Gaza - Timeline
- Early 2004
- Prime Minister Sharon announces his disengagement plan for the Gaza Strip where 1.2 million Palestinians, many of them refugees from Israel's ethnic cleansing of Israel in 1948, are huddled together in the most crowded place on earth. There are also around 7,500 illegal Israeli settlers occupying around 25% of the territory, together with a large Israeli military presence. Israeli controls the borders completely.
- 06 October 2004
- Dov Weissglas, Sharon's adviser stated:
The significance of the disengagement plan [from Gaza] is the freezing of the peace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.What I effectively agreed to with the Americans [in talks leading to Bush's endorsement of disengagement] was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. [1]
- 12 September 2005
- The end of the Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Gaza Strip. Israel controls the air space, borders and most of the water supply. In essence the Gaza Strip is a large open-air prison.
- 25 January 2006
- Hamas win the elections in the Occupied Territories, probably because the population was disappointed with the failure of Fatah to improve their situation and frustrated by the endemic corruption in the administration.
US and Europe demand of Hamas that they renounce violence, recognize Israel (though not specifying within which borders) and accept the previous "peace" accords, which have been consistently broken by Israel, for example by expanding the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. No demands are made of Israel to renounce violence, accept a Palestinian state or uphold the "peace" accords.
- February 2006
- The US and Europe cut off all aid to the Palestinians.
- 19 February 2006
- Israel decides to withhold tax revenues due to the Palestinian Authority. [2]
- 23 March 2006
- Although 14 percent of their children were already suffering from levels of malnutrition that match sub-Saharan Africa, food supplies into Gaza were restricted. "It's like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die," said the prime minister's adviser Dov Weissglas. [3]
- 10 May 2006
- The Israelis decide to transfer part of the tax revenues to the PA. “The funds can be used to pay for electricity, water supply, hospitals, medical treatment in Israel”, in other words most of the funds will be transferred to the Israeli vendors supplying these services. [4]
- 08 June 2006
- Israel assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
- 09 June 2006
- Hamas armed wing calls off a 16-month-old truce after seven family members are killed on a Gaza beach during a day of Israeli shelling. Israel denies responsibility for the deaths, blaming it on Hamas planting a mine to counter Israeli landings on the beach! [5]
When this story was greeted with incredulity, they said that although they did not know where one of the shells landed, it could not have been the cause of the deaths.
[6]
- 13 June 2006
- Ten Palestinian civilians, including a man, his child, his brother-in-law and 4 medical personnel, were killed when a US-supplied F-16 attacked a car in Gaza City.
- 24 June 2006
- The IDF kidnapped two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from their home in Gaza and took them into Israel. It is an illegal act under international law, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
- 25 June 2006
- Gaza resistance fighters launch a raid into Israel, killing two soldiers and capturing a corporal.
- 28 June 2006
- Israel re-invades Gaza. Hamas offers the exchange of the captured corporal for 126 women and 300 minors under the age of 18 who are being detained in Israel out of a total of some 9,400 Palestinians illegally detained in Israeli prisons. (It is illegal under the Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention [7] to transfer civilians from occupied territories to the occupying country.) Israel refuses.
- 29 June 2006
- Israeli Occupation Forces in the West Bank kidnap a third of the Palestinian cabinet and nearly two dozen lawmakers.
- 03 July 2006
- Israeli troops move into northern Gaza.
- 06 July 2006
- The Israeli invasion is expanded after a rocket fired by Hamas hits the Israeli city of Ashkelon for the first time.
Since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 heavy artillery shells have been shot and fired into Gaza by Israel. On the Palestinian side, approximately 1,000 Qassam missiles, crude missiles, have been fired into Israel. Approximately 80 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing and there have been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Qassam missiles. [8]
- 08 July 2006
- A Hamas offer of a ceasefire and prisoner exchange is rejected by Israel.
- 12 July 2006
- Hizbollah guerrillas capture two Israeli soldiers and kill eight others around the Lebanese border, after an incursion by Israeli military into Lebanon. [9]
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls it an "act of war" by Lebanon and widens Gaza offensive, killing 24 civilians. Israeli strikes destroy 10 bridges in Lebanon, and hit power stations and a water facility.
Mainly Israeli sources claim that there were also rocket attacks by Hizbollah either in the morning or all day on the IDF positions near the border, though it is impossible to confirm this.
Israel broadens Gaza offensive and cuts the strip in two.
- 13 July 2006
- Israeli US-supplied aircraft bomb runways at Beirut's Rafik al-Hariri International Airport. Israel's navy blockades Lebanese ports.
- 14 July 2006
- Israeli US-supplied warplanes blast the main Beirut-Damascus highway, tightening an air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon.
The Shia suburbs of Beirut are bombed: 67 Lebanese civilians dead. Hizbollah launches 130 missiles at Israel, killing at least two civilians. An Israeli ship is hit by an explosives-filled drone, four dead.
- 15 July 2006
- Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demands an immediate U.N.-backed ceasefire, denouncing Israel for turning his country into a "disaster zone". He appeals for foreign aid.
An Israeli missile attack on the village of Marwaheen, southern Lebanon, kills 20, including 15 children, the deadliest attack of the campaign.
- 16 July 2006
- Rockets fired by Hizbollah kill eight in the Israeli city of Haifa bringing to 12 the number of Israelis killed.
Israel attacks Beirut's Shi'ite southern suburbs. 111 people in Lebanon have been killed in the five-day assault.
Notes
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