UN envoy urges Gaza blockade end
The UN's top human rights official has said Israel's blockade of Gaza deprives Palestinians of the "most basic human rights" and should end immediately.

High Commissioner Navi Pillay called for "dignity and basic welfare" to be restored to the 1.5m people affected by the blockade for months.

Her comments came as the Israeli troops entered the southern Gaza Strip, clashing with Palestinian gunmen there.

Crossings into Gaza Strip were closed again by Israeli defence officials.

Israel described the incursion, close to the southern town of Rafah, as a "routine operation".

'Massive suffering'

Ms Pillay issued a statement from UN offices in Geneva criticising the blockade: "This is in direct contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must end now."

A convoy of 33 trucks of humanitarian aid was allowed in on Monday, but United Nations officials say the supplies will run out within days.

Israel says it has tightened its blockade of Gaza in response to recent rocket attacks by Palestinian militants, which have caused minor damage but no casualties.

Ms Pillay called on Israel to let aid, including food, medical supplies and fuel, into Gaza.


She also said electricity, water and other essential services should be restored immediately, and restrictions lifted on the movement of civilians for medical, educational and religious purposes.
"Decisive steps must be taken to preserve the dignity and basic welfare of the civilian population, more than half of whom are children," she added.

Describing the situation as "massive humanitarian suffering", Ms Pillay said Israel had a duty under international law to ensure food and medical supplies are distributed.

During Tuesday's incursion, witnesses said the Israeli troops were accompanied by bulldozers which destroyed agricultural land east of the town of Rafah, in southern Gaza.

There was no immediate reports of any injuries or deaths.

The Israeli military described the incursion as "a routine operation to uncover explosive devices near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip", the Associated Press news agency reported.

It said two mortars were fired at troops, causing no injuries or damage.

Aid protest

With the crossings shut, a coalition of aid agencies which had been due to hold a meeting in Gaza instead held the event in the car park at Erez, the main crossing for people into Gaza, in protest at being denied entry to the Strip.

They called on the Israeli government to allow them "unimpeded humanitarian access" to help Gaza's residents.

At least 16 Palestinian militants have been killed in skirmishes with Israeli forces along the border in the past two weeks.

Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group agreed a ceasefire last July, but it has been under serious strain since early in November.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Middle East | UN envoy urges Gaza blockade end

Published: 2008/11/18 16:15:21 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Why should the Palestinians be allowed entry into Israel? That's like saying the United States should give Mexicans "unimpeded humanitarian access" to the United States.

Maybe when Palestinians stop firing missiles into Israeli civilian populations and stop their terrorist attacks on Israel there might be some loosening of the blockade.

It's interesting how the UN always criticizes Israel for defending itself but never criticizes the Palestinians for their terrorist acts against Israel.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Israel isn't defennding itself by preventing large ammounts of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. It's using the blockade as a form of collective punishment.

By the way, Palestinian rocket attacks out of Gaza have been largely in response to Israeli attacks, attacks which break the ceasefire. The last major round of rockets were launched in response to Israel entering the Gaza strip and killing several Palestinians that Israel accused of digging a tunnel.

At this point, I no longer care who did what to who first. Both of them piss me off with their ceaseless squabbling. I suspect the rest of the world is getting a little fed up, as well.

Tell both them to get their crap together and knock it off by Jan. 1 or the whole area will become a parking lot for the world's largest WalMart.

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"Oh, bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round...

No, it's simply an issue of Israel not allowing the humanitarian aid to traverse its sovereign territory to get to Gaza. It would be like the United States prohibiting Canadian cargo ships from entering American territorial waters to get to Cuba.

That's a crock of b.s.! Israel and Hamas entered into a cease fire agreement and it was the Palestinians that broke the agreement by lobbing rockets into Gaza. Israel was simply responding to Palestinian attacks. And Palestians have no business trying to cross into sovereign Israeli territory even by an underground tunnel: Israel is well within its rights to stop these incursions into its territory.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Don't we though?

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No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Well, no, actually we don't.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Um, that was sarcasm....lighten up man.

__________________
No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Your comparison doesn't make any sense seeing as how Cube isn't a defacto enclave of the US. Israel controls Gaza's Sea and airspace and de facto controls its borders with Egypt through the US, and Israel uses this control to bar purely humanitarian aid that poses no security risk to Israel from getting to the people of Gaza.

It is collective punishment and has been deemed as such by the international community. It is a human rights abuse, it is, in my opinion, morally wrong and it certainly violates the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Which was in response to Israel military operations which targeted Palestinians.

Who were responding to Israeli attacks.

So then wait for the tunnel to cross the border and detroy it? Work with Hamas to get rid of it? No, instead Israel clearly violated the terms of agreement under the ceasefire, by unilaterally deploying troops inside the Gaza strip and attacking Palestinians.

No, Cuba is an independent nation but the comparison is valid since we're talking about going through one nation's sovereign territory to get to the territory of another entity (in this case the Palestinians that want to be a nation).

But since Gaza is not an independent nation, and since it is from Gaza that these attacks on Israel originate, Israel has the right to do what it can to prevent anything from going in or out of Gaza.

The opinion of the so-called "international community" is meaningless - especially the opinion of Europeans who have a long history of persecuting Jews and who didn't do a damned thing to stop the Holocaust that was happening within Europe's own borders.

Where is there a human right (of Palestinians) to have free access to someone else's country (Israel)? Where is there a human right to fire missiles into that other country and then have the "international community" blame that other country? Where is the human right to sneak your children across the border into that someone else's country and use them as suicide bombers?



Targeted Palestinian TERRORISTS who had violated the cease-fire.



Wrong as usual. Hamas and Israel had a cease-fire agreement and it was the Palestinians that violated the cease-fire.



No, you don't wait until the tunnel violates your sovereign territory. You stop it BEFORE it crosses your border. Since the Palestinians violated the cease-fire agreement, that is a de facto declaration of war by the Palestinians. That, in itself, gives Israel the right to invade Gaza.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."