Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Israeli "ceasefire"
On January 18, the Israeli invasion of Gaza "ended" when Israel unilaterally declared a "ceasefire." I've written before I was under the impression that practically every day since, there has been some sort of Israeli attack, but I finally decided to do a little investigation. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights compiles weekly reports of events in the occupied territories. I couldn't analyze the report for Jan. 15-21, since that was a "partial" week (partially under the "ceasefire"), but here are the results since then (through the week of 3/12, hence not quite up to date), taken from those reports (subtotals for children are in parentheses):
| Week starting | Killed* | Wounded | Arrested |
| 1/22 | 3 (1) | 17 (4) | 64 (15) |
| 1/29 | 4 | 44 (22) | 42 (3) |
| 2/5 | 4 | 5 (1) | 30 (18) |
| 2/12 | 3 (2) | 15 (6) | 82 (17) |
| 2/19 | 1 (1) | 19 (8) | 42 (6) |
| 2/26 | 3 (1) | 9 (5) | 31 (4) |
| 3/5 | 5 (1) | 26 (6) | 54 |
| 3/12 | 0 ! | 19 (9) | 36 (6) |
| TOTAL | 23 (6) | 154 (61) | 381 (69) |
I haven't included the detailed descriptions of the dead and injured. No doubt they were all "gunmen" or "Hamas militants" according to Israel, even the children. Of course they were not. Some were resistance fighters according to PCHR, most of them killed not while actually doing anything threatening but simply as part of the "targeted assassinations" that Israel (and the U.S., in different theaters, as made clear recently by Sy Hersh) has been carrying out for years.
Of course those numbers don't tell the complete story (aside from not including the last two weeks). Every single week also lists bombing of targets in the Gaza Strip, particularly on the Egyptian border, and, needless to say, the blockade continues unabated. But these numbers do tell a story which, as far as I know, you won't see summarized elsewhere. And they tell the story of a "ceasefire" which is the same kind of "peace" the Palestinian people have been living under for decades.
