Gaza Strike: The Military Support of United States.

From 2001-2006, the United States transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts to fly its fleet of F16's. In July 2008, the United States gave Israel 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel. Last year, the United States signed a $1.3 billion contract with Raytheon to transfer to Israel thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and "bunker buster" missiles. In short, Israel's lethal attack today on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military and political support of the United States.

While Israel's spokespersons may constantly repeat that these attacks are "targeted", but targeted attacks don't kill this many civilians. They don't destroy and cause chaos and panic in entirely residential areas. If we accept – by silence or without questioning – that anything and everyone can be defined as "terrorist infrastructure", then we are designating all civilians in Gaza as being targets. And the targeting continues.

Shabbat Shalom! "Peaceful Saturday." Many don't believe that Israeli leaders appreciate the meaning of this Hebrew greeting given at the start of the weekly Jewish day of rest. No more "Shabbat Shalom," as on Saturday, 27 December 2008, just a few days before the start of a new year, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on different parts of the Gaza Strip.

The number of deaths resulting from these attacks indicates a willful targeting of the civilian police forces in these locations and a clear violation of the prohibition against willful killings. Willful killings are a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention under Article 147 and therefore, a war crime. Both the time and location of these attacks also indicate a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible with many of the police stations located in civilian population centers and the time of the attacks coinciding with the end of the school day resulting in the deaths of numerous children.

Despite repeated calls from the Palestinian human rights community with regard to Gaza, the international community has failed to act. We are now on the brink of an explosion of violence as result of this failure and are pushed once again to call for action.

In light of the above, Palestinian human rights organizations urge:

1. The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel's fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
   
2. The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
   
3. The High Contracting Parties to fulfill their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
   
4. EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel.

For more than 60 years the Palestinian people had seen their lands taken from them, their olive groves ransacked, their children killed, their young men imprisoned, their women humiliated and beaten. Having deprived the Palestinians in Gaza of their rights, dignity and basic necessities for close to three years, their Israeli tormentors now have the temerity to blame them for the death and destruction in the deadliest bombings in the Middle East since the 1967 war. Admittedly, as Israeli leaders have reiterated time and again, no country would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its towns. But neither should some of the most wretched people on earth have to endure such a protracted and terrible siege. There is no excuse for the indiscriminate and disproportionate slaughter on the battered strip of land, which, at the last count, stood at the lopsided ratio of almost 300 dead Palestinians to one dead Israeli. It is outrageous to justify the murder of innocents by blaming Hamas of hiding terrorist "infrastructure" among civilians. To put the blame squarely on the Islamists for provoking the bloody reprisal is sheer mendacity when it disingenuously disguises the fact that Operation Cast Lead had been in the works even as Israel was negotiating the six-month truce with Hamas in June. With Israel already preparing for war even as it seemed to be making overtures for peace, it is hard to see the murderous onslaught as anything but premeditated, and the barrage of missile and mortar attacks from Gaza as just a convenient casus belli to activate the operation.

“Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”
- John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"