I'm telling you, the people, they want to live and they want something to eat.
My Name
By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer - Tue Jan 5, 7:03 am ET
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - A jackhammer pounded large steel beams
side by side into the sandy soil on the Egyptian side of
Gaza's border, putting in place an underground wall that
could shift the balance of power in this volatile area.
Once completed, the steel barrier would cut off blockaded
Gaza's last lifeline and - by slicing through hundreds of
smuggling tunnels under the nine-mile (14-kilometer) Gaza-
Egypt border - could increase pressure on the territory's
Hamas rulers to moderate.
The Islamic militants have so far shown little willingness
to compromise in power-sharing talks with their Western-
backed rivals or in negotiations on a prisoner swap with
Israel. Their hold on Gaza is at least partly dependent on
supplies and cash coming through the tunnels.
On Monday, workers operated huge machines just behind the
Egyptian border line, offering a rare glimpse at what the
wall is made of.
A drill pierced holes in the soil, a crane lifted steel
beams into position and a jackhammer drove them into the
ground as several workers could be seen welding.
Egyptian troops in four armored personnel carriers with
mounted machine guns guarded the crew. In the past, shots
were fired several times from Gaza at the workers, though no
one has been hurt.
Hamas guards watched from a nearby position, some shouting
insults at an Egyptian soldier who poked his head out of his
armored vehicle.
Hamas leaders are furious about the border wall and are
seeking to rally Arab and Muslim public opinion against
Egypt. On Sunday, demonstrators marched outside Egyptian
embassies in Jordan and Lebanon, holding posters showing
Egypt's president with Israel's Star of David on his
forehead.
Hamas has also marshaled Muslim scholars who decreed that
the barrier is "haram," or religiously forbidden. The
scholars were responding to a statement by Al-Azhar
University, Egypt's prestigious Islamic seat of theology,
which reached the opposite conclusion last week.
Gaza's borders have been virtually sealed since June 2006
when Hamas-allied militants captured an Israeli soldier,
Gilad Schalit. The blockade by Israel and Egypt intensified
a year later when Hamas overran Gaza, seizing the territory
from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The blockade has evoked intense international criticism, but
Israel justifies it by claiming that supplies to Gaza could
end up in the hands of violent militants.
In response to the stifling closure, Gazans dramatically
expanded smuggling from Egypt to bring in commercial goods,
along with weapons and cash for Hamas.
Today, nearly 400 tunnels run under Gaza's border with
Egypt, employing 15,000 people and bringing in $1 million in
goods a day, said Issa Nashar, the Hamas mayor of the Gaza
border town of Rafah. The municipality supplies electricity
and levies $2,500 in taxes per tunnel, he said.
Large white tents mark the tunnel entrances on the Gaza
side.
During a tour Monday, rows of tents were visible along most
of the border. A stretch of sandy soil, about 200 yards
(meters) wide, runs between the tents and the first Egyptian
demarcation, in some places a low stone wall and in others a
line of rusty steel containers.
The tunnels run under the border and emerge about half a
mile (a kilometer) away on the Egyptian side, the exits
often disguised by homes.
Construction of the anti-tunnel wall is believed to have
started some time in November, though Egyptian officials
initially would not discuss the project and still decline to
provide details. In recent days, as opposition to the wall
mounted, Egypt's leaders have struck a defiant tone.
"Egyptian borders are sacred and no Egyptian allows any
violations in one way or another," Egyptian Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Gheit said last week.
It's impossible to gauge how much of the wall has already
been completed, but smugglers watch the construction with
growing concern. Tunnel operators standing near Monday's
work site said they have not been directly affected so far,
but fear the day when they have to stop working.
Profits from the tunnels are still considerable. A 36-year-
old former taxi driver said he makes $100 a day, a large sum
for Gaza, by pumping fuel from Egypt through his tunnel.
Amid the uncertainty, rumors are running wild. Many here
believe Egypt plans to flood the area and are already
scheming to make their tunnels waterproof. Nashar, the Rafah
mayor, said enterprising smugglers have managed to cut
pieces off the underground wall.
Others have raised the possibility that the smugglers might
simply dig deeper, going below the underground wall.
Two years ago, Hamas militants cut down a metal border wall
that had been erected by Israel, enabling tens of thousands
of Gazans to pour into Egypt until the border was resealed.
During Israel's 38-year military control of Gaza, Israel
tried in vain to halt the smuggling, including tearing down
houses along the border and blowing up tunnels.
In Israel's three-week military offensive against Hamas last
winter, warplanes repeatedly bombed the border area, causing
some damage, but failing to close down the tunnels.
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Hamas is
believed to have stepped up its weapons imports
considerably. The underground passages also pose a threat to
Egypt, which is increasingly concerned about an Islamic
militant regime on its doorstep.
The wall construction marks the highest profile attempt by
Egypt to halt the smuggling and seems to have struck a
nerve, judging by Hamas' angry protests.
Hamas officials portrayed Egypt as doing the bidding of
Israel and the U.S. and even hinted at another border
breach.
"I'm telling you, the people, they want to live and they
want something to eat. They may do everything they can,"
Ehab Ghussein, a spokesman for Gaza's Interior Ministry,
said Monday.
"But we don't hope to reach that point."
___
Additional reporting by Salah Nasrawi in Cairo and Diaa
Hadid in Jerusalem.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100105/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_palestinians_sealing_gaza
Graphic novel revisits "forgotten" Gaza killings
Mike Collett-White, Reuters January 6, 2010, 5:57 am
LONDON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Comic book meets investigative
journalism in "Footnotes in Gaza," a graphic novel by Joe
Sacco that focuses on two days in Gaza in 1956 when
Palestinians said hundreds of civilians were killed by
Israeli forces.
Sacco and his researchers found almost nothing written in
English about the episodes, despite U.N. estimates at the
time putting the death toll at nearly 400 -- 275 in Khan
Younis on Nov. 3 and 111 in nearby Rafah on Nov. 12.
In a bid to discover the truth about what he called a
"footnote of history," the 49-year-old traveled to Gaza
twice to interview people who witnessed the events.
Sacco, an award-winning artist and journalist who has
produced a graphic novel about the West Bank and Gaza Strip
and a comic book about the conflict in Bosnia, wanted to use
the past as a way of exposing problems in the Middle East.
"People are so focused on what's going on now," he said in a
recent interview.
"When I was growing up there was a lot of news about
Palestinians on TV and it was always hijackings, bombings
and always related to terrorism.
"I was never given the context, and what brought them to
that unhappy point. Some younger Palestinians I met thought
perhaps I should be focusing on the here and now. This is
not an isolated incident. Is it talking about a people who
have been hammered over and over again."
The novel, around 400 pages long and containing detailed,
black-and-white drawings, jumps from Sacco's visits to Gaza
between November 2002 and March 2003 to the events of 1956,
and places them in the context of the Suez crisis.
Israeli forces crossed the Gaza Strip and Sinai Desert with
the declared aim of halting attacks by Egyptian-backed
Palestinian fedayeen guerrillas, and it was during the
campaign that the alleged massacres took place.
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
Sacco is recognizable as the bespectacled reporter
brandishing notepad and tape recorder as he travels around
the region talking to witnesses and joining the community of
foreign journalists who party hard after an often grim day's
work.
He also seeks to recreate the bombings, assassinations,
beatings and executions of 1956, underlining how violence in
the region today is nothing new.
Sacco concedes that an account based on the memories of
Palestinian witnesses recalling events 53 years ago, which
he then turns into pictures, will never be 100 percent
accurate.
He addresses the issue of accuracy in the book, pointing out
how people's memories of the same incident vary. Sacco also
quotes from a 1956 U.N. report that points to differences in
the accounts of Israeli authorities and Palestinian
refugees.
Even Israeli troops involved in the operations disagreed on
what happened, he says, underlining how competing truths
have helped perpetuate an apparently intractable conflict.
But Sacco hopes "Footnotes in Gaza", which has won warm
early reviews, will encourage others to look at the more
obscure passages of the region's history.
"There are very few definitive histories, especially talking
about this part of the world," he said. "I hope the book
does give an Israeli historian some kind of impetus to try
again."
Sacco's next project is a magazine piece about African
migrants trying to enter Europe, after which he plans to
take a break from reporting.
"I would like to step away from journalism for a while and
do something else. Fiction perhaps."
"Footnotes in Gaza" is published in the United States on
Tuesday by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Macmillan.
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6647001/graphic-novel-revisits-forgotten-gaza-killings/
--
A government, of Israel, by Israel, and, for: Israel.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light:
for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. The light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not. The light of the body is the eye:
if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give thee light. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.