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Live blog: Gaza under attack

Live
Live blog: Gaza under attack
MEE follows events in Israel and Palestine as they happen. Are you there? Got something to add? Get in touch with MEE at [email protected] and follow us on Twitter at @MiddleEastEye

Live Updates

9 years ago

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Haaretz reported Netanyahu as saying Hamas is "committing a double war crime by trying to deliberately harm Israelis while using Gaza's civilians as human shields. Therefore, Hamas was responsible when there are accidental civilian casualties in Gaza."

9 years ago

The Turkish Anadolu Agency reports:

"The total number of Palestinians killed by recent Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip has risen to 51, including 13 children, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Wednesday.

""At least 51 people have been killed and nearly 451 injured in Israeli military operations since Monday," ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra told Anadolu Agency.

"He said two Palestinians were killed and a third was injured in an Israeli attack targeting a group of Palestinians in the northern Beit Hanoun town.

"The spokesman said that 13 children and nine women had been among those killed in the latest Israeli onslaught on the embattled coastal enclave."

9 years ago

Wafaa Abu Rahma, a Palestinian from the Nusayrat district of Gaza, spoke to MEE about the effect of Operation Protective Edge on her area over the past 24 hours:

"It is relatively calm in the Nusayrat district. They were shelling empty areas and farms, [the Israelis] fear that there are fighters or rocket launchers there. It seems that all of the nearby farming areas are targeted. Many trees have been destroyed. The shelling was throughout the night.

"Sometimes shrapnel would fall on the nearby houses, breaking the glass. In our case, the house was shaken but we suffered no material losses. I work in Gaza City but today I could not go, there is no public transport. It's hot and people are fasting, but if they need to go somewhere they have to walk. 

"The UNRWA clinic is shut but some pharmacies have opened. Most shops are shut, but some bakeries and food stores are open. All banks are shut. Western Union branches are open but they are only available in Gaza City.

"So everyone is having cash problems and people are having difficulties getting the things they need."

9 years ago

The International Cyber Convention at Tel Aviv University has reported a 900 percent increase in cyber-attacks against Israeli government websites since Operation Protective Edge began on Monday.

“We deal with an average of 100,000 attacks a day, and in the last day we have been faced with 1,000,000 attacks”, said Major-General Yitzchak Ben Yisrael, head of the Cyber Center at Tel Aviv University.

Yisrael said attacks originate from across the Muslim world, describing Hamas' hacker unit as "primitive".

“We know of about 1 million attacks on government bodies and big companies. If a private individual is attacked – we have no account of it,” said Yisrael. “People think that cyber attacks are about data security. Those are the easy attacks. The mass of attacks are against physical infrastructure. The trains, for instance, are piloted by computers. A virus inserted into the system can cause a deadly accident,“ he added.

Earlier in the day Israeli daily Haaretz reported that a text message sent out to thousands of Israeli mobile phones in its name was fake.

The message claimed a rocket from Gaza had hit a petrochemical plant in Haifa.

9 years ago

Mohammed Omer, an independent journalist based in Gaza City, spoke to MEE as bombing increases in the strip:

“Right now there are F-16 warplanes bombing next door to us in Gaza City. I don’t know what the target is but all I can see is people running away from smoke that is coming out of the blast zone. It could either be a house or agricultural land, since it happened less than a minute ago it isn’t clear yet."

Omer said the strikes had reduced earlier in the day but that Gazans were now preparing for a night of intense attacks.

“The bombing calmed down for about an hour, not stopped entirely however, but they are now increasing again. They always increase at this time, overnight until seven or eight in the morning."

The bombs aren't just being dropped from the air, as the Israeli warships are now bombing from off Gaza's coast.

“The Israeli warships are also bombing from the sea at the moment and they are quite close to the beach. They can’t fire too far in from the beach and are only able to attack the houses along the coastal line."

“They have hit the fire department, the fishing habour and the container for the Palestinian navy from the sea. The bombing started from the sea last night and has intensified since."

Omer said mosques have been hit, as well as an United Nations school, while bemoaning the fact increased bombing takes place just prior to the time for Muslims to break their daily fast.

“Three mosques have been targeted in the last 24 hours, with the worse hit in the east of Khan Younis. An UNRWA school was hit too, earlier today, but it did not get any attention from the media. The school was damaged but nobody was hurt at no one is at school at the moment.”

“All of this is happening just half an hour before Iftar [breaking of the fast], which is supposed to be a time where people have inner peace and sit quietly reciting the Qur’an. It is very risky to go to the mosque or shops."

9 years ago
https://twitter.com/aqsatvchannel/status/486892285469028352

Translation: "Breaking: Meshal: It won’t be long until there won’t be any Palestinians who dare to talk about a state based on the 67 borders." 

9 years ago
9 years ago

Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius has written about how Operation Protective Edge may effect American involvement in potential peace negotiations.

"The most difficult question now for Kerry is whether he has the credibility with either side to help rebuild dialogue after this new war in Gaza," he wrote. "He should be careful about reentering this fray. The cruelest outcome would be if his peace process proved so unsuccessful that it killed the very idea of a U.S.-mediated settlement."

9 years ago

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip has hit and damaged an art gallery in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council of southern Israel, according to Haaretz.

There are no reports of any casualties or injuries.

9 years ago
https://twitter.com/aqsatvchannel/status/486891637105123329

Translation: "Breaking // #Meshal: Israel, we don’t have anything to lose. This eruption of the people is a natural state."

9 years ago

MEE contributor Patrick Strickland has just arrived to Haifa, in northern Israel, where Hamas claims to have struck twice in the past 48 hours. 

Strickland says there is "there is no indication that this is true". 

"Sirens have not gone off in Haifa. Sirens did go off in the Israeli city of Zikhron Yaacov earlier today," he said.

9 years ago

The Israeli army has struck over 400 targets in the Gaza Strip since Monday, according to a senior military official who gave a press conference on Wednesday.

“We think Hamas was surprised by Israel’s actions over these two days. We are systematically hitting their infrastructure, where Hamas commanders operate,” a senior IAF officer told defense correspondents, according to Haaretz.

The army has dropped more than 400 tons of explosives on Gaza since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, according to Israeli army figures.

The unnamed officer said the Israeli army had destroyed "more buildings constituting infrastructure of Hamas than it had in all of Operation Pillar of Defence [in 2012]".

“I don’t know whether any Hamas brigade commanders will have a place to return to,” the officer said.

9 years ago

Around 100 protestors have reportedly gathered in Tel Aviv to call for an end to violence and the occupation of Palestine.

https://twitter.com/adanielroth/status/486898679920336896
9 years ago

AFP are reporting quotes from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas labelling Operation Protective Edge as "genocide":

"It's genocide -- the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people," he told a crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"What's happening now is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole and not against the (militant) factions.

"We know that Israel is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project," said Abbas.

9 years ago

Speaking on Al Jazeera English, Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett poured scorn on Meshaal's speech and said "all options are on the table" for a ground offensive in Gaza.

Here are the highlights from his interview:

“Meshaal was talking nonsense as usual. Hamas is shooting 100s of missiles onto civilians on Israel. The good news is we have the Iron Dome and we don’t allow these missiles to hit our cities.

"We will hunt the Hamas terrorist group down until they stop firing missiles on Israeli civilians.

“Hamas is killing its own civilians, they hide rocket launchers within homes, so they are in effect killing their own civilians. Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths in gaza. We will not tolerate a terror state under our nose, we will fight and we will win.

“We are not looking for war with anyone, but when we are forced to fight battles to defend our people we will.

“Hamas is under severe pressure and distress, which is the way they ought to be. The international community know Hamas is a terror group and they will not run to their rescue.

“The only thing Hamas needs to do is stop shooting. If necessary [there will be a ground offensive], all options are on the table."

Responding to claims he is an extremist rejected by much of Israeli society, evidenced by his being heckled at a peace conference in Israel yesterday, Bennett rejected these accusations:

“Millions of Israelis accept my views. The good news about Israel, unlike Gaza and Syria, is we are a democracy. People can heckle me, I’m proud to be in a government where a minister can be heckled."