RogueAcademic
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Here we go.... it will just get worse and worse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?_r=1&hp
January 15, 2009
Bin Laden, on Tape, Urges Holy War Over Gaza
By ALAN COWELL AND GRAHAM BOWLEY
In his first public statement over the 19-day Gaza conflict, the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, on Wednesday publicly exhorted Muslims to wage holy war against Israel and criticized Israel’s Arab allies in an audiotape posted on Islamist Web sites.
The Qaeda statement came a day after Israel conceded that despite its relentless bombardment of Gaza, it had yet to cripple the military wing of Hamas or destroy the group’s ability to launch rockets. The concession suggested that despite heavy air and ground assaults Israel’s main goals in the conflict remain unfulfilled after more than two weeks of war.
As is common with such missives, the tape’s authenticity could not immediately be verified, but it bore many hallmarks of Al Qaeda messages. The message was produced by As-Sahab, the Qaeda media arm, and the voice on the tape closely resembled other recordings by Mr. bin Laden, who was pictured on the Web sites next to an image of Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Under the picture of the mosque, an inscription in white Arabic letters said the message is a “call to jihad to stop the enemies in Gaza.”
“There is only one strong way to bring the return of Al Aqsa and Palestine, and that is jihad in the path of God,” Mr. bin Laden said in the 22-minute audiotape, according to The Associated Press. “The duty is to urge people to jihad and to enlist the youth into jihad brigades.”
The audiotape, if verified, is the first time Mr. bin Laden has issued a public statement since May, according to The A.P. It appears just a week before the inauguration of the new Obama administration in Washington.
It is the first time he has commented on the Gaza conflict, which on Wednesday
ground into a 19th day with no immediate sign of a cease-fire. Israeli warplanes pounded at least 60 targets in the battered coastal enclave and Hamas militants fired a dozen rockets into southern Israel, the Israeli military said.
At the same time, three rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed in northern Israel, outside the town of Kiryat Shmona, but there were no casualties and there was no clear indication of who fired them. The Israeli military said it fired back.
A similar incident last week raised concerns briefly that a second front had opened in the war, but Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group which fought a war with Israel in 2006, quickly sought to assure the Lebanese government that it was not responsible for those attacks.
The Israeli military says its warplanes have carried out more than 2,300 air strikes since the conflict began on Dec. 27. The Israeli military said its 60 air strikes overnight included attacks on what the army called weapons smuggling tunnels, rocket-launching sites and weapons production facilities. The Associated Press quoted Gaza residents as saying one strike hit a cemetery, destroying 30 graves and scattering body parts.
The military also said that, by midday Wednesday, Hamas had fired at least 12 missiles, including five of the larger ones in its arsenal, out of Gaza, into southern Israel. The rockets landed in areas close to the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Beersheba, a military statement said.
The developments came as the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, began a visit to the region, landing in Cairo where Egyptian officials have been meeting counterparts from Hamas. The comments by the intelligence officials, conceding that Israel’s military goals remain unfulfilled, reflected a view among some Israeli officials that any lasting solution to the conflict would require either a breakthrough diplomatic accord that heavily restricts Hamas’s military abilities or a deeper ground assault into urban areas of Gaza, known here as a possible “Phase Three” of the war.
In Gaza, the Israeli intelligence officials said, there were some signs that the military assault had undermined Hamas’s political cohesion, and that Hamas’s leaders in hiding inside Gaza were more eager for a cease-fire than group leaders in exile. They described this assessment as based on hard intelligence, presumably telephone intercepts. A senior Egyptian official in Cairo said separately on Tuesday that representatives of Hamas had disagreed openly when participating in continuing Egyptian efforts to broker a cease-fire.
Inside Gaza, the military wing of Hamas has been hit “to a certain extent” with “a few hundred” Hamas fighters killed during the ground offensive that began midway through the war, the intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in return for discussing internal assessments of the conflict. Hamas is still able to launch 20 to 30 rockets a day, including 5 to 10 missiles of ranges longer than 20 kilometers, or about 12 miles, down by a third from the start of the war, the officials said.
Greater damage has been done to Hamas’s capacity to run Gaza, with a large number of government buildings destroyed over the course of the operation, they said.
In Egypt, efforts to broker a cease-fire were complicated by bickering inside Hamas, the Egyptian official said. The official said that Hamas representatives in Gaza were eager for a cease-fire, but were being blocked because political decisions were being made by the group’s leadership in Damascus, Syria.
“The guys inside are holding their ground, but they don’t want to continue the confrontation,” the official said. Egypt talks to Hamas but is not eager to see the radical Islamic group succeed in running a small statelet next door.
Israeli officials said they were delaying any expansion of the war until the negotiations succeeded or failed. But journalists and photographers along the Israeli border with Gaza said they saw large numbers of Israeli reservists moving into the territory, suggesting preparation for an intensified phase of the conflict.
On the eve of his visit to the region, Mr. Ban demanded an immediate halt to the fighting in accordance with a Security Council resolution.
“Too many people have died,” Mr. Ban said, while Gazans are facing a humanitarian disaster. United Nations officials have said that three-hour daily humanitarian lulls are insufficient to provide enough food, medicine and other essentials to civilians. Israel said that 102 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza on Tuesday, with a total of 1,028 since the war began.
Israeli officials say their primary aim in the operation is to stop Hamas from firing rockets from Gaza into Israeli cities.
Hamas is capable of building rockets with an advanced propellant that can go up to 18 miles, the intelligence officials said, using chemicals and parts smuggled in from Egypt. Hamas also is using 122-millimeter rockets that are Chinese-made and supplied by Iran that can go almost 25 miles, they said.
But they assessed the probability that Hamas now has rockets capable of going farther than 25 miles as “very low.”
In Tuesday’s fighting, 18 Palestinian fighters and seven civilians were killed, part of the 971 Palestinians who have died, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Those figures are not thought to include many of the fighters killed since the ground war began.
Thirteen Israelis have died, including 10 soldiers.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, the exiled deputy to the Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal, told Al Jazeera television on Tuesday that while the organization had “serious reservations” about the Egyptian cease-fire plan, he believed that it might be accepted if changes were made.
“If the initiative is accepted, it will be in accordance with the position set out by Hamas at the start, namely an Israeli withdrawal, a cease-fire and the opening of the crossing points” between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, he said.
Alan Cowell reported from London and Graham Bowley from New York. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem; Michael Slackman from Cairo;; Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza City; Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise from Jerusalem; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
Bin Laden, on Tape, Urges Holy War Over Gaza
By ALAN COWELL AND GRAHAM BOWLEY
In his first public statement over the 19-day Gaza conflict, the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, on Wednesday publicly exhorted Muslims to wage holy war against Israel and criticized Israel’s Arab allies in an audiotape posted on Islamist Web sites.
The Qaeda statement came a day after Israel conceded that despite its relentless bombardment of Gaza, it had yet to cripple the military wing of Hamas or destroy the group’s ability to launch rockets. The concession suggested that despite heavy air and ground assaults Israel’s main goals in the conflict remain unfulfilled after more than two weeks of war.
As is common with such missives, the tape’s authenticity could not immediately be verified, but it bore many hallmarks of Al Qaeda messages. The message was produced by As-Sahab, the Qaeda media arm, and the voice on the tape closely resembled other recordings by Mr. bin Laden, who was pictured on the Web sites next to an image of Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Under the picture of the mosque, an inscription in white Arabic letters said the message is a “call to jihad to stop the enemies in Gaza.”
“There is only one strong way to bring the return of Al Aqsa and Palestine, and that is jihad in the path of God,” Mr. bin Laden said in the 22-minute audiotape, according to The Associated Press. “The duty is to urge people to jihad and to enlist the youth into jihad brigades.”
The audiotape, if verified, is the first time Mr. bin Laden has issued a public statement since May, according to The A.P. It appears just a week before the inauguration of the new Obama administration in Washington.
It is the first time he has commented on the Gaza conflict, which on Wednesday
ground into a 19th day with no immediate sign of a cease-fire. Israeli warplanes pounded at least 60 targets in the battered coastal enclave and Hamas militants fired a dozen rockets into southern Israel, the Israeli military said.
At the same time, three rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed in northern Israel, outside the town of Kiryat Shmona, but there were no casualties and there was no clear indication of who fired them. The Israeli military said it fired back.
A similar incident last week raised concerns briefly that a second front had opened in the war, but Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group which fought a war with Israel in 2006, quickly sought to assure the Lebanese government that it was not responsible for those attacks.
The Israeli military says its warplanes have carried out more than 2,300 air strikes since the conflict began on Dec. 27. The Israeli military said its 60 air strikes overnight included attacks on what the army called weapons smuggling tunnels, rocket-launching sites and weapons production facilities. The Associated Press quoted Gaza residents as saying one strike hit a cemetery, destroying 30 graves and scattering body parts.
The military also said that, by midday Wednesday, Hamas had fired at least 12 missiles, including five of the larger ones in its arsenal, out of Gaza, into southern Israel. The rockets landed in areas close to the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Beersheba, a military statement said.
The developments came as the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, began a visit to the region, landing in Cairo where Egyptian officials have been meeting counterparts from Hamas. The comments by the intelligence officials, conceding that Israel’s military goals remain unfulfilled, reflected a view among some Israeli officials that any lasting solution to the conflict would require either a breakthrough diplomatic accord that heavily restricts Hamas’s military abilities or a deeper ground assault into urban areas of Gaza, known here as a possible “Phase Three” of the war.
In Gaza, the Israeli intelligence officials said, there were some signs that the military assault had undermined Hamas’s political cohesion, and that Hamas’s leaders in hiding inside Gaza were more eager for a cease-fire than group leaders in exile. They described this assessment as based on hard intelligence, presumably telephone intercepts. A senior Egyptian official in Cairo said separately on Tuesday that representatives of Hamas had disagreed openly when participating in continuing Egyptian efforts to broker a cease-fire.
Inside Gaza, the military wing of Hamas has been hit “to a certain extent” with “a few hundred” Hamas fighters killed during the ground offensive that began midway through the war, the intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in return for discussing internal assessments of the conflict. Hamas is still able to launch 20 to 30 rockets a day, including 5 to 10 missiles of ranges longer than 20 kilometers, or about 12 miles, down by a third from the start of the war, the officials said.
Greater damage has been done to Hamas’s capacity to run Gaza, with a large number of government buildings destroyed over the course of the operation, they said.
In Egypt, efforts to broker a cease-fire were complicated by bickering inside Hamas, the Egyptian official said. The official said that Hamas representatives in Gaza were eager for a cease-fire, but were being blocked because political decisions were being made by the group’s leadership in Damascus, Syria.
“The guys inside are holding their ground, but they don’t want to continue the confrontation,” the official said. Egypt talks to Hamas but is not eager to see the radical Islamic group succeed in running a small statelet next door.
Israeli officials said they were delaying any expansion of the war until the negotiations succeeded or failed. But journalists and photographers along the Israeli border with Gaza said they saw large numbers of Israeli reservists moving into the territory, suggesting preparation for an intensified phase of the conflict.
On the eve of his visit to the region, Mr. Ban demanded an immediate halt to the fighting in accordance with a Security Council resolution.
“Too many people have died,” Mr. Ban said, while Gazans are facing a humanitarian disaster. United Nations officials have said that three-hour daily humanitarian lulls are insufficient to provide enough food, medicine and other essentials to civilians. Israel said that 102 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza on Tuesday, with a total of 1,028 since the war began.
Israeli officials say their primary aim in the operation is to stop Hamas from firing rockets from Gaza into Israeli cities.
Hamas is capable of building rockets with an advanced propellant that can go up to 18 miles, the intelligence officials said, using chemicals and parts smuggled in from Egypt. Hamas also is using 122-millimeter rockets that are Chinese-made and supplied by Iran that can go almost 25 miles, they said.
But they assessed the probability that Hamas now has rockets capable of going farther than 25 miles as “very low.”
In Tuesday’s fighting, 18 Palestinian fighters and seven civilians were killed, part of the 971 Palestinians who have died, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Those figures are not thought to include many of the fighters killed since the ground war began.
Thirteen Israelis have died, including 10 soldiers.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, the exiled deputy to the Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal, told Al Jazeera television on Tuesday that while the organization had “serious reservations” about the Egyptian cease-fire plan, he believed that it might be accepted if changes were made.
“If the initiative is accepted, it will be in accordance with the position set out by Hamas at the start, namely an Israeli withdrawal, a cease-fire and the opening of the crossing points” between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, he said.
Alan Cowell reported from London and Graham Bowley from New York. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem; Michael Slackman from Cairo;; Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza City; Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise from Jerusalem; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
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