Gaza

WHILE CAROL Towarnicky (op-ed, Jan. 23) prays for the success of the relief convoy bringing water filters to Gaza residents, perhaps she can also pray for the citizens of S'derot and other Israeli communities who have endured a barrage of over 250 rockets and mortars a month since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2005 - a terrorist onslaught that has murdered and maimed hundreds of Israelis. Without this constant terror emanating from the duly elected government in Gaza, there wouldn't have been a need for the increased border security, and Palestinians would be unburdened by the shortages they're facing.

The sheet-metal rooftops of the refugee camps of Gaza are heaped with bricks, tires, firewood - even children's toys - so that the stiff breezes off the Mediterranean will not blow them away. In these sprawling shantytowns, built in the early 1950s as "temporary" housing for displaced Palestinians, families sleep six or more to a room. Goats, chickens and an occasional cow share the narrow streets and alleyways with the human inhabitants. Near the center of Jabalya, the largest of Gaza's eight camps, open sewers empty into a dank, fetid treatment lagoon.

Chanting "Long Live Palestine" and bearing signs calling for an end to the bombing, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on City Hall yesterday to protest recent Israeli attacks on Gaza. The predominantly Arab-American crowd carried Palestinian and American flags, and many wore traditional kaffiyehs around their necks or on their heads. After gathering at the Israeli consulate at 19th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard at 4 p.m, they marched down the boulevard, snarling rush-hour traffic as they circled City Hall and echoed the chants of a man with a bullhorn.

Israeli planes, helicopters and warships pounded Gaza and the West Bank yesterday and renewed attacks in the early hours today, carrying out one of its fiercest assaults during the 17-month Palestinian uprising. Israel moved into the West Bank town of Tulkarem from three directions before dawn and killed one Palestinian, witnesses said. The Israelis declared a curfew and confined people to their homes as helicopters fired missiles, residents said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The assassination of Muhammad Abu Shaaban, a prominent PLO leader in Gaza, may signal increased violence within that organization on the road to peace in the Middle East. To me it marks the loss of a friend of peace, and just a friend. I met Muhammad Abu Shaaban several years ago when the Israeli Army granted me permission to interview Arab lawyers imprisoned in Gaza for anti-Israeli activity. I had long been the director of a joint summer law program in Israel of Temple and Tel Aviv Universities and active in human rights throughout the world.

In the first deadly attack since last week's Mideast summit, three Palestinians sneaked into an Israeli army post disguised as Israeli soldiers today, killing four Israelis and wounding several others before being killed themselves by Israeli troops. The shooting was a major setback to a U.S.-backed peace plan and came just hours after Palestinian militant groups affirmed they would not halt attacks on Israelis. Three Palestinian militant groups - Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Brigades -jointly took responsibility for the shooting, saying it was a message that attacks would continue.

IFEEL I MUST respond to the Jan. 6 letter by John Stuhr on the number of World War II deaths in Germany compared to the number in Gaza. It takes no great education to see that there is an obvious gap in the death tolls between the Israelis and Gazans. At one point, they were listing only 11 dead Israelis, and more than 500 Gazans. I would question the humanity of anyone who thinks 500 deaths in 10 days is a "small number. " I believe I.F. Stone said that there could be no justice in Israel until the Israelis and the Palestinians work together.

A pair of Israeli infantrymen were standing a few feet away. Intent on ending a commercial strike, they had just persuaded Mohammed Shaban to open his machine-tool shop for business - by threatening to weld the doors shut if he did not. Their presence made him nervous, but Shaban, 37, wanted to speak, to explain what has made his people desperate enough to take to the streets with bricks, bottles and Molotov cocktails and place their bodies in...

By Jeffrey Goldberg There are many lies being told about the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. Here are seven things that are true: 1. This most recent outbreak of violence represents the opening round of the third Palestinian intifada. The first was an uprising of stones and Molotov cocktails. The second was an uprising of suicide bombers. The third, inevitably, was going to feature rockets and missiles. I don't care to think about what weapons and tactics will feature in the fourth intifada.

JERUSALEM - A 16-year-old Israeli boy wounded when an antitank rocket fired from Gaza hit a school bus 10 days ago died Sunday without regaining consciousness, a hospital spokeswoman said. Two Palestinian teenagers, meanwhile, are in custody, suspected of the stabbing deaths of five members of a West Bank settler family, including small children, Israeli authorities said. The April 7 attack on the school bus provoked a harsh response in the form of Israeli air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A refugee from Syria recently opened a bakery here, drawing long lines of customers eager to taste meat and cheese pastries with the special flavors of Damascus - a rare bright spot in the long shadow that the Syrian civil war is casting over the Gaza Strip. The conflict in Syria, about 190 miles away, is increasingly hurting Hamas-ruled Gaza financially, according to several officials in the Islamic militant group and in Islamic charities. They say Iran, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a former major financial backer of Hamas, has reduced monthly cash transfers because Hamas refuses to side with the Syrian regime.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Arab Idol is an over-the-top TV ratings smash in the Middle East, and a young crooner from a Palestinian refugee family, whom admirers have nicknamed "the Rocket," is stealing the show. The surprise breakout of the second season is a 23-year-old Gaza Strip resident named Mohammed Assaf, whose patriotic folk songs and romantic ballads - with their themes of grit, longing, and love - have propelled him into the final rounds. "I think this shows the world there are many normal people in Gaza, that Gaza is not just this place of terrorists and criminals but nice people," said Ala'a Nabrees, 22, a longtime friend.

If all you know, or think you know, of Alice Walker is The Color Purple - either the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel or the 1985 Steven Spielberg film - it might be time to find out what she's been up to since. Not that she's been hiding or kicking back. Walker, who will read from her work at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Free Library of Philadelphia, has two books out at once: The Cushion in the Road (New Press, 366 pp., $26.95), a collection of essays, reviews, public letters, and opinion pieces; and The World Will Follow Joy (New Press, 192 pp., $21.95)

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian stabbed a Jewish settler to death in the West Bank on Tuesday - the first fatal attack on an Israeli there in more than a year - and the killing triggered retaliatory violence in both the West Bank and Jerusalem, a police spokesman said. In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli air strike killed an Islamist extremist who allegedly was involved in the recent firing of rockets from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula toward the southern Israeli city of Eilat. The air strike was the first targeted killing in Gaza by Israel since a November cease-fire ended eight days of cross-border fighting.

When Secretary of State John Kerry revisits Israel and the West Bank this week, he's unlikely to talk about what really needs discussing: What will Israel and the Palestinians do once the two-state solution dies? No one wants to discuss such a grim prospect, let alone admit that the peace process is over. Such an admission would have earthshaking repercussions not only for the Palestinians and Israelis, but for Washington and the entire Mideast. So the pretense continues that peace talks can be revived.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Starting with the new school year in September, Gaza boys and girls in middle and high school will be breaking the law if they study side by side. Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers argue that new legislation, mandating gender separation in schools from age 9, enshrines common practice. But women's activists warned Tuesday that it's another step in what it sees as the Hamas agenda of imposing its fundamentalist world view on Gaza's 1.7 million people. The Gaza rules appear harsh compared to Western practice but are not unusual in parts of the Arab and Muslim world.

EL-ARISH, Egypt - Thousands of tons of building materials such as cement and steel began crossing into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said, temporarily easing a five-year-old blockade on the coastal territory. An Egyptian security official said the shipment was made in consultation with Israeli officials, who were in Cairo on Thursday to discuss security in the Sinai Peninsula and the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreed upon by Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel last month.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly quit politics Monday, potentially robbing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a key ally who enabled his hard-line government to present a moderate face to the world. Barring another comeback by the mercurial former general, Barak's departure marked an end to a distinguished and tumultuous career that spanned half a century. It began on a communal farm, led to military greatness and business success and a mixed record in politics that was highlighted by failed peacemaking efforts during a brief term as prime minister.

Why was there an Israel-Gaza war in the first place? Resistance to the occupation, say Hamas and many in the media. What occupation? Seven years ago, in front of the world, Israel pulled out of Gaza. It dismantled every settlement, withdrew every soldier, evacuated every Jew, leaving nothing and no one behind. Except for the greenhouses in which the settlers had grown fruit and flowers for export. These were left intact to help Gaza's economy - only to be trashed when the Palestinians took over.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A leading Islamic cleric in the Gaza Strip has ruled it a sin to violate the recent cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group that governs the Palestinian territory - according a religious legitimacy to the truce and giving the Gaza government strong backing to enforce it. The fatwa, or religious edict, was issued late Saturday by Suleiman al-Daya, a cleric respected by both ultra-conservative Salafis and Hamas....