Israeli Shell Goes Wrong in Gaza

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BBC radio:

The first television pictures from the beach revealed a terrible scene. At least four figures lay unconscious on the ground, possibly dead. One was a middle-aged woman, another, a child. A little further away, a man was sprawled on a sand dune, perhaps fatally injured. A child of about 9 years old stood looking on in utter horror, screaming and screaming. Around the casualties were tables and chairs, and beach bags. This was a family that had been enjoying a picnic by the sea on their Friday afternoon off, when everything was torn apart in a devastating explosion.
Link containing a somewhat censored version of what I transcribed from BBC radio:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5065008.stm

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Quote:

We know it's not from the air force and not from the navy and we are checking if it was artillery [fire] - we also don't know for certain if it was Israeli fire
Jacob Dallal
Israeli army spokesman

The fairies did it.

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What a f***-up.

On BBC radio this morning, Hamas now say the official cease-fire is off, and they will now resume suicide bombings withinin Israel.

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Yep:

Hamas ends truce after Israeli attack

Saturday 10 June 2006, 5:39 Makka Time, 2:39 GMT

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has shelved a 16-month-old truce after Israeli attacks on Gaza killed 10 people, including women and children on a beach outing.

"The Israeli massacres represent a direct opening battle and that means the earthquake in the Zionist cities will resume and the herds of occupiers have no choice but to prepare the coffins or the departing luggage," Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said on Friday.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, confirmed the group would renew its attacks.

"I believe that amid the continued bloodshed of our people and the horrific images of massacres, there is no place for silence."

But Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said the Brigades' statement meant little because Hamas had been helping other groups to carry out rocket attacks well before Friday.

Beach attack

Israeli air strikes and artillery fire killed 10 Palestinians on Friday, the highest Palestinian toll in a single day since late 2004, Palestinian officials said. Around 35 people were injured.

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Among the dead were three siblings aged one, three and 10, along with their parents at a beach in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinians said seven people in all were killed at the beach by an Israeli shell. The army said it was too early to be certain.

"This may have been an accident which caused an artillery shell to fall off course, or an older unexploded shell which went off, or perhaps an explosive device which was tinkered with," Major-General Yoav Galant, head of the southern command, said.

He said he was sorry for the loss of civilian life.

Investigation

Israel said it was investigating whether its forces were responsible for the beach killing in an area it had been shelling to stop resistance fighters from firing rockets over the border.

Dan Halutz, the Israeli military's chief of general staff, later suspended the bombardments.

Israel earlier killed three men in an air strike on what the army said was a rocket crew. Palestinians said they were civilians. Rocket fire had intensified on Friday following Israel's killing of a senior militant the day before.

Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, who is also a Hamas leader, called the Israeli beach attack a "war crime" and urged Jordan and Egypt, both mediators in past Israeli-Palestinian talks, to intervene.

Hamas, which has run the Palestinian government since March after winning parliamentary elections in January, spearheaded a bombing campaign during a Palestinian uprising that broke out in 2000.

UN, US reaction

A spokesman for Kofi Annan said the UN secretary-general "is deeply disturbed at the killing of civilians, including women and children ... and calls for a full investigation".

While France, Egypt and Russia condemned the attack, Sean McCormack, spokesman for the US State Department, said: "Let me just state what we have said before: That Israel has a right to defend itself.

"We also at the same time encourage Israel to ... consider the consequences of its actions."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2B834F41-F91C-4F3A-9A30-7E59D2CCAF0E.htm

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McTag wrote:

What a f***-up.

On BBC radio this morning, Hamas now say the official cease-fire is off, and they will now resume suicide bombings within Israel.

I can't believe Hamas is being so shortsighted.

I figured Israel's plan to redraw their borders and make them permanent was going to happen anyway. But if Hamas, as the Palestinian government, goes to war against Israel, they're giving those new borders to Israel on a silver platter.

And that is not even considering what Israel might do militarily if Hamas attacks Israel while acting as a legitimate government.

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Consider the forensic principle commonly known as Cui Bono, in English: "Who benenefits?"

The nascent Palestinian Hamas government, adamantly opposed to comming to grips with Israel's existence, increasingly beset by crippling difficulties financial and political, and staunchly opposed to the general referendum called to put the issue before the Palestinian populace, would see its interests well served by an Israeli screwup.

Quote:

A Palestinian security source said Sunday that Hamas operatives had cleared the debris from the explosion which killed seven Palestinian civilians on Friday in order to frustrate the IDF's attempts to investigate the incident.
Source

Quote:

Jerusalem-----June 11.......An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives.

"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets.
Source

It appears there is a different slant to this story than Hamas would prefer to see reported.

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Beach deaths 'not Israel's fault'

11 killed in new Israeli air strikes on Gaza

Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Posted: 10:14 a.m. EDT (14:14 GMT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- An explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people last week was caused by explosives planted there by Palestinian militants, not artillery fire from an Israeli navy gunboat, Israeli military sources said.

The Israeli investigation concluded that the possibility any of the six artillery shells fired from the gunboat last Friday could have landed on the beach was "almost nil," the sources said.

The deaths of seven people -- all members of a Palestinian family having a beach picnic -- prompted the military wing of Hamas to resume rocket strikes against Israel after a hiatus of more than a year.

The Israel Defense Forces report, to be presented to the Israeli defense minister and Israeli chief of staff Tuesday, will cite several factors that led to the conclusion that the explosion was caused by a mine planted on the beach by Palestinian militants, the sources said.

An Israeli commando unit used the beach to enter Gaza for a mission in recent weeks, prompting the militants to place the mines, the sources said.

Intelligence information gathered by Israeli investigators showed that Hamas quickly removed the remaining mines from the beach after the blast, the sources said.

Investigators were able to locate where five of the six shells fired from the gunboat Friday landed and none of them were near the beach, the sources said. The sixth shell -- the first to be fired -- could not have killed the family because it was fired further north and too early, the sources said.

Adding to the conclusion that it was not an Israeli shell that killed the family was an examination of photographs of the crater on the beach. The sources said experts found it was the type of crater caused by a planted explosive, not by an artillery shell landing from above.

Finally, shrapnel removed from three of the injured by doctors at Israeli hospitals was not the from an artillery shell, the sources said.

At least 11 Palestinians, including two children, were killed Tuesday when an Israeli military aircraft fired missiles at a car in northern Gaza, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Israel Defense Forces said the car carried "Islamic Jihad terrorists" and was en route to a site where rockets have been fired into Israeli territory.

Five Qassam rockets landed on the Israeli side of the Gaza border Monday morning, causing no injuries or significant damage, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The Monday launches followed a series of at least 70 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since Friday, wounding four Israeli civilians, the IDF said.

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timberlandko wrote:

"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields,...

Who talks like this? As for who benefits, I say Israel. They do best when the Palestinians are in chaos. This is just what they need to destabilize the Hamas government and resume occupation and control of the territories long enough to fully legitimize the borders they want without having to negotiate with the Palestinians. Whatever you want to make of it, there was a cease fire, Israel had been provoking an end to it even before this incident, and now there is no cease fire.

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FreeDuck wrote:

timberlandko wrote:
"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields,...

Who talks like this? As for who benefits, I say Israel. They do best when the Palestinians are in chaos. This is just what they need to destabilize the Hamas government and resume occupation and control of the territories long enough to fully legitimize the borders they want without having to negotiate with the Palestinians. Whatever you want to make of it, there was a cease fire, Israel had been provoking an end to it even before this incident, and now there is no cease fire.

Someone secretly replaced our freeduck with Folgers Crystals...

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Was that a subpar post? The bit about who benefits applies even if it was Hamas who blew up the beachgoers. Hamas and the PLO have been known to do things that inadvertently benefit Israel before, so this would be no different. Still "defensive firing on launch installations behind human shields"? That's extremist talk. You might as well quote Hamas: "soon after we finished defensive ambushing of unauthorized vehicles carrying zionist occupiers...". The language is just loaded with "it's not my fault, we are the victims".

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FD, the notion there might be cause for, let alone be, any external effort to destabilize the Hamas government is ridiculous on its face. Of course, it must be granted, as you pointed out, that Hamas and the PLO have been known to inadvertantly do things that work out to Israel's benefit - they've accomplished nothing of benefit to the people they purportedly represent, while their endorsement and practice of terrorism serves well the Israeli prosecution of initiatives against the madmen and institutions responsible for fabricating and perpetuating the myth of the "Palestinian Crisis". Indeed there are victims here, and along with the Israeli victims, one must count the Palestinian people, victimized by their own leadership.

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timberlandko wrote:

FD, the notion there might be cause for, let alone be, any external effort to destabilize the Hamas government is ridiculous on its face.

I find that assertion to be ridiculous on its face. Witholding Palestinian tax revenues and outside aid is designed to do what if not choke the government into destabilization? Israel may deny that that's what they are doing, but it's naive to label such a claim "ridiculous".

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To paraphrase the late, great Hizzonner Richard J. Daly, the sanctions placed on the Hamas government are designed not to create destablization, but to preserve it.

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Right.

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The latest information is that it was a Hamas mine that killed the people. Israel wasn't directly involved.

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Bumperstickers: EDIT (Moderator): Link Removed

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Actually, the Israelis are contending that it was a case of a missile belonging to Hamas which misfired after the launch frame collapsed. Mines and missiles don't even remotely resemble one another.

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As far as I'm able to figure out, whatever it was had nothing to do with Israeli artillery or other Israeli action. Reports are that it most likely was the result of Hamas-emplaced mines/IEDs, a failed Hamas rocket launch, or some combination thereof. It would appear any foot on which Hamas had hoped to stand in this regard in fact has been shot by Hamas.

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defendusa wrote:

The latest information is that it was a Hamas mine that killed the people. Israel wasn't directly involved.

The latest information here is that it was a 155mm howitzer shell.

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timberlandko wrote:

As far as I'm able to figure out, whatever it was had nothing to do with Israeli artillery or other Israeli action.

I'd say the jury is still out.

Quote:

The military now says that it fired six shells on to and around the beach where Huda Ghalia's family died, with one of them falling about 100 yards away, but by coincidence a mine planted by Hamas exploded in the same area at the same time. The military backs its claim with analysis of aerial photographs, shrapnel and what it is says is intelligence that Hamas has mined Gaza beaches to stop Israeli forces landing, although it is not known to have used such a tactic before.

But a former Pentagon offical sent by the New York-based Human Rights Watch to investigate the death of the family has concluded that there is little doubt they were killed by an Israeli shell. "All the evidence points to the fact that it couldn't have been a mine," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon expert on battlefields who led the US military's battle damage assessment team in Kosovo and worked for its intelligence wing, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky not explosives under the sand."

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the army concedes that five shells landed along a 250-metre stretch of beach and that a sixth shell is unaccounted for. But it says that an eight-minute gap between when the sixth shell was fired and when the Palestinians say the family was blown up means there is no connection between the two.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1796691,00.html

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Some will the jury still was out regardless what may be revealed.

I'll concede I don't have access to the same photos and videos that Garlasco prolly saw, but I have a more than casual working familiarity with artillery - several up-close-and-personal years, of itt, in fact, and much of it with 155's - and what photos and videos I saw did not appear to me to be consistent with artillery.

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Israeli Shell Goes Wrong in Gaza

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