Global Pressure Mounts on Israel to End Gaza Fighting

International pressure mounted on Israel to end its three-week offensive in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with President Barack Obama and the United Nations Security Council demanding an immediate truce.

Israel reduced the scope of its military offensive today, saying it wouldn’t initiate strikes, though it responded to rocket and mortar fire that persisted after a Hamas truce offer yesterday. Military spokesman Brigadier-General Moti Almoz said the army would continue to destroy tunnels militants dug to infiltrate Israel.

The conflict is the third major military showdown between the sides in less than six years. It has already claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Palestinians, 45 Israelis and a Thai worker in Israel. Previous truce deals have failed to resolve underlying issues including the proliferation of arms in Gaza and Hamas’s demand to end Israel’s economic blockade of the Palestinian territory, initiated in 2006 and joined by Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scoffed at Hamas’s truce offer in interviews with U.S. television shows yesterday, noting that the militant group rejected proposed extensions of a UN-sponsored truce a day earlier and continued to bombard Israel with rockets.

Immediate and Unconditional

Obama called Netanyahu afterward to “make clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities,” the White House said in a statement. Israel and Hamas rejected a truce proposal put forward over the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Added pressure came today from the UN Security Council, which in an emergency session called for an “immediate and unconditional” truce to allow for the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, according to a statement on its website. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, told Israel Radio the council sees that immediate halt to attacks “as a bridge to a broader cease-fire.”

The calls for a break in hostilities came as Gaza’s 1.8 million people began observing Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday marking the end of the Muslim fast month of Ramadan. In more peaceful times, streets would be bustling and the atmosphere would be festive, with adults and children dressed in holiday finery and visiting relatives. Parks and beaches would be packed.

Visiting Graveyards

Today, streets were almost empty in Gaza City, the territory’s biggest urban area, as people visited fresh graves, bouquets of flowers in hand, paid hospital calls on family and friends wounded in the fighting, and surveyed the damage done by the Israeli strikes. The Eid is usually the best season for business in Gaza, yet this year, many shops were closed.

“This isn’t Eid, it’s the worst Eid I’ve seen in all my life,” said Mohamed al-Ejla, a 45-year-old father of seven. “I still remember the Eid when I was young, it was full of happiness and we enjoyed it. But this Eid is full of blood, destruction, pain, grief and sadness.”

Clothes shop owner Hamada Salhi, 26, said he had been counting on the holiday season to help repay bank debts.

“Since the beginning of Ramadan and the start of Eid, I haven’t opened my shop, except for a few hours during humanitarian cease-fires, when I sold some clothes that brought in cash to buy food for my children,” he said. “How can people celebrate, when their neighbors and friends and relatives have mourning tents outside their homes?”

Strong Support

Two people, including a 5-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli tank shells today, bringing the death toll since fighting escalated on July 8 to 1,044, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza.

In Israel, support for the military offensive is strong, after years of increasingly menacing rocket fire and the discovery of dozens of infiltration tunnels. A poll commissioned by Israel’s Channel 10 television showed 87 percent backing for the offensive, with 69 percent saying it should continue until Hamas is toppled, a goal the government hasn’t declared. Seven percent favored a cease-fire. The report didn’t give the size of the polling sample or margin of error.

Pollster Mina Zemach said on Channel 2 television that she hasn’t seen such backing for the government in surveys since the beginning of the 1982 war in Lebanon.

Previous Truces

While the military operation has barely affected Israel’s financial markets, the only analyst to predict Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug’s first interest-rate cut in September says the conflict is tipping her toward another one today.

“You can’t completely ignore the effect of the security incidents,” Rafael Gozlan, chief economist at Israel Brokerage & Investments Ltd. in Tel Aviv, said by phone last week. While 18 of 21 economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the rate will be held at 0.75 percent, Gozlan said he expects it to be pared to 0.5 percent.

Israel says its campaign is intended to quell the rocket fire and destroy the infiltration tunnels, which militants used during the fighting. Israel, the U.S. and the European Union label Hamas a terrorist group. Netanyahu says Gaza militants must be disarmed if a sustainable peace is to be achieved.

“We have to demilitarize it from the weapons that Hamas has put in there — missiles, rockets, terror tunnels,” he said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We can’t allow them to restock this arsenal or we’ll be stuck in another five, six months with the same problem.” Militants have fired more than 2,500 rockets at Israel during the current fighting, the military says.

‘High Time’

Hamas’s exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, said it is “high time to lift the siege on Gaza,” a reference to the blockade. “We are not fanatics,” he said in an interview taped July 26 that aired yesterday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We fight the occupiers.”

Asked if he would recognize Israel if the occupation and blockade were to end, he replied, “When we have a Palestinian state, then the Palestinian state will decide on its policies.”

The Israeli army said yesterday it wasn’t to blame for the deaths of 16 Palestinians at a UN-run school July 24 in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, citing its investigation. Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said video footage showed one errant Israeli mortar shell hit the school’s yard at a point where there were no people. He suggested in a phone briefing that the victims may have been killed in crossfire between Israel and Palestinian militants and moved into the yard.

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Bertharina Rina

THE WASHINGTON MERRY GO ROUND

Shamefully, man-made religions are open to so-called inquiry, as these many self-serving
saving machines, so often front for a national empire of wealth being tied directly to the IRS.
Here the innocent worshiper is lulled into a network, where souls are to be saved, as these flocks
of believers put forth money, and guaranteed a future in the hear in after, which is just as
solid as the Rock of Gibraltar sits. A spiritual being [ DEMOM ] described as the Serpent, has
its coils over the globe. Its final resting place is right here in the midst of America. The tool of
this [ LUCIFER ] is to play to play the race card and to fermate racial disparity.

Do doubt about it, Racial misunderstandings is getting the best of, and all people, of whom have
been deceived by man-made religious functionaries from the ground up. America is a combination
of many individuals of multiple cultures. Imposters of eastern Europe. Floods of Asiatics formerly
sat up a system of a one-class imperialism, This took years before Russia was a state. This tribe
of people were formerly known as [ Mongols ],or Khazars, before the Russian state originated.

Without a question. this tribe aided in the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen. Being unhampered by western European countries, After several hundred years their secretive societies and subversive customs formed confederations between each state with political whores for hire.
Eventually, through their wealth being allied to all man-made religions of state being tied to each religious, that had previously prevailed nationally. Finally, through their globalized wealth and influence through control of America’s legal industry, especially the Supreme Court of The Disunited States of Amerika . The weapon of these Khazars is the infected National Bar Association.
This bar association actually appoints all Presidents. This final straw in breaking the back of Old Glory under the Bolsheviki sat up known as the United Nations Organization, with its tie in with
League of Nations. Two political tools in supporting the Khazar movement was the late Woodrow Wilson and Harry Solomon Truman. The very evil , collectively, within America is class antagonism
through racial motivation coming from Red cells spread through out our fifty states. The pro commies in legal and educational facilities have taken the bait-liberalism today, mental and physical slavery tomorrow.

For those of whom are to be ensnared by the poppy-LOT of a metaphysical bipolarism of two
pseudo and corrupt political parties is latching onto a lie. There is no in between. These political
gangsters are in control in being aided through ministers in pulpits across America. If the truth was to be known, in all, thousands have come to America, as professional revolutionaries. Our nations, collectively, are being hunkered down through race baiting. This is a pro Marxist format under
the banner of universal communism.

Forthright. it will be wise for those to search their ancestry back to Noah. This man had three sons,
Ham, Japhet, and Shem. All mankind are descendants of this Divine ingenuity. Racial hatred is
a weapon of Satan, and is intended to enslave all mankind spiritually that dwell under the doctrine
of the Constitution. Apostle Paul said: Beware of the workers of iniquity, and those of wolves sheep in clothing; for they are devils in the flesh. [ DEMONS ].