THE content of the Bush ‘peace offensive’ was yesterday revealed for the whole world to see when Israeli tanks, supported by artillery fire advanced into the outskirts of Gaza City killing eleven Palestinians and wounding 50.
Among the dead was Husam Zahhar, the son of senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar, murdered by the Zionists while they were shelling the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City.
At least 50 other Palestinians have been injured.
Eyewitnesses said that at least five activists were injured by the shelling, while Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles slowly pushed into the eastern Gaza City neighbourhoods of Ash-Shuja’iyya and Zeitoun.
Eyewitnesses said that Israeli bulldozers destroyed fruit groves in an area that is currently really short of food and being blockaded by Israel, the US and the UK.
Mahmoud Zahhar is one of Hamas’ founders. He served as Palestinian foreign minister from 2006 to 2007. He was believed to have been one of the targets of the terrorist raid. In September 2003, Zahhar’s other son Khaled was killed in an Israeli airstrike that completely destroyed their home in Zeitoun.
Palestinian medical staff at Ash-Shifa hospital in Gaza said that six seriously injured men have also arrived at the hospital.
Muawiya Hassanein, the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that Ash-Shifa hospital received at least five injured men, two of whom were seriously hurt.
Separately, eyewitnesses said that Israeli military vehicles invaded the industrial zone near the Erez border crossing in the northern Gaza Strip.
Eyewitnesses said that armed Palestinians were bravely resisting the invading Israeli forces and that very heavy exchanges of fire were taking place.
Israeli tanks were also in action in another operation near the town of Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
The Israeli army had been launching near-daily air and ground raids in Gaza in the period up to yesterday’s massive raids.
Since Bush relaunched ‘peace talks’ in late November, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza. Tuesday’s deaths bring to 6,058 the number of people killed since the start of the second Intifada in September 2000.
The Israeli military were yesterday carrying out Bush’s orders, to take continuous action to destroy the Hamas movement to prepare the way for the ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian ‘problem’.
Bush is determined to overthrow the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, and to have the Palestinian militias disarmed in the West Bank.
His ‘final solution’ envisages a Palestinian ‘state’ that will comprise the Gaza Strip, and parts of the West Bank, while Israel annexes the settled areas of the West Bank, taking over the whole of Jerusalem as its capital.
Bush is determined that there will be no right of return for the Palestinian refugees. He is determined that all that the refugees will get is some minor financial compensation.
Palestinians view his carefully chosen words in support of the ‘Jewish state’ as being sinister in the extreme. They consider that the logic of this position will see Bush supporting and financing the transfer of the Palestinian population now living in Israel into the ‘new Palestinian state’, once it is established.
Workers in the West will not stand by and watch the slaughter taking place on the Gaza Strip, underneath Bush’s ‘peace’ umbrella. At the least the trade unions must establish a 100 per cent boycott of Israel, and spread it worldwide. It must remain in place until the Palestinians win all their demands for a real and viable state.
