Palestinian voices from Zeitun in my apartment

As we reported in "From my apartment 17th day of the Invasion," Red Cross ambulances were denied permission to get into Zeitun, to the east of Gaza City. Well, today, Al-Arabiyya interview a van load with some women who were able to get out of Zeitun. I was not able to catch the first part of the interview where the matriarch spoke of how she tried to explain to the Israeli troops that they were Jordanians. That they had already been kicked out of the west bank in 1967. Then I turned on the tape recorder when her 15-year-old daughter was talking. This is the first description I have heard of what the ground troops of the occupying forces are doing in the villages surrounding Gaza city while the F-16's and Apache helicopters demolish buildings in Gaza city itself. She describes how the occupying forces banged on their door and entered the house. They even questioned her about her "shobah" and the reporter says, "What's a shobah?" and she says, "It's just a paddle we use to stir flour to make bread." I couldn't quite understand, but it seems the occupying forces thought even that was a weapon and they arrested her brothers and threw all the children on the street(the pavement?). Below is the recording. I preserve it here on Blogger for the melodious tones--to me--of the Palestinian accent.





Later, after this live report from inside Gaza, near where the service taxis and bus-vans come, Al-Arabiyya reported that Hamas representatives at the peace talks in Cairo had agreed to the Egyptian cease fire. At first BBC tried to say that Al-Jazeera was reporting that the Hamas spokespeople in Damascus did not agree to the cease fire. But I saw Al-Jazeera and they carried the Hamas press conference in Cairo live, where the spokesperson--I forget his name--said the Egyptian brother would be carrying the Hamas agreement to the ceasefire to the Israelis.

The delay will give the Israelis more time to bomb and make mayhem tonight and they will probably disagree to to abide by the cease fire since it obligates them to stop the bombing, withdraw, and open the borders with Gaza.



An hour before midnight Saudi Time, the New York Times grudgingly put in the news that Hamas had agreed to the cease fire in an article about how some Israeli groups were calling for a war crimes investigation(NYT did not mention that Richard Falk, Princeton emeritus has called for Israel to be brought before the World Court for War Crimes) with this picture of destruction in Gaza city today, Wednesday, Jan.l 14, 2009. The picture above is credited to Hatem Moussa/Associated Press