Israel risked a new wave of international condemnation today when its troops boarded a boat attempting to break the blockade of Gaza and forcibly diverted it to the port of Ashdod.

Five days after the botched assault on a six-boat flotilla ended in the deaths of nine activists and international isolation for Israel, an unknown number of naval commandos stormed the MV Rachel Corrie in international waters, about 20 miles from the coast of Gaza.

Today’s operation was mounted despite growing calls for Israel to ease its siege of Gaza significantly. The US, Israel’s staunchest ally, said the blockade was “unsustainable and must be changed”.

Israel said it had met no resistance in stopping the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie. “They complied with us completely,” an Israeli military spokeswoman told the Observer.

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, the main organization behind the flotilla, said the passengers and crew had four times refused to accede to Israeli demands to divert to Ashdod voluntarily.

“There’s no way that 20 people are going to resist a fully armed force,” she said. “The fact that Israel boarded a civilian boat in international waters is a violent act.”

She expected the 11 passengers – including the Nobel peace laureate Máiread Maguire– and nine crew would be treated “with kid gloves: the world is watching”.
[More Via:Guardian]

JERUSALEM – At least 10 people were killed as Israeli forces stormed a boat carrying pro-Palestinian activists bound for Gaza, Israeli television and radio stations reported on Monday.

According to Israel’s private channel 10 television, Israeli marine commandos had opened fire after being attacked with axes and knives by a number of the passengers on board the aid ships, the television said, without giving the source of its information.

The station did not say whether the dead and injured were passengers or members of the Israeli navy.

Israel’s army radio said between 10 and 14 people had been killed in clashes which broke out after the passengers allegedly tried to grab weapons off the naval commandos who tried to storm one of the boats.

It was not clear whether the clashes were taking place on just one of the six boats making up the aid convoy, and the Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incident.

Shortly afterwards, the Israeli military censor ordered a block on all information regarding those injured or killed during the storming of the ship.

The Israeli ambassador was summoned to the Turkish foreign ministry Monday after the incident, a Turkish diplomat said.

“The ambassador (Gabby Levy) was summoned to the foreign ministry. We will convey our reaction in the strongest terms,” the diplomat, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

Forty-two years of military occupation and sixteen years of the Oslo Process have made Gaza a smaller place. Already one of the most densely-populated strips of land in the world, its population has grown during this period from less than 360,000 in 1967 to 1.5 million today. Meanwhile, its borders have not only become more impermeable, but they have been progressively closing in on what some have called “the world’s largest open air prison.”

In the early years following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War in June 1967, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals routinely crossed the border between Israel and Gaza without much difficulty. Palestinian fishermen routinely sailed as far out to sea as necessary to secure a good day’s catch. International freighters continued to arrive at Gaza Port to unload their goods and take on Palestinian fruits, flowers, and other products. Among the first casualties of the Israeli occupation was the loss of trade and tourism with Egypt, but life went on for most Gaza residents. Over the years, many would eventually find employment in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere inside Israel, mostly in construction and services – 130,000 workers commuting from Gaza to Israel at its peak.

However, owing to the heightened tensions of occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlement activity, successive breakdowns in the peace process, and the Palestinian Intifadas, the situation of Gaza residents continued to deteriorate. Employment inside Israel for Gaza residents was largely cut off by Israel during the Second Intifada beginning in September 2000, and completely eliminated with the economic siege imposed on Hamas in Gaza in January 2006.

As part of the Oslo Process that began in 1993, the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994 established a fishing limit for Gaza fishermen at 20 nautical miles from the shore. A “Maritime Activity Zone K” 1.5 nautical miles wide was established as a “security” buffer from the Israeli sea boundary inside Gaza’s territorial waters and extending out from shore to the 20-nautical-mile fishing limit. It would be a “closed area” patrolled by the Israeli Navy. A similar “Maritime Activity Zone M” one nautical mile wide was demarcated as a buffer on the sea border with Egypt. Zone M would be patrolled not by the Egyptian Navy, but exclusively by the Israeli Navy. The offshore area in between these security zones was designated “Maritime Activity Zone L” within which Palestinian fishermen were allowed to fish.

In the context of a surge in suicide bombings inside Israel and the comprehensive Israeli military assault on all the occupied Palestinian territories launched at the end of April 2002, Israel demanded tighter limits on Gaza fishermen, as if unarmed fishermen could be any sort of realistic threat to Israel’s security. In August 2002, the Bertini Agreement restricted Gaza’s fishing limit to 12 nautical miles from shore. … Continue Reading

CNN’s John Roberts talked with John Ging who is the director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza. Ging believes that Israeli shells that recently struck the U.N. complex contained white phosphorus. “It looks and smells like phosphorus and it’s burning like phosphorus. That’s all I can say. That’s why I’m calling it phosphorus,” said Ging.

The complex under fire is the U.N. central distribution facility in Gaza. “We’re trying to deal with our whole transport compound. It’s on fire and now have some danger spreading into the warehouse, where all of the food and thousands of tons of food and medicine. This is a hub of the whole operation, the whole United Nations operation in Gaza, this is the hub, where it all comes to, gets distributed from,” he said.

Three people have been reported as injured in the attack.

The Associated Press also reports that a hospital, several high-rises, and media building was hit by Israeli shelling and wounded several journalists.

A building housing the Associated Press offices was hit by bullets, with no reports of injuries at that location.

“It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. “I don’t think it should have happened and I’m very sorry.”

The AP adds, “A senior Israeli military officer had also said Israeli troops shelled the compound after coming under fire from Palestinian militants there – an account dismissed by a U.N. official there at the time as ‘nonsense.’”

The Pentagon plans to make a large arms delivery to Israel, rising fears that the military campaign in Gaza will go on for a long time.

The US is trying to hire a merchant ship that can carry hundreds of tons of weapons from Greece to Israel later this month; Reuters reported citing tender documents it had obtained.

According to the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), the ship will transport 325 standard 20-foot containers of what has been called ‘ammunition’ from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod on two separate trips in the second half of January.

A description on the manifest says the containers will be loaded with ‘hazardous material’, such as explosive substances and detonators, without giving any more details.

The Pentagon announced the tender for the ship in the last hours of 2008. The two deadlines set for the deliveries are January 25 and the last day of the month.

Meanwhile, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed the planned arms shipment to Israel, but denied that the delivery was linked to the Israel’s deadly offensive in Gaza.

“This previously scheduled shipment is routine and not in support of the current situation in Gaza,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder.

However, a senior military analyst in London, who wished to remain unnamed, said the timing of the shipments shows that they may be ‘irregular’ and linked to the military operation in Gaza.

The tender for the ship followed a December US arms delivery to Israel, which was also carried out by a merchant ship.

This is while shipping brokers in London who have carried out weapon deliveries for the British and US military in the past say that shipment of such a large cargo of weapons to Israel is rare.

“Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot… this is pretty rare and we haven’t seen much of it quoted in the market over the years,” one broker said, on condition of anonymity.

Tender documents indicate that the German ship hired by the US in early December also carried a massive cargo of weapons that weighed over 2.6 million kg and filled up to 989 standard 20-foot containers to Ashdod from North Carolina.

In September, the US Congress approved a plan to sell Israel 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, of the Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39), that use GPS to find their way and are able to penetrate deep fortified constructions, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Last week, The Jerusalem Post, reported that the first shipment of the missiles arrived in early December, adding that the bombs had been used in the military onslaught in Gaza.

So far, Israel’s 15-day offensive in the besieged Palestinian enclave has claimed the lives of more than 800 Palestinians and wounded almost 3500.

Hamas on the other hand says Palestinian fighters have so far killed at least 30 Israeli soldiers and wounded more than 80 others.