tuesday, the centrist Labor Party joined Netanyahu’s emerging coalition, saying it would help moderate what would otherwise have been a narrow, hardline government.

RELATED:

How Black Men Can Relate To War In The Gaza Strip | CLICK HERE

GALLERY: Casualties Of The Gaza War | CLICK HERE**

**(Disclaimer: Graphic Content Not Suitable For All Audiences)

An agreement between Hamas and Israel to bring quiet to the war-torn Gaza Strip could be announced within days, Hamas officials said, as rocket fired from the territory Friday further strained an informal cease-fire.

Two rockets fired by Gaza militants hit near a communal farm and the town of Sderot, the Israeli military said. No one was injured and no armed group took responsibility for the attack.

Rocket fire and shooting incidents along the Gaza-Israel border have persisted since the end of Israel’s devastating offensive against Hamas in the territory. Israel halted the operation on Jan. 18 and Hamas declared a cease-fire later the same day.

Friday’s rockets came as Hamas officials said talks in Cairo aimed at achieving a long-term truce were close to success.

A Hamas delegation is in the Egyptian capital and an Israeli envoy has been flying in periodically from Tel Aviv. Egypt is mediating between Israel and Hamas because the sides will not talk directly to each other.

Late on Thursday, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk told Egypt’s official MENA news agency that the Islamic militant group has agreed to an 18-month truce with Israel. He said it would be announced within two days after the group consults with other Palestinian factions, the news agency reported. Abu Marzouk said the deal calls for Israel to reopen its border crossings into Gaza, fulfilling Hamas’ central demand.

The border crossings have been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since Hamas violently seized power in the territory in June, 2007, defeating its rivals from the Fatah movement.

Taher Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Cairo with the group’s truce delegation, said Friday he expects an agreement “within the coming three days.” He said progress had been made on a cease-fire, on a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and on reconstruction funds for Gaza.

“Many obstacles have been resolved, especially stopping all forms of aggression and the issue of the quality and kind of goods (entering Gaza) and the opening of the border,” Nunu said in a statement e-mailed to reporters in Gaza.

Little has leaked from the Israeli side on the truce talks. In Jerusalem, government officials would not comment Friday.

Israeli defense officials said the talks were serious and making progress. An initial agreement could involve a partial opening of Gaza’s crossings, they said, with a later agreement to include the release of Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006, in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners demanded by Hamas. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the details remain classified.

Talks on Schalit’s release have stalled over disagreements about which prisoners Israel would free. The hundreds of names on Hamas’ list include senior militants and masterminds of deadly suicide bombings.

It is unclear how the results of Israel’s national election this week are affecting the Cairo talks. The election ended with the moderate foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, winning one more parliament seat than hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. But with a majority of hard-line lawmakers now in parliament, Netanyahu has better chances of cobbling together a coalition government. He met with potential allies Friday. Coalition wrangling is expected to last weeks, at least.

A new government is likely to be either a hard-line coalition led by Netanyahu or a centrist coalition involving a power-sharing arrangement between Netanyahu and Livni.

Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has become the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. Over 800 students, professors, and alumni have signed SJP’s “institutional statement” calling for the divestment.

The proposal put forth by SJP was approved on Saturday, 7 Feb 2009 by the Board. By divesting from these companies, SJP believes that Hampshire has distanced itself from complicity in the illegal occupation and war crimes of Israel.

Meeting minutes from a committee of Hampshire’s Board of Trustees confirm that “President Hexter acknowledged that it was the good work of SJP that brought this issue to the attention of the committee.” This groundbreaking decision follows in Hampshire’s history of being the first college in the country to divest from apartheid South Africa thirty-two years ago, a decision based on similar human rights concerns. This divestment was also a direct result of student pressure.

The divestment has so far been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Rashid Khalidi, Vice President of the EU Parliament Luisa Morganitini, Cynthia McKinney, former member of the African National Congress Ronnie Kasrils, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, John Berger, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, among others.

The six corporations, all of which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza are: Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola, and Terex (see attached info sheet for more information on these corporations.) Furthermore, our policy prevents the reinvestment in any company involved in the illegal occupation.

SJP is responding to a call from Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as a way of bringing non-violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law. SJP is following in the footsteps of many noted groups and institutions such as the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK, the Israeli group Gush Shalom, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the American Friends Service Committee.

As well as voicing our opposition to the illegal occupation and the consistent human rights violations of the Palestinian people, we as members of an institute of higher education see it as our moral responsibility to express our solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation.

SJP has proven that student groups can organize, rally and pressure their schools to divest from the illegal occupation. The group hopes that this decision will pave the way for other institutions of higher learning in the U.S. to take similar stands.

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 criticized President Barack Obama for not mentioning Gaza in his inauguration speech, and urged Muslims around the world to target U.S. interests to avenge American backing of Israel’s offensive against Hamas.

In a new audio recording posted Tuesday on the Internet, Ayman al-Zawahri also called on Muslims to continue fighting in the Gaza Strip, where a two-week truce remains fragile.

While Obama later voiced concerns about the killings of civilians, “in his inauguration speech, he gave no mention to what happened in Gaza,” al-Zawahri said.

“As for Obama, he has expressed his worries over the killing of civilians in Gaza. Worried? We really appreciate your worries Mr. Obama,” he said. “We have learned about your worries, as well as about thousands of the missiles and white phosphorus,” al-Zawahri added in a reference to charges that Israeli forces used phosphorous shells in a way that burned civilians in Gaza.

The recording was the second al-Zawahri has posted this year about the three-week offensive that began on Dec. 27. The terror network’s chief Osama bin Laden also issued an audio message on Gaza in January, urging Muslims to launch a jihad against Israel.

“The path to fighting the occupation is open to all Muslims,” al-Zawahri said in the recording accompanied by video and still images from the Gaza offensive. “Bring weapons into Gaza. … Punish everyone who stands against Gaza and the rest of the Muslim world.”

Al-Qaida holds little influence among Palestinians but the network’s Gaza-related postings are likely aimed at harnessing Muslim anger about the offensive and channeling it at the new U.S. administration.

The authenticity of the 17-minute recording could not be independently confirmed but it was posted on an Islamist militant Web site known as a clearing house for al-Qaida messages.

The recording opened with video scenes of Gaza, showing buildings exploding and wounded crowding into hospitals. Then it settled into a montage of still photographs showing the white-turbaned al-Zawahri, dead Palestinian children, and photographs of Egyptian and Saudi leaders, as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival.

Al-Zawahri, who is Egyptian, also lashed out at Arab rulers. He singled out Egypt for refusing to open its border with Gaza and preventing humanitarian access to the strip.

“Anybody who imposes a siege on Gaza is an enemy,” he said.

He urged Muslims to not just protest, but to attack U.S. and Israeli targets.

“The Israeli and American interests are spread everywhere,” he said. “If it (attack) doesn’t work in one place, it’s possible in other places. And if the enemy fortified some of its interests, many others remain without cover and under threat.”

President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy turned his attention to the Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank on Thursday as rockets thudded into southern Israel and Israeli warplanes attacked new targets in Gaza.

George Mitchell was seen entering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah and was due to meet later in the day with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

He is not meeting with Hamas, the Islamic group that is Abbas’ rival and the ruler of the Gaza Strip. The U.S., Israel and European Union have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group.

Mitchell held his first round of talks with regional leaders in Cairo and Jerusalem Wednesday to determine the next steps toward reviving peace negotiations following Israel’s blistering military offensive Hamas.

But a flare-up of violence in Gaza underscored the more immediate priority — shoring up a 10-day-old cease-fire. Palestinians fired a rocket into Israel early Thursday, and residents of the south Gaza town of Khan Younis said an Israeli airstrike there wounded an unidentified man on a motorcycle and five passers-by, among them children walking home from school.

The Israeli military said it targeted the motorcyclist because he was involved in a bomb attack Tuesday on the Gaza-Israel border which killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others.

On Wednesday Israeli warplanes struck Gaza smuggling tunnels and a weapons factory. There were no reports of casualties.

Israel and Hamas separately declared a cease-fire on Jan. 18, ending a three-week Israeli offensive that killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians and caused widespread destruction in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Thirteen Israelis also died in the fighting.

Israel launched the operation to end years of rocket fire on its southern towns.

International diplomats have been trying to work out arrangements for a longer-range truce. Israel wants an end to Hamas rocket attacks and weapons smuggling. Hamas wants Israel to end a crippling economic blockade of Gaza’s borders, imposed after the Islamic militant group seized power in June 2007.

After talks in Jerusalem Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mitchell said consolidating the cease-fire was “of critical importance.” He said a longer-term truce should be based on “an end to smuggling and reopening of the crossings” into Gaza.

Mitchell’s Mideast foray comes just a week after Obama took office, signaling the new U.S. administration’s willingness to make the region a priority. Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader and a broker of the 1998 Northern Ireland peace deal, said that after finishing his consultations in the region and with European leaders, he would report his recommendations to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mitchell was silent on the details of his meetings, and he has no news conferences planned during his seven-day tour.

In a meeting Wednesday night, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Mitchell that only a peace agreement which guaranteed Israeli security would win the approval of the Israeli public.

“In order for the peace negotiations to succeed, Israel must continue its war against terror wherever it exists and is directed against us,” her office quoted her as saying.

Livni has been Israel’s chief negotiator in the past 15 months of peace talks with Abbas’ government. Those talks have been put on hold due to the fighting in Gaza, and Israel’s political campaign ahead of a Feb. 10 parliamentary election.

The recent Israeli offensive has fueled new calls for Abbas’ Fatah movement and Hamas to reconcile. The sides met in Cairo this week for their first talks since Hamas took control of Gaza, and Egypt hopes to hold more substantive reconciliation talks by mid-February.

The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank — areas located on opposite sides of Israel. Israel says a peace agreement is impossible as long as Hamas remains in charge in Gaza.

In the meantime, it would be hard for the cease-fire to hold unless arrangements are made to stop the flow of arms to Hamas and end the blockade of the tiny coastal territory, which has deepened the deprivation there and trapped 1.4 million people inside.

Mitchell said the crossings should be opened on the basis of a 2005 agreement brokered by the U.S. that put the main crossing — the passage between Egypt and Gaza — under the management of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, with European monitors deployed to prevent smuggling.

However, Hamas wants a role at the crossings in recognition of its power in the territory. Israel and Abbas do not want Hamas there.

Olmert told Mitchell Wednesday that Hamas’ power in Gaza “must diminish” and Abbas must “gain a foothold” there, an Olmert aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity because their meeting was closed.

Olmert said crossings between Israel and Gaza “will only open permanently” after the freeing of Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier Gaza militants captured in June 2006, the aide said.

In Qatar on Wednesday, Hamas’ supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, said the group would not link the opening of crossings to the release of the Israeli soldier.

Hamas wants Israel to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit.

Egypt has been exploring the possibility of including some Hamas personnel in a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, but that would require some form of reconciliation between the factions, which remain bitter rivals.

Gaza residents headed for Friday communal prayers and Israeli naval guns were largely silent as grief and shock began to mix with a palpable sense of relief in the coastal strip pounded by weeks of Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults.

Gazans filled mosques without fear of Israeli strikes for the first time since cease-fires were declared by Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers Sunday. Residents had endured weeks of non-stop gunfire along Gaza’s coast after Israel launched a devastating offensive in late December.

Near two destroyed Gaza City mosques on Friday, men spread carpets on sandy ground to prepare for open-air prayers. In the main market of the Jebaliya refugee camp, large crowds shopped ahead of prayers and restaurants fired up huge vats with meat, cooking on wood fires because of a shortage of gas.

Fruit merchants boasted shipments of apples and bananas from Israel. One owner said it was the first time in five months he’d been able to sell fresh apples.

The three-week Israeli offensive killed 1,285 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Thirteen Israelis were also killed during the fighting, according to the government.

Despite signs that life was beginning to return to normal in Gaza, the six-day-old truce remained fragile, and the sides’ main demands for a durable cease-fire deal were unmet.

Israel insists on guarantees that Hamas will stop smuggling weapons into Gaza and halt its rocket fire on southern Israel, while Hamas wants Gaza’s borders open to ensure delivery of vital supplies.

President Barack Obama addressed both stands on Thursday, saying his administration supported implementation of a “credible” system for stopping smuggling and calling for Gaza’s borders to be opened for aid shipments, with “appropriate monitoring.”

“Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians,” Obama said. “I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days, and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who have faced suffocating poverty for far too long.”

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told The Associated Press during a visit to Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday that he was unimpressed by Obama’s comments.

“It is a real pity what Obama has said, because his statements were a repeat of what the previous president, George W. Bush, has said,” Abu Zuhri said.

“What has actually happened was a form of self defense against Israel’s colonization. What Obama should have said was how he could pressure Israel to stop its colonization in Palestine. If he said that, we would really appreciate it.”

Abu Zuhri said Hamas would keep up its fight against Israel. “As we are being colonized, it is our obligation to defend our motherland,” he said. “We want to free all Palestine, not just Gaza.”

Hamas’ leaders, who claim they won the fight against Israel, appear firmly in control of Gaza and now insist the money needed to reconstruct the devastated territory must go through them. This puts the United Nations and donor countries in a difficult position since Hamas refuses to discuss peace with Israel and is listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and Europe.

Israel, for its part, is coming under fire internationally for what critics say was its use of disproportionate force during its Gaza offensive.

After several cases in the past in which lawsuits were filed abroad against Israeli officers, Israel’s government is taking steps to protect military officials from legal action stemming from the Gaza operation.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed a government team to make legal preparations for such action. The team will begin work next week, said Shiri Crispin, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Justice Ministry. She would not give more specific details.

For the same reason, Israel’s military censor issued new orders this week forbidding media from publishing the names or photographs of officers between the rank of company commander and battalion commander. The officers can only be identified by the first letter of their name and their unit.

In an interview published Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv, Olmert defended the Gaza operation.

He said he cried when he heard about the death of the three daughters of Palestinian physician Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, an incident that was widely covered in Israel because the doctor trained in Israel and has many Israeli acquaintances.

“I cried when I saw this. Who didn’t? How could you not?” Olmert said.

But Olmert criticized accusations about “Israel’s cruelty,” saying Israel did what it needed to do to stop incessant rocket fire at its civilians and protect its troops.

“When you win, you automatically hurt more than you’ve been hurt. And we didn’t want to lose this campaign. What did you want, for hundreds of our soldiers to die? That, after all, was the alternative,” he said.

Sunday’s announcement came about 12 hours after Israel declared its own unilateral ceasefire.

Hamas’ Syrian-based deputy leader, speaking for the militant Palestinian factions, said on Syrian television that the cease-fire will give Israel time to withdraw and open all the border crossings to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

An Israeli security chief told Cabinet ministers the military operation “is not over” and that the next few days would be critical to determining whether it would resume.

The military said no one was injured by more than a dozen militant rockets that struck southern Israel ahead of the announcement from deputy Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk on Syrian television.

“We the Palestinian resistance factions declare a cease-fire from our side in Gaza and we confirm our stance that the enemy’s troops must withdraw from Gaza within a week,” Abou Marzouk said.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not say what level of violence would provoke Israel to call off the cease-fire.

“Israel’s decision allows it to respond and renew fire at our enemies, the different terror organizations in the Gaza Strip, as long as they continue attacking,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of the weekly Cabinet session.

“This morning some of them continued their fire, provoking what we had warned of,” Olmert said. “This cease-fire is fragile and we must examine it minute by minute, hour by hour.”

In Gaza, people loaded vans and donkey carts with mattresses and began venturing back to their homes to see what was left standing after the punishing air and ground assault the tiny seaside territory endured. Bulldozers began shoving aside rubble in Gaza City, the territory’s biggest population center, to clear a path for cars while medical workers sifting through mounds of concrete said they discovered 75 bodies. discovered dozens of bodies in the debris.

The Israeli cease-fire went into effect at 2 a.m. Sunday local time after three weeks of fighting that killed some 1,200 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials. At least 13 Israelis also died, according to the government.

An official who attended the Israeli Cabinet meeting quoted internal security service chief Yuval Diskin as telling ministers that “the operation is not over.”

“The next few days will make clear if we are heading toward a cease-fire or the renewal of fighting,” security chief Yuval Diskin was quoted as saying. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Cabinet meetings are closed.

Israel stopped its offensive before reaching a long-term solution to the problem of arms smuggling into Gaza, one of the war’s declared aims. And Israel’s insistence on keeping soldiers in Gaza raised the prospect of a stalemate with the territory’s rulers.

The cease-fire went into effect just days ahead of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration Tuesday. Outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration welcomed Israel’s decision and a summit set for later Sunday in Egypt is meant to give international backing to the truce.

Leaders of Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Turkey and the Czech Republic – which holds the rotating European Union presidency – are expected to attend along with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

Ban welcomed the cease-fire. “Urgent humanitarian access for the people of Gaza is the immediate priority,” he said, declaring that “the United Nations is ready to act.”

Israel said it was not sending a representative to the meeting. Hamas, shunned internationally as a terrorist organization, was not invited. However, the group has been mediating with Egypt and any arrangement to open Gaza’s blockaded borders for trade would likely need Hamas’ acquiescence.

In announcing the truce late Saturday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would withhold fire after achieving its goals and more.

“Hamas was hit hard, in its military arms and in its government institutions. Its leaders are in hiding and many of its men have been killed,” Olmert said.

If Hamas holds its fire, the military “will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us,” Olmert said. If not, Israel “will continue to act to defend our residents.”

In Gaza, people began to take stock of the devastation. The Shahadeh family loaded mattresses into the trunk of a car in Gaza City, preparing to return to their home in the hard-hit northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

“I’ve been told that the devils have left,” said Riyadh Shahadeh, referring to the Israelis. “I’m going back to see how I’m going to start again. I don’t know what happened to my house. … I am going back there with a heart full of fear because I am not sure if the area is secure or not, but I have no other option.”

In the southern town of Rafah, where Israel bombed dozens of smuggling tunnels, construction worker Abdel Ibn-Taha said he was very happy about the truce. “We’re tired out,” he said.

Schools in southern Israel remained closed in anticipation of possible rocket fire. Shortly before the rocket volley Sunday, the head of the Parents Association in the border town of Sderot, Batya Katar, said she was disappointed that Israel did not reach an agreement directly with Hamas, which Israel shuns.

“It’s an offensive that ended without achieving its aims,” Katar said. “All the weapons went through Egypt. What’s happened there?”

Israel apparently reasons that the two-phase truce would give it ammunition against its international critics: Should Hamas continue to attack, then Israel would be able to resume its offensive after having tried to end it.

Hamas, which rejects Israel’s existence, violently seized control of Gaza in June 2007, provoking a harsh Israeli blockade that has deepened the destitution in the territory of 1.4 million Palestinians. The Israeli war did not loosen Hamas’ grip on Gaza.

However, Hamas’ Syrian-based political chief Khaled Mashaal rejected Israeli conditions for a cease-fire and demanded an immediate opening of the besieged territory’s borders.

“I hope we are entering the end game and that our goal of sustained and durable quiet in the south is about to be attained,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

He said it was possible that Cabinet ministers would make a decision on a cease-fire as early as this weekend. But he said Israel was first waiting to receive reports from envoys who traveled Friday to Cairo and Washington to discuss terms of a truce.

Israel wants militants to halt rocket fire and international guarantees that militants won’t rearm before it agrees to a truce.

In the Qatari capital of Doha, Hamas chief Mashaal took a tough line and asked a summit of Arab countries to back him by cutting off any ties with Israel.

“We will not accept Israel’s conditions for a cease-fire,” Mashaal told the summit. He said Hamas demands that “the aggression stop,” Israeli troops withdraw and crossings into Gaza open immediately.

Israel embarked upon an air and ground war against Gaza militants on Dec. 27 to stop the rocket fire that has traumatized southern Israel for years. But the spiraling Palestinian death toll, which includes hundreds of civilians, has drawn international outrage and touched off intense diplomatic activity to end the violence.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on Dec. 27, including 346 children, according to the U.N. and Gaza health officials. The death toll rose by three dozen on Friday, including 25 people whose bodies were unearthed from rubble, Gaza health officials said.

Thirteen Israelis have been killed, four by rocket fire, according to the military.

The Israeli military kept up pressure on Hamas Friday. Before dawn, aircraft struck about 40 targets including smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border, a rocket launcher ready for firing and a mosque that housed a tunnel entrance and was also used to store arms, the military said.

In Washington, diplomats said the U.S. and Israel are working toward an agreement on the final working day of the Bush administration that would facilitate a cease-fire.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are to ink the deal on Friday. The pact also would assure Israel that additional steps will be taken to end weapons smuggling into Gaza and prevent Hamas from rearming. Diplomats say the text calls for enhanced intelligence cooperation and U.S. technical and logistical support for border monitors.

The diplomats say the hope is that the agreement will satisfy Israeli concerns about reopening Gaza border crossings and will be an important piece of an Egyptian cease-fire being negotiated in Cairo.

Earlier Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to the West Bank, urged Israel to declare a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, but Israel rebuffed the idea.

“I strongly urge Israeli leadership and government to declare a cease-fire unilaterally,” Ban said from Ramallah, the seat of the West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas. “It’s time to think about a unilateral cease-fire from the Israeli government.”

But Regev dismissed that idea.

“I don’t believe that there’s a logical expectation in the international community that Israel unilaterally cease fire while Hamas would continue to target cities, trying to kill our people,” he said.

Chief Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad arrived in Cairo for his second visit in two days to seek clarifications and express his views about the latest Egyptian cease-fire proposal.

An Egyptian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks, said “signs are encouraging” for a breakthrough” in negotiations over a cease-fire.

Palestinian medical officials reported an 11-year-old girl was killed in a shelling in northern Gaza and witnesses reported an airstrike on a Gaza City mosque as people were headed there for Friday prayers. The Israeli military had no comment.

Militants sent rockets flying at Israel more than 10 times, injuring three people, including one critically, officials said.

In the West Bank, Palestinian medics said Israeli soldiers shot dead a 20-year-old Palestinian during a violent protest against Israel’s Gaza Strip offensive.

Witnesses said demonstrators hurled rocks at troops who stopped them from marching into the Israeli-controlled sector of Hebron. The witnesses said the soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters but the man killed was hit by a live round to the head. Five other men were injured, medics said.

The army had no immediate comment.

Intense Israeli military activity in Gaza on Thursday exacted a steep price from Hamas when Interior Minister Said Siam was killed in an airstrike. Siam was the commander of Hamas security forces and was widely feared in Gaza.

A small crowd of mourners buried Siam in Gaza City on Friday. His white-shrouded body was draped in a green Hamas flag and some of the people who carried it chanted, “Greetings from Hamas!” One man fired an assault rifle in the area in a traditional salute.

Siam was seen as a main architect of the violent Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, when Hamas fighters expelled forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Abbas. He was the highest Hamas official killed in the offensive.

Hamas leaders went into hiding before the war began and none attended the funeral. But a statement distributed there in the name of Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said, “This new crime committed by the Zionist war machine will not affect the determination of our people or drive us to raise the flag of surrender.”

Bin Laden spoke in an audiotape posted Wednesday on Islamic militant Web sites where al-Qaida usually issues its messages. It was his first tape since May and came nearly three weeks after Israel started its campaign against Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

“There is only one strong way to bring the return of Al-Aqsa and Palestine, and that is jihad in the path of God,” bin Laden said in the 22-minute audiotape, referring to the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. “The duty is to urge people to jihad and to enlist the youth into jihad brigades.”

“Muslim nation, you are capable of defeating the Zionist entity with your popular capabilities and your great hidden strength — without the support of (Arab) leaders and despite the fact that most of (the leaders) stand in the barracks of the Crusader-Zionist alliance,” bin Laden said.

The authenticity of the tape could not be independently confirmed, but the voice resembled that of bin Laden in previous messages.

The tape, entitled “Call for jihad to stop the aggression on Gaza,” was played over a still picture of bin Laden and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, one of Islam’s holiest sites. But there were no English subtitles and flashy production effects that usually accompany such messages.

That suggested the message had been hastily put together and issued to best exploit anger in the region over the Gaza offensive, which Palestinian medical officials say has killed more than 940 Palestinians, half of them civilians. Israel said the offensive aims to halt rocket fire from Gaza against Israeli towns.

Bin Laden accused Arab leaders of “avoiding their responsibility” to liberate Palestine.

“If you are not convinced to fight, then open the way to those who are convinced,” he said.

Bin Laden and his lieutenants frequently use the Palestinian issue to try to rally support for al-Qaida and often call for holy war to free Jerusalem.

Israel‘s push into Tel Hawwa neighborhood was the farthest it has moved into Gaza City during its 18-day offensive against Hamas militants, and brought Israel’s ground forces within a mile of the crowded city center. Palestinian hospital officials say more than 900 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have been killed.

Israel launched the offensive on Dec. 27 to end years of Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern towns, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed to press forward with an “iron fist,” despite growing international calls for an end to the fighting. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was headed to the region Tuesday to press for a cease-fire.

Palestinian witnesses said the Israeli forces moved overnight about 300 yards into Tel Hawwa, a neighborhood of high-rise buildings on the southeastern edge of Gaza City. Palestinian medical officials reported at least 16 people killed in fighting, though the Israeli army suggested the number could be much higher.

One resident, Khader Mussa, said he fled his house while waving a white flag as the Israeli forces advanced. He spent the night huddling in the basement of a relative with 25 other people, including his pregnant wife and his parents.

“Thank God we survived this time and got out alive from here. But we don’t know how long we’ll be safe in my brother’s home,” Mussa, 35, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Several buildings were on fire, witnesses said, including a lumberyard. Sounds of the battle could be heard clearly around the city of 400,000 as the Israeli forces, backed by artillery and attack helicopters, moved into neighborhoods east and south of Gaza City. Israeli gunboats shelled the coast from the west.

The Israeli military said it carried out some 60 airstrikes overnight, hitting groups of Hamas militants holed up in a hotel, a house and a mosque. It said it also struck 15 squads of gunmen, rocket launching sites and 15 smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border.

The army said it had killed or wounded about 30 militants, and that three soldiers were wounded in overnight fighting. Among them was an officer who was seriously wounded when a bomb exploded in a northern Gaza house that he was searching. Weapons, including a machine gun, were later found in the house, the military said.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian Health Ministry official said dozens of calls for ambulances had been received, but they could not be dispatched because of the fighting.

The Gaza fighting has raised tensions around the region and galvanized anger toward Israel throughout the Arab world. On Tuesday, at least one gunman opened fire at an Israeli army patrol along the desert border between Israel and Jordan, the military said. There were no casualties, and Jordan said the claim was “baseless.”

There was a similar shooting incident on the Israel-Syria border on Sunday, and last week militants in Lebanon fired rockets into an Israeli town in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into a second front.

The Israeli military has tightly controlled information from the battlefield, but indications have been that Hamas has not put up a serious fight. Of the nine Israeli soldiers killed during the offensive, four were killed in “friendly fire incidents,” a military inquiry concluded. Repeated Hamas claims of spectacular attacks on the Israelis have turned out to be false.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Israel’s military chief said his troops have achieved a lot but “still have work to do” in fighting Hamas in Gaza.

“The soldiers are doing exceptional work, with many achievements in inflicting damage on Hamas, its infrastructure, its government and military wing,” he said.

Palestinian rocket fire has been greatly reduced, but not halted altogether, since the offensive was launched.

As diplomats struggled with the truce efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would end the military operations only when Hamas stops rocketing Israel and halts weapons smuggling across the porous border.

“Anything else will be met with the Israeli people’s iron fist,” Olmert said.

He spoke Monday in the town of Ashkelon, where life has largely been paralyzed by rocket fire from Gaza.

Later, he tempered his tough talk, saying: “I really hope that the efforts we are making with the Egyptians these days will ripen to a result that will enable us to end the fighting.” Egypt, which often mediates between Israel and Hamas, and international diplomats have been furiously working toward a solution that would stop the fighting.

In a speech broadcast on the group’s Al Aqsa TV station, Hamas’ prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, claimed his group would continue fighting, but said it was pursuing diplomacy to end the conflict. He said any truce would require an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the opening of the territory’s blockaded borders.

“As we are in the middle of this crisis, we tell our people we, God willing, are closer to victory. All the blood that is being shed will not go to waste,” Haniyeh said.

Like other Hamas leaders, Haniyeh is in hiding, and it was not clear from where he was speaking.

Inside Gaza on Monday, an Israeli battalion commander identified only as Lt. Col. Yehuda said troops had not met significant resistance. He said troops found several houses booby-trapped either with regular explosives, or by sealing the windows and doors and opening cooking gas valves.

“A couple of days ago, an armed squad popped up from a tunnel that was concealed by a nearby building. We took them out with tank fire and a bulldozer,” he said.

The officer’s comment was approved by Israeli military censors. He spoke to a small group of reporters who accompanied Israeli units inside Gaza. Israeli forces have not allowed journalists to enter Gaza to cover the war.

Much of the diplomacy focuses on an area of southern Gaza just across the Egyptian border that serves as a weapons smuggling route, making Egypt critical to both sides in any deal.

Israel wants smuggling tunnels along the border sealed and monitored as part of any peace deal, and has been bombing the tunnels throughout the campaign.

The U.N. Security Council has already passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire. Ban was headed to the Mideast on Tuesday to enforce the measure.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday, Ban said he has been on the phone constantly with top officials in the Middle East, Europe and the United States promoting the cease-fire. But he said phone calls are not a substitute for direct talks with leaders who have influence on the parties.

“To both sides, I say: Just stop, now,” the U.N. chief said. “Too many people have died. There has been too much civilian suffering. Too many people, Israelis and Palestinians, live in daily fear of their lives.”

The secretary-general said he plans to meet senior officials in Egypt and Jordan on Wednesday, then head to Israel, the West Bank, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait.

The fighting has raised concerns about a looming humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people are without power and running water. The Israeli army said about 100 truckloads of humanitarian aid, including wheat, flour and medical supplies, were expected to be let into the territory on Tuesday.

All this talk of a proportionate response and Israel defending itself seems to be off the mark by the numbers. If a man hits you and you beat up his whole family is that proportionate response? Is shooting a man for throwing a rock at your window defending yourself?

The Associated Press reports that as of Wednesday, January 14th, more than 985 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 400 civilians. This is comparison to 13 Israeli’s who have been killed, including 3 civilians. It is estimated that 40% of all the Gaza casualties have been civilians . From 2005 through 2007 there were 86 Israeli’s killed, 8 of which were civilians, meaning less than 10% of all Israeli’s killed during the time were civilians.

Barack Obama was on ABC’s this week and reiterated his statement  “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.”

Palestinians are seeing bombs dropped on their houses at a much more frequent rate than Israelis have had rockets shot at them, shouldn’t they have the right to defend themselves too? Way more Palestinian daughters have died because of this conflict than Israelis.

We’ve all heard the statement about how an aye for an eye leaves US all blind. What about an eye for 200 eyes?

Does Israel expect to be greeted as liberators in Gaza. Every family member they kill just adds to the desperation and hatred of Israel that creates the rocket launchers and the suicide bombers that they are trying to fight.

According to Wikipedia, since 2005 not including the recent conflict, there have been 1290 Palestinian casualties vs 86 Israeli casualties. Of those casualties, there were 222 Palestinian civilians killed vs 8 Israeli civilians killed. From 1987 through 2005 their have been 3196 Palestinian casualties including, 620 civilians and 946 Israeli casualties including 112 civilians.

So in these past two weeks, Israel has killed as many Palestinians as they have for the past 4 years.

In the face of the murder, terror and dead children, US politicians are not condemning the violence or the war but defending Israel’s right to defend themselves. David Patterson said “I believe the Israeli people, under constant attack from the Palestinian territories, have a right to protect themselves and I stand with them as they fight to defend the basic rights of humanity.”

Is Hamas not under attack by Israel is well? Given the disproportionate amount of casualties, isn’t it Palestine who is more need to defend their basic rights for humanity.

Mike Bloomberg said there is no measured response to terrorism, essentially saying that Israel has carte blanche to use what ever force it wants, regardless of civilian casualties.

I worked for many years as a teacher and had to break up several fights. If a 100 pound kid kicks 300 pound kid in the shins, and the 300 pound kid begins pummeling the 100 pound kid, I wouldn’t say that the 300 kid had a right to defend himself I would tell them both to stop fighting and try and break it up.

Maybe one of the reasons the US has been slow to criticize Israel is the Iraq war. 100,000 Iraqi civilians (some have estimated it in the millions) have been killed vs 4,000 soldiers.

If this were a boxing match it would’ve been declared a TKO a long time ago. If it were a football game, Israel would’ve put in their second string. Without a referee, the game has already gotten far out of hand.

In war there is rarely a right side and wrong side.  if Hamas was wrong for breaking the ceasefire, that does not mean Israel is right for killing 382 civilians.

Israel is doing very little to improve their relations with both Palestine and their middle eastern neighbors with the current war on Gaza. They are only fueling the hatred for Israel in the arab world.

While I’ve heard several good arguments justifying Israel’s actions. I’ve always been told that number and pictures don’t lie. Given the lopsided score on the casualty count and gruesome pictures of the casualties, it is very clear that Israel is in the wrong along with Hamas.

For more evidence of the brutality in Gaza check out a gallery of Palestinian casualties.

One Israeli airstrike killed two Hamas militants and another unidentified man, while another flattened a five-story building in northern Gaza, killing at least seven people, including an infant, Hamas officials said. Israeli aircraft struck more than 30 targets before dawn, and there were constant explosions after first light.

By midday, 19 Palestinians had been killed, pushing the death toll to more than 760 and in the two-week-old conflict, according to Gaza health officials who say at least half of those killed were civilians. Thirteen Israelis have also been killed.

A U.N. Security Council resolution approved Thursday night called urgently for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. The U.S., Israel‘s closest ally and a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, abstained.

While the call is tantamount to a demand on the parties, Israel’s troops won’t be required to pull out of Gaza until there is a durable cease-fire. The resolution calls on U.N. member states to intensify efforts to provide guarantees in Gaza to sustain a lasting truce, including prevention of illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.

In Israel’s first official response to the resolution, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert‘s office said the Hamas rockets fired at Israel Friday “only prove that the U.N.’s decision is not practical and will not be kept in practice by the Palestinian murder organizations.”

A Hamas spokesman said the Islamic militant group “is not interested” in the cease-fire because it was not consulted and the resolution did not meet its minimum demands.

Israel launched its assault on Dec. 27 in an attempt to halt years of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled territory.

Despite the devastating offensive, Hamas has kept up rocket attacks on southern Israel. The rockets fired Friday hit in and around two of the largest southern cities, Beersheba and Ashkelon. Cities within rocket range of Gaza have largely been paralyzed since the fighting began.

The Security Council action came hours after a U.N. agency suspended food deliveries to Gaza, and the Red Cross accused Israel of blocking medical assistance after forces fired on aid workers. It also followed concerns of a wider conflict after militants in Lebanon fired rockets into northern Israel early Thursday, though the border has been quiet since.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. “fully supports” the resolution but abstained “to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation” with Israel and Hamas, also aimed at achieving a cease-fire.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas envoy to Lebanon, told the al-Arabiya satellite channel that the group “is not interested in it because it does not meet the demands of the movement.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the U.N. failed to consider the interests of the Palestinian people.

“This resolution doesn’t mean that the war is over,” he told the Al-Jazeera satellite television network. “We call on the Palestinian fighters to mobilize and be ready to face the offensive, and we urge the Arab masses to carry on with their angry protests.”

Israel’s government says any cease-fire must guarantee an end to rocket fire and arms smuggling into Gaza. During a six-month cease-fire that ended with the current operation, Hamas is thought to have used tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border to smuggle in the medium-range rockets it is now using to hit deeper than ever inside Israel.

Hamas has said it won’t accept any agreement that does not include the full opening Gaza’s blockaded border crossings. Israel is unlikely to agree to that demand, as it would allow Hamas to strengthen its hold on the territory which it violently seized in June 2007.

With Israeli troops now in control of many of the open areas used by militants to launch rockets, gunman have continued shooting from inside populated neighborhoods.

The conflict has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza increasingly desperate for food, water, fuel and medical assistance, and the situation was expected to worsen as humanitarian efforts fall victim to the fighting.

One of the dead Thursday was a Ukrainian woman, the first foreigner to die in the fighting, according to Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain. He said the woman was married to a Palestinian doctor who trained in Ukraine and returned with her to Gaza. Her 2-year-old son was also killed in the tank shelling east of Gaza City, he said.

Details are emerging of other incidents in which civilians were killed. A U.N. agency said Israeli troops evacuated Palestinian civilians to a house in Gaza City on Jan. 4, then shelled the building 24 hours later, killing 30 people.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report was based on eyewitness testimony. It added details to an incident previously reported by The Associated Press and an Israeli human rights group.

The U.N. agency said 110 people were in the house. The 30 people reported killed is a far higher figure than in other accounts.

The Israeli military had no comment on the report Friday.

The West Bank saw its biggest protests so far Friday, as thousands took to the streets following prayers to express their anger at the Israeli offensive.

From Phillip Pullella at Reuters:

Relations between the Vatican and Israel grew tense on Thursday when the Jewish state condemned an aide to Pope Benedict for calling Gaza “a big concentration camp.”

Israel criticized Cardinal Renato Martino as the pope delivered a speech to diplomats in which he spoke out against the use of violence by both Israel and Hamas Islamists in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, delivered the Vatican’s toughest criticism of Israel since its offensive in the Palestinian-ruled enclave, calling Gaza a “big concentration camp.”

“We are astounded to hear from a spiritual dignitary words that are so far removed from truth and dignity,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Reuters.

“The vocabulary of Hamas propaganda, coming from a member of the College of Cardinals, is a shocking and disappointing phenomenon,” he said.

Jewish leaders around the world also condemned Martino.

Click here for the full report.

From Rami G. Khouri at the Middle East Online:

Of course, the immediate consequences of the Israeli assault on Gaza are felt primarily by the Palestinians in Gaza. But the political shockwaves will be felt throughout the Arab world in forms that cannot be easily predicted today. The Israeli attempt to inflict patricide — the killing of a country — on Gaza emphasizes a series of transformational trends that have been clear throughout the Arab region for about the past quarter century.

The most important trend concerns the reconfiguration of power, legitimacy and activism in the modern Arab state. As governments in existing Arab states effectively ignore what is happening in Gaza — to judge by their political immobility — we will continue to witness the weakening impact, control and even the legitimacy of many of those regimes. We will also continue to see the rise of non-state actors who become so strong and credible that they should be called parallel states.

Click here for the full story.

From Rashid Khalidi at The New York Times:

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

Click here for the full post.

Two people were lightly injured, and the rockets that exploded in Israel’s north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza.

No group claimed responsibility and Lebanon’s government, wary of conflict, quickly condemned the rocket fire. Israel fired mortar shells into southern Lebanon in response.

For a second straight day, Israel said it suspended is Gaza military operation for three hours to allow in humanitarian supplies.

Before the lull on Thursday, Israel killed at least 11 people in Gaza, including five militants, raising the death toll from its 13-day offensive to 699 people, according to Palestinian medical officials. The offensive is meant to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, but with roughly half the dead believed to be civilians, international efforts to broker a cease-fire have been gaining steam.

One of the Lebanese rockets went through the roof of a retirement home in Nahariya, about five miles from the border, and exploded in the kitchen as some 25 residents were eating breakfast in the adjacent dining hall. One resident suffered a broken leg, another bruises, apparently from slipping on the floor after emergency sprinklers came on.

“The rocket entered through the roof, hurling the water heaters into the air. It went through bedrooms upstairs and then into the kitchen. There was a serious blast,” said Henry Carmelli, the home’s manager.

About three hours later, air-raid sirens went off again. But authorities said it was a false alarm.

Israel has repeatedly said it was prepared for a possible attack on the north since it launched its bruising campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza on Dec. 27. Israel has mobilized thousands of reserve troops for such a scenario, and leaders have warned Hezbollah of dire consequences if it enters the fighting.

“We are following what is happening in the north. We are prepared and will respond as necessary,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the attacks and Israel’s retaliatory fire. The attacks are “the work of parties who stand to lose from the continued stability in Lebanon,” Saniora said.

Hezbollah, which did not comment, has said it does not want to draw Lebanon into a new war. Small Palestinian groups, who have rocketed Israel twice since the end of the 2006 war, have recently threatened to open a new front against Israel if the fighting in Gaza continued.

An Israeli Cabinet minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggested that Lebanese splinter groups, not Hezbollah, were responsible. He said the government had no interest in renewing hostilities.

“Even though we have the ability to respond with great force, the response needs to be carefully considered and responsible,” Sheetrit told Army Radio. “We don’t need to play into their hands.”

Shortly after the first rockets fell around the town of Nahariya, five miles south of the Lebanese border, Lebanese TV stations reported Israeli mortar fire on open areas in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military confirmed it carried out “pinpoint fire” in response without elaborating.

Israeli defense commentators said they expected the rocket fire to be a one-time show of solidarity with the Palestinians, not a declaration of war. Still, police said public bomb shelters throughout the north were opened.

Palestinians reported some two dozen airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday. One militant was killed and 10 wounded in Gaza City, while an airstrike in northern Gaza killed three members of a rocket-launching cell, Palestinian medical officials said. The attack took place about 150 yards from a hospital and wounded 12 bystanders. The Israeli army has repeatedly said militants use civilian areas for cover.

Nine other Palestinians were killed in separate incidents, including three civilians — en elderly man and two women — who were fleeing their homes in northern Gaza, officials said.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross said it found four small children alive next to their mothers’ bodies in the rubble of a Gaza home hit by Israeli shelling. The neutral aid group says a total of 15 dead were recovered from two houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday.

A Red Cross spokesman says rescuers had been refused permission by Israeli forces to reach the site for four days. It said the delay in allowing rescue services access was”unacceptable.”

The Israeli offensive has reduced Palestinian rocket fire, but not stopped it altogether. Several barrages were reported Thursday, including one strike that damaged a school and sports center in the southern city of Ashkelon, police said. Both buildings were empty.

For a second day, Israel’s Defense Ministry said the offensive was halted for three hours to allow Gaza residents to stock up on supplies and to allow aid shipments into the besieged area. Ministry spokesman Peter Lerner also said some 300 Palestinian holders of foreign passports would be allowed to leave.

The lull appears to be in response to international pressure on Israel to try relieve civilian suffering in Gaza. U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness said three hours was “wholly inadequate” and would not be enough to relieve widespread food and water shortages.

After Wednesday’s lull, Israel quickly resumed its offensive, bombing suspected smuggling tunnels near the border with Egypt after Hamas responded with a rocket barrage. Israeli planes destroyed at least 16 empty houses.

The tunnels are Hamas’ lifeline, used to bring in arms, money and basic goods. Israel says local homes are used to conceal the tunnels.

Of the Palestinians killed since Dec. 27, some 350 were civilians, among them 130 children, according to Palestinian medical officials. Eleven Israelis have been killed, including three civilians, since the offensive began. The army said Thursday that an infantry officer was killed by an anti-tank missile.

Growing international outrage over the human toll of Israel’s offensive, which includes 3,000 Palestinians wounded — could work against continued fighting. So could President Bush’s departure from office this month and a Feb. 10 election in Israel.

But Israel has a big interest in inflicting as much damage as possible on Hamas, both to stop militant rocket fire on southern Israeli towns and to diminish the group’s ability to play a spoiler role in peace talks with Palestinian moderates.

Despite the heavy fighting, strides appeared to be made on the diplomatic front with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying the U.S. supported a deal being brokered by France and Egypt.

While the U.N. Security Council failed to reach agreement on a cease-fire resolution, Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said representatives of Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority agreed to meet separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo.

Israeli envoys arrived in Egypt on Thursday to discuss the proposal.

For Israel to accept a proposed cease-fire deal, “there has to be a total and complete cessation of all hostile fire from Gaza into Israel, and … we have to see an arms embargo on Hamas that will receive international support,” said government spokesman Mark Regev.

For its part, Hamas said it would not accept a truce deal unless it includes an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza — something Israel says it is not willing to do. Israel and Egypt have maintained a stiff economic embargo on Gaza since the Hamas takeover.

The Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza — two territories on opposite sides of Israel that are supposed to make up a future Palestinian state. Hamas took control of Gaza from forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.

The Israeli Cabinet formally decided on Wednesday to push ahead with the offensive while at the same time pursuing the cease-fire.

The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive. Defense officials said the troops could be ready for action by Friday.

In Geneva, the international Red Cross said it found four small children alive next to their mothers’ bodies in the rubble of a Gaza home hit by Israeli shelling. The neutral aid group says a total of 15 dead were recovered from two houses in the Zaytun neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday.

A Red Cross spokesman said rescuers had been refused permission by Israeli forces to reach the site for four days. It said the delay in allowing rescue services access was “unacceptable.”

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site called pjtv.com.

Dubbed “Joe the Plumber” by McCain’s campaign, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama’s election.

Wurzelbacher says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants “go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story.”

Wurzelbacher later joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail.

At one stop, Wurzelbacher agreed with a McCain supporter who asked if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel.

With criticism rising of the operation’s spiraling civilian death toll and Gazans increasingly suffering the effects of nonstop airstrikes and shelling, Israel’s military said opened “humanitarian corridors” to allow aid supplies to reach Palestinians.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said the “recess in offensive operations” was aimed at allowing in supplies and fuel and would last from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m local time (6 a.m. to 9 a.m. EST). He said similar lulls in the coming days would be considered.

However, Lerner said that even during the pause “for every attack against the army, there will be a response.” Gaza residents reported scattered gunfire and explosions even after it was supposed to have gone into effect, but the scale of fighting appeared to drop.

As Israel’s leadership met in the morning in Tel Aviv, sounds of heavy gunfire and thick plumes of smoke engulfed the Zeitoun neighborhood east of Gaza City. Israel said it struck 40 Hamas targets during the hours of darkness. Gaza health officials said new strikes Wednesday morning killed eight people.

Outrage over an Israeli strike Tuesday near a U.N. school continued, with the U.N. agency responsible for the building demanding an “impartial investigation” into the attack. Gaza health officials put the death toll from the strike at 39, while the U.N. said 40 were killed.

Israel said its forces fired at militants who launched mortars from that location.

About 300 of the more than 670 Palestinians killed so far are civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. figures. Of those killed, at least 130 are children age 16 and under, says the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which tracks casualties.

The number of armed fighters killed remains unclear. Gaza residents say Hamas fighters are known to have begun wearing civilian clothes and the organization is keeping its casualties secret and housing its wounded and dead in undisclosed locations.

Israel has lost six soldiers since launching a ground offensive on Saturday, and four other Israelis have been killed by rocket fire, three of them civilians.

Israel’s lull in operations could ease the plight of civilians in Gaza, where much of the territory has no power or running water, because pumps are dependent on electricity.

More than 500 aid trucks have been shipped into Gaza since operations began. But even when aid crosses into Gaza military operations have prevented officials from distributing it, leading to food shortages in some areas.

A World Bank statement Wednesday said there are growing signs of a severe public health crisis in Gaza because of a shortage of drinking water and an escalating failure of the sewage system.

Militants hit the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Wednesday with a medium-range rocket, causing no casualties. Rocket fire has fallen off as Israeli troops tighten their hold on Gaza, taking over open areas used to launch rockets, but Gaza residents say militants are still launching from heavily populated areas.

Israel’s leaders — including the top troika of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak — were to discuss whether to broaden the operation in Gaza or move to accept a plan being proposed by Egypt and France to end the fighting.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the initiative calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel and Palestinian factions for a limited period to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and an urgent meeting of Israel and the Palestinian side on arrangements to prevent any repetition of military action and to deal with the causes.

International Mideast envoy Tony Blair said Tuesday the key to any cease-fire will be an arrangement to stop weapons smuggling over the Gaza-Egypt border.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday he saw the proposal as a “small hope” for ending the Gaza violence.

Israeli officials have said any cease-fire agreement must prevent further rocket attacks by Gaza militants and put in place measures to prevent the smuggling of missile and other weapons into the small Palestinian territory. Hamas has demanded that Israel open Gaza’s blockaded crossings as part of any agreement.

In the meantime, Israel has been making preparations to continue fighting. The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive, supporting the three brigade-size formations of regular troops now inside. Defense officials said the troops could be ready for action by Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the army’s preparations are classified.

The Franco-Egyptian plan was given increasing urgency by the Israeli mortar strike near a U.N. school that stained the streets with blood.

The United Nations said the school was sheltering hundreds of people displaced by the onslaught on Hamas militants. Israel said its troops returned fire on a Hamas squad that fired mortars at them from nearby.

Israel’s military said its shelling — the deadliest single episode since Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza on Saturday following a weeklong air bombardment — was an attack on a military target and accused Hamas militants of using civilians as cover.

Christopher Gunness of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the school, said the agency is “99.9 percent certain there were no militants or military activity in its school.”

That would not necessarily contradict Israel’s claim that the militants were just outside.

Gunness demanded an investigation, and punishment for anyone found to have violated international law.

Two residents of the area who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Gunness said 1,300 people were taking shelter from the shelling at the school.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said there were no militants there at the time.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the presence of militants did not justify Israel’s response. “The presence of armed resistance does not justify in any way the use of excessive force that is disproportionate,” the center said in a statement.

The carnage, which included 55 wounded, added to a surging civilian toll and drew mounting international pressure for Israel to end the offensive against Hamas.

From Steve Holland at Reuters:

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, breaking his silence about the Gaza war, expressed deep concern on Tuesday about civilian deaths in Gaza and in Israel and vowed to push for Middle East peace when he takes power.

Speaking after Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, Obama said “the loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern for me.”

Obama otherwise said he would adhere to his principle that only U.S. President George W. Bush would speak for American foreign policy at this time, but said he would have plenty more to say after his January 20 inauguration.

He expressed deep concern about the conflict but made no mention of a “durable, sustainable and not time-limited” cease-fire sought by the Bush administration.

Click here for the full report.

From Habib Battah at Al Jazeera:

The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel’s war on Gaza.

On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

Click here for the full story.

It was the second fatal strike in the vicinity of a U.N. school in hours, and the deadliest assault since Israel sent ground forces into Gaza last weekend. The ground operation is part of a larger offensive against the ruling Hamas militant group that has killed nearly 600 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, according to U.N. and Palestinian officials.

Ignoring international calls for a cease-fire, Israeli soldiers edged closer to Gaza’s major population centers. A total of 58 Palestinians were killed Tuesday in fighting — with just two confirmed as militants, health officials in Gaza said.

“There’s nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized,” John Ging, the top U.N. official in Gaza, said after the first strike on the compound of a U.N. school killed three people.

A Palestinian rocket — one of two dozen fired from Gaza on Tuesday — wounded an Israeli infant.

The United Nations said three civilians were killed in the first airstrike late Monday on the courtyard of its school, where hundreds of people from a Gaza City refugee camp had sought shelter from Israel’s blistering 11-day offensive.

A second Israeli strike about 10 yards (meters) outside a U.N. school in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya. Witnesses reported several explosions, and it was not immediately clear whether they were caused by Israeli airstrikes or tank shells.

Dr. Bassam Abu Warda, director of Kamal Radwan Hospital, said 34 people were killed.

“I saw a lot of women and children wheeled in,” said Fares Ghanem, another hospital official. “A lot of the wounded were missing limbs and a lot of the dead were in pieces.”

Majed Hamdan, an AP photographer, said he rushed to the scene shortly after the attacks. 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.”

He said there were marks of five separate explosions, all in the same area outside the school.

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

The army declined comment, but said Hamas often uses schools, mosques and civilian areas for cover. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev also refused to react, saying he was waiting for the military to comment.

The international Red Cross said an ambulance post was hit as well on Tuesday, injuring one medical worker.

Israel launched its offensive on Dec. 27 to halt repeated Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern towns. After a weeklong air campaign, Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza over the weekend.

Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 100 civilians, according to United Nations and the latest Palestinian figures. Ten Israelis have died since the operation began, including a soldier who was shot on Tuesday.

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

United Nations staff estimate around 15,000 people have fled to 23 U.N.-run schools they have turned into makeshift refuges. U.N. food aid has halted in the northern Gaza Strip because officials fear residents would risk their lives to reach distribution centers.

Tanks rumbled closer to the towns of Khan Younis and Dir el Balah in south and central Gaza but were still several kilometers (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.

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.

“This is not a crisis, it’s a disaster,” said water utility official Munzir Shiblak. “We are not even able to respond to the cry of the people.” He said about 800,000 residents in Gaza City and northern parts of the territory had no access to running water from Tuesday.

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 battle is bitter but unavoidable. We set out on this operation in order to deal Hamas a heavy blow and to alter living conditions in the south of the country and to block smuggling into the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

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 (40 kilometers) from the Gaza border, lightly wounding a 3-month-old infant, police said. At the outset of the fighting, militants launched dozens of rockets each day.

Hamas is believed to have 20,000 fighters.

Israeli forces have seized the main Gaza highway in several places, cutting the strip into northern, southern and central sectors 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.

Late Monday, a paratroop officer and three Israeli infantrymen were killed in two separate friendly fire incidents, the military said. Heavy Israeli casualties could threaten to undermine what so far has been wide public support for the operation.

A high-level European Union delegation met with President Shimon Peres on Tuesday in a futile bid to end the violence. Commissioner Benita Ferraro-Waldner acknowledged Israel’s right to self-defense, but said its response was disproportionate.

“We have come to Israel in order to advance the initiative for a humanitarian cease-fire and I will tell you, Mr. President, that you have a serious problem with international advocacy, and that Israel’s image is being destroyed,” she said, according to a statement from Peres’ office.

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.

Israeli leaders say there is no humanitarian crisis and that they have allowed the delivery of vital supplies.

The EU delegation was one of a flurry of diplomatic efforts to forge a cease-fire. French President Nicolas Sarkozy left Israel after a day of meetings with leaders.

Europe “wants a cease-fire as quickly as possible,” Sarkozy said Monday, urging Israel to halt the offensive, while blaming Hamas for acting “irresponsibly and unpardonably.”

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stressed to Sarkozy 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.

International Mideast envoy Tony Blair said ensuring weapons smuggling to Hamas is halted would be a key step to restoring calm.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Blair said that stopping Hamas’ rocket supply would be a “very significant advance in terms of Israel’s security,” which would allow Israel to halt its offensive and relieve the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.

He would not give details of an international proposal to stop the flow of weapons into Gaza from Egypt.

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. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival who runs a separate government from the West Bank, was expected Tuesday morning to press his case.

Before Tuesday’s deaths, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said the overall Palestinian toll since the opening of the Gaza campaign on Dec. 27 stood at about 500, with about 125 of them civilians.

Israeli forces detained 80 Palestinians — some of them suspected Hamas members — and transferred several to Israel for interrogation, said military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to release the information.

Israel’s operation has angered many across the Arab world and has drawn criticism from countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, which have ties with Israel and have been intimately involved in Mideast peacemaking.

From Foreign Policy Watch:

When President-elect Barack Obama takes office in two weeks, he will immediately be faced with two elusive foreign policy problems whose resolution has evaded every post-war US president: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Indo-Pakistani rivalry. Each has visibly reasserted itself in its own way in recent weeks, as Israel has trounced Hamas-related installations in Gaza in retaliation for the latter’s rocket attacks, and as Pakistan has diverted troops to its border with India in the wake of New Delhi pressure over November’s attacks in Mumbai.

While both are messy and seemingly intractable, they have only assumed greater urgency over the last few months. And both old problems pose new challenges for the incoming administration.

Click here for the full report.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel assassinated a Hamas strongman Thursday in its first assault on the top leadership of Gaza’s rulers, escalating a crushing aerial offensive even as it declared it was ready to launch a ground invasion.

The airstrike targeted the four-story apartment building that was home to 52-year-old Nizar Rayan, ranked among Hamas’ top five decision-makers in Gaza. It also killed 12 other people including two of Rayan’s four wives and four of his 12 children, Palestinian health officials said. The Muslim faith allows men to have up to four wives.

While intensifying its 6-day-old military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Israel also appeared to be sounding out a possible diplomatic exit by demanding international monitors as a key term of any future truce.

Israel launched the offensive Saturday to crush militants who have been terrorizing southern Israel with rocket fire from Gaza.

The campaign began after more than a week of intense Palestinian rocket fire that followed the expiration of a six-month truce. Israeli warplanes have carried out some 500 sorties against Hamas targets, and helicopters have flown hundreds more combat missions, a senior Israeli military officer said Wednesday.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded, Gaza health officials said. The U.N. says the death toll includes more than 60 civilians, 34 of them children.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one-eighth of the population within rocket range.

Israel has made clear that no one in Hamas is immune from attack and Thursday’s strike drove that point home. It flattened Rayan’s apartment building, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air and heavily damaged several neighboring buildings.

Hamas leaders went into hiding before Israel launched its operation, but Rayan was known for openly defying Israel.

A professor of Islamic law, Rayan was closely tied to Hamas’ military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza.

Throughout the day, huge blasts had rocked cities and towns across Gaza as Israeli warplanes went after Gaza’s parliament building, militant field operatives, police and cars. The military said aircraft also bombed smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, part of an ongoing attempt to cut off Hamas’ last lifeline to the world outside the embattled Palestinian territory.

So far, the campaign to crush rocket fire on southern Israel has been conducted largely from the air. But military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said preparations for a ground operation were complete.

“The infantry, the artillery and other forces are ready. They’re around the Gaza Strip, waiting for any calls to go inside,” Leibovich said.

Hamas threatened to take revenge against Israeli soldiers who were massed along the border with Gaza, waiting for a signal to invade.

“We are waiting for you to enter Gaza to kill you or make you into Schalits,” it said, referring to Sgt. Gilad Schalit who was seized by Hamas-affiliated militants 2- 1/2 years ago and remains in captivity.

Israeli Cabinet ministers have been unswayed by international calls to end the violence, which is to include a whirlwind trip around the region next week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Instead, they authorized the military to push ahead with its campaign against militants, who fired more than 30 rockets into Israel by late Thursday afternoon, according to the military. No injuries were reported, but an eight-story house in Ashdod, 23 miles from Gaza, was hit by a rocket that pierced through two floors.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of mayors of southern communities Thursday that Israel would not shy from using its vaunted military power.

“We have no interest in a long war. We do not desire a broad campaign. We want quiet,” Olmert said. “We don’t want to display our might, but we will employ it if necessary.”

Ordinary Israelis are not eager to see the operation expand beyond the air-based campaign, a poll Thursday showed.

Earlier this week, Olmert rebuffed a French proposal for a two-day suspension of hostilities. But at the same time, he seemed to be looking for a diplomatic way out, telling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders that Israel wouldn’t agree to a truce unless international monitors took responsibility for enforcing it, government officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

International intervention helped Israel to accept a truce that ended its 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, when the U.N. agreed to station peacekeepers to enforce the terms. This time, Israel isn’t seeking a peacekeeping force, but a monitoring body that would judge compliance on both sides.

The idea was floated before the offensive but did not gain traction because of the complications created by the existence of rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza, defense officials said.

Gaza has been under Hamas rule since the militant group overran it in June 2007; the West Bank has remained under the control of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been negotiating peace with Israel for more than a year but has no influence over Hamas. Bringing in monitors would require cooperation between the fierce rivals.

An Abbas confidant said the Palestinian president supports international involvement.

“We are asking for a cease-fire and an international presence to monitor Israel’s commitment to it,” Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

Israel posted video of its attacks on rocket launchers over the past five days on a new YouTube channel to try to show the world the threat against it.

But YouTube temporarily yanked the clips on Tuesday after viewers, apparently supporters of Hamas, flagged it as objectionable and asked that it be taken down. The video sharing Web site restored the video a few hours later, labeling it inappropriate for minors.

“The blogosphere and the new media are basically a war zone” in a battle for world opinion, military spokesman Maj. Avital Leibovich said Wednesday.

Leibovich said the new YouTube channel and a new blog the military is launching are an important part of Israel’s attempt to explain its actions abroad.

One of the aerial surveillance videos Israel posted shows about a dozen figures the military says are militants loading rockets onto a truck. They are eventually targeted by an air-launched missile and disappear in a white cloud as the truck explodes.

“We were saddened on Dec. 30, 2008 when YouTube took down some of our exclusive footage,” the military wrote on its YouTube channel page. “Fortunately, due to blogger and viewer support, YouTube has returned the footage they removed.”

YouTube did not immediately reply to an e-mail requesting comment. In the past, YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., has been pressed to take down videos depicting violence. The site has no automatic review, however, so anything posted runs until a viewer flags it and asks that it be taken down.

In May, Sen. Joseph Lieberman complained that the process was flawed because al-Qaida recruitment videos could still be seen on the site.

The military says its clips have attracted more than 230,000 hits since going online Monday.

Israel launched the air assault on Saturday in response to rocket barrages launched from Gaza at Israeli towns. Hundreds of airstrikes across the Palestinian territory have caused huge damage and Gaza officials say some 390 Palestinians have been killed. Hamas says some 200 were members of its security forces, and the U.N. says at least 60 were civilians.

Militant rockets have reached farther into Israel than ever before, killing three Israeli civilians and a soldier.

Click here for the official Israeli YouTube Channel.

Spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Texas that President Bush had a detailed briefing early Monday by video conferencing with Vice President Dick Cheney, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and national security adviser Stephen Hadley.

Johndroe blamed the militant Hamas organization for the latest wave in violence, saying that it broke a six-month cease-fire agreement arranged by Egypt. He said that Hamas has “shown its true colors as a terrorist organization.”

At the same time, Johndroe said the United States has asked Israel to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.

But the spokesman declined to respond to questions about whether the United States believes Israel is ready to launch a ground attack on Gaza.

He said that Bush had spoken early Monday with King Abdullah of Jordan, and had spoken on Saturday with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Johndroe said the Israeli actions were “in response to the mortar and rocket attacks on Israel” and said that the United States has asked Israel to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.

Johndroe also said that parties on all sides should clear the way for humanitarian assistance such as food and medical supplies in Gaza.

Asked if the administration believes it permissible for Israel to launch attacks in Gaza, Johndroe said, the spokesman replied: “The United States understands that Israel needs to take actions to defend itself.”

Johndroe repeated that President-elect Barack Obama is getting daily intelligence briefings “and we will continue to stay in touch with his staff as developments warrant.”

Johndroe said that “at this time” there are no plans for Bush to speak on the issue.

He said he did not want to speculate too heavily on the impact the new violence will have on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Asked why Hamas broke the cease-fire, “You know, it’s hard for me to get into the minds of terrorists … so it’s impossible for me to answer.”

Asked if the Israelis would be justified in seeking to destroy Hamas if it does not renounce further rocket attacks, he said, “I think what people want is peace on the ground and an end to the violence so people can go about living normal lives, and especially people in southern Israel, who spend so much time living in bomb shelters. It’s unacceptable.”

He said the ultimate goal of Israelis is “for their people to be able to live in peace.”