[News] Israeli Invasion Pre-planned

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.aljazeerah.info/28%20n/Israeli%20Invasion%20Pre-planned,%20Destruction%20of%20Gaza%20Power%20Station%20Violates%20Agreement%20with%20EU%20to%20Spare%20Electricity%20from%20Military%20Actions.htm

Israeli Invasion Pre-planned, Destruction of Gaza 
Power Station Violates Agreement with EU to Spare 
Electricity from Military Actions

Olmert Invades Gaza, Dashing Hopes for Swap of 
Prisoners PNA: ‘Operation Summer Rains’ a Pre-planned Israeli Invasion

28/06/2006

Palestine Media Center – PMC

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) early Wednesday 
invaded southern and eastern Gaza Strip and 
occupied Yasser Arafat airport, after destroying 
three bridges linking south and north Gaza as 
well as the only power station in the strip and 
knocking out water pipelines in what the IOF 
called “Operation Summer Rains,” driving 
thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate 
their homes looking for safety and paralyzing 
civilian life in the densely-populated and 
poverty-ridden Mediterranean coastal strip.

Dismissing calls by Russia and the United Nations 
Secretary General, Kofi Annan, for restraint and 
by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to 
“give diplomacy a chance,” Israeli Prime Minister 
Ehud Olmert on Wednesday insisted on military 
action saying that Israel wouldn't balk at 
“extreme action” to bring home a soldier captured 
by Palestinian anti-occupation activists.

Ruling out negotiations, Olmert insisted that, 
“the age of restraint has come to an end,” and 
“gave an order to military leaders 
 for 
comprehensive and ongoing military action,” he told parliament on Tuesday.

Palestinian chief negotiator and lawmaker, Saeb 
Erakat, said Israel wants to reoccupy the Gaza 
Strip and the capture of the Israeli corporal, 
Gilad Shalit, was only a pretext.

Former Palestinian deputy premier and Foreign 
Minister lawmaker Nabil Shaath on Tuesday voiced a similar statement.

Israel was planning a military invasion of Gaza 
to stop the launch of primitive home-made 
Palestinian rockets before the Israeli soldier 
was captured, Sha'ath told the Qatar-based Arabic 
satellite television station, al-Jazeera.

Israeli media reported an imminent military 
operation in Gaza a week before the capture of 
the dual Israeli-French soldier Shalit, 19.

Saeb Erakat told al-Jazeera, on Wednesday that 
Israel, by destroying the electricity grid in 
Gaza was violating a Palestinian – Israeli 
agreement with the European Union (EU), whereby 
it was agreed to keep power out of military action.

Erakat added that Israel’s destruction of the 
bridges and roads and other infrastructure in 
Gaza indicates it was reoccupying the Gaza Strip.

He stressed that “We are unarmed civilians and 
not an army,” as the Israeli media is trying to portray the Palestinians.

The international contacts that are being 
conducted intensively by President Mahmoud Abbas 
for the world community to intervene and stop the 
Israeli aggression were fruitless, he added.

IOF sealed off and banned entry to and exit from 
the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, besieging President 
Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and top 
officials of the Palestinian National Authority 
(PNA) as leading anti-occupation activists went underground.

Palestinian presidential security adviser Jibril 
al-Rjoub arrived in Cairo on Tuesday via Jordan 
and met with the Egyptian FM Ahmed Abu el-Gheit, 
intelligence chief Omar Sulaiman and presidential adviser Osama el-Baz.

Panic Grips Palestinian Civilians

The invasion came shortly after Palestinian 
security forces deployed near the Gazan border 
town of Rafah said they were ordered out by the IOF.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians evacuated 
their homes in Rafah and other communities 
looking for safety as the Israeli tanks and 
troops rolled into the southern Gaza Strip under 
the cover of the US-made F-16s early Wednesday.

Before daybreak Wednesday IOF warplanes flew low 
over Gaza city, causing sonic booms and breaking windows.

Men, women and children, packed into rickety 
carts and cars fled border areas of southern Gaza 
in fear of their lives after Israeli troops rolled into the territory.

“We're going someplace safe. We saw the tanks 
coming and we decided to leave before anything 
else happens,” said Mohammed Abu Zakr, arriving 
in the southern city of Rafah accompanied by two 
female relatives and several young children, AFP reported.

Gazan Infrastructure Targeted

Much of the northern Gaza Strip was plunged into 
darkness after Israeli war planes hit the power 
station, three bridges, water pipelines and a 
road in a series of night-time raids.

Flames poured into the night sky from the power plant in central Gaza.

Grabbed by what Anshel Pfeffer described in The 
Jerusalem Post on Monday as the “Entebbe 
Syndrome,” Olmert ruled out negotiations and 
rejected a Palestinian demand to free 400 women 
and minors among more than 9,800 Palestinian 
detainees in the IOF jails, dashing the hopes of 
both the Palestinian families and the Israeli family of the “missing” soldier.

The IOF reported corporal Gilad Shalit “missing” 
following a daring Palestinian attack, in which 
two Palestinians were killed when they attacked 
an IOF unit protecting the Israeli-Egyptian 
border crossing of Karm Abu Salem (known to 
Israelis as Kerem Shalom), after killing two 
Israeli soldiers and wounding four others.

Russia on Tuesday was seriously concerned over 
the dangerous development of the situation around 
the Gaza Strip, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

“The situation on the Palestinian territories and 
in the Palestinian-Israeli relations, 
regrettably, is already heated. It is apparent 
that the force operation in Gaza can lead to 
numerous human victims and will be fraught with 
the gravest consequences for the future of 
Palestinian-Israeli settlement,” he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on the 
Israeli government “to refrain from tough 
scenarios and try to find a solution within political bounds.”

Search for Missing Recruit in West Bank

Separately in Gaza, anti-Israeli occupation 
activist Hamza Muhareb, 21, was killed and five 
Palestinians were wounded in a massive explosion 
that demolished a car near the residence of 
President Abbas in Gaza on Tuesday.

Meanwhile the security situation in the West Bank was heating up.

IOF said overnight Wednesday that the Israeli 
army recruit Eliyahu Oshri, a settler of the 
illegal Israeli settlement of Itamar near the 
northern West Bank city of Nablus, was missing, 
confirming a report by the Popular Resistance 
Committees (PRC) it had captured Oshri.

IOF sources they believe Oshri or his body could 
be somewhere in or around Ramallah.

The IOF sealed off Ramallah, the home of the PNA 
leadership, by military roadblocks and 
checkpoints early Wednesday and massive searches 
were being conducted by the IOF troops.

Israeli settler goes missing in West Bank: kidnapped or not?

PNN, (Bethlehem) Palestine News Network 28 June 06

There is a missing Israeli settler in the West 
Bank. Although his presence is illegal, he does 
live in a Nablus area settlement in the northern 
West Bank in direct contravention to international law.

The last place 18 year old Elyaho Asheary was 
seen was near the Betar Settlement, built on Bethlehem District lands.

At the same time, the Nasser Salah Addin 
Brigades, the armed resistance wing of the 
Popular Resistance Committees announced they 
captured an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. 
Although they made no official announcement, the 
Israelis fear that this is the missing settler.

The settler was a student at an Israeli military college in the West Bank.


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