Tens of thousands of Gazans living in tents and damaged homes face a wet, cold and miserable winter as Israel’s blockade of the coastal territory continues to prevent the importation of building and reconstruction material. During the last few weeks Gazans were given a brief reprieve from the oncoming winter as an unseasonal snap of warmish, sunny weather held off winter rain and plummeting temperatures. But, during a tour of northern Gaza last week, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, and the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) called on Israel to open its border crossings immediately to avert a further deterioration in the humanitarian situation on the ground. "With winter rains and cold weather now imminent, the people of Gaza are even more desperately in need of construction materials such as cement, roofing tiles and glass to build and repair homes destroyed and damaged during the Israeli military offensive of 2008/2009," said Gaylard.

As part of CODEPINK’s commitment to human rights, it is working with a broad coalition to organize, in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, a massive march on December 31 from inside Gaza to the Israeli border. The March calls on Israel to lift the inhumane siege that is keeping 1.5 million people imprisoned. Already, participants have signed up from 32 countries. They include writers (U.S. Alice Walker), actors (Syrian Duraid Lahham), members of Parliament (from France to the Philippines), diplomats (from Japan to the Netherlands), as well as doctors, lawyers, professors and students.

The General Assembly today endorsed the report of the United Nations investigation which found that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants were guilty of serious human rights violations during the conflict in the Gaza Strip at the start of the year. After two days of debate in the Assembly, at UN Headquarters in New York, 114 Member States voted in favour of a resolution endorsing the report’s findings and its recommendations for further action. Eighteen States voted against the resolution and another 44 countries abstained.

"The point here is that while the Palestinians should be held accountable for their actions just like any other people in this world, they should not be held to the same standards as their occupier, simply for the very reason of their occupied status. When addressing Israel's relationship with the Palestinians, the first thing that should be mentioned is its 42-year old occupation of this people and its land."

When the Goldstone report was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, [the Israeli] government decided to do all it could to prevent even a debate about it. The debate was, of course, demanded by the Palestinians. When the report was published, the Palestinian representative in Geneva did the obvious: he demanded that the report be debated with a view to submitting it to the Security Council, which in turn would submit it to the international court in The Hague. What came next could have been foreseen. The Israeli government exerted heavy pressure on the US. The US exerted heavy pressure on Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas gave in and instructed his representative in Geneva to withdraw his request for a debate. In any other matter, this would have passed quietly. But since the subject was the Gaza War, Palestinian public opinion exploded.

Thabet El Masri, is the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at the Shifa Hospital, a public institution in the Gaza Strip. He replies here to the questions of Silvia Cattori about the recent increase in the number of babies being born with birth defects. Gaza Israeli war crimes Israeli State terrorism Children victims White phosphorus bombs on an UNRWA school in Beit Lahiya, January 17, 2009 Silvia Cattori: In June, you started to be concerned by an increase in the number of babies born with birth defects. We would be very interested to have your medical assessment and to know the result of the study you made of this troubling phenomenon. Can you tell us the ratio of prenatal and postnatal birth defects ten months after the attacks on Gaza in comparison with the same period in 2008, in terms of the number of cases involved?

Israel may have won the military stage of Cast Lead, but the campaign continues - on the diplomatic and legal fronts, and there things aren't going so well. It's a new world under the Obama presidency, and Israel can no longer count on automatic U.S support for all its actions. The Gaza campaign continues being fought - in the diplomatic arena and in public opinion - and Israel must cope with its consequences in a less-friendly Obama era. Israel's leaders are busy defending the country against the United Nations' Goldstone report (that accuses Israel and Hamas of perpetrating war crimes), and some even have to worry now about being the object of arrest warrants in Europe. Even if the legal process that Goldstone initiated ends up being halted, and Israel is not put in the dock in The Hague, its hands have been tied. The world, led by Obama, will not let it initiate a Cast Lead II operation. Certainly not when a right-wing government is in power in Jerusalem led by Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the world loves to hate. Upon returning to power, Netanyahu hoped to leave the Palestinian issue on the side and focus on the Iranian threat and on economic reforms. Now his government will have to cope with the consequences of Cast Lead and do so under less than ideal conditions, heavy international pressure and fear of arrest warrants and charge sheets.

Concerns of facing arrests in Europe shroud Israel's hawkish government as the Goldstone report on Gaza wins more support across the world. The Israeli government is reportedly considering limitations on its officials' travel to Europe fearing that they could be arrested over charges of committing war crimes during the Gaza war in January. Israel's Western allies on Wednesday called on Tel Aviv for a credible investigation into UN allegations of possible war crimes by the Israel Defense Forces during the winter conflict in the Gaza Strip. [Note: DUH!! "POSSIBLE war crimes? All one has to do is to look at that poor ravaged area and its people to know that war crimes have been committed.]

It's a pity Israel waited for Goldstone to probe Gaza war, a pity we take a hard look at ourselves only when personal harm looms.Israel should thank Judge Richard Goldstone and his commission's important report. After subjecting him to useless, automatic mudslinging, Israel suddenly realized that it should finally investigate the events of Operation Cast Lead. Why? What happened? The ground has started to tremble under the feet of a number of Israeli statesmen and officers. That, it turns out, is the only way to teach us a lesson. Goldstone held up a mirror to us; we tried to smash it, as is our wont, but this time, as opposed to earlier reports, smashing it did not work. Are Ehud Barak and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi sweating? That's the only way Israel will learn. Not only if it is proved that there were war crimes in Gaza, but if people also have to pay for their actions. That is good news for Israel: Thanks to Goldstone, people in Israel will think twice and perhaps even three times before they bring down another barrage of cast lead on a helpless civilian population.

It was not only shocking, but incomprehensible. Mahmoud Abbas, the de-facto leader of the Palestinian people, backing the opposition to postpone the UN vote on the findings of Richard Goldstone's report on Israel's war on Gaza. Various media outlets reported that the action was the result of 'intense US pressure', however, unnamed sources have another version of the events.It would appear that at the time of the Israeli offensive on Gaza which began last December and lasted nearly a month, when the world began to call for a cease fire, Israel may have been taking its cues from Mahmoud Abbas. Let us recall that the Palestinian leader has been seen as a weak figure, unable to gain the support of his own people, and the loser of the democratically held elections which gave Hamas victory over Fatah. Naturally, since the vote did not please Israel nor its Western allies, that particular election result was not welcome.

Like its predecessors, the so-called Goldstone report, named after chief investigator Richard Goldstone, is devastating in its critique of Israeli actions: indiscriminate use of firepower; deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian structures, including hospitals, schools, mosques, water and sewage plants, and rescue vehicles; use of white phosphorus munitions in built-up areas; use of human shields; abusive treatment of detainees; imposition of a blockade on Gaza before and after the attack itself--the report concludes that Israel violated international humanitarian law, committed "grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons," and war crimes, possibly even crimes against humanity. The courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed it up well in Haaretz: it was "an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this operation."...

The report of Goldstone led UN Commission reports of Israeli war crimes and Gaza last winter "focuses overwhelmingly on Israel's actions," said Friday a senior U.S. diplomat. Although it acknowledges, to a lesser extent, Hamas war crimes, the Goldstone report has angered Israel. From December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, the Israeli army launched a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, called Operation Cast Lead in response to Hamas rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot. Statistics show 1400 Palestinian deaths of which 926 were civilians including 313 children and 116 women. On the Israeli side, 13 people were killed, including 3 civilians.

Israel "punished and terrorised" civilians in Gaza in a disproportionate attack in its three-week offensive on the territory earlier this year, a United Nations report has found. Judge Richard Goldstone, who led the inquiry, said on Wednesday that he found evidence Israel targeted civilians and used excessive force in the assault, which was launched on December 27, 2008. "The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defence Force," Goldstone, a former South African justice, said. While the report was more sharply critical of Israel, it also said that there was evidence "that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity", by firing rockets into southern Israel. Goldstone's report, which came at the end of a six-month inquiry and will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council later this month, said Israel deliberately attacked civilians, failed to take precautions to minimise loss of civilian life and cited strong evidence that Israeli forces committed "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. He said: "In the months since the end of the war, various rights groups both domestic and international have provided evidence of Israel’s war crimes."

The Goldstone Report is a grave blow to the State of Israel on three significant international fronts: The diplomatic theater, the media front, and the military-legal arena. On the diplomatic front, the report will constitute the basis for proposed anti-Israel resolutions to be submitted by the immense Arab-Muslim bloc in the United Nations -- a Security Council resolution may mean big trouble for Israel: Ranging from acceptance of the recommendation to indict officials at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague to a demand to impose sanctions on Israel should it fail to lift the Gaza Strip siege. On the media front the damage is grave, as the report provides an international seal of approval to the war crime claims. Just as grave is the damage on the legal-military front. The report explicitly rules that the combat methods and armaments utilized by the IDF even prior to Operation Cast Lead, as well as during the campaign, are illegitimate, violate the Geneva Convention, and constitute a war crime. Judge Richard Goldstone even said explicitly that the issue of personal criminal responsibility must be looked into in respect to what happened in Gaza, a clear call on the UN to examine the possibility of trying senior Israeli army and government officials on war crime charges.

Israel has opened an international campaign to protest a United Nations report which ruled it committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during its offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier this year. The report accuses both Israel and the Palestinians of actions amounting to war crimes during the December 27-January 18 battle in the Hamas-ruled territory. The Israeli campaign is aimed at preventing a discussion on the report in the United Nations Security Council. The Foreign Ministry [said]: "Israel knew it could not cooperate with the commission, due to the one-sided mandate, which ignores the thousands of rockets Hamas fired at civilians in southern Israel - that which made the offensive on Gaza necessary. Following the report, nine Israeli human rights groups called on the government to conduct its own probe of the war. "Human rights organizations in Israel believe that the State of Israel must conduct an independent and impartial investigation into these suspicions and to cooperate with an international monitoring mechanism that would guarantee both the independence of that investigation and the implementation of its conclusions," said the groups in a statement.

One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water?

Former US President Jimmy Carter and his wife fasted in solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip who are living under siege. Jimmy Carter said that he had received a call from Khahamat religious Jews in the United States who told him that they had already begun fasting once a week in solidarity with Gaza and its people, and asked him to join them, but he and his wife decided that they would do so alone and already had started fasting.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that unless the siege of Gaza is lifted and a political solution implemented, Gaza's badly damaged health system will go from very bad to worse.

Call it that choice between looking at the half-full or half-empty part of the results. And it is almost half; 55 percent of schoolchildren passed their exams in Gaza this year. Hanan Al-Manameh scored 99.4 percent in science, the sixth highest in the exams conducted both in Gaza and the West Bank. "The war and the siege on Gaza will not break us down," she tells IPS on phone from Gaza City. "The war didn't put an end to the school year, and it didn't kill the motivation inside me." Mahmoud Al-Segali, 18, scored 99.5 percent. "My family had to move from one shelter to another while Israeli F-16s bombed the houses around us. Then, and later, we have been short of electricity, and short of paper, but I still managed my dream result."

Israel has just published their self assessment into their 22 Day offensive in Gaza. The report entitled "The Operation in Gaza - Legal and Factual Aspects," has been designed to counteract international claims of ‘war crimes’ over IDF military actions during the incursion.