How Cold Is Gaza In Winter,How Hard Do the Winds Blow?

Gazans Brace for Cold, Bleak and Miserable Winter

By Mel Frykberg

 

EZBT ABBED RABBO, Nov 16, 2009 (IPS) – Tens of thousands of Gazans living in tents and damaged homes face a wet, cold and miserable winter as Israel’s blockade of the coastal territory continues to prevent the importation of building and reconstruction material. During the last few weeks Gazans were given a brief reprieve from the oncoming winter as an unseasonal snap of warmish, sunny weather held off winter rain and plummeting temperatures. But, during a tour of northern Gaza last week, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, and the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) called on Israel to open its border crossings immediately to avert a further deterioration in the humanitarian situation on the ground. “With winter rains and cold weather now imminent, the people of Gaza are even more desperately in need of construction materials such as cement, roofing tiles and glass to build and repair homes destroyed and damaged during the Israeli military offensive of 2008/2009,” said Gaylard. During Israel’s intensive bombing campaign in December/January Gaza’s infrastructure was heavily targeted leading to the destruction and damage of thousands of homes. “Gaza urgently requires 268,000 square metres of glass for windows and 67,000 square metres of glass for solar water heaters or enough glass to cover more than 30 football pitches. More than 500 children are still living in tents,” Mike Bailey from Oxfam told IPS. Damage caused to Gaza’s water, sanitation and electricity systems, exacerbated by Israel’s crippling blockade which forbids the import of most essential spare parts and fuel, has further limited the ability of aid agencies to supply essential services. The lack of concrete water storage tanks means that fresh water can only enter water pipes when there is electricity to power water pumps. Backup generators – which rely on fuel – are needed to ensure power cuts do not lead to water shortages and pollution of water. “The humanitarian situation is going to deteriorate if something doesn’t give,” Gaylard told IPS during a tour of the Ezbt Abbed Rabbo area of the northern Gaza strip. “We are reaching out to the international community. We are appealing to the member countries of the U.N. on a regular basis about this continuing crisis… We are holding discussions with the U.N. General Assembly and the U.N. Security Council. One would hope that the message would be getting out after the Goldstone report,” said Gaylard. “We are continuing talks with the Israeli government but pressure must be brought to bear on those responsible for keeping the border crossings closed,” Gaylard told IPS. Fifty metres away from where the media gathered to hear the U.N. coordinator address the escalating humanitarian crisis, dozens of Gazan families were living the crisis first-hand. Muhammad Zaid’s five-storey home – which took four years to build and was home to 16 people, the youngest a one-year-old – was flattened during 15 days of intensive Israeli shelling at the beginning of the year, forcing the family to flee. For the first five months after the war Zaid and his family lived under the caved-in bottom floor of the building. For the last five months the Zaids have lived in a tent supplied by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Despite the recent unusually warm and dry weather, the heavens opened up for one night last week and rainwater flooded their tent as the family desperately tried to salvage belongings. “We were awake the whole night scooping water out and trying to dig a small ditch around the tent to prevent more water flooding in but it didn’t help. The children were terrified and screaming. It was so cold,” Zaid told IPS. However, when the winter rains begin to flood his tent on a regular basis in the near future Zaid, who is unemployed and in huge debt, will face the additional problems of having only intermittent electricity, and no running water. “I have spent over three thousand dollars of borrowed money for a new refrigerator and stove and some other basic appliances but we have no heater and the electricity keeps cutting,” said Zaid. Several kilometres away, near the border with Israel, mother of eight Taghreed Abu Amrayn, showed IPS her new “home”, a tent attached to the remains of her former three-storey house, as she jiggled 20-month old Safedin on her hip. “I’m not sure how we will cope with winter as heating and electricity are a big problem and the children are always getting sick. I think the phosphorous bombs that were dropped nearby may have affected them. “Apart from the health issues we still live in fear on a daily basis as Israel continues to bomb these areas,” Amrayn told IPS. Nearby the Abu Amrayns, Rifat Bakri, 28, and Wissam Amoud, 27, were using improvisation to try and overcome the absence of construction material. They had “rebuilt” their former garage and mechanical workshop with cardboard boxes. “We couldn’t just sit around, we needed to get back to work. These boxes have provided a provisional garage for the short-term but when it rains in winter they will become water-logged and I’m not sure what we will do then,” Bakri told IPS. “This abysmal situation can’t continue. People are desperate. Enough is enough. It is time for the blockade to be ended and for humanity to return to Gaza,” Bailey told IPS.

:: Article nr. 60135 sent on 16-nov-2009 22:50 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=60135

Nation Fanning Flames of Hatred In Peshawar, Running Hysterical Opinions as “News”

[In one of the most blatant attempts to amplify anti-India propaganda, this opinion piece disguised as a news story, blames India for Peshawar's market bombing.  Real Muslims couldn't have done this, could they?  VBIED (vehicle born improvised explosive device) is simply a description of any car-bomb, manufactured with explosives.  Surely Col. Pirohit didn't supply a truck-bomb all the way from India, nor even the actual explosives used.   Peshawar was and is bombed continually because the government leaves it unprotected.  The militant problem stems from two causes, the Army chasing them there, first from Swat and now Waziristan, and because of past sponsorship of all the active militant groups by the ISI, as hands of the Army and the CIA.  By encouraging media under the Army's thumb like the Nation, to hype the threat from India now, is a clear attempt to relieve pressure on the Army by reopening the Eastern front with India.  Beware.]

India destabilising Pakistan

By: Ashraf Javed

LAHORE – Explosive material used in the deadly bomb blast which took place at Khyber Bazaar Peshawar last month, was identical to what had been used in exploding Samjhota Express in India, sources confined to The Nation Monday.
The explosive material – Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) – was used in Khyber Bazaar bomb blast.
Sources say the Pakistani security agencies have found concrete evidences to prove Indian involvement in Khyber Bazaar blast in which VBIED was used.
Sources close the development revealed that the Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was behind the terrible blast which left more than 42 innocent people dead and 100 others wounded, including women and children.
“Lt Col Prohit of the Indian Army who is the prime accused in the Samjhota Express explosion case, was the expert and qualified to handle VBIED and its manufacturing process,” sources said.

More Nations Buying Gold By the Ton in Preparation of Dollar Elimination

Mauritius buys two metric tons of gold from IMF

WASHINGTON: The African nation of Mauritius has bought two metric tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for nearly 72 million dollars.

Sale of two metric tons of gold to the Bank of Mauritius, which is the central bank of Mauritius, was conducted on the basis of market prices prevailing on November 11 with proceeds equivalent to 71.7 million dollars, the IMF said.

Early this month, the Reserve Bank of India had announced buying 200 metric tons of gold from the IMF for 6.7 billion dollar.

This transaction is part of the total 403.3 metric tons sales approved by the IMF Executive Board in September and adds to the 200 metric tons already sold to the Reserve Bank of India.

The money, thus generated would be used by the IMF to fund projects in Africa and other third world countries.

Israel gaffe reveals ‘Iran ship photos’ were forged

Israel gaffe reveals ‘Iran ship photos’ were forged

Iran says labels reading ‘Ministry of Sepah’, a body that no longer exists, are enough to prove that the photos released by Israel are forged.

After Israel released photos it said proved that a huge shipment of weapons for Hezbollah came from Tehran, Iranian news agencies publish evidence showing that the photos are forged.

Israeli naval sources recently claimed that they found a large cache of Iranian-made arms when they stormed a vessel near Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.

They claimed that the ship was heading for the Hezbollah resistance movement, either in Lebanon or Syria.

Iran instantly dismissed the claims, issuing a statement with which it condemned Israel’s many acts of piracy in international waters.

But the Israeli government persisted in its accusations, releasing what it claimed to be photos and documents in an effort to implicate the Iranian government in the matter.

The photos and documents were carried by a number of leading newspapers in the West, including The Los Angeles Times.

“The Israeli regime has made a fool of itself with regards to what it claims to be evidence that Iran was sending weapons to Hezbollah,” IRNA news agency said on Monday.

“Take a close look at the photos, one of which merely shows a couple of boxes labeled ‘Ministry of Sepah’ without providing corroborative evidence that they came from Iran, and you will see the huge gaffe committed by Israel,” it added.

The article explained that Iran’s Ministry of Sepah gave its place to the Defense Ministry more than twenty years ago. “So this begs the question of what the emblem of a nonexistent body was doing on the cargo?”

“It seems the American daily has failed to get its facts straight, or on the other hand, maybe it is getting its cue from the Israeli leadership,” said the news agency.

“In any case, the newspaper should know that if a country plans to send a secret arms cargo to another, it will not brand the shipment with a full description of the batch.”

“Tel Aviv’s baseless claims [about Iran providing Hezbollah with military] are evidently designed to justify another Israeli attack on Lebanon.”

Yadollah Javani, the Director of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said last week that the claims were intended to divert attention from a UN report detailing Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

“These accusations are nothing but an Israeli ruse to deflect international attention from the Goldstone report as they move closer to the war crimes tribunal [at the International Criminal Court (ICC)],” noted Brigadier General Javani.

He was referring to the 575-page report headed by Jewish South African judge Richard Goldstone, which detailed numerous acts of war crimes and human rights violations committed by Israeli soldiers during their incursion into Gaza.

“Israeli officials have a longstanding tendency to level baseless accusations against others when they are in serious trouble,” he added.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri also dismissed the charges, questioning why the Israelis had failed to detain the crew, if the ship was supposedly carrying weapons.

Berri said that while Hezbollah has the right to obtain arms from “anywhere in the world,” it is pretty obvious that Israel made the claims to fudge the issue of its war crimes in Gaza.

SBB/DT

South Stream Is a “Go,” Nabucco Merely “Gone”

Russian gas pipeline’s approval deals blow to EU

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Vladimir Putin has made energy politics a top priority

Slovenia’s agreement to sign on to the South Stream pipeline project has dashed hopes by the European Union to reduce dependency on Russian gas.

 

As the Slovenian and Russian energy ministers signed an agreement for the massive South Stream gas pipeline Saturday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin looked on in satisfaction.

The approval of Slovenia, the fifth country to do so, brings Russia closer to locking its control over the European gas supply.

South Stream, which is estimated will cost 20 billion euros ($30 billion) to build and is expected to be completed by 2015, would run under the Black Sea to carry natural gas to western Europe.

The European Union has supported the construction of an alternative pipeline, known as Nabucco, in an effort to counter Russian monopolistic influence by importing gas from Caspian Sea nations like Azerbijan and Turkmenistan. That project has been stalled, however, by a lack of supply agreements.

The politics of gas

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Russian claims the South Stream line would ensure supplies by bypassing Ukraine

EU leaders have been pushing for more independence from Russian natural gas since a dispute between Moscow and Kiev last January left many European homes without heat in the dead of winter.

About 80 percent of Russian gas currently passes through Ukraine, and Russia has claimed the South Stream line, which bypasses Ukraine, would ensure a smoother supply.

Another Russian project, Nord Stream, would also bypass Ukraine by piping gas to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. Denmark, Sweden and Finland have all given their approval to the project, meaning construction could start as soon as next year.

acb/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Rick Demarest

The imminence of war is an illusion

Irrespective of the provocations, there are natural obstacles to a new round of Israel-Hezbollah conflict

• Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News
• Published: 00:00 November 17, 2009

• Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News

Shortly after the Israel Defence Forces claimed that it had captured a ship allegedly filled with Iranian weapons meant for the Hezbollah, Israeli Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said Hezbollah had rockets with a 320-kilometre range that could reach into the Israeli heartland.

On November 11, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah corrected him, saying that all of Israel, not only its south, was within the range of Hezbollah rockets — raising fears that a new confrontation could soon break out along the Lebanese-Israeli border. A closer look, however, proves that it was not as imminent as it may seem. Simply put: Israel is not ready, the US is not enthusiastic and international heavyweights, like Saudi Arabia and Russia, would not allow it.

Over the past two years, Israel has been violating international law with repeated over-flights above Lebanon and sending espionage cells into Lebanese territory, including listening devices into the south last October. According to the UN, both sides “remain committed to full implementation” of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that repeated violations across the border highlight how fragile the situation is, raising fears that it could deteriorate any minute.

Sources close to Hezbollah confirm that the Lebanese party is busy reinforcing fixed defence positions north of the Litani River, protecting the routes to Beirut and the Beka’a Valley, claiming that if war is to break out, Hezbollah is prepared not only to fight back, as it did in 2006, but to delve deep into northern Israel, capturing Jewish colonies along the border. If that happens, they add, this would certainly bring down the Netanyahu government. The ground would be too soft for Israeli tanks to venture this winter, sources add, pushing the likelihood of a confrontation to next spring.

Impediments

There are natural obstacles to a new round of battle between Hezbollah and Israel. One is the presence of UN peacekeeping forces along the border, who had their mandate renewed earlier this year, along with a lack of a proper pretext for the Israelis to strike at Hezbollah, which has been observing 1701. Israel can, of course, use the ship affair to justify striking at Lebanon once again, although it is difficult to see what that would achieve, except set the region ablaze — drowning all the moderation brought around by Barack Obama.

Israel, however, realises that it cannot bomb Hezbollah out of existence. Far from eliminating Hezbollah, such a war, were it to break out, would be targeted at Iran more than Lebanon. The Lebanese party, despite all attempts, is still firmly united and has not been infiltrated by Israeli spies. Had this been the case, then Israel would have managed to penetrate them long ago. Let us not forget that for years, the only kind of intelligence both countries got on Iran was from various unreliable sources: Iranians in the Diaspora loyal to the Shah, Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussain and Lebanese proxies like the “South Lebanon Army”. None of them knew for sure how powerful the Iranian giant really was. Real intelligence, after all, is always gathered by embassies — which are official channels of espionage, recognised by the international community since the 16th century. The US and Israel have not had embassies in Iran since 1979.

The only logical explanation for such a war would be to test the pulse of the Iranians, preparing for a Plan B in case Obama’s engagement hit a brick wall with Tehran. Obama, for that matter, is not too enthusiastic about a non-state player in the Middle East, over which he has absolutely no control. He would not mind an assault that breaks or weakens Hezbollah to prevent the snowballing of non-state players modelled after Hezbollah.

Not now, however. Not before Obama delivers on the Middle East process and gets his domestic house in order.

One suggestion on how to deal with Hezbollah is to lure them into power, as was the case with Hamas after 2006, and Fatah, before them, after Oslo. Only when they capture the state will they cease to operate as a state-within-a-state, where they will be eager to be recognised by the international community as statesmen rather than guerrilla leaders. Nasrallah personally is very aware of this danger and insists that Hezbollah wants to hold on to both sides of the stick — assume their respected allocation in the Lebanese system, while maintaining their arms and right to fight the Israelis. He realises very well that power corrupts and this explains why in the newly-born Lebanese cabinet, Hezbollah has no more than two technical portfolios — agriculture and administrative reforms. Since the option of taming Hezbollah through power does not stand for now, the world is clueless on how to deal with Hezbollah. Politically, they remain as powerful as ever, having managed to dictate all of their demands.

The will for war is therefore present, although the logistics of such a war and the logic behind it remain very abstract and difficult to justify for the Israelis. And so long as dialogue is still ongoing — no matter how sluggishly — between the US and Iran, war is probably not in the immediate horizon between Lebanon and Israel.

Sami Moubayed is the editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine.

Morocco: Endangered ‘Model’?

Eric Goldstein | November 16, 2009 Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
How should the United States relate to a solid ally whose human rights record is better than the norm in its region and better than its own record of 20 years ago — but is now heading in the wrong direction? The United States has long held Morocco, a pro-Western ally, as a model for other countries in North Africa and the Middle East because of its cooperation in the fight against terrorism and simultaneous political liberalization. This image has helped Morocco strengthen its ties with the European Union too. Morocco is “on the front lines in the global war against terrorism,” the State Department wrote in 2007, and “one of our most reliable and closest allies in the region. The country is a liberalizing, democratizing, and moderate Middle East nation undertaking broad political, social, and economic reforms.” That year, Morocco won a five-year, $700 million U.S.-government-backed Millennium Challenge Corporation grant. In the mid-1990s, toward the end of his 38-year rule, the late King Hassan II eased repression, freeing political prisoners and ending the practice of “disappearing” opponents. After Hassan II’s death in 1999, his son and successor, Mohammed VI, continued to liberalize politically, allowing exiles to return and affording critics a wider space to sound off in the media and on the streets. The young monarch also undertook two bold measures. He reformed the family code to give women more rights and established a truth commission — the region’s first — to probe and acknowledge past abuses and compensate victims. Recent Reversal More recently, though, Morocco’s advances have been eroded or reversed, mainly because they have not been institutionalized: working mechanisms are not in place to hold accountable the officials who flout them. The country’s compliant judiciary, the institution that has lagged the most in the reform process, rarely investigates complaints of official abuses but reliably convicts dissidents in unfair proceedings. After all, if those in power were to allow courts to deliver justice independently, they would surrender a pillar of their repressive apparatus. The effort to stem terrorism has contributed to the regression on rights. After coordinated suicide bombings in Casablanca on May 16, 2003, authorities rounded up and tortured suspected militants, convicting hundreds in unfair trials. To its credit, the government did not extend the crackdown to mainstream Islamist movements or civil society. Although Morocco has not had a major terrorist incident since the May 2003 attack, it faces a continuing and real threat from militant Islamist groups. Meeting this challenge is not easy but requires, among other things, effective police work, based on exploiting available technical means and collecting reliable human intelligence. That agenda is not advanced by allowing the police to fall back on indiscriminately arresting suspects, holding them in prolonged incommunicado detention, and coercing confessions that the courts then use to convict them. Lately, however, the setback on rights seems to have less to do with combating terror than with reining in those who challenge the political status quo, centered on an unaccountable monarchy and the key ministries that answer directly to it. For example, in July, a Rabat court convicted the heads of two parties, four other well-known political figures, and 29 others of complicity in a terror network, on the basis of confessions contested due to allegations of torture and falsified transcripts. The “Belliraj” case, which seems more about discrediting or weakening certain opposition parties than punishing terrorists, goes to appeal this month. Western Sahara In an ominous development, Morocco last month referred to a military court seven nonviolent activists who seek self-determination for the Western Sahara — a contested territory south of Morocco’s internationally recognized border that Morocco claims and administers de facto — on charges of harming external state security. “One is either a patriot, or a traitor,” King Mohammed VI declared one week later in a speech marking the 34th anniversary of Morocco’s “Green March” to take control of the former Spanish colony. “Is there a country which would tolerate a handful of lawless people exploiting democracy and human rights in order to conspire with the enemy against its sovereignty, unity and vital interests?” The “Moroccanness” of the Western Sahara, which Moroccan authorities have portrayed for decades as the national cause, remains a convenient pretext for repressing rights, on the grounds that Sahrawis who favor self-determination are Algerian-backed enemies of Morocco’s “territorial integrity.” While Morocco’s press may be among the freest in the Middle East and North Africa, it’s also arguably the one whose freedom has shrunk the most during the past year. Since June, the courts have jailed one magazine editor for writing about the king’s health and heavily fined three newspapers for “insulting” the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi. Exercising powers found nowhere in the law, the interior minister destroyed issues of two magazines in August because they reported on a public opinion poll about the king and in September ordered the police to evict the staff and padlock the offices of a daily that ran a caricature of a royal cousin. Clinton’s Move After meeting with King Mohammed VI on November 2, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first top Obama official to visit Morocco, saluted the reforms that have enabled Moroccan women to “bring their considerable talents to strengthening democratic institutions, accelerating economic growth and broadening the work of civil society.” Let us hope that in private, Clinton conveyed to the king a concern that the overall human rights situation in Morocco is deteriorating — for women as for men who engage in social or political activities that displease those in power. To remain silent about Morocco’s backsliding because “it is better than its neighbors” would promote complacency about a situation that, once a cause for hope, is threatening to settle down as one more stalled transition. In a country that Washington commended for liberalizing politically while combating extremism, that augurs ill on both fronts. Eric Goldstein is a deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, an expert in developments in North Africa, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.