The appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as new Israeli deputy prime minister has been followed by stepped-up atrocities against the Palestinian population in Gaza. More than 325 Palestinians have been killed since late June, most by air and artillery strikes on heavily populated residential towns and refugee camps. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas of the world.
A Nov. 8 artillery assault on the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun killed 18 members of one family and left more than
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Palestinian Authority prime minister Ismail Haniyeh called the Nov. 8 assault “a massacre.” PA president Mahmoud Abbas said the attack was “a despicable crime” and had ended any chance for negotiations. The attack resulted in the largest number of civilian casualties of any incident since the start of the Intifada (uprising) six years ago.
In Damascus, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal announced that Hamas was calling off its ceasefire with Israel, in effect since Feb. 2005.
Many media outlets reported gruesome scenes in Beit Hanoun. The BBC News quoted a resident employed in a Gaza hospital as saying: “I have not seen injuries like this for a long time.”
The shelling of Beit Hanoun was completely unprovoked according to local residents. BBC reporter Mathew Price quoted a local doctor: “Dr. Ali tells the same story as everyone I spoke to, that there had been no anti-Israeli attacks by Palestinian militants from this area, as the Israeli military claims, before the shells struck.”
Attacks after Lieberman appointed
In late October, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the extreme right-wing “Israel Our Home” party was brought into the Israeli government by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Lieberman is a settler in the West Bank who came from the former Soviet republic of Moldova in the late 1970s. The base of his party is mainly settlers who have arrived in Israel over the past two decades, most from the former Soviet Union.
Lieberman and his party, which holds 11 of 120 parliament seats, call for the complete separation of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis—in other words, for the removal of the Palestinian population within the 1948 borders of the Israeli state, and from all areas of the West Bank and Gaza that Israel wants to annex.
Lieberman was appointed to the newly created post of “minister of strategic threats” and also made a deputy prime minister. The elevation of an open fascist to one of the most powerful positions in Israel is a sign of the shift taking place in Israeli society.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera news, Ismail Haniyeh said: “Lieberman [is responsible for these] strategies of killings and massacres, [of] killing children and women sleeping safely in their houses.”
The Beit Hanoun atrocity has brought calls for intensified resistance from across the Palestinian political spectrum. A local resident, Raed Ibrahim, who witnessed the horrific aftermath, told Price: “I am angry. I hate the U.S., I hate George W Bush, I hate of course Israel. I also hate the Arab states which do nothing to help and the international community.”
