Benjamin Netanyahu

It’s election day here in Israel and the only guess that anyone can lob out there is that Benjamin Netanyahu will probably end up Prime Minister, but that doesn’t mean he will win the election.

There are a number of forces here at work, which create a very unpredictable dynamic in a multi-party coalition government.

First, let’s talk about Hamas. Back when Ariel Sharon initiated the pullout from the Gaza strip, Netanyahu spoke against it (after initially voting for it).  His Likud party defected from Sharon saying Gaza would become a radical Islamic sub-state and the rockets fired at the Gaza settlements would one day reach towns like Ashkelon.  Netanyahu doesn’t often campaign on the “I told you so” platform. He lets other people say it for him.  However, Israeli voters are so tired of Palestinians and the rocket fire they have gone even farther right than Netanyahu and Likud. Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Betenu (Israel is our Home) party have grown from a far right fringe party to a major player in Israeli politics. They have passed Ehud Barak and the Labor party to poll as the 3rd highest vote getters in Israel.

Tzippi Livni

Here’s where its gets spooky for Netanyahu.  Tzippi Livni and the Kadima party are closely trailing Netanyahu and Likud. Lieberman and Yisrael Betenu could very well split the vote leaving Kadima with more seats in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) than any single party. Livni would be at the top of the party.

But that doesn’t guarantee she’ll be Prime Minister.

Israeli law says the President, Shimon Peres, appoints a Knesset Member to form a governing coalition based on who will be most able to put together a majority of votes.  That person becomes Prime Minister.  Livni already failed to assemble a majority once and there isn’t much to indicate she would be more successful now.

Avigdor Lieberman

Kadima and Labor, favor ceding more land to make a Palestinian state and a two state peace deal possible.  In light of the continued rocket fire from Hamas, Israeli voters don’t feel like ceding much of anything to the Palestinians.  So, even if Likud doesn’t win, the right could still end up with the most seats in the Knesset.  Therefore, the top right wing politician would be the most able to assemble a majority.  The burden would fall on Peres to appoint Netanyahu, even if he’s not the top vote getter.

Ehud Barak

Still, Netanyahu could end up the clear winner.  The moderate Israeli voting public is remarkably undecided and uninspired by the menu of potential leaders presented to it. Those voters may not show up to vote.  Given the recent conflict in Gaza, The recent war with Hizbollah and the Israeli soldier still held hostage in the Gaza strip, right wingers who favor a hard stance against Palestinians are motivated and they’re arriving at the ballot boxes.

Share This

By Reena Ninan, Middle East correspondent

I could never be a good smuggler.

I once tried to smuggle ten souvenir lighters on a flight from Baghdad to Amman.

The lighters had a picture of George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein with an F-16 above their heads.  I bought them at Baghdad airport.  Airport security yelled at the man who sold them to me and forced him to return my money.  He did.  I gave back most of the lighters but was allowed to keep two.

Smuggling is a profitable business–especially in Gaza.  But it’s not lighters they’re after.

This week Hamas’s Gaza spokesman Ayman Taha was busted trying to carry $11 million in cash ($9 million in U.S. dollars and $2 million in euros) through the Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border. Taha was coming back to Gaza after ceasefire talks in Egypt.  But before those talks, he made a stop in Tehran along with Hamas’s leader Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Syria.  Gazans believe he picked up the money in Iran.

It’s not the first time Hamas leaders have tried this route. When the Islamists took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, the international community launched an economic boycott.  Hamas Leader Mahmoud Zahar travelled to several countries, including Iran and Indonesia.  He successfully brought back bags of cash via Egypt–$35 million worth.

If it worked back then, why not now?

To start, Egypt appears to be making a more serious effort to crack down on the smuggling. So why not use the underground tunnels–the same tunnels that are also used to bring in rockets?

Maybe it’s become harder to do after Israel bombed hundreds of tunnels recently.  Or perhaps Hamas wanted to see if the Egyptians would really follow through on their pledges to patrol the border.

Either way, with $2 billion dollars in estimated reconstruction costs for Gaza, the Islamists will need to find some way to get fresh funds in if they expect to maintain their grip on power.

Share This

Just when I thought I’d seen every surprise the Middle East had to offer, I showed up on the Gaza/Egypt border.  To understand why this is such a surprise you need to remember that Israel said the war in Gaza had two goals: 1) To stop the rocket fire and 2) To stop the smuggling of rockets into the Gaza strip and close the tunnels through which they are smuggled from the Egyptian side.

So, I arrive at the border and find an entire community digging away like prospectors during the gold rush.  It was all out in the open. They were pulling broken wood out of the opening of tunnels. Diggers, most of them kids, were covered from head-to-toe with sand having done the labor of re-opening the tunnels Israel had just closed with 22 days of a withering air campaign.

One of the first I visited needed just a little patch up work and was back in the business of running goods underground from Egypt. I asked the owner of the tunnel if I could have a look at it he said, “Ahlan wa Sahlan,” welcome to everything.

The problem is that the entrance of the tunnel had been hit. It was about 90 feet down and the ladder was broken away in the middle. One of the little diggers offered to haul my camera and shoot pictures himself but I had a couple of problems with that: 1) He didn’t know how to shoot for TV and 2) I can’t keep a clear conscience and send some kid down to do the dangerous work while I sit up top and wait for the video.  So, down I went. It was really treacherous.  None of the steps on the ladder seemed like they were nailed in and secured very well.  When I got to the broken part, I shot my foot out to little nubs of wood on the opposite site of the chute and climbed like spider man keeping enough pressure to keep from falling.  The fall would have been accented by the exposed nails and broken wood on the way down with a final compliment of digging tools lying at the bottom.

I got down and there was the corridor in the sand. The only thing separating me from Egypt was the darkness of the tunnel and the knowledge that the ground above it had been softened for the past 3 weeks by Israeli air strikes.

The owners of the tunnels never admit they smuggle weapons. They will only tell you they smuggle food and basic necessities like fuel and clothes. But they are capitalists.  When a load shows up on the Egyptian side of the border, they don’t ask what’s in it.  They ask how much they can get to pull it through to Gaza.

For all of Israel’s effort and bloodshed, the smugglers are back in business.   I asked one of them what would it take to stop them from digging. He said, “We’ll stop when the borders open.”

Share This

Share This

Share This

11 am EET: I couldn’t help but feel panicked. I was using the computer on the 7th/ top floor business lounge when the sirens went off in our hotel.  Since rockets obviously fall out of the sky, the top floor of any building is the last place you want to be during a rocket attack.  I quickly walked out the door and had no idea where the bomb shelter was.  In front of me is a window running the length of the hall that overlooks the inviting deep blue sea.  Strike two for me, windows are the worst thing to hide behind in an attack.  I cower behind one of the cleaning carts housekeeping uses and a steel elevator door.

I can’t hear the children in the daycare located in the hotel.  They’ve gone silent for the first time this morning.  Rocket impacts a couple miles away hitting a home.  No fatalities or injuries.   Family wisely heeded the sirens warning and fled to their bomb shelter.

11:30 am: At the front desk I notice this sign:
Dear Guest,

For your comfort there are shelters on floors 1, 4, 5, 6.

Regards,
Hotel Management

No internet in hotel rooms, but bomb shelters on 4 floors.

1 pm: Producer Ian Rafferty  and I go to fill up gas and pick up water and sunflower seeds for the crew.  The alarm goes off again.  The woman behind the counter pulls my arm and drags me to a closet that’s clearly used for storing.  Packages of soda, chips, and bottled water surrounded us.  There is so much you can tell about a person’s ego based on how they enter a bomb shelter here.

A man with his son entered the “safe room” lacksadaisically – making a show of himself about how he wasn’t scared and how silly everyone else was who ran into the shelter.  Much to the irritation of my producer Ian and the people stuck behind him trying to get in.

15 minutes later Ian was still fuming saying, “Look if you think your too cool to enter a bomb shelter don’t jeopardize the other people who are scrambling to get in!”

There are a lot of people who think they’re too cool for a bomb shelter.  My general rule: If the local people are running to bomb shelters don’t pretend you’re too cool for them.”

236 pm: We go to pick up lunch for the crew at the border before our shift begins.  The alarm system in the city goes off.  We’re near a gas station.  Cameraman Dudi pulls next to the gas station.  I’m not sure this is so smart.  He says the roof is armored.  Ian and I disagree.   Dudi grabs his camera as we wait for the rocket to fall.  It hits close by.  We get in the car and drive down the street to the town of Sderot.

244 pm: We ask 3 different policemen where the rocket hit.  No one seems to know.  We don’t see any smoke.  Probably landed in a field somewhere.  If it had hit a home the authorities would know by now.

330 pm: Human rights groups say the White Phosphorous used in artillery shells by the Israeli military to create smoke screens has left burns on Palestinians in Gaza.  We shoot a stand up near a military area by an orange tree grove.  I pluck 10 oranges.  I’m a Florida girl.  I haven’t seen fresh fruit in weeks.

5 pm: When we arrive back a the work site overlooking Gaza,  Ian puts the oranges in a overturned Kevlar helmet and serves them to the crew.  They chuckle and nod approvingly.  It’s been a quiet day on the hill so far and everyone in the FOX camp seems to be in a good mood.  This is typical.  FOX personnel typically enjoy each others company – not always – but usually.

6 pm: Back in Jerusalem my other producer Ibrahim is working hard with editor Ronin to put together our package for Special Report about White Phosphorous burning Gaza civilians.

Share This

The acrid smell of spent machine gun rounds was floating up through the load master’s porthole on the turret of the Merkava Tank. It burned my nostrils and made my eyes water. The sun had gone down and the little DV camera I had was not getting a good picture of the big cannon on the front of the tank in low light. So, I fished in the pocket of my flack vest and pulled out a little l.e.d. flashlight. I held the camera in my right hand, cause my left one is broken. I used the broken hand to hold the flashlight and tried to illuminate the cannon on the front of the tank.

Adam, the load master, tapped on my leg from the inside of the tank. He told me I needed to get my feet over to a rail that ran along the edge of the cabin inside the tank because the 120 mm cannon was about to fire and if the recoil hit my legs, it would be bad.

So, I had my feet pitched off to one side, both hands extended out like a crossing guard, one recording, one lighting.  I balanced by wedging my flack jacket in the porthole. My head was sticking up out of a Merkava tank, in combat. I was scared.

Did I have my legs out of the way enough? Was I going to lose my hearing? Was I going to get knocked silly and fall into this tank when it fired?

   I got my answer soon enough.

From a distance tank fire always sounds like trucks crashing head-on, without the screeching of tires. When you are balanced above the cannon, it sounds like a big pop. I was wearing one of the Israeli tank crew helmets complete with ear protection. But the headset wasn’t a good fit. There was a gap by my right ear. As I write this, my ear is still ringing.  There was a tremendous flash of light. I was knocked off balance but saved because my Kevlar-wrapped girth kept me wedged tight in the small porthole. The cannon fired a total of 3 times. That followed all of the small arms fire that was directed at a Palestinian Mortar team in the Gaza strip.

Colonel Yigal, who was the commander, told me the mortar team had been firing at infantry soldiers with Israel’s Givati brigades. There were 5 people on the mortar team, 3 of them, he said, had been killed.

That’s the part that struck me. The machinery of war kept me very distant from the human impact. We were roughly 300 yards from the mortar team, but I never saw them. I never heard one of their rounds.  From my perspective, we could have been blasting away at a shooting range.  But as I watched the number of Palestinian dead increased by 3 and with combat still raging as I write, the death toll has crossed 900 and edges ever closer to 1000.

Keep checking back for the latest EXCLUSIVE coverage from Gaza!

Share This

545 am EET: The sirens go off in our hotel.  I’m so tired but I know I need to go to the bathroom, sit in the tub, and close the bathroom door. No time to go to the saferoom.  I wonder if the rest of our FOX News crew made it to their bathrooms or if they just rolled over.

3pm: A rocket makes a direct hit on a home in Ashkelon about 15 miles from Gaza.

4pm: We’re at the home.  Dudi and Ian checkout the site and are optimistic we can go LIVE from the 2nd floor of the house where the rocket hit.

They scramble to make it work, but that requires borrowing power from the house next door.  At one point the security guard who has taken over the home refused to let them back in the house where all our gear has been set up.  Dudi says something in Hebrew.  Somehow he managed to get us back in.

5pm: We’re broadcasting live for “America’s Newsroom”. Producer Ian Rafferty and Cameraman Dudi make the impossible happen.  They manage to get us up LIVE from the middle of the rubble.  President Bush has just wrapped up his final press conference.  He says Israel has a right to defend itself as long as rockets keep coming.

After the home we’re at was hit by a Grad rocket,  I talk to Bill Hemmer about how these rockets are smuggled through underground tunnels from Egypt to Gaza. Israel says for any ceasefire agreement to happen they want the tunnels stopped.  They took out 20 yesterday.

6pm: We’ve shot a standup for “Special Report” tonight and are heading back to the Gaza border for more LIVES.  Tune in tonight to Special Report with Bret Baier.

Keep checking back for the latest EXCLUSIVE coverage from Gaza!

Share This

Share This

Your Facebook status is an electronic bumper sticker. Both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict want to use it.

As the military conflict in Gaza heats up, so does the propaganda war. Both sides are using social networking websites to get their message out to as many people as possible.

On Facebook, two Israeli entrepreneurs have created QassamCount. The site asks users to “donate” their Facebook status bars, which are then automatically updated to display the latest tally of Qassam rockets Hamas fires from Gaza into Israel.

A pro-Palestinian group has created a similar Facebook site called “Stop Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza,” that also solicits status bar donations.

Facebook is just part of the equation when it comes to online social activism in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Groups on both sides are also using “micro-blog” services such as Twitter and posting video, some of it shot on cell phones, on sites such as YouTube.

In the video below, FOX field producer David Lewkowict and I surf the web for some examples of the online battle for public opinion.

Follow Jonathan on:     Twitter Facebook Other Blogs

Share This

By David Lee Miller, FOX News correspondent, Jersualem Bureau

The Israel-Gaza conflict has changed the rules when it comes to booking a hotel room.

As a globetrotting reporter I have stayed at some of the swankiest hotels and slept on army cots. (For the benefit of FOX accountants, more cots than luxury bedding.)

Yes, real down pillows, a fluffy bathrobe and a complimentary fruit basket are always a welcome sight. But at a certain hotel in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, less than a 15 minute drive to the Gaza border; I have had to change my list of requirements for a room to earn five star status.

Upon check in at most hotels the conversation goes like this:

Clerk: “Welcome to the Five Seasons.”

Me: “Thanks. Can I have a no smoking room with a king size bed, away from elevators, far from vending machines and with no adjoining door?”

Clerk: “Uh, let me get my manager…”

In Ashkelon, I have different priorities.

Clerk: “Welcome to Ashkelon…”

Me: ” Thanks. Can I have a room in the ‘no shrapnel’ section of the hotel?”

Clerk: “Sorry, we only have rooms facing south…”

Due to the nearby conflict the hotel is packed with journalists from around the world. And everyone one of us wants a room facing any direction except south. South is the direction of Gaza which is where militants have been firing rockets on a daily basis. Rooms with a southern exposure have the greatest risk of being hit.

At least one of my colleagues has covered his window with a spare mattress to offer some protection from the risk of shattered glass. But the best protection when warning sirens sound is racing to one of the hotels reinforced safety shelters. Guests have about 30 seconds before the rocket hits somewhere in the city.

That’s one kind of room service I can do without.

Keep checking back for more behind-the-scenes blogs from the Gaza border!

Share This

1 pm EET – There are two hurdles for women in a war zone.  Flak jackets and outdoor bathrooms.  The man from the flak jacket company brought several flaks, all of them too big for me.  I guess there’s not much of a market for women’s petite in the flak jacket industry.  I got fitted for a small flak jacket today. My producer Osnat helped to measure me.  “You don’t need to blog about this one,” she says to me before measuring.

2 pm — As I drive out to the border, there are still tanks being transported on flat bed trucks.  Some of these tanks are placed in storage facilities with humidifiers inside the tanks.  This way the tanks are battle-ready and can be used at a moment’s notice.

3:30 pm — I pull up to the hotel near the border where our FOX News crew is staying.  Ian Rafferty, my producer, tells me to check in first.  Journalists from all over the world are here, and there’s some worry there won’t be enough rooms.

The hotel isn’t allowed to use rooms on higher levels that are within range of rocket attacks.  Obviously with rockets falling from the sky, the higher floors are more likely to be hit first.  It’s one of the few times you don’t want to be on the top floor.

Ian has been to Baghdad.  He covered the 2006 Lebanon war from Israel.  He gets combat coverage.  He promises to help me move one of my mattresses up against the window of my room.  This way if a rocket lands nearby the mattress will help absorb any shrapnel or glass from shattered windows.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Truth is, if there’s a direct hit on the hotel the mattress really won’t help much.

4pm — We’re at the border with the rest of our FOX crew.  David Lee Miller is doing a live shot for America’s Newsroom.

I walk over to our Middle East Bureau Chief Eli Fastman.  He has set up a makeshift office (he prefers the term ‘command post’)  with a folding chair, binoculars, and a liter of bottled water.  He was the one who discovered this location.  Kind of funny — now dozens of international TV journalists are swarming the place.  Eli gets war and the Mideast.  And second only to perhaps Greta, he doesn’t sleep.  He’s here pretty much 24 hours a day.

We’re hearing that a United Nations school was hit by an Israeli missile.  UN officials on the ground here can’t reach people in Gaza.  Phone lines are cut. There were 40 Palestinians killed in that attack; 55 injured.

Israeli army says they received mortar fire from the school and returned fire.  They also say senior Hamas militants were killed.  Hamas TV hasn’t announced if any senior militants were killed, and it’s hard for us to independently confirm it.

UN is calling for an independent investigation.  They say they carefully vet anyone who enters these shelters, and there’s no way Hamas would’ve been allowed in.

The director of UN relief efforts in Gaza, John Ging, says the Israeli military was given the GPS coordinates for all UN schools and shelters.

Keep checking back for the latest EXCLUSIVE coverage from Gaza!

Share This

I want to tell you about one of the unsung heroes of FOX News: Ibrahim Hazboun.  He is one of the producers out of our Jerusalem Bureau.

It’s trite to say we couldn’t do the job without him, because we could. We just couldn’t do it as well.  Forget the fact that, together, we have been tear gassed and pummeled with stones together in the West Bank, stranded in Gaza for weeks at a time. That’s the stuff that makes Ibrahim a friend.  What serves you back in the states is that he is a solid newsman.  When I present a story to you, often times that story got its start from Ibrahim.  Most of the time, he has given the story input in one way, shape or form. Now, as he did during the Lebanon War, Ibrahim is performing a thankless, yet indispensable role.

While I’m running around the border, Ibrahim is back in the Jerusalem office keeping an eye on all of the information that comes in through the wires as well as the video and interviews that come into our grasp.  When an Israeli or Palestinian leader walks into our studio, Ibrahim and I try to decide what information that newsmaker could provide to benefit you at home, and Ibrahim will badger him/her to get it on tape.  Then he stacks up a description of the day’s best video and sound and e-mails it to my blackberry. Because of his effort, when I sit down to write, I’m confident we’re delivering the best to the viewers.  I’m well aware of how much Ibrahim would prefer to be out of that office when a big story comes our way.

Our working relationship is not all sunshine, roses and Qassams.  If you take two guys who are both passionate about the final product, they will ultimately disagree. Add the pressure of TV news in conflict zones and they will disagree with passion. One of our most memorable fights came in the Gaza strip a few years ago.  We were doing a story about the growing chaos in Gaza. Rafa, a city in the Southern end, melted down into riots.  I said “let’s go.” Ibrahim and another guy, Nael Ghaboun (I’ll write about him later) both decided it was too dangerous and refused.  As our disagreement became more heated, Ibrahim called me a Kharouf: Arabic for sheep.  He and Nael argued that in their culture the sheep walks into trouble and needs the Shepard to protect him.  Now, I was really angry and argued that in my culture the sheep is scared and stays with the safety of the flock. After the argument gave way to good-natured ribbing, we began to refer to each other as Kharouf or the plural: Khurfan. (The other nickname is Sadiki: my friend)

Now, the most common greeting or parting sentiment spoken between Ibrahim, Nael and myself is: Yaish il Kataeb il Khurfan: Long live the sheep brigades.

Share This

Someone once told me that if you hang around long enough in the Middle East, news is bound to break at some point. It never stays dull for very long. That’s certainly been true on just about all my trips to Israel, and several of my trips to Lebanon.

Our timing was pretty good – as journalists – in the summer of 2006. We arrived on the same day that Hezbollah carried out a cross-border raid in the south and captured two Israeli soldiers. The next morning, Israel bombed the airport, so we weren’t going anywhere for a while. We had planned to stay for five days and ended up staying five weeks, as Israel pounded Lebanon from the air and sea. Despite that, Hezbollah kept up its barrage of rockets into Israel.

This time around it’s a lot safer. People keep writing to say “Be careful” and “Keep your head down,” but it’s really quite calm. That doesn’t mean it won’t change. This is the Middle East, but for now it’s life as normal. As normal as it can be Beirut, anyway, which is a pretty chaotic city.

We’re just here to report on the reaction from the Arab street, which is angry, but for the most part, not violent. Producer Marcia Biggs lives here, so she knows her way around, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, who’s been pretty much all over the world, is enjoying his first visit to the city that used to be known as the Paris of the Middle East.

Share This

LIVE Gaza Updates

1:30 pm EET: My cameraman Dudi and I are driving on Highway 1 from Jerusalem to the Gaza border.  There’s a flat bed truck with a giant Merkava tank being transported next to us. You can see war everywhere here. Cars are being checked by police on the highway.  They’ve set up a check point where cars coming from East Jerusalem and the West Bank can be searched.

2 pm: An Israeli radio station interviewed the mother of the first Israeli soldier killed in Gaza from this operation. She said her son sent her an SMS on her cell saying:

“My dearest mother in the world.  I’m looking after myself.  You look after yourself.  We will prove to the whole world and return the honor to the people of Israel.”

Israeli military came to the kindergarten where the mother works.  When they asked if she was the mother of Staff Sergeant Dvir Emmanueloff she said, “I understood. He was dead.”   Emmanueloff was part of a Golani combat engineers unit.  He was hit by shrapnel in a mortar attack.  Dvir Emmanueloff was 22 years old.

4 pm: A kindergarten has been hit in the Israeli town of Ashdod.  That means the rocket traveled about 25 miles.  Thankfully the school was closed, but the rocket hit the playroom. We walk into the school.  Legos were scattered everywhere on the floor amongst broken glass and the crumbled building. As we prepare to go LIVE on FOX, the Red Cross uses a megaphone to tell residents in the apartment building around the kindergarten to go back to their homes.  “Go on with your lives,” the Red Cross worker says.  He also warns there could be more rockets. The kindergarten teacher from the school tells me she prays for peace on both sides.  “I’m 52 years old and living in Israel this kind of war is all we’ve known,” she tells me.

5 pm: We’re headed back to the Gaza border.

6 pm: It’s now dark.  We can see and hear a lot of military activity in Gaza.

7:30 pm: There are lots of flares in the sky.  We hear drones and helicopters above.  Tank fire can be heard, and we also hear rockets landing in Israel.

8 pm: There’s an unexpected situation inside Gaza with grave consequences for the Israeli military.

8:30 pm: We can hear sirens.

Keep checking back for the latest on the Gaza border!

Share This

By Eric Shawn, FOX News Channel correspondent

We are about to witness one of the crucial roles of the United Nations in world affairs: diplomacy by television.

While the world food program feeds more than 103 million each day, and UNICEF provides life-saving shots for a variety of childhood diseases, we should not underestimate the importance of an open, live broadcast of a security council meeting for aggrieved parties to believe they are getting justice. Such will be the scene on Tuesday when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas leads a meeting seeking a ceasefire in Gaza. What the Arab group really seems to mean is an end to the Israeli operations, for the current draft of a proposed resolution makes no mention of the continued Hamas rockets or indeed any acknowledgment, as U.S. diplomats see it, of the prospect that a member of the world body has been under attack by a terrorist group and has decided to try and stop it. Observers believe if a council resolution includes demands on both sides, then the council could really live up to its name.

The 22 Arab nations (the Palestinian authority would make 23), gathered in a basement conference room hammering out their proposal, which still does not mention Hamas’ role in the fighting. It is similar to the one Libya floated on New Year’s Eve, which condemned “all acts of violence and terror against civilians,” (one would presume that could include Israelis as well as Palestinians) “as well as expressing grave concern about the widespread death and destruction among the Palestinian civilian population.” The draft also said it “strongly condemns the Israeli military attacks.”

It went nowhere, and an even weaker expression late Saturday night was not agreed on because of U.S. objection. American diplomats note the absence of holding Hamas responsible, and indeed the British ambassador said if there were to be a balanced resolution… that is, a resolution that includes criticism of and demands on Hamas as well as Israel, then such a declaration could pass muster.

There is growing anger at the U.N. at the mounting civilian casualties. No one wants to see the violent developments continued. But if Israel is successful in weakening Hamas, then the Palestinian authority could grow in stature and accomplish something. How ironic it would be if Hamas’ radicalism sows the seeds of its own demise, and peace be brought by the very group it replaced in Gaza: The P.A.

But when asked about what their proposal said about Hamas, Arab League Secretary General Amr. Moussa said, “This is a sticking point to certain parties. What is a sticking point to us is what is happening to civilians.”

“This resolution is not to condemn Hamas,” he admitted, saying dealing with Hamas will only come after Israel stops its actions. When asked what he can do to stop Hamas from firing rockets, he ducked. “There is no progress in peace. There is nothing we can say. We need to move to an atmosphere of peace.”

For now, the fighting continues, and the sharp words of condemnation will fill the carpeted security council chamber Tuesday. What the world wants is for those expressions to actually count. But without Hamas also being held accountable, it seems once again the results, for a fourth time since the crisis began, will be all talk and no action.

Share This

Share This

Update 4:17 pm in Gaza: I moved to a hotel in Ashkelon. I got to the room at 7am my time after hitting the “Geraldo at Large” show last night. By 11 the sirens and rocket strikes got me out of bed. I have my little handicam in the room. Producer Ian Rafferty and I chased after some of the grad strikes earlier.

It took us a while to get back to the hotel because the sirens kept wailing warning of new inbound rockets. We had to keep jumping out of the car and taking cover. The car doesn’t protect you from a rocket strike. The shrapnel can cut right through the doors and break the windows.

I got back and tried to sleep. No luck.  I read the wires and watched other newscasts. Now, I’m starting to feel a little tired.

Keep checking back for updates from Gaza – There’s more to come!

Share This

3:00- drove back down to Gaza border.

4:20 – arrived to find art and air strikes “softening” the ground. A strange new smoke bomb was fired laying out fog by Gaza border.

5:30 – Eli fastman and I drive to see tank unit that had been staging near Erez crossing.

5:39 – Tanks are moving. We shoot with my little handheld video camera.

6:00 – We’re back at LIVE location. Air strikes and Artillery shake the night sky.

Share This

Share This

UPDATES LIVE FROM THE GAZA BORDER

6:00 – We changed the location of our live shot. The hilltop spot doesn’t show anything in the dark. It was also dangerous. Lots of rocket fire today. We moved to Sderot. It is the town most frequently targeted and we’ll see something in the background.

4:45 – I’m driving to catch a few minutes of the Livni briefing. The red alert sounds warning of an incoming rocket. I’m close to a bomb shelter. I leave the car running and take cover.

2:46 – Israel’s security cabinet adjourns. The 48 hour cease fire has been rejected.  I get an e-mail from the foreign press association that the border crossing into Gaza is still closed. There may be an opportunity for pool reporters to go in. I want to get into Gaza. I don’t feel like I’m close enough to this story.
My right thumb hurts. With a cast on my broken left hand, I write everything on my BB with my right thumb. That’s a lot of thumb work.

2:15 - Arrive in Sderot. FM Tzippi Livni is having a press conference. I was told at 3:00. Now I learn it’s at 5:00. I won’t be able to make it. I run into my buddy Avi Issakarov, a respected reporter for Haaretz newspaper. We have coffee and discuss how this reminds us of the 2nd Lebanon war. “Same S—” says Avi. Only more rain this time.

12:30 – I drive for sderot and call my mother. She doesn’t answer. I call an advisor to the PA, Diana Bhuttu. She says Hamas is winning the PR game amongst their Gaza constituents. I call ahead to my favorite little Yemeni restaurant on the way and get a spicy Yemenite chicken sandwich to go.

11:45 – I have time for a haircut. Call Nael in Gaza on the way. He tells me Hamas gunmen are really feeling their hubris.  The Gaza public does not blame them for inviting the offensive, they support Hamas.

11:00 – It’s raining. I check with bureau chief Eli Fastman. The military operations are slow. The rocket teams are having a field day. The clouds provide them cover. Planes can’t see them very well. They let wave after wave of rockets fly. The Israeli tanks sit Idle. The rain turns desert dirt into soup. They could get stuck and become sitting ducks for RPGs or anti-tank missiles.  If the ground offensive was planned for today, it will wait.  Eli + I predict the 48 hour cease fire proposal will be rejected.

10:20 – I made coffee and checked the papers on line. The tone of the Israeli columnists has changed. They have all taken a critical tone of the Government and the Gaza operation.

10:00 am – I hit Greta’s show last night at 5:49 am my time. I intended to sleep longer but my phone was jumping off the nightstand.

Share This

There were protests outside the Israeli Embassy in London Tuesday for the third day in a row.

300 people gathered, most with placards saying things like “End the siege in Gaza”, “Free Palestine”, “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza”, or “Stop the Killing, Stop the Crime”.

It was freezing in London Tuesday.  The assembled crowd was varied with young and old,  Arab and non-Arab.

I spoke to Eileen Maclean who works for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She said she’d come to join the demonstration in Kensington, on the edge of Kensington Gardens, because she was “so angry” about what is going on, the military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has left over 350 Palestinians dead, a campaign that is Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ firing of rockets into southern Israel.

A couple of Brazilian tourists were next in line behind the police barricades.  Police were out in numbers, because the protests did get a bit rough on Sunday.

The Brazilians, of Lebanese origin, had seen the demonstrations on the news and wanted to come out and express support for the people of Gaza.  They said they were not against Israel and its right to exist.  They just wanted to see two states, Israel and Palestine, living together in peace.

A British pensioner, Richard Frost, chimed in next.  “We are giving Israel the hardware to destroy unarmed civilians to our eternal shame.”

And then Violetta Thompson, originally from Spain.  “They say they are destroying Hamas but they are destroying the little bit of infrastructure the Palestinians have left.  What do they want them to do? Live in sewers, like rats?”

A group of Palestinian women told me they had come out, because their family lives in Gaza.  They said “everyone is waiting for death”.

A group of ultra orthodox Jews joined, Jews with signs expressing support for the Palestinians, Jews whose version of the religion tells them there should not be a Jewish state until the Messiah comes.

The demonstration was just about to wind down, around sunset, when suddenly the shouts got louder, and the movement a bit more frenetic.  An Israeli flag went up in flames.  As the hustle and bustle of life busy Kensington continued around it all.  The police were relaxed, but never let down their guard.

And then it was over and everyone went home vowing to return on Wednesday as news of a possible truce between Israel and Hamas, if only a temporary one, crossed the wires.

Share This

By FNC Reporter David Lee Miller, Jerusalem Bureau

Fifteen seconds is not a lot of time. Yet, it can seem like an eternity.

Fifteen seconds is how long it takes for a rocket launched by Islamic militants in northern Gaza to reach the nearby city of Sederot.

Along with other journalists perched on a Sederot hilltop I watched as a Kassam rocket was fired. The trail of white smoke is unmistakable. Almost simultaneously, an automatic warning system is triggered and loudspeakers in Sederot signal the 24 thousand residents to take cover.

The 15 second clock is ticking – Instinctively I hit the ground.  I look up to try and spot the rocket. Is it really heading my way?

12 seconds to go – I grab the microphone and alert the FOX News control room in New York that they should switch live to our camera position.

Ten seconds and counting – the Jerusalem-based FOX News crew led by bureau chief Eli Fastman scramble to get the pictures and sound on the air.

Seven seconds until impact – I crawl on the ground trying to locate my helmet.

Three seconds on the clock – a loud whoosh is heard overhead.

Two seconds and counting – I look around for a place to take cover. There is nowhere to hide.

The final second – I hold my breath.  There is impact, then a  thunderous boom. The earth shakes. We are all safe. The rocket has landed 100 yards from our position in an empty field. I am now on the air, describing the scene.

Moments later and now off the air, we all reflect on our close call. If the launcher had fired a millimeter to the left, the consequences could have been deadly.

Tune in to FOX News Channel for continuous coverage of the fighting in Gaza!

Share This

President Bush issued a statement Monday morning calling for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas as the Bush administration said it’s continuing to monitor events in the Middle East.

“In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable cease-fire. That is the objective to which all parties need to be working. That is what the United States is working towards,” National Security Council Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas.

Fighting began earlier this month when terrorist group Hamas started sending rockets into the Gaza Strip after canceling its participation in a cease-fire. Israel responded by launching its own air offensive over this past weekend, targeting suspected terror sites, including security outposts and the Islamic University.

More than 300 Palestinians and two Israelis have died as a result of the violence thus far, and numbers will surely rise as rocket-fire continues.

Tell us what YOU think!
- Is the Israeli response appropriate in light of the threat of Hamas?
- How do you feel about the response from the U.S. and international community so far?
- How long do you think the fighting will continue?

Share This

We all knew this was coming. What only Israelʼs leaders knew was exactly when and how ferocious that attacks would be.  The cease-fire had really fallen apart before it expired. In mid-November, the Israeli Army went into the Gaza strip and attacked what they claimed was an effort to dig another tunnel under the Gaza/Israel border with the intention of penetrating Israel, mirroring the attack that resulted in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. From Israelʼs standpoint, that was a violation of the cease-fire and needed to be stopped. From the standpoint of Hamas, Israelʼs response was a violation of the cease fire. Six Palestinians were killed.

So, the cease-fire degraded. Rockets flew out of Gaza. Air strikes went back in.  As the deadline for the cease-fire approached, Hamas leaders promised it would not be extended.  What Hamas overlooked was the degree of frustration building in the Israeli public due to the insatiable rocket fire, the amount of pressure the public was putting on its embarrassed leaders.  Most importantly,  Hamas overlooked Israelʼs might and that during the calm, even before that, Israeli intelligence had been scanning Gaza, outlining Hamas related targets: Weapons depots, communications infrastructure, headquarters and smuggling tunnels.

Reluctantly, I went on my holiday vacation and, playing winter sports, managed to break a knuckle on my left hand. (Iʼm typing with one hand right now.) My plane got me back to Jerusalem at 4am. A few hours later, our bureau manager, Mark Abrahms lit up my telephone.  Israel had unleashed an unprecedented, punishing air campaign on Gaza.  We didnʼt know how many people would be killed, we just knew there would be many.  It was difficult to get dressed and get out the door, but a day of rest was not an option.

The Erez crossing into Gaza is closed. As of this writing there is no option of going in.  Mark and the rest of the crew had set up on a hill near the Gaza border, which gives us a look into the northern end of the Gaza strip.  It is a location where militants had made several attempts to attack inside Israel. It gives us the advantage of being able to see into the northern Gaza towns. The disadvantage is that anyone who wanted to shoot into Israel could see our camera lights.  So, we operated with a low light setting on the camera and little LED lights.  I think it kept us safe.

All night long, helicopters, war planes, and Israeli drones roared overhead.  About every 20 minutes, the night sky would light up. The flash would be followed by the great thunderclap of another air strike. Israelʼs leaders promised to continue with the campaign and were making good on the campaign.

As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza is climbing to the 300 mark.  Israeli armor is amassing along the Gaza strip, threatening to roll into the densely populated non-country.  A senior military official told a group of us journalists today that it is impossible to stop all the rocket fire.  All the army can do is stem the tide by making certain Gaza pays a severe price if Hamas does not stop the rocket teams.

Share This