Israeli forces appeared to withdraw from the Gaza Strip Tuesday, January 20, in time for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the United States’ 44th president, but militant group Hamas said it would rearm, suggesting its conflict with Israel was not over.
The militant group Hamas has rejected a cease fire with Israel and Iran said the country has no “right to exist,” after Israeli forces killed a Hamas minister and struck a United Nations compound in the Gaza Strip.
The militant group Hamas admitted Thursday, January 15, that Israel had killed one of its key ministers in a major air strike in Gaza City, while the United Nations expressed outrage that Israeli forces attacked a U.N. compound used by refugees.
The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution calling for an “immediate cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip. The United States abstained in the vote as the council passed the resolution 14-0. However, Israel continued a military offensive Friday, January 9, saying it has an obligation to protect its citizens, including one million Israelis who face threats from rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas militants.
At least two people were injured when rockets fired from Lebanon landed in the north of Israel early Thursday, January 8, officials said, raising fears militants of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group were preparing to support fighters of Hamas, who have fired rockets from Gaza.
A young Christian girl has died in the Gaza Strip, amid growing signs minority Christians there are caught in the crossfire as the Israeli army continues its offensive against militants of the Hamas group, Worthy News learned Thursday, January 8.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected a European Union request for a 48-hour ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, saying Israel will uphold its commitment to provide basic foodstuffs and medicines to the residents of the Hamas-controlled region.
(ADDS MORE DETAILS, HAMAS REACTION)
Israel is halting its military operations for three hours a day beginning Wednesday, January 7, for three hours each day, to allow humanitarian aid to enter into Gaza, Israeli officials said.
At least 40 people were killed and over 50 injured when the Israeli Air Force struck a United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip in what it said was a response to repeated mortar and rocket attacks from militants of the Hamas group.
Signs that Hamas has isolated itself in the world have merged from two fronts. Iran, on Tuesday, pledged that Hezbollah will not open a front against Israel along Israel’s northern border. Israel had been concerned that Hezbollah, in an act of solidarity with Hamas, might initiate a war along the Lebanese border; thus, dividing Israel’s attention and its forces.
As Israel continued to fight Hamas in Gaza City, Tuesday, January 6, Israeli soldiers faced the inconvenient truth that weapons used by the militant group were indirectly supplied by Israel itself, the United States, Egypt and other countries.
As Israel’s offensive against militants of the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip continued Tuesday, January 6, around the world Arabic leaders, Palestinians and their supporters continued to pressure the Jewish state to end the operation.
Iran says tens of thousands of students are preparing themselves for suicide attacks against Israel, in revenge for the Israeli offensive against militants of the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.
More than half of the United States’ Lutheran bishops were on their way to Israel Monday, January 5, amid international concerns that an Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip would lead to more suffering of civilians, including the territory’s Christian minority.
Alarm bells echo around the world as Israel continues a major ground offensive it says is aimed at ending rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip fired by the militant group Hamas into Israel. Envoys of the European Union, including Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenburg along with the EU’s external relations commissioner and Schwarzenburg’s French and Swedish counterparts were due to hold talks in the region Monday, January 5.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon tried to bring an immediate end to Israel’s ground war in the Gaza Strip by backing a resolution to the Security Council that was drafted by Libya and put forward by the Arab League, calling for an immediate ceasefire.
On Saturday, January 3, Israel launched a ground assault against Gaza on what was the eighth day of its aerial assaults against the seaside strip of desert. Israel’s stated objective for the ground confrontation is to end all rocket attacks. The immediate objective of the ground operations, according to Major Avital Leibovitch, a military spokeswoman, “is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations.”
The director of the Gaza Strip’s only known Christian bookstore was found dead Sunday, October 7, shortly after being abducted near his home, officials said.
Caught amid the infighting between Hamas and Fatah and Israel’s retaliation for rockets launched at its southern cities is an easily overlooked segment of the population: Christians number only 2,000 among 1.5 million in the Gaza Strip — less than 1 percent of the population.
As a teenager, they trained him to kill Christians and Jews as Beirut dissolved into the chaos of civil war. Before his 17th birthday, his fellow street warriors credited him with 223 kills — mostly against rival militias. Then a missionary witnessed to him in the streets about one who could remove the bloodguilt that drenched his hands. He listened long enough to lay his guns down forever.