Rice condemns Carter’s Hamas plans
12/4/08
Condoleezza Rice has criticised reported plans by former US president Jimmy Carter to meet a senior Hamas leader in Syria next week. “I find it hard to understand what is to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace,” the US secretary of state said in Washington on Friday. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, could meet Khalid Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, during a trip to the Middle East that begins on Sunday. Hamas has said the meeting will take place but Carter is yet to confirm it. The US state department has urged Carter not to violate foreign policy by meeting Hamas’s political leader.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BBE18D00-B8B4-4A87-8FA1-6494A9EC2676.htm
Egypt sends troops to Gaza border
12/4/08
Egypt has sent more than 1,000 extra troops to the border with the Gaza Strip, after Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement warned that it could be breached if Israel’s blockade of the territory continued. The reinforcements were sent to the the Rafah border crossing and the Sinai coastal city of Al-Arish on Thursday. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed across the border in January after Israel stopped deliveries off fuel, food and other basic necessities. A security official said that lorries heading for the border were being stopped at the Suez Canal, in an a bid to remove the economic incentive for Palestinians to break out of Gaza and defeat Israel’s lockdown of the territory.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2AD49C94-E1AA-42E2-A8CA-6C667171B6D1.htm
IDF kills 8 Palestinians, including child, in Gaza
12/4/08
An Israel Air Force air strike on Friday evening killed a Hamas militant in central Gaza only hours after five people, including a 12-year old boy, were killed in an Israel Defense Forces ground raid in the same area. Also on Friday, IAF missiles killed two Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip. The deaths brought the Palestinian death toll to 16 in IDF strikes that followed a terror attack Wednesday, in which two Israeli civilians were killed at a vital Gaza fuel terminal. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged to keep hitting Hamas so that it cannot continue to operate against Israeli civilians as it does.
See; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974044.html
PM to IDF commanders: Think of Palestinian suffering at roadblocks
Yossi Verter
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called on IDF commanders in the West Bank to understand that the roadblocks are causing suffering to the Palestinians, whose needs should be appreciated to avoid a worsening of relations between the two peoples. Olmert made these comments during a closed-door meeting with brigade commanders of Central Command. “Take all the Palestinians who were stripped at the roadblocks, only because there was concern that some of them were terrorists. Take all those who stand at the roadblocks where there is concern that a car bomb will pass through,” Olmert said.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/973994.html
UN: Israel’s removal of W. Bank roadblocks fall short of promise
Akiva Eldar; 12/4/08
Israel has removed 44 roadblocks in the West Bank, short of the number promised to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a United Nations agency has found. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said most of the roadblocks removed were of little or no significance. OCHA, which charts the location of roadblocks in the West Bank, conducted its own field survey of the 61 obstacles that Israel said it removed earlier this month after Rice’s visit.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974077.html
Tags: Egypt Warning, Israel, Palestinian Deaths, Road Blocks, UN, USA Terrorism