Palestine Theater

Lebanon: 500,000 displaced

From CNN, July 20:

Lebanese refugees pour across Syrian border
YABOSS, Syria — As many as 50,000 refugees from Lebanon poured through one border crossing into Syria alone Thursday, officials said, as the desperate and displaced fled to escape Israel's bombing campaign.

Meanwhile on the West Bank...

From the International Middle East Media Center (IMEC), July 18:

Troops invade Nablus, occupy a building belonging to its municipality
Israeli soldiers operating in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus broke into a building belonging to the Nablus municipality and used it as military post. Soldiers also occupied a school and fired shells at several houses in Old City.

Lebanon: death toll tops 200

From DPA, July 18:

At least 47 people were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Monday and 10 more bodies were found, pushing the death toll from the Israeli offensive to more than 200 over the past six days.

Meanwhile in Gaza...

With all eyes on the horrific and escalating Lebanon crisis, Gaza has been forgotten. But things aren't looking too good there. From Reuters, July 17:

Aid agencies express concern about humanitarian crisis facing Gaza
Christian Aid, Oxfam International and Save the Children UK fear that escalating violence in Gaza will lead to a humanitarian crisis for over 1.3 million Palestinians.

Lebanese civil society appeals for solidarity

Received by email from Indymedia Beirut:

URGENT APPEAL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH LEBANESE CIVIL SOCIETY
The Israeli offensive against Lebanon is an act of aggression against the whole Lebanese people. The IDF claims to be attacking an "infrastructure of terror," but the attacks on bridges, roads, airports and ships are cutting the country into pieces, threatening to create a disastrous situation by impeding the transportation of food and medicines, and terrorizing everyone. Besides the hundreds killed and injured, thousands of people are fleeing the country, and thousands of people are fleeing from the areas where the bombing is heaviest into central Beirut. Even here in the "safe" parts of the city we can hear the bombs throughout the day and night, and electrical and water supplies are tenuous.

Lebanon: death toll mounts

Its hard to imagine where this will end... From the Reuters, July 15:

BEIRUT - Israel killed 35 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, in air strikes meant to punish Lebanon for letting Hizbollah guerillas menace the Jewish state's northern border.

Lebanon carnage escalates; media silence on Israeli protests

Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor provides this July 14 round-up of the fast-escalating Israel-Lebanon crisis and international reactions. We especially love Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon's invocation (yet again) of US atrocities in Afghanistan, and Russia's in Chechnya—as if one atrocity justifies another. It does point up, however, that Washington's criticisms of Israel (lukewarm as they are—in fact, Condoleezza Rice's "sharp" words are an implicit endorsement of Israeli aggression) are thoroughly hypocritical.

Jews in Britain protest Israel's Gaza aggression

The following paid advertisement was signed by 300 Jews in Britain and placed in The London Times on July 7:

WHAT IS ISRAEL DOING? A CALL BY JEWS IN BRITAIN
WE WATCH WITH HORROR the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit's safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorise an entire people.

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