Gaza Strip

The graves are dug, the wounded tended, but the battle over what happened in the Gaza Strip during Israel's 22-day offensive remains unfinished. International organizations, citing videos and witnesses, say Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza's villages and city alleys. The Israel Defense Forces deny such allegations, issuing their own video clips and assessments.

Every Friday, Mohammed Khatib's forces assemble for battle with the Israeli army and gather their weapons: a bullhorn, banners -- and a fierce belief that peaceful protest can bring about a Palestinian state. A few hundred strong, they march to the Israeli barrier that separates the tiny farming community of Bilin from much of its land. They chant and shout. A few teenagers throw stones. Khatib helped launch the weekly ritual five years ago in an attempt to "re-brand" a Palestinian struggle often associated with rocket attacks and suicide bombers.

An underground barrier to prevent tunneling by smugglers along Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip has been dubbed a "wall of shame" by Arab writers and politicians who charge that Cairo is siding with Israel in isolating the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the seaside enclave. Construction on the 100-foot-deep steel wall began a few weeks ago, but the Egyptian government didn't publicly acknowledge the project until the weekend. Officials defended the effort against accusations that it was an affront to Palestinians by the government of President Hosni Mubarak, which opposes Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza.

Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor's decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza offensive. The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.

Some of them are said to be big enough to accommodate railroad cars. They may reach a depth of 60 feet, and are reported to be equipped with cables and electric motors that move food, fuel -- and probably some of the heaviest rockets that Hamas aims at Israel. They also are one of the main reasons fighting is continuing in the Gaza Strip.

Gunfire broke out Wednesday during a Palestinian protest over Egypt's blockade of the Gaza Strip, leaving an Egyptian border guard dead and a dozen Palestinians injured. The riot along the border came a day after several hundred international activists clashed with police in the Egyptian port city of El Arish when they were told that a portion of their aid convoy would be allowed to enter Gaza only through Israel. In response, the Hamas movement that rules Gaza called on supporters to demonstrate Wednesday against both Egypt's interference with the aid convoy and its construction of an underground barrier designed to block tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons into the coastal strip.

A recent spate of cross- border and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip -- the worst in a year -- is testing Israel's resolve to strike back hard against such provocation. But it remains to be seen whether the get-tough approach will hinder or escalate violence, analysts and officials said Friday. Israeli military planes struck several Gaza targets early Friday, including what Israeli officials described as the first air attack on Gaza City in nearly a year.

A large roadside bomb exploded beneath an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing three security officers in the first deadly attack on a U.S. target since the Palestinian uprising began three years ago. The blast upended and nearly sliced an armored Chevrolet Suburban in half, spraying vehicle and body parts and gouging a large crater in the road barely a mile from the checkpoint where the convoy had entered Gaza from Israel.

Each morning, Thaeer Alsheikh sits beside the ruins of his family's two-story house, destroyed by Israeli forces in the final days of the 22-day Gaza Strip offensive in the winter. He can't explain why he comes. He doesn't do anything while here. He says it just makes him feel better. His extended family, now sharing a rented apartment nearby, recently gave the children a choice: spend the weekend at the beach or hang out next to the rubble.

The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel. "This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness," a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter.

If our present era constitutes a sort of End Times for mainstream media, it's proving to be a golden age for Joe Sacco and other practitioners of comic-book reportage. Balkan blood feuds, the "war on terror" and the agonies of post-diluvium New Orleans are just a few topics taken up by graphic journalists of late. No doubt, some intrepid cartoonist-correspondent is currently roaming Port-au-Prince, sketchbook and flip-cam in hand. Sacco, 49, isn't just one of this evolving medium's most skilled advocates.

A Hamas military commander slain in a Dubai hotel room played a key role in smuggling antiaircraft missiles and other weapons into the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Hamas officials said Sunday. But they disagreed on whether Mahmoud Mabhouh's death would be a blow to Palestinian armed groups in the territory or inspire them to redouble their arms campaign. "This guy was a middleman for smuggling weapons from Iran, not only to Gaza but to Hezbollah" in Lebanon, said an Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues involved.

Even as Israel defended its handling of last year's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, officials said Friday that the government was considering heeding international calls to open a new inquiry of its army's actions. Officials cautioned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made no final decision and that his Cabinet remained divided. Israel had flatly rejected calls for an independent inquiry and insisted that its internal military investigation of the Gaza operation was sufficient.

A recent spate of cross- border and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip -- the worst in a year -- is testing Israel's resolve to strike back hard against such provocation. But it remains to be seen whether the get-tough approach will hinder or escalate violence, analysts and officials said Friday. Israeli military planes struck several Gaza targets early Friday, including what Israeli officials described as the first air attack on Gaza City in nearly a year.

Gunfire broke out Wednesday during a Palestinian protest over Egypt's blockade of the Gaza Strip, leaving an Egyptian border guard dead and a dozen Palestinians injured. The riot along the border came a day after several hundred international activists clashed with police in the Egyptian port city of El Arish when they were told that a portion of their aid convoy would be allowed to enter Gaza only through Israel. In response, the Hamas movement that rules Gaza called on supporters to demonstrate Wednesday against both Egypt's interference with the aid convoy and its construction of an underground barrier designed to block tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons into the coastal strip.

In a deadly spurt of violence, six Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces Saturday, three of them suspects in the slaying of an Israeli West Bank settler two days earlier. The bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, after a relative lull in violence since spring, marked a setback for U.S. and international efforts to restart peace talks that collapsed a year ago. Israeli security forces killed three Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus during an early-morning raid Saturday.

An underground barrier to prevent tunneling by smugglers along Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip has been dubbed a "wall of shame" by Arab writers and politicians who charge that Cairo is siding with Israel in isolating the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the seaside enclave. Construction on the 100-foot-deep steel wall began a few weeks ago, but the Egyptian government didn't publicly acknowledge the project until the weekend. Officials defended the effort against accusations that it was an affront to Palestinians by the government of President Hosni Mubarak, which opposes Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza.

President Obama asserts, seconded by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" in the West Bank. Both have praised the 10-month freeze on new residential building -- excluding eastern Jerusalem -- that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month. Netanyahu now calls for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations or take the blame for lack of progress when the "one-time-only" freeze expires.

Israeli planes carried out airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip today, injuring seven people, Palestinian medical workers said. An Israeli army spokesman said the strikes had targeted two factories in central and northern Gaza used to make weapons and a smuggling tunnel under the border with Egypt. The spokesman said the airstrikes were in response to a rocket fired from Gaza Saturday. The rocket landed near the city of Sderot, causing no injuries or damage, he said.

Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip have test-fired a rocket with a 37-mile range, Israel's military intelligence chief said Tuesday, giving them the capacity to reach deeper into Israel and strike Tel Aviv's southern suburbs and possibly its international airport. Israeli officials said the launch into the Mediterranean Sea was the latest sign of the rebuilding and upgrading of Hamas' arsenal since the Jewish state's crippling 22-day offensive in Gaza last winter, but did not appear to foreshadow an imminent renewal of hostilities.