Oil Exporters Ignore Iran’s Call for Embargo Over Gaza War

Hello from Lahore, Pakistan!  I just arrived today and plan to base here for at least the next six months.  There is so much going on here at the moment that I feel very fortunate to have a front row seat.  I am extremely eager to hear about new and interesting story ideas here in the country so I invite you all to submit some suggestions.  

In the meantime, I wrote the story below in Dubai last week regarding calls for an oil embargo against supporters of Israel over the Gaza crisis.  As of today, about 1,000 Palestinians have been killed as the result of Israel’s attack on Gaza, most of them civilians.  Please consider ways in which you can help the poor people of Gaza rebuild after this destructive conflict with Israel.

by VIVIAN SALAMA

MIDDLE EAST TIMES

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Cozy economic ties with the West and cool heads have led the Arab Gulf’s leading oil exporters to ignore calls by Iran for an oil embargo against supporters of Israel over the Jewish state’s military offensive in Gaza. 

Mirfaysal Bagherzadeh, brigadier-general of Iran’s hard-line Revolutionary Guard, has urged Muslim countries to cut oil exports to Israel’s allies as punishment for their inaction against the its “unequal war” on the Palestinian territory.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, responded this week saying that the use of oil as a weapon in the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a solution.

“The oil producers who need their income … are not going to do that,” he said at a news conference in Riyadh. “The use of oil, especially at this time, is an idea that is at least past its worth.”

The comments from Tehran echoed sentiments by members of Bahrain’s lower house of parliament earlier in the week that “all retaliation options” should be considered by Arab governments against the Israeli aggression.

While the tiny Gulf kingdom is not a major oil exporter, it is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

“Bahraini and Kuwaiti parliaments are quite renowned for nationalistic and even Islamist voices that do not necessarily reflect the position of their particular governments,” said Neil Partrick, assistant professor of international studies at the American University of Sharjah.

The renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza have claimed nearly 1,000 lives since they started on Dec. 27.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and a delegation of European Union foreign ministers have been meeting with Arab heads-of-state in an attempt to broker a cease-fire and bring both parties back to the negotiating table.

Israel’s government has been accused of heavy-handed tactics resulting in huge destruction of infrastructure and high civilian casualties.

Protesters have come out in large numbers in cities across the region demanding that their governments take action to stop Israel and make it take responsibility for the heavy losses.

A statement released this week by the Saudi cabinet accused “the policy of war, violence, murder and torture practiced by Israel against the Gaza Strip and throughout Palestine” as demonstrative of the “extremist political parties in Israel and abroad aiming at [the] restructuring of the region of the Middle East according to their terms.”

The Saudi government also criticized American nepotism toward Israel. Speaking at this week’s U.S.-Gulf Forum, the Saudi deputy foreign minister said that the United States has “adopted policies full of flaws against the Gulf nations and the Middle East while it has been extending all-out support to Israel.”

For countries in the Gulf, their oil wealth has historically proven to be a mighty weapon in times of turmoil. Flash back to the now infamous oil embargo by Arab producers during the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the armies of Egypt and Syria. The boycott sent shock waves around the world – the market price for oil soaring almost immediately from $3 a barrel to $12.

Arab oil producers would subsequently take a hit, however, as consumption dropped by 5 percent over the following two years. The crisis served as a wake-up call for countries in the West to seek alternative sources of energy and ultimately, reduce dependency on oil imports.

Today, Saudi Arabia is the only major Middle East oil supplier to the United States. The United Arab Emirates, Oman and Iran sell mostly to Asia, while Kuwait divides its exports among countries in Asia and Europe, while sending only a small amount to the United States.

“So the phrase ‘we need to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil’ is actually a misnomer,” said Raja Kiwan, an energy analyst with PFC Energy, a Bahrain-based consultancy. “Most of [Iran's] oil is sold to Asia, so the comments by the Revolutionary Guard should be seen as political rhetoric.”

Like other oil producers in the region, Iran depends on oil revenue for as much as 90 percent of its foreign income – and is currently suffering as the result of plummeting oil prices. An export ban is therefore believed by analysts to be in no one’s interest – most of all, the oil producers.

“The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] has no appetite for an oil embargo because the embargo of the 1970’s was quite damaging economically for the Gulf countries,” noted Partrick.

Martin Lovegrove, vice chairman of oil and gas for Standard Chartered Bank in London said that oil producers must consider the implications an oil embargo could have on their domestic economies.

“Some, if not the majority, of these countries would certainly have to tighten their belts should they have an embargo, and not just for the short-term,” he said.

“An embargo could increase prices again at a time of true economic sensitivity in the world financial, business and personal economic markets [and] this could delay any real term recovery in prices.”

Explaining Israel’s Military Strategy

by Vivian Salama

PostGlobal – WashingtonPost.com

It can be suggested that the build-up to this crisis in the Middle East began in 1967, when Israel earned itself a reputation – regionally and globally – as a military power to be reckoned with. In just six days, Israeli Defense Forces advanced to the edge of the Suez Canal, and in one foul swoop, gained control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, and the whole of Jerusalem.

It was not until the Yom Kippur War of 1973 that Israel’s military would fall from grace, not by a decisive defeat or loss of land, but more symbolically in the face of a somewhat attenuating Arab military resistance.

In 2006, Israeli forces launched an unforgiving attack on Hezbollah strongholds in Southern Lebanon responding to the abduction of IDF officers both in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. The savvy and unexpected resistance campaign orchestrated by Hezbollah fighters during the month-long war earned the group global recognition, with the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah hailed a hero across the Muslim world.

While the Israeli government maintained that its heavy-handed response was warranted in the face of an Hezbollah uprising, the Jewish State received staunch criticism for use of unnecessarily brutal force which claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians. For Israel, the 2006 conflict bore scars far deeper than its government may have anticipated as the world watched Hezbollah fighters defiantly take on the 600-pound gorilla.

Today, Israel may have earned itself another reputation – not just as a military power, but one that might be considered particularly merciless.

The images of smoke plumes, destruction and death emanating from Gaza over the past few days are a somber reminder of the country’s 2006 clash with Hezbollah and the great reality that years of neglect are wearing heavily on any hope for Arab-Israeli peace. Israel’s deadly response on Hamas and residents of the Gaza Strip is increasingly looking like an attempt to regain an air of indestructibility, and less like a defense strategy. The embattled government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, still reeling from the ineffective military campaign of 2006, has but a few months left to salvage its reputation, as well as the beset image of Israel.

This point was illustrated in an analysis by Yossi Sarid, published over the weekend in Israel’s Haaretz Newspaper. Sarid wrote: “A million and a half human beings, most of them downcast and desperate refugees, live in the conditions of a giant jail, fertile ground for another round of bloodletting. The fact that Hamas may have gone too far with its rockets is not the justification of the Israeli policy for the past few decades, for which it justly merits an Iraqi shoe to the face.” [http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050451.html]

Gaza has already been shut to the outside world for some 19 months, making it more of an open-air prison for its 1.5 million residents. Now, according to international aid agency Oxfam, most humanitarian work in the territory has been forced to a standstill and a program that would feed 25,000 people had also been put on hold.

The repercussions of Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza this week may come back to haunt it if it does not show mercy in the face of a humanitarian disaster. With its message now reverberating across the Gaza Strip, Israel should halt all attacks and give Hamas a hard deadline for compliance.

They say in life, timing is everything. For Israel, the timing could not be more ideal to wage this unforgiving show of strength on Hamas and with it, residents of the Gaza Strip who, in early 2006, may have cast a vote for Hamas. For one, the military campaign came sandwiched in between Christmas and New Year celebrations when much of the Western world is off from work, away from their television sets, and unwilling to acknowledge any bad news that does not directly involve them.

Further, much of the world is now busy piecing together what is left of the global economy and Washington has entered a twilight period where neither the lame duck president nor the president-elect is willing to make any significant statements or policy decisions that may alienate the other. This latest eruption of violence in the Middle East sends President George W. Bush out the door, tail between his legs, with a staunch reminder of his failed promise to revitalize his “Roadmap to Peace” plan before the end of 2008.

President-elect Barack Obama, meanwhile, has a unique opportunity to make history in the Middle East, just as he made history at home. The road to fixing the diplomatic disaster created by the Bush Administration in Iraq runs through Jerusalem. This new outbreak of violence should, if nothing else, move the Arab-Israeli conflict back to the top of the incoming administration’s “things to fix in the Middle East” list. The first step toward winning the hearts and minds of people from Morocco to Pakistan lies in a fair and genuine solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Hossein Deraskshan Arrested

I received some troubling news today about a friend of mine – journalist and blogger Hossein Derakhshan.  Hossein was arrested in Tehran, allegedly on charges of spying for the Israeli government.  Last week he was detained in Tehran, and Jahan News, an Iranian Pres Agency, put out news that he had ‘confessed’ to spying for Israel. No one has heard from his since, and his blog has not been updated for weeks.

Hossein had a very highly publicized trip to Israel a few years back which he not only blogged about (with video) and which was also highly covered in the Israeli media.  He’s been studying in Canada and then London for several years now and was returning home to live with his family. I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he was really thrilled to be returning home.

I wrote an article about Hossein a few years ago — that is how we met and have since become friends.  Here is my article, which illustrates his last run in with the Iranian authorities:

Arab and Iranian Bloggers: Emerging Threat to Official Line

 I suspect he is in a lot of trouble.  Charges like this are no joke in Iran, as the article below indicates.

Iran Executes Man in Spy Case, and Blogger’s Arrest Is Reported

By NAZILA FATHI

Published: November 22, 2008

TEHRAN — Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Saturday.

The agency reported that Ali Ashtari was executed by hanging on Monday. It said he was arrested in 2006 and confessed during his trial in June to spying for Israel through security and telecommunication equipment.

Iranian news media reported in June that Mr. Ashtari, 45, had received a death sentence for spying. At the time, newspapers said he had been the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.

An Israeli official said in June that Israel had no knowledge of his case.

Tension between Iran and Israel has escalated in recent months over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has not ruled out launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran does not recognize Israel as a state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken of Israel with hostility since his election in 2005.

A Web site affiliated with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has reported that a high-profile blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was also arrested this month and accused of spying for Israel. Judiciary officials have not confirmed his arrest but the Web site, Jahan News, reported that he had confessed to spying for Israel.

Mr. Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian, had lived in Canada since 2000 but moved back to Tehran a few weeks ago. He traveled to Israel in 2007 and wrote about it on his blog.

Abraham Rabinovich, an Israeli journalist who interviewed Mr. Derakhshan in Jerusalem two years ago, described him in an op-ed article for The International Herald Tribune on Friday as an “Iranian patriot” who through his blog “offered the first views of ordinary life in Israel that Iranians had been able to see.”

Mr. Rabinovich quoted Mr. Derakhshan as saying: “I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying, that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood. And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel.”

Help Students in Gaza Get a Better education

I received this email today from a contact of mine regarding an initiative by an Israeli nonprofit organization looking to help students in Gaza leave the besieged territory to get a better education.  I think it is really honorable and I hope people can help!

———–

Greetings,

I write to ask you to join us in helping hundreds of Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip reach their universities abroad. Since June 2007, Gaza’s borders have been closed, trapping 1.5 million people – including hundreds of talented young people accepted to universities abroad but prevented from reaching their studies. Last year, Israel permitted approximately 500 students and dependents to reach their studies abroad via “shuttle” services, but this year, Israel says that students will not be permitted to leave Gaza – except for a few dozen with prestigious scholarships to Western countries.

Hundreds remain trapped, in danger of losing hard-won places at universities all over the world. I refer you to Gisha’s report, “Held Back-Students Trapped in Gaza” (June 2008) and Gisha’s Power Point Presentation, “Students STILL Trapped in Gaza” (July 2008).

 

Today we are launching an online campaign aimed at recruiting international support for the right of Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip to reach their studies abroad. By clicking on the banner above you’ll reach the campaign’s mini-site: www.trappedingaza. org

The campaign is accessible in three languages - English, Arabic and Hebrew - and we hope to communicate it via e-mail, social networks, blogs and other websites.

How can you help?

1.       Join the campaign by logging on to the mini-site and asking Israel’s leaders to let students in Gaza access education;

2.       Spread word of the campaign by forwarding this message to others;

3.       Feature the banner on your website or blog.  You may choose a banner to download at this link.

4.       Click on the mini-site for further action.

Please join us in helping Gaza’s young people exercise their right to freedom of movement and to access education – and to build a better future in the region. 

Best Regards,

Sari Bashi, Executive Director

Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement

Israeli food company: We won’t sell produce grown by Arabs

I found this story in Ha’aretz today to be really disturbing.  Already Palestinian farmers are at the mercy of road blocks and travel bans.  These people are suffering enough – not just from Israeli restrictions, but from the conflict within their embattled territories that is completely out of their hands.  This is really just the icing on the cake.  So sad. – VMS  

Israeli food company: We won’t sell produce grown by Arabs By Amiram Cohen, Haaretz Correspondent http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1008424.html

Israeli produce marketing company Otzar Ha’aretz (treasure of the earth) announced on Monday that it will not market produce grown by Arab farmers, and will from now on only sell only Jewish-grown products. 

The company, which has been marketing fruits and vegetables to the ultra-Orthodox community during the shmita (sabbatical) year, announced that it will continue to operate once the year is over in effort to “support Jewish agriculture in Israel.” 

According to Jewish law, every seventh year the earth must rest and no crops can be grown. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews use foreign-grown produce during this sabbatical year in order to avoid using crops grown by Jews. Another solution, offered by Otzar Haaretz, is the Otzar Beit Din, a solution in which the Rabbinical Court appoints the farmers as its emissaries to grow produce. The produce retains its Shmitah sanctity, but can be sold by the Rabbinical Court for a fair price. Other solutions include growing produce in hothouses on beds detached from the ground, storage of produce grown in the year prior to Shmitah, produce grown in the Aravah and more. These are the main sources from which Otzar Ha’aretz supplies kosher produce during the Shmitah year.

In a statement issued Monday, Otzar Ha’aretz announced that though the shmita year will soon come to an end, the company plans to continue marketing produce to the ultra-Orthodox community as well as to members of the general public “who want high quality produce that the consumer can identify where it was grown.” 

The Director of Otzar Ha’aretz Ika Ness explained the company’s decision, saying that “Jewish agriculture needs support and we, as Zionist people, view this as our mission.” 

Marketing Director Dore Lichtenstein said that “it is every person right to know who stands behind the product they are buying, who made it and who imported it and whether it was made in Israel.”

Scenarios after Olmert Resignation

I’ve been a bit swamped lately — off to Sudan in a few days to report on various issues, including some agricultural investments taking place in the country as of late.  It’s a really fascinating story that branches off in so many ways.  In the meantime, I will not bore you all with my personal opinions on the resignation of Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister.  Reuters sent out this “scenario alert” the day Olmert resigned and I think it is pretty accurate.  As you will read, several scenarios ultimately result in a boost for Benyamin Netanyahu and the rightists, which will ultimately mean (more) bad news for the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. – vms

July 30 (Reuters) – Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday he would resign as Israel’s prime minister after his ruling Kadima party chooses a new leader in an internal election in September, in which he will not run. 

The following are three scenarios for what might happen next in Israel’s shaken political system: 

* Israeli opinion polls show Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defence chief, are favourites to win the Kadima party leadership contest. Either could forge a coalition similar to the current one. It would take office once sworn in by parliament in late October. Olmert would remain caretaker prime minister until then. 

* Some of Olmert’s bickering coalition partners may balk at joining a coalition with the more politically moderate Livni if she became Kadima leader. 

These parties could swing behind rightist parliamentary opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and force President Shimon Peres to ask Netanyahu to try to form a coalition. Such a government might be reluctant to pursue U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians or indirect negotiations with Syria. 

* Olmert’s resignation could prompt a majority in parliament to opt for an early election. Parliament could dissolve itself and set an election date before the scheduled date of 2010. 

An election must be held within five months of the Knesset voting to dissolve itself, but the gap is usually shorter in practice. Recent opinion polls show Netanyahu’s Likud party would emerge strongest if a vote were held now. 

Such a scenario could leave Olmert as caretaker prime minister until a government is formed after the election

What happened to the man of change?

This is an interesting article from First Post.  I admit that I shared similar concerns after watching Obama’s speech to AIPAC.  Is change conditional?  

Barack Obama’s stance on Israel exposes his agenda for change as a sham, says Alexander Cockburn

On June 3 Barack Obama claimed the greatest prize the Democratic Party can offer, namely his nomination as its candidate for the presidency. The very next day the salesman of ‘change’ raced from Minnesota back to Washington and publicly abased himself at the feet of an organisation whose prime mission is to ensure that change unpalatable to the state of Israel will never be pressed by the United States government.

The terms of Obama’s surrender before the American Israel Public Committee exploded like rhetorical cluster bombs across the Middle East. To Israel and its Arab neighbours it surely signalled that, whoever moves into the White House next January, there will be no swerve from Bush’s role as guarantor of Israeli intransigence.

Before he began his drive to the nomination Obama took good care to get the support of

influential American Jews in Chicago like the Crown family, associated with the aerospace firm, General Dynamics. Worried about rumours fanned by the Clinton campaign that he was still a secret Muslim, Obama insisted that before the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, a state with a politically significant Jewish vote, his campaign start a Hebrew-language blog in Israel.

So Obama came to this year’s AIPAC conference determined to dispel all remaining doubts that he’s a Friend of Israel. “We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran,” he assured AIPAC. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…Everything and I mean everything.” He swore he wouldn’t talk to the elected representatives of the Palestinians, Hamas. To thunderous applause he declared, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

As Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli writer expostulated furiously in the wake of this last sentence, “Along comes Obama and retrieves from the junkyard the outworn slogan

‘I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon… Everything’

‘Undivided Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel for all Eternity’. Since Camp David, all Israeli governments have understood that this mantra constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to any peace process. It has disappeared – quietly, almost secretly – from the arsenal of official slogans.

“No Palestinian, no Arab, no Muslim will make peace with Israel if the Haram-al-Sharif compound (also called the Temple Mount), one of the three holiest places of Islam and the most outstanding symbol of Palestinian nationalism, is not transferred to Palestinian sovereignty. That is one of the core issues of the conflict. On that very issue, the Camp David conference of 2000 broke up.”

Obama’s foreign policy advisors were tearing their hair out and the next day his campaign issued a clarification. “Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with”. All the same, Jerusalem in Obama’s eyes must be the capital of Israel.

Although Obama’s statements at AIPAC got

Obama’s most egregious talent is the ability to allay suspicion among the powerful that he could rock the boat

wide coverage across the Middle East, what was obvious here in the US was the utter absence of comment in the mainstream press. It was evidently taken as a given, unworthy of editorial remark, that a man who might very well be the next president was de-activating the policy of ‘change’ precisely where it is most needed at the behest of the men the popular TV comedian Jon Stewart edgily derided as “the elders of Zion”.

Obama’s most egregious talent is the ability to adapt his rhetoric with ominous speed, to allay any suspicion among the powerful that he could rock the boat in a way they might not care for. Earlier in the campaign he was criticised for not wearing the American flag as a lapel pin. At the AIPAC event he wore a double lapel pin, with both the US and Israeli flags.

Is there a ‘real Obama’ waiting to emerge, once the messy business of pleasing the voters is over? Not really. The making of the ‘real’ Obama is an ongoing project, and the AIPAC speech an important marker in the evolution of ‘change’ into immobility. 

Gaza Power Cuts – Email from a friend

The following is an email sent to me by my friend Mohammed Omar, a journalist in Gaza.  Mohammed is also a photographer and he sent me numerous photos, but they are far too disturbing to post.  Believe me when I say that I cannot begin to describe the horror revealed in some of these photos.  Undoubtedly, this conflict has done nothing but punish innocent lives – both Palestinian and Israeli.  It is accomplishing NOTHING.  If the international community continues sitting back, twirling its thumbs and leaving things to get worse, I fear for what is to come.  Desperate people do desperate things.  We mustn’t forget this. – v

——————–

Where to start…, what to talk about…?  The crippling electricity shortages, affecting hospitals as well as civilians?  The air strikes & on-going, daily bombings by the Israeli army, their indiscriminate targeting of civilians and police stations…?   Israel ’s non-accidental, enforced starvation of 1.5 million people by closing off ALL borders and not allowing in even UN aid, let alone basic medicinal, food, and construction needs…? 
 
Shortages of fuel have re-surfaced in Gaza : most of Gaza has no electricity and even more importantly, the shortage of medicine in Palestinian hospitals continues to increase, with the Ministry of Health reporting a looming humanitarian catastrophe.
 
Or should I begin with the bomb which just hit a wedding close to the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City , with 15 apartment buildings within the bomb’s target range?  One woman was killed and 47 others were injured –mostly children and women who had been inside their homes or playing on the street!!  Scenes of children injured, bleeding and crying just moments after they had been enjoying a wedding celebration in a Gaza wedding hall…a horrific sight likely to go without mention of that in most news sources.
 
The injured were evacuated to Al Shifa hospital, where it was then hard to find enough beds and blankets for them, with children crammed three to four on a bed due to overcrowding. 
 
Earlier Friday, Israel closed its border with the Gaza Strip to all traffic in what officials say is response to cross-border rocket fire, preventing even UN humanitarian supplies from getting in.  The decision came after Israel vowed to broaden its military campaign against Gaza militants who have fired more than 110 home made rockets at southern Israel in the last three days resulting in the injury of two Israelis.
 
In contrast, 19 Palestinians were killed in one day last Wednesday during another Israeli attack, this one targeting the eastern part of Gaza City . 
 
These are the latest attacks, but not the only: since the visit of US president and ‘peacemaker’, George Bush, within only 74 hours, Israel has killed 37 people and injured more than 90.  Those numbers, which could again go up at any minute, were confirmed by Khaled Radi, the Ministry of Health spokesman in Gaza .  Radi also said that Israel is using internationally illegal weapons, which makes it impossible for people to identify the bodies of their relatives as they have been destroyed to unrecognizable ends.
 
Among the tens killed were a 13 year old boy and his father and uncle, killed in what Israel claims was “a mistake”.  Another Israeli attack killed a mother, Maryam Al Rahel, and her son, Mohammed, who were on a donkey cart when an Israeli warplane bombed them.  Their bodies, like so many others, were rendered into small pieces of flesh, scattered everywhere!
 
I and some journalist colleagues went to offer condolences to a journalist friend of ours for the death of his cousin as a result of medicine shortages on Wednesday.  While on the way, there was a lot of shooting going on, from funerals and demonstrations.  Later, as we were starting to drive off from our parking spot, Mohammed, another journalist, suggested waiting for a moment.  But as others preferred to not wait around, we eventually left. 
 
After we had gone just a few minutes down the road, we learned that the place where our car had been parked had just been bombed, targeting and killing two Palestinians, injuring another three.  “It could have been us who were killed,” one of the journalists said to me.  I answered: “Thanks to God, it wasn’t.  But this is so sad; it must be terrible for their families, with children left behind and no one now to support them.” 
 
As predicted, the death toll has risen since I began this report: another two have been killed in northern Gaza , and another 4 badly injured.  Israeli Ministry spokesman, Shlomo Dror says that: “It’s unacceptable that people in Sderot are living in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual.”
 
And I wonder, what exactly does he consider “life as usual”?  For if he means it is normal that over 35 civilians should be killed in 4 days, an entire population should be on the verge of starvation and should be forced to shiver through winter nights without electricity or sufficient blankets, that hospitals and medical centers should be forced to shut down or operate at sub-par capability and without needed medicine, food, blankets, and even space,…the list goes on…well then yes, we are living life as usual.

FYI: MOHAMMED OMAR POSTS MANY OF HIS ARTICLES AND PHOTOS AT www.rafahtoday.org

Gaza plunged into darkness as Israeli fuel blockade takes effect

JUST AWFUL!

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Monday January 21, 2008
The Guardian 

Parts of Gaza were pitched into darkness last night after its only power plant was shut down following a move by Israel to halt fuel shipments under its new closure of the small, overcrowded strip of land.As fuel supplies ran out, the plant was shut down. Earlier, queues formed on the streets and at petrol stations and warehouses selling cooking gas as the shortages began to take effect. Blackouts have stretched to 12 hours a day in recent weeks.

The closure came after a week of the most intense conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza for more than a year. Nearly 40 Palestinians have been killed in the past week, at least 10 of them civilians.

From Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, appealed to Arab leaders and his rival, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to forget their differences and help the Gazans: “All Arab leaders, exercise real pressure to stop this Zionist crime … Take up your role and responsibility. We are not asking you to wage a military war against Israel … but just stand with us in pride and honour.”

Mashaal said he had been in contact with some Arab countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to see if they would pressure Israel. He had asked Egypt to provide fuel for the Gaza plant.

Over the weekend Palestinian militants drastically reduced the number of makeshift rockets they fired into Israel. Israeli officials accused Palestinians of exaggerating the fuel crisis and said the blame lay with the militants.

There was swift condemnation of Israel yesterday from Israeli and western human rights groups and from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Rafik Maliha, the director of the power plant, said the last fuel shipment had arrived on Thursday. The plant was built to provide 140 megawatts of electricity but has never operated at that level. At best, officials at the plant say it could produce 80MW. But early last week, before the closure was imposed, it was down to 45MW, enough to provide less than a fifth of the demand from Gaza’s 1.5 million people. The rest of the electricity is bought from Israel and Egypt.

Israeli officials said the policy was directly linked to the rocket attacks. “If they stop the rockets today, everything would go back to normal,” said Arye Mekel, a foreign ministry spokesman.

The Other Christmas Rush Is Christians Fleeing Arabia

 As always, I am eager to hear your thoughts!

By Vivian Salama

Newsweek

Jan 14, 2008 Issue 

Christmas is usually a time to celebrate the arrival of Christians in the Holy Land. But this year, as Patriarch Michel Sabbah of the Latin Rite Catholic Church revealed during his Christmas sermon in Bethlehem, local leaders are currently concerned with the opposite phenomenon: exodus. Speaking to the legions of Arab Christians fleeing the region, Sabbah said, “I say to you what Jesus told us: do not be afraid.”But there’s reason to be. Last year, dozens of Christians were slain in Iraq and a Syriac Orthodox priest was beheaded in Mosul. Two prominent Christian Palestinians were recently killed in Gaza. A political stalemate in Lebanon and the increased dominance of Shiite Hizbullah has made Maronites fear their traditional perks, like control of the presidency, are slipping. Even in Egypt, where religion has played little role in government, Christians now worry that the increasing popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood could lead to new restrictions.

Thus many are voting with their feet. There are now just 12 million to 15 million Arabic-speaking Christians left in the Middle East, and this could drop to 6 million by 2025. Countries are being transformed: in 1956, Lebanese Christians made up 54 percent of the country; today they’re about 30 percent. Iraq’s Christian population has fallen from 1.4 million in 1987 to 600,000 today. And Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was 80 percent Christian when Israel won independence in 1948; now it’s 16 percent. Fred Strickert of Wartburg College estimates that hundreds of thousands of Christian Arabs have been displaced in the recent years, including half a million from Iraq alone. Christian Arabs emigration isn’t new. But according to Drew Christiansen, editor of America Magazine, the tide has increased since the second intifada in the Palestinian territories and the Iraq War. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute says most Christians chose to relocate to Europe and the Americas. Some 75 percent of the United States’ 3.5 million Middle Easterners are Christian, as are large slices in Canada, France, and Brazil. Many new exiles hope to relocate to the United States: no small irony given that the instability they’re fleeing was set in motion by the United States itself.

With the exodus, ancient practices and cultures are being lost, and Middle Eastern Christians risk eventually being “amalgamated into Western Christianity,” says Christiansen. The result will be “a dilution of the diversity of Christian traditions.” But given the life or death choices many Arab Christian emigrants now face, that looks like a small price to pay.