Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

2008, 2009 PalArab self-death updates

My self-death count has had a lot of guesswork since the beginning of Cast Lead, and I based a lot on a Jerusalem Post article that claimed 35 had been killed as of January 4th. Since then there have been a number of attempts to catalogue the dead, and I believe now that the JPost numbers were a bit high. I try to make sure my numbers are accurate. My rule had been, whenever possible, to only count deaths with names attached to them and I had been bothered that the 35 mentioned in the JPost never panned out.

The PCHR just published (in Arabic only so far) the most comprehensive list of those killed in infighting since Cast Lead began. According to its numbers some 16 were killed in 2008 and 16 more in 2009. I adjusted the 2008 numbers accordingly (adding 10) and I included the 16 in the 2009 numbers, plus two more in the West Bank.

As far as I can tell, all the ones I had specified were on the PCHR list, including the former B'Tselem worker; they also included some more recent ones I had missed, including a 7-year old girl killed by "misuse of weapons." And this list includes far more dead than earlier lists published by Fatah and another human rights org in Gaza.

For now, I am treating these numbers as accurate.

Must read - Khaled Abu Toameh

Michael Totten transcribed a long talk by Khaled Abu Toameh that is essential reading if you want to understand the Middle East. A small part:

Now you may ask yourself why Arafat was inciting against his peace partners in Israel, why was he inciting against the Americans and Europeans who were feeding him? It doesn't make sense.

Well, to us it does make sense. This is how our Arab dictators survive. They constantly blame the miseries of our people on the Jews and the West and the Crusaders and the infidels and the Zionist lobby and the imperialists. They use all these slogans. Arab leaders always need to make sure that their people are busy hating somebody else, preferably the Jews and the Americans. Otherwise their people might rebel, and God forbid they might demand reforms and democracy.

This is exactly what Arafat did, but he did it in Arabic. The international community – and even Israelis – did not want to listen to what Arafat was saying in Arabic. They only cared what he said in English. They said that what he said in English was good.

The question we should ask ourselves in the wake of this scenario is whether or not there is really a partner on the Palestinian side for any deal, let alone a peace agreement. Any kind of deal. Is there really a partner on the Palestinian side? And the answer is simple. No.

I don't know how to solve this problem. Talking about a Palestinian state today is a joke. Where would that state be established? Israel controls nearly half of the West Bank. These PLO people can't deliver. If Israel gives up the West Bank, you will have to go to Cairo or Amman to take a flight back to America because snipers will be sitting on the hilltops above Ben-Gurion airport.

If you keep up this policy of supporting one party against the other, Gaza will move to the West Bank and we will end up with more anarchy and lawlessness and God knows what else is going to happen. It's a very unpleasant picture. It's very gloomy, I know.

And while you are at it, also read his article here.

Because the two-state solution and the one-state solution are not going to work for all the above-mentioned reasons, the time has come to consider other options. One idea that has been floating around lately is to involve the Jordanians and the Egyptians in running the affairs of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptians and Jordanians are already involved, to a certain degree, in helping the Palestinians in both entities. In recent years, the Egyptians have often found themselves involved in what's happening inside the Gaza Strip. The Jordanians have also lately increased their involvement in the affairs of their former citizens in the West Bank.

What is needed now is to exert pressure on Cairo and Amman to step up their involvement in what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Training Palestinian security forces is not enough. The two Arab countries should be more involved, even if that means deploying their own troops in these areas.

President Hosni Mubarak and King Hussein II do not like the idea. They prefer that the Palestinians remain Israel's problem alone. But the Palestinians really need the help of these two countries. As such, there is nothing wrong with trying a new solution - one that would place the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under the jurisdiction of Jordan and Egypt respectively until the Palestinians get their act together and start working toward establishing a good state. It is possible that, with the help of the Jordanians and the Egyptians, the Palestinians might move faster toward achieving their goal.

Today's PalArab media roundup

Egypt decided to close the Rafah crossings on Thursday, only to be opened for emergencies. The UN has yet to issue a statement accusing Egypt of imposing a "siege."

Egypt also blew up some 13 tunnels under Rafah yesterday.

The PRC, which has close ties with Hamas, threatened Israel to fully open the crossings or else the "truce is finished." They helpfully add that they will turn Israeli sites into hell. (These same people took responsibility for over a dozen mortars and rockets yesterday.)

A "Free Gaza" style boat has left Tripoli to go to Gaza via Cyprus.

Our UNRWA friends in the news

UNRWA tried to pull a stunt yesterday, revealing not only its disrespect but also its arrogance. From JPost:

On Monday, the Kerem Shalom crossing was opened for the delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza, including some 50 trucks with supplies provided by UNRWA. The night before, UNRWA had asked the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration to permit the transfer of paper and plastic bags to Gaza, and had been told the request was under consideration.
Despite not having received approval, UNRWA, COGAT officials said, drove several trucks carrying the supplies from Jerusalem to the crossing and coordinated their arrival with several media outlets, which filmed the trucks being turned away.
COGAT Spokesman Maj. Peter Lerner called the incident a "regretful provocation" by the UNRWA spokesman's office and added that while Israel may eventually approve the transfer of office supplies to Gaza, it was currently focusing on humanitarian aid.
"UNRWA receives preferential treatment at the crossings, and today alone 50 of its trucks were allowed in," Lerner said.
"What was done was wrong and not in accordance with the working relationship that Israel has with UNRWA."

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the organization's schools in Gaza, which opened last week, only had 60 percent of the needed textbooks and that the paper was needed to fill the gap.
"We are running schools for 200,000 kids in Gaza and we have said for weeks that we would need to get it in, and it is entirely predictable since our school term starts at a certain time and therefore it is really strange that anybody should be surprised that we raised this issue," Gunness said.

UNRWA is now deciding that it alone decides the priority of goods entering Gaza. Apparently, paper and plastic bags for schools are more important than fuel and food for everyone, which we are hearing is still in short supply.

Instead of an apology for trying to smuggle in goods that have not been approved and staging a media stunt meant to embarrass Israel, our old friend Chris is saying to the Israelis that he really considers them beneath contempt and that he knows best, that Israel's security concerns are meaningless, that the continued rockets into Israel are less important than the sacred UNRWA school year where teachers can pass on their hatred of Israel to the next generation.

UN Humanitarian chief John Holmes, who is not a part of UNRWA, notably does not deny that some aid to Gaza may have been stolen by Hamas as Gunness has:

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said he was unaware of any instances in which international aid had been misappropriated. But he told reporters in Geneva at the launch of the UN's $613 million emergency appeal for the Palestinian territory that there have been stories about aid getting diverted to Hamas.
"There are concerns by Israel in particular about things like construction materials, cement, pipes [and] other kinds of equipment which they believe could be diverted to military uses," Holmes said, mentioning the construction of bunkers or rocket launchers.
Holmes said the improved audits would be part of the UN's effort to convince Israel to fully reopen its crossing points with Gaza, so that humanitarian aid and commercial goods could be brought in, along with cash so salaries could be paid.

Holmes is trying to work with Israel to allay concerns about misallocation of aid. However, UNRWA is telling Israel that it simply never happens, that the huge network of bunkers that Hamas built with cement that Israel had previously allowed in don't exist, that Qassam rockets built with pipes that Israel had previously allowed in don't exist, that the UNRWA is omnipotent and benevolent.

The divergence of rhetoric between UNRWA and John Holmes also indicates that perhaps the UN is not as fully behind UNRWA as one would think.

The all-knowing UNRWA did admit a mistake yesterday:

While correctly reported on 6 January that Israeli shells landed outside an UNRWA school in Jabalia, resulting in an initial estimate of 30 fatalities, the Situation Report of 7 January referred to 'the shelling of the UNRWA school in Jabalia.' The Humanitarian Coordinator would like to clarify that the shelling, and all of the fatalities, took place outside rather than inside the school. According to UNRWA, the number of fatalities is over 40, many of them among the 1,368 people who had taken refuge in the school.

More on Israeli methods to minimize civilian casualties

The more I read, the more I am amazed. From the Jerusalem Report, in an excerpt from a much longer article:

A campaign very similar, in fact almost identical to the Gaza war in the urban military problems it posed was the U.S. Operation Phantom Fury in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November and December 2004. About 5,000 insurgents under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were embedded in the city of 300,000. An estimated 200,000 civilians heeded American warnings and fled before the fighting began. On November 7, the Americans launched a major air strike, followed by nine days of fierce ground fighting and another 37 of mopping up. Of the 200 mosques in the city, 66 used to cache arms were destroyed; about 30,000 buildings were demolished or significantly damaged; the estimated civilian death toll was 6,000.
In Gaza, with a population of 1.5 million (5 times that of Fallujah) and about 20,000 armed militiamen, 20 mosques were destroyed, 25,000 buildings demolished or damaged, and the estimated civilian death toll was 894 by the Palestinian count or 500-600 according to the Israelis, although they had nowhere to flee to, and some were hit in what had been designated as safe havens.
Indeed, the IDF's efforts to keep civilian casualties to a minimum despite the risks and complexities of urban warfare have been hailed by some foreign experts as setting new standards for other armies. "I don't think there's ever been a time in the history of warfare when an army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza," Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told the BBC while operation "Cast Lead" was in full flow.
Still, the IDF acknowledges that it used heavy fire to protect its soldiers moving forward and that it made mistakes. The fact that four of the nine Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza were hit by friendly fire attests to the difficulty of accurately distinguishing between fighters and civilians in a fast moving urban battle situation.
So what was the IDF's modus operandi? How did it manage to move through the narrow streets and alleyways, the booby-trapped houses and tunnels, with so few casualties of its own? Maj.-Gen. (Res) Doron Almog, a former commander of the southern front responsible for Gaza, puts it down to a combination of high-grade intelligence and a battle plan that took Hamas by surprise at every stage: strategic surprise at the ferocity and duration of the operation; tactical surprise at the timing of the initial air-strike and at the way the IDF found counters to all aspects of a Hamas defense strategy based on human shields, booby-trapped buildings and secret tunnels, and at the modus operandi of the forces on the ground.
"After one swift pincer movement, Hamas fighters suddenly found themselves surrounded everywhere," Almog, now chairman of Aleh Negev, a live-in facility in the south for the mentally disabled, tells The Report. "The IDF soldiers then moved forward behind camera-carrying unmanned aircraft, which located Hamas forces and directed accurate fire from the air and heavy artillery barrages at them. So that even before they engaged in close combat, the Hamas lost dozens of fighters. Many of the dead were company and battalion field commanders. They weren't at the head of their troops, but were deliberately picked out and hit. Through these tactical, targeted assassinations, the chain of command was severely disrupted. If the army hadn't operated in this way, we would have sustained dozens of casualties."
There were other tactical surprises, too - for example, the way the IDF was able to drop a mysterious electronic screen over Gaza. Israelis in the immediate vicinity found they were unable to open their cars by remote control; Hamas militiamen were unable to detonate booby-trapped buildings and other remotely controlled explosive devices.
Had the IDF used less firepower, Almog says, it would have cost it more casualties and greatly undermined the operation's deterrent impact. "Everyone in the region was watching us: Hizballah, Syria and Iran. I think the show of force was very important in creating deterrence, not only vis a vis Hamas, but in the region as a whole," he says.
As they went forward, Israeli troops with cameras fixed to their helmets recorded the web of booby-trapped buildings and tunnels, the way Hamas used civilians as human shields and weapons stored in and being fired from civilian locations. The data will obviously be used by the IDF in analyzing the operation; but it could also be made available if ever legal proceedings are instituted against Israeli soldiers.

(h/t EBoZ)

Hamas fashionistas' shopping spree in Cairo

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas negotiators in Cairo went on a $25,000 shopping spree in a high-end mall:

Witnesses in Egypt saw the Hamas delegation, who left Gaza for talks with the Egyptian leadership to stabilize the calm, shuttled between the largest and most luxurious and the best clothing shops in the Cairo.

The witnesses said they saw Ayman Taha, Salah Bardawil and Jamal Abu Hashim, Hamas leaders from the Gaza Strip, on Saturday on 1-24 in the largest and most famous mall in Cairo.

They said that Taha, Hamas and Abu Hashim loaded bags carried by four assistants went from store to store that sold famous brands and where the price of men's suit in the stores is over $500.

They purchased shoes, shirts and ties, perfumes and luxury items, where the total tally was more than 25 thousand U.S. dollars.

Perhaps they were contestants on Queer Eye for the Terrorist Guy.

Latest Zionist Crime!

Yesterday, the floor of a UNRWA girls' school in Jerusalem collapsed, injuring some students:

Several students were lightly injured and three suffered shock when a classroom floor crumbled beneath their feet in an UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) girls' school in Jerusalem's Old City.
The pupils were on the first floor when it suddenly collapsed, causing them to fall into a hole 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep.

A commotion broke out in the area, with all of the school's workers and the students' family members standing outside the building and looking for someone to blame.

Guess who they found?

Neighbors nearby the school said the floor collapsed as a result of excavations that Israeli antiquities authorities have been carrying out under the Old City, particularly near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is located just 100 meters from the damaged school.

And now that idea is spreading:

he accidental collapse of an UNRWA school in Jerusalem on Sunday proves the extent of the un-researched, unprepared, and careless nature of the extensive digging and excavations Israel is conducting beneath Jerusalem, said the Palestinian democratic Union (FIDA) on Monday.

Even though Jerusalem's mayor observed:

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat arrived at the school immediately after hearing about the incident.
"This was caused by sloppy construction," he told Ynet. "It's clear that whoever built this place did not do it properly. This is a classic engineering problem.
"Under the floor was a space built on logs which rotted and could not stand the load. The floor was weak, and this caused its collapse. The whole building must be rebuilt so that such an incident does not repeat itself, God forbid."

Interestingly, no one is faulting the builders of the school nor UNRWA which, one would presume, would be maintaining it. My query to UNRWA received a predictable response:

Chris:

What do you believe caused the floor to collapse in the UNRWA girls' school in Jerusalem? Did UNRWA build or own the school? When was it built?

not sure why it collapsed. I am still waiting for news on the incident. c

This isn't Gaza and the Chris Gunness can stroll over to the school from his office to check it out himself, but the UNRWA will certainly not take any responsibility for the shoddy building. As usual it will take a low profile, refuse to answer questions and hope it all blows over.

And if the Arabs it serves wants to blame Israel, the UNRWA will certainly not disabuse them of that notion.

More on the sock-puppet

I mentioned yesterday that I had doubts that "Dr." Sam Hamod's credentials were accurate. Perusing the various biographies that he has written about himself on the Internet, he claims:

Sam Hamod is a former advisor to the U.S. State Dept; founder of 3rd World News (Wash, DC);Director of The Islamic Center (Wash, DC); Professor at Princeton, Michigan, Howard and Iowa (ret.).

From his website:

Sam Hamod has published 10 books of poems; has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; has a Ph.D. from The Writers Workshop of The University of Iowa, has taught at Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Howard and elsewhere;founded and edited Third World News in Wash, DC; and was the Director of The Islamic Center in Washington, DC.

At Al Jazeerah he throws in that he is a former professor of mass communications at Northwestern University.

For now, I am most interested in his Ph.D.

Because, according to the Writers' Workshop Page of the University of Iowa, it only offers a Masters degree, not a Ph.D.

(For the record, he clearly is a poet, having published a couple of books and been quoted in many others. Also, he has testified before Congress a number of times as a representative of the American Arab community, mostly in the 50s and 60s.) And he commented again last night on my blog, pretending again to be the fictional Dr. Tova Bloom/Blum.)

Blowing apart "official" Gaza casualty figures

CAMERA has been taking apart the weekly PCHR casualty reports in Gaza and finding that - despite its seemingly comprehensive nature, with names and ages listed - it is woefully inaccurate.

This information is extremely important and needs to be disseminated. Here is their summary and some notable parts of their analysis:

• By cross-checking with other sources, CAMERA has identified a number of Hamas fighters and members of other Palestinian terrorist groups who were either misclassified by PCHR as civilians, not identified as combatants, or omitted entirely from their tabulations. This raises serious questions about the accuracy of PCHRs casualty statistics.

PCHR represents a partisan source that favors Hamas over Israel. This is evidenced by the terminology and tone it uses in its reports - for example, labelling the Israeli Defense Forces as the "Israeli Occupation Forces" and describing Israeli military operations as "war crimes." Despite PCHR's clear bias, its data is widely cited by the media.

• An analysis of the fatalities by age and gender shows that the majority of civilian fatalities recorded by PCHR are males between 15 and 40 years old, the same age profile as the combatants. This also should raise concern that significant numbers of combatants may have been misclassified as civilians.

• Out of 1285 fatalities, at least 950 were males aged 15 or higher. While males over age 15 make up approximately 25 percent of the Gaza population, they made up over 74 percent of the fatalities.

PCHR records 281 child fatalities to January 21. But it gives specific age and gender information for only 253. Of these 253, 57 (23 percent) are 15 -17 year old males. Considering that this age group accounts for less than 8 percent of the under-18 population, 15-17 year old males are overrepresented as fatalities. Since Palestinian terror groups are known to have used teenagers from this age category to carry out suicide bombings, it is not unreasonable to suspect that a number of these teenage fatalities resulted from them having participated in combat.

Another example of how "children" are misrepresented can be seen from a list of "child" casualties from Al Jazeera (h/t Henrik). In a January 15th report of child victims, listed by name and age, out of 217 listed, 22 were adults by any definition (18 years old) ;70 were males above 15.

Also, keep in mind that we have no idea whether those executed by Hamas are included in these counts. In addition, we do not know how many Gazans were killed by Hamas fire aimed at the IDF, nor how many were killed by secondary explosions of Hamas munitions when Israel targeted weapons stores or terrorists. CAMERA also points out that quite a few of the civilians were killed when Israel targeted specific terrorists at locations that Israel warned the residents to leave, including family members who were forced to stay with their terrorist relatives.

I would also like to point out that the "objective" PCHR has as of yet refused to issue a report on casualties from Hamas attacks on Fatah and syspected "collaborators," information that PCHR pretends to keep track of and that other Gaza human rights organizations have publicized and criticized. The PCHR is taking a decidedly pro-Hamas stand in its choice of how to present its statistics, and this needs to be exposed to the Western reporters who are happy to parrot their seemingly comprehensive figures.

More Hamas war crimes

Ma'an lists the names of 181 people who were either killed, shot in the legs or had their legs broken by Hamas in Gaza in the past month. Since the list was generated by Fatah, it might not be including everyone, and while they only list 11 people killed, I have seen Palestinian Arab sources that list the names of 16. Also, yesterday a group of PalArab human rights organizations counted 27 killed by Hamas, without listing the names.

Meanwhile, the Shin Bet is getting specific confirmations of Hamas war crimes in Gaza from prisoners captured by Israel:

Nuaf Atar spoke about the use of Gazan schools to shoot rockets at Israel. Zabhi Atar revealed that Hamas used food coupons to entice Palestinians to join its ranks and Hamad Zalah said Hamas took control of UNRWA food supplies transferred to Gaza and refused to distribute them to people affiliated with Fatah.

Just last night, Hamas reportedly took over a house belonging to a relative of YasirArafat in Gaza.

Staged photo (and actor) of the day

Reb Akiva of Mystical Paths picks up on a nice example of a staged photo from Gaza.

From AP last week:

Leading Palestinian Hamas lawmaker Mushir Al-Masri stands in the chamber of the Palestinian Legislative Council that was destroyed during Israel's offensive in Gaza City, Monday, Jan. 26, 2009.

Let's look a bit closer at part of the photo:

Amongst the devastation, by Allah, five framed photos of Hamas members happen to all fall and drop in the same area, face up. And while the entire parliament building is covered with grey dust, these photos miraculously are clean.

Masri himself is in a prayerful position, looking heavenward at the very moment that the photographer happens to have clambered over to the balcony or perhaps set up the gear needed to take such a photo from such a high angle.

Masri is of course a deeply religious man, well known among Gaza journalists, always praying. Here we see him in a very similar pose as he leads prayers outside another ruined building, places that he seems to be magnetically drawn to along with Gaza photographers.

Another photo of him praying with the ruins in the background here. And another more recent example of him praying here.

Poor Masri, always getting caught by the intrusive photographers while he is just trying to have a couple of moments communicating privately with Allah.

The Gaza equivalent of "No Smoking"

Hospitals in the Western world will usually have "no smoking" signs.

In Gaza, things are a little different:

A Palestinian woman waits to receive treatment at a medical clinic run by visiting Jordanian doctors in Gaza City February 1, 2009. A large team of Jordanian medical workers arrived in Gaza last week to treat Palestinians after Israel's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Why exactly doesn't Reuters point out why such a sign might be necessary?

An Arab boy works on his laptop among the ruins of his house.

However, these ruins aren't from Israeli bombardments in Gaza. They aren't from Israel destroying Arab houses in the West Bank or Jerusalem.

This house is in Saudi Arabia, and destroyed by the Saudi authorities:

"A young Saudi is busy with his laptop on Saturday on the ruins of his house in Al-Balad District in downtown Jizan, Saturday. The house was demolished by the Committee for Combating Encroachments two months ago. "

Somehow, I don't think that there are any protests against Saudi Arabia for destroying the houses of Arabs.

Transcript of Peres speech at World Economic Forum in Davos

Here is what Shimon Peres said last week that so upset Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, causing him to walk out. Here is also Erdogan's sputtering response.
The only place I have found this was at a site called Palestine Think Tank which is heavily anti-Zionist, but the transcript appears to be accurate.

Well, thank you Mr. Chairman, I heard the distinguished speakers talking about Israel and I couldn’t recognize the picture of the country that they know. I want to tell the beginning. It’s very difficult when a democratic country has to confront an illegal terroristic group. Whatever we do is being photographed; whatever they do, nobody sees. For example, when you throw a rocket on a settlement in Israel, it’s not being photographed. You cannot see the mother trying to defend her child the whole night, and their sleepless night. Did you ever see on television a sleepless night?

I must respect for you Mr. Prime Minister, but I must put things as they really are.

Let me start with democracy. First of all, who was elected by the Palestinians, but Mr. Abbas, who is called Abu Mazen. Sixty-two percent of the Palestinians voted for him to be the President of the Palestinian people, and we negotiate with him. Hamas participated in the elections but have a very unique idea about democracy. They think a democracy is a story of one day in four years you go through the election. After the elections you can start to shoot and kill and threaten. Finished. Democracy is not a matter of elections. It is a civilization and I want to conflict to your words by quoting from the Hamas; I won’t be going to interrupt the stories? But Hamas concerns us; Hamas published a charter; let me just read two lines, three lines from it, from the Hamas Charter. “The day of judgment will not come about until the Muslims kill the Jews, when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, there is no solution for peace initiative, proposals, international conferences are all a waste of time.” This is an official charter. I don’t know about which Hamas you are talking?

Now about the proportions. In the last eight years, well I mean, I hate to say it, but since you mentioned it, let me give the other picture, too. Israel lost hundred, thousand hundred sixty-seven lives from terrorists, eight thousand five hundred were wounded. It wasn’t done in twenty days, it was done in several years. We restrained all the time. And then since the last four years when Hamas took over Gaza, 5500 rockets, and 4000 mortars, shells were fired upon civilian life in Israel at random: they didn’t care if it was a kindergarten, if it’s a [ ]we didn’t answer. For that reason, the ceasefire idea, Mr. Prime Minister, was very strange in our views. We never started fire. And we told the Palestinians time and again, “Don’t fire, and there won’t be fire; we are not doing we never started!” And who broke…and oh by the way, we didn’t have a formal agreement about the ceasefire, they announced, and the Palestinians said, “It’s over.” They broke it. And when the Prime Minister was at your place four days before the operations started, the government of Israel didn’t yet to decide to take actions against it.

Now let me… I want you to listen because you watch all of your television, I can understand your feelings.

Israel left Gaza completely, no occupation. We took out all of our soldiers from Gaza, all of our civilians. People are talking about settlements, we took out from Gaza all the settlements and all the settlers, fifteen thousand of them. Nobody forced us, it was our own choice. We had to mobilize forty-five thousand policemen to bring them back home, at the cost of 2.5 billion dollars.

I want to understand why did they fight rockets against us? What for? There was not any siege against Gaza. All the passages were open. Not only that, we participated in investing money in Gaza, to develop a, an agriculture. We at Peres Center, we ourselves put in twenty thousand dollars, twenty million dollars, sorry, to build green houses, to develop strawberries, the export of strawberries, excellent strawberries, flowers.

Jimmy Wolfensohn who was representative of the Quartet, took from his own pocket 5 million dollars to participate in it. They destroyed it. Why? They bombed all the passages. Why? Why did they fire at us, what did they want?" We didn't occupy, there was never a day of starvation in Gaza! By the way, Israel is the supplier of water daily to Gaza, Israel is the supplier of fuel to Gaza, the only thing we didn't permit to bring in was rockets from Iran! And they build tunnels to do it! And you know, we also have women and children, and they want to sleep at night. Do you know what it means, every day, almost hundred rockets falling at random, a million people have had to be under shelter. They came to the government and said "What happened to you? We want have security, why do you permit to happen it? " And I want anyone telling me, clearly, what were the reasons for the attack? What were the purposes of the attack? Peace? We make peace with Egypt, not by arms, by agreement and negotiation, and we met all of the requests of Egypt. We made peace with Jordan the same, we gave back all the land and all the water. We opened with the Palestinians, and we told them, that we are for a Palestinian state, I started in Oslo, against the majority maybe, of our people that didn't agree And all the time, you know Mr. Prime Minister, while you have had to wait, because many busses that came from the West Bank to Jerusalem were full of dynamite. I was then Prime Minister, I saw it with my own eyes, the blood and the bodies. You know, I don't have to watch television, and when I came in there were thousands of people shouting at me "Traitor, killer, look at what you did to us!" You must, there are many details you have to know. Israel is sixty-years old, do you know any other country, that in sixty-years has had to go through seven wars, two Intifadas, an ongoing boycott? What, why? And in spite of it, we made peace with Egypt. I have the highest respect for President Mubarak. By the way, President Mubarak accused Hamas, not us. And President Mubarak knows the situation not less as you Mr. Prime Minister. And President Abbas knows the situation not less than you do, and he accused Hamas not us. And then mothers and children came to the government and asked what will happen? A million people every night have had to hide themselves in shelters, mothers with sleepless nights, what do you really mean? By the way, I have never saw anyone demonstrating against those missiles! That was ok Nobody said a word. And we didn't answer, a day in and a day out, a year in a year out, there's a limit to it.

And by the way, I have much respect for the Secretary General, he used to be and I hope we're still a friend, I appreciate very much the Arab initiative, but there is a problem in it, I don't want to hide it. The problem is not the Arab world, the problem is the Iranian ambition to govern the Middle East. They supplied the rockets to Hezbollah, they supplied the rockets to Hamas, they are controversially the Arab making, and you know we didn't have a choice. The leader of Hezbollah, Nasrallah says: "Would I know that Israel will react so strongly, we wouldn't have started". Thank you very much. And then come the Mashaal, the leader of Hamas and said: "Israel reacted too strongly." What did you expect us to do, I don't understand? What would any country do? What would you do if it you would happen in Istanbul every night ten rockets, a hundred rockets?

And we never gave up, all my life as you said, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it, I am fighting for peace, what we did is not…the thing that we wanted to do… It's not our choice, our choice is peace. What we did is because the lack of a choice, we were threatened with a choice. Would you vote for such a convention, to kill the Jews? OK, those are words, but to kill the Jews and send rockets to kill them. What you want us to do? We started to negotiate with Mr. Arafat, with much respect, it wasn't simple. The PLO was in the beginning a terroristic organization. Mr. Arafat agreed to stop terror and go on to negotiations. By the way, what ever was achieved peacefully, positively, was achieved not by rockets, not by force, not by power, but by negotiations. It takes time, it takes time. It's a very complicated country. It's a small country with three religions, with a lot of history. With different ethnicities, it's not simple. We made peace, once, twice, now we are negotiating with the Palestinians. There was a crisis among the Palestinians, we don't intend to be the one that decide that the Palestinians be united or not. As long as Hamas did not rebel against the Fatah, it was not our business, we didn't say a word.

You know what? I am talking about Israel, look what the people, of the Palestinian people, the Secretary General of Fatah is saying about Hamas, three days ago.His name is Yasser Abd Rabbo, a Palestinian, a secretary general of the PLO, of the executive committee, and I quote him, I quote him three days ago: "Hamas has turned Gaza, Gaza schools and mosques, all universities into centers of detention, interrogation and torture and torture. Dozens have been shot in their legs, beaten savagely, and had their bones broken, broken. Hamas plundered trucks bringing …and distributes it only to…the food.. only to the supporters of their movement." They didn't give the food to the people of Fatah. They killed hundred leaders of Fatah in full daylight. They throw them from the roofs. What do you really mean? Is that the matter of definitions? Israel does not want to shoot anybody, for us all children are as important as one can think of. I created the Peres Center, all the money we have collected went to the cure of children. Palestinian children. They didn't have insurance, they didn't have hospitals, in five years we have brought to Israel 5500 Palestinian children and their mothers to be cured. By the way, there is no hospital today in Israel that does not have Arab doctors, so the children can communicate with the doctors in the Israeli hospitals. That is our choice, to touch a child. But if you put a child, if you put bombs in the kindergarten, and if you hide yourselves behind innocent families, and before we shell, we, before we try to shell anybody, we try and telephone the people, we say, please leave the place. We don't want to hurt you. We made during those twenty days, 250,000 telephone calls before we shoot. What could we do, what was our choice? And what would any government do?

I am very much sorry Mr. Secretary General about the United Nations' building, according to our records, not by your knowledge, they started to shoot from there, and by the way, Europe, you bombed Kosovo, and you hit the Chinese embassy, did you want to? And hundreds of civilian people were killed in the bombing to, That's Ok. So please, I want to speak clearly, Israel does not need a ceasefire, because we never started a bullet and we shall never do it.

And we shall never do it, and the minute they stop shooting there will be a ceasefire, we don't need anything else. Every moment, every day we are not interested in fire; we are not interested in hurting or killing anybody.

Now about the peace process. First of all I want to say that it was a great move on the side of the Secretary General of the Arab League to introduce the Arab Initiative. I think that was a very positive move in a bitter history of misunderstanding and confrontations. The problems we will facing well the following: a) we started to negotiate directly with the Palestinians. President Mubarak told me, "Look, finish you negotiations with the Palestinians we shall consider as the first move to an overall peace." We are negotiating and I think we made headway in extremely complicated issue. They call on this issue of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not a piece of land. Jerusalem is fire. There are three different religions and there are different streams in every religion, and people are fighting about every window, every door. It's easy to say "make an agreement," we are trying to find the way. We told the Palestinians that we are ready really to accept [unintelligible], which means ready to return most almost all of the land of the West Bank to them. Gaza we left completely. What is there to fight? So the ceasefire is as far as this is concerned is not a problem for us. We never started, we should never start fire and when they fired against us we replied, but after a great restrain and thousands of people were killed too. They weren't killed in a concentrated manner. So what? It doesn't matter.

I think that what we have to do, and by the way I'm for the restoration of Gaza, we have nothing there wasn't a day that we didn't supply water and oil. I personally read every week a report about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. If something is missing the government and myself we're intervening to make sure there will be fuel and food. The tragedy of Gaza is not Israel, it's Hamas, who decreed a dictatorship, a very ugly one and they build the problem of the crossing, now is not because we want to control the supply of food or building material or medical. They build a tunnels to bring in those missiles and they build an underground system of tunnels, well by the way the leaders hide themselves there and they forgot the people. I think, yes, we would like to see Gaza flourishing- Gaza is a small place with an intelligent people. When I started to talk with Mr. Arafat we took as an example Singapore. Gaza together with the West Bank are nine times larger than Singapore and Singapore there are more people than in Gaza and the West Bank. Today the problem is not land but really education and Gaza is not our enemy, and the people in Gaza are not our enemies, and we want to live with them in peace. We don't have hatred and we don't have plans for that reason we left Gaza and we are for restoring the life in Gaza but without dictators and without shooting not only us but the people of Fatah…

Moderator: We might end there… Just one minute

Shimon Peres: And then want to renew negotiations with the authorized Palestinian authority. We made headway. We want to start right away, we want to do it with the Quartet, we want to do it straight away, we don't want to waste time. Our aim is peace not war and when we win a war we don't consider it as a victory. For us victory is peace not war. We have power we should never use power unless we don't have another choice and when we have a choice we want peace and I think that Hezbollah has learnt the lesson they stop shooting, nobody stop them to shoot but our reaction. I hope that Hamas will also have lesson they will stop shooting and start talking everything that we can achieve is by talking not by shooting and that was and that is and that will remain the position of Israel.

Thank you sir.

Moderator: This has been a powerful and passionate debate. It's a debate that tonight can go on for hours but we have already gone well past our closing time. I mean…

Erdogan: One minute.

Moderator: Mr. Prime Minister…. with apologies to Mr. Prime Minister Erdogan…

Erdogan: One minute, one minute, one minute…

Moderator: Well, I…

Erdogan: One minute! It can't be! One minute! One minute!

Moderator: Ok, but I'm gonna hold you to the one minute please.

Erdogan: Dear Mr. Peres, you are older than I am. And you have a very strong voice. I feel that you feel guilty and that's why your voice was so loud. My voice is not going to be so loud because you know what I'm going to tell you. You know very well how to kill. I know very well how you killed and murdered children on the beaches [of Gaza]. There are two people, two former Prime Ministers of your country, who said something very significant to me. One of them said: "When I entered Palestine in a tank I was happy." When the tanks entered Palestine they were happy. That's how some of your Prime Ministers felt. Here you're talking about figures. I can give you names, perhaps some of you feel curious. I condemn the ones who applaud cruelty. Because applauding these people who have murdered children is a crime against humanity. We can't overlook that reality. Look, here I have taken many notes [about Peres intervention] but now I don't have the possibility to answer them all. I only will tell you two more things about this issue. The first one…

Moderator: Prime Minister, we can't start the debate again.

Erdogan: Excuse me. The first one, the first one…

Moderator: I'm sorry…

Erdogan: Don't interrupt me.

Moderator: We really do need to get people to dinner.

Erdogan: The Torah's 6th Commandament says: Thou Shalt Not Kill. But they have killed Palestinians. The second thing, look, is very interesting. Gilad Atzmon: "Israel's barbarity is way beyond cruelty." He's Jewish. Then, there is international relations professor from Oxford University Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli army. He has said the following in the English newspaper The Guardian: "Israel is a rogue state".

Moderator: Prime Minister, Prime Minister. I wanna ask to our host. Thanks.

Erdogan: I also want to thank him as for me it's finished. For me, for me Davos is finished. I will not come back again to Davos, you should know, here is finished. You don't let me speak. He's been talking for 25 minutes, and I only could talk 12 minutes. It can't be. [He gets up and goes away, the Secretary of the Arab League shakes his hand].

By the way, Erdogan did speak for 12 minutes, but so did Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, so only Peres had a chance to speak for Israel.

And while I didn't reproduce Erdogan's speech, it had some less-than-truthful passages like "but when the ceasefire ended, 6 months later there were no rocket attacks at that point."

Hamas' current strategy

Today we have an object lesson in how Hamas shoots rockets into Israel while pretending to maintain a cease-fire, and it provides a glimpse into Hamas' strategy to land on its feet after Cast Lead.

Unlike Fatah, Hamas tries to project an aura of trustworthiness. Hamas supporters point out that Hamas didn't take any responsibility for rockets fired during the last month of the six month "lull," for example; they only started to claim to shoot rockets after the deadline had passed.

Likewise, all rockets fired into Israel since the last "ceasefire" have either not been claimed or claimed by small, "rogue" groups that Hamas can pretend are acting on their own. It would be hard for Hamas supporters to believe that the PRC or Islamic Jihad - whom Hamas obviously coordinated fighting with during January - are acting on their own in shooting rockets, so we are seeing claims instead by the "Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades" or similar, seemingly tiny groups.

Today, there were three rockets and four mortars shot into Israel, and they were claimed by the "Yasser Arafat Brigades" of Fatah. Curiously, this claim was send not to Fatah media outlets, but to Palestine Today, which is aligned with Islamic Jihad.

An intriguing report in WorldNetDaily from 2007 quotes Israeli sources as saying that Hamas had infiltrated these very same Yasser Arafat Brigades.

While this is slightly tenuous evidence, it can be bolstered by understanding the timing. Hamas is supposedly set to agree to a one-year ceasefire with Israel starting Thursday. It needs to appear as if it is a credible partner for such a deal - increasing its prestige - but it also needs to shore up its base of terrorists who want to make it appear as if Israel lost the war by not having stopped rockets. These rockets, laundered through these third party groups, make Israel appear weak to the Arab world while a successful "cease fire" deal - where these tiny groups' rockets magically disappear, as they did for a few months during the last lull - will make Hamas appear strong to the West.

Simultaneously, Hamas is pushing to replace the PLO with its own more extreme leadership for Palestinian Arabs outside of Gaza, making an end-run around the increasingly weak PA.

Hamas is banking that it can continue to smuggle weapons with impunity under whomever is guarding Rafah, especially the PA. It is also positioning itself to be the primary provider of aid in Gaza after the war, because whoever controls the aid - and the money - controls Gaza.

Hamas is also calculating that it can brush off the criticism that the Arab world hurled at it and can end up stronger after Cast Lead than it was before, both to the more sympathetic Arab countries of Syria and Qatar as well as to Europe and the US. Everything it is doing is aimed in that direction, and, as usual, the PA is completely outmaneuvered.

Apparently, so is much of the West.

Almost certainly Iran is behind these machinations, and if the West doesn't wake up, we will be caught flatfooted again.