____twoism

At least 220 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli aerial bombardment on Hamas security installations.

Israel launched air attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday, threatening that further operations would be carried out.

Emergency services said that at least 700 people had been wounded.

Witnesses reported heavy damage as at least 30 missiles were fired.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said that the operation would not be short.

"The operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary," he said on Saturday.

An Israeli military spokesman added that any "Hamas target is a target".

As dusk fell, Israel continued to bomb the strip, firing on a metal foundry in the south.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the attack and demanded an immediate cessation.

Hours after the Israeli assault, Gaza fighters fired home-made rockets into southern Israel, heeding calls by Hamas and other affiliated Palestinian groups to avenge the attacks, unprecedented in their scale.

One Israeli was killed in the rocket fire, medics said.

Taher al-Noono, a Hamas spokesman, described Israel's operation as a "massacre", adding: "However, our resolve cannot be dented and cannot be shaken. We will continue our struggle with absolute strength and steadfastness."

Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman, said a police graduation ceremony in Gaza City was struck by Israel. Among those killed was Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said all security compounds in the Strip had been destroyed.

Gaza is densely populated. Its 1.5 million residents area already experiencing shortages in medicine, power and basic supplies due to 18 months of an Israeli blockade.

'War crimes'

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of Fatah, condemned the "aggression" in Gaza.

Mousa Abu Morzouz, the deputy leader of Hamas, told Al Jazeera: "Until now the aggression didn't stop ... they are targeting all the police headquarters and offices.

"We will defend our people, we will retaliate against this aggression ... our military will retaliate."

Morzouz called on the world's most powerful nations to condemn the attacks: "Nobody in this world can accept what happened and the Israeli aggression ... [we expect] the international community to stand against this and say that it is not acceptable."

Mustafa Barghouthi, the former Palestinian information minister, said: "This is not an attack on the Hamas. It is an attack on the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza."

He accused Israel of committing "war crimes" and demanded that Abbas and his government stop all relations with Israel.

'Only just beginning'

The Israel army released a statement saying "terrorist installations" were hit and that all Israeli pilots returned unharmed.

The operation against the Hamas is "only just beginning," Avi Benayahu, an Israeli military spokesman said.

The air raids follow the decision by the Israeli security cabinet to increase reprisals for cross-border rocket attacks against Israel, and the breakdown of a six-month-old Israel-Hamas truce earlier this month.

The ceasefire expired on December 19, with Hamas arguing that Israel had violated the truce by preventing vital food and medical supplies into the Strip.

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, said: "A series of explosions were heard over Gaza City.

"From where we are, there are at least seven different clouds of smoke from the strikes. We are seeing some casualties being evacuated in cars."

Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip to receive injured people, Egyptian officials said. Ambulances have been sent to the crossing and two Egyptian hospitals emptied to take in the wounded.

Weakened security services

Mohyeldin said that Hamas, which rule the Gaza Strip, was being held responsible by Israel for any attacks from the territory into Israel, even if they are undertaken by other Palestinian factions.

Palestinian officials called on the international community to condemn the raids [AFP]
However, officials of the deposed government in Gaza which maintains law and order, while being Hamas member in the main, are separate from the group's military wing and other factions responsible for attacks into Israel.

"There is within Gaza a functioning ministry of interior that has security services, traffic control, emergency medical services," Mohyeldin reported.

"Those workers are seen as employees of the government in Gaza. So now that many of these installations have been targeted, it will have an immediate impact in terms of the law and order structure here in Gaza."

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalem, said that Israel's decision to strike at this moment was down to Hamas withdrawing from the ceasefire and the intensified rocket fire coming from the Gaza Strip in recent days.

"In one day [in the past week] we saw 80 rockets ... which is a huge upsurge," she said.

Hamas won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2005. The international community refused to accept a Hamas-led government, demanding that the faction recognise Israel and renounce violence. Economic sanctions by the EU and US followed.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after bloody street battles against its rival, the Fatah movement.

Israel's air assault on Gaza is "the first in several stages" of operations aimed at ending militant rocket fire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.

As bombing continued for a fourth day, another top official said Israel was ready for "long weeks of action".

Palestinian officials say more than 360 people have been killed since Saturday. Four Israelis have died in rocket fire.

eppers wrote:
just thought shedding some light on this matter is important, even on twoism.

hexagon son wrote: the sooner we get religion out of politics, the better. both sides are killing innocent people.

eppers wrote:
cheers.

hexagon son wrote:i believe that both palestine and israel are both entitled to their sovereign countries, free from threat and intimidation. the situation is very difficult to gauge sometimes. things like this have been happening throughout history, the british empire, the spanish, the french, the portuguese, nowadays USA and china.

people need to remember, the common man controls none of these acts and can do nothing about them. i was one of 2,500,000 protesting in london for the no war in iraq gathering. and all of us didn't make one bit of difference. governments will do what they want to do. people like president bush critisize people like hugo chavez saying they are dictators, when in fact people like chavez are trying to make a difference in the world by helping the poor.

the world needs to start taking palestine more seriously and force israel to the table to negociate seriously. israel illegally occupies palestinian land with their civilian settlements. give to palestine what is palestine's and israel what is israels.

eppers wrote: And it's a shame that most of the world believes that Israel is the nation demanding peace and that the Palestinians aren't giving them a chance, what a shame.

eppers wrote:Thanks for the kind words.

Well the only thing that I can say is, you can't judge it until you've lived through it, and even I haven't lived through it like how Gazans are having it now..

a friend of mine called his relatives to ask how the situation was, they told him, when Israel stops a bombing round, we can't eat, we can't sleep, we can't do nothing, because we don't know what are they going to do next..

Imagine how shitty that feels, when silence becomes tension.

what a shitty world we're in.

Twoist wrote:

eppers wrote:Thanks for the kind words.

Well the only thing that I can say is, you can't judge it until you've lived through it, and even I haven't lived through it like how Gazans are having it now..

a friend of mine called his relatives to ask how the situation was, they told him, when Israel stops a bombing round, we can't eat, we can't sleep, we can't do nothing, because we don't know what are they going to do next..

Imagine how shitty that feels, when silence becomes tension.

what a shitty world we're in.

Eppers, I think it's nearly impossible to imagine what your friend's relatives are going through - but we should try our hardest to imagine it. So many of us (and I'd include myself here) live in sheltered, cossetted environments and don't see or understand enough of what goes on outside our own towns, let alone our national borders. To have an existence where basic survival is at such a premium on a daily basis, it shouldn't be so in this day and age. I've got my own [deeply negative] thoughts about Israel and their policies, but I have a good [Israeli] friend who is far more experienced in vocalising such things (from the same standpoint as me) - and she is far more qualified to speak about it all.

I hope you, your friend, his family, all the families have the quietest, safest new year that it's possible to have. Thoughts are definitely with you.