15 January, 2009 Global Research,

To truly understand the specific you must understand the general and to master knowledge of the general you must understand the specific.

What is taking place in the Palestinian Territories is related to what is taking place across the Middle East and Central Asia, from Lebanon to Iraq and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, as part of a broader geo-strategic objective. All the events in the Middle East are part of a mammoth geo-political jigsaw puzzle; each piece only shows you one picture or a portion of the picture, but when you put all these pieces together you see the grand picture of things.

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15 January 2009

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights LTD (non profit)

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has documented death and destruction across the Gaza Strip throughout the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ongoing military operation in the Gaza Strip. Since December 27, 2008, the IOF have killed at least 983 Palestinians in Gaza. 85% of the victims are civilians, and 35% of them are children. In addition, more than four thousand Palestinians in Gaza have been maimed and injured by IOF. Thousands of civilian objects, including homes and schools have been destroyed. The UN estimates that 35,500 civilians are now being housed in shelters it is providing for internally displaced civilians across the Gaza Strip.

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Palestinian Centre for Human Rights LTD (non profit)

Palestinian paramedics are risking their lives to rescue the dead, maimed and injured across Gaza

“We are working twenty four hours a day – we only sleep when there is no Israeli shelling. The rest of the time it is our duty to stay at our work – I have not been to my home for days now, and I can’t believe the situation we are facing. Ninety percent of the injured victims we try to rescue have already lost legs or arms, or both.”

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16 January, 2009. AlterNet

One Israeli official promised a holocaust in Gaza; it is impossible to keep pace with the death toll.

Gaza is an immense concentration camp — 1.5 million people squeezed into 140 square miles hemmed in on all sides by 25-foot-high walls separated by a vast expanse of bulldozed earth. The 2005 “pull-out” left Gaza still controlled by Israel from air and sea, its entries and exits prisonlike mazes electronically controlled and under constant surveillance. Bombing it, assaulting it with tanks and Uzis, is like shooting animals in a pen. The claptrap about “pinpoint” accuracy and “avoiding civilians” is a lie so flagrant, so transparent, that any child — certainly any Gaza child — could grasp it.

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16 January 2009 07:04:20 GMT

Medical staff of a Gazan hospital shows one of the shells that struck there

The morgues of Gaza’s hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in. Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child. Many of those who wait their turn have lost numerous family members and loved ones.

Blood is everywhere. Hospital orderlies hose down the floors of operating rooms, bloodied bandages lie discarded in corners, and the injured continue to pour in: bodies lacerated by shrapnel, burns, bullet wounds. Medical workers, exhausted and under siege, work day and night and each life saved is seen as a victory over the predominance of death.

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15 January, 2009 Washington (UPI)

One Israeli party, Likud, is so oblivious to Fourth Generation War that its proposed grand strategy for Israel, largely written by American neoconservatives, calls for the destruction of every Arab state. Iraq was the first victim of that strategy, thanks to the neocons’ influence on the Bush administration. If Likud wins the coming Israeli elections, there is every reason to think it will put its strategy into practice, pushing Israel into the maelstrom.

Israel’s dependence on strong neighboring states is equally true with regard to the Palestinians. That means Israel needs a strong Palestinian state in the West Bank. But the effect of the war in Gaza is to undermine Fatah in favor of Hamas on the West Bank, which also has elections coming up. So Israel, in effect, has shot itself in both feet.

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Across the world, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has been viewed with horror and outrage. The massive loss of human life in the densely-populated occupied territory has sparked worldwide condemnation and protest. In Europe, North America, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, millions of people have demonstrated against the Israeli version of ‘shock and awe.’ The number and size of these protests are a testament of global solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and open new fronts against Zionism and U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Global Solidarity with Palestine

In the Middle East, for example, hundreds of thousands of people have gathered and marched in Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt. In many cases, these protests have blamed the Arab regimes for colluding with Israel and the United States, and have faced severe repression as a result. Protests and riots have also occurred across the occupied West Bank and have suffered repression from the joint forces of Israel and Fatah. In Israel itself, protests by Arabs, communists, anarchists and Jews have also taken place, including a few ‘civil disobedience’ actions.

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