Eyewitnesses inside Gaza

Live dialogue with a journalist based in Gaza taken from islamonline.net

Saleh Al-Naami - Journalist, Gaza
Monday,Dec 29 ,2008

How is this attack on Gaza different from the other attacks, is Hamas capable of controlling things inside Strip now?

It is obvious that the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza are very different in many ways from previous attacks in both Gaza and West Bank.This is a campaign not witnessed since 1967. First, the scale of attack and air raids is immense. Israel until now has dropped about 500 tons of explosives on Gaza. They have dropped bombs that weigh up to one ton from F 16 fighter jets.

Secondly, they dropped these explosives on institutions during work hours.They targeted all kinds of institutions, even houses of worship.

Today alone, Israelis bombed 5 mosques. A prominent mosque is in Jabalia and a nearby house was completely demolished and five girls inside were killed, one of them is 4 years old.

They have targeted peoples homes unlike before when they used to attack mainly public institutions.

As to how Hamas currently manages Gaza, it is fair to say that many key institutions have been damaged, such as police centers and government offices. But people all rally around Hamas because they know it is the one Israel is trying to eradicate Resistance before it stretches its occupation all over the territories.

Hamas is doing its best and people are rallying around it. This possibly against what the Israeili government anticipates.

Are Israeli strikes precise enough as they claim to not hit civilians?
With the populous nature of the Strip, what is the margin of error?

Of course they are very precise in attacking their intended targets, such as mosques, civilian population, gov. institutions..etc.

They are very precise about that. Israel claims that it does not target civilians and that some of these may be killed by mistake in attacks.

This can be understood say if a militant compound is near a mosque or populated neighborhood. But this never is the fact.

A lot of times they target Mosques that and people's homes intentionally in order to make these people revolt against Resistance, but this only backfires on the Israelis. Some of them are now acknowledging this and say that these attacks may even strip Abbas from any legitimacy and and further empower Hamas.

So yes, They are precise in killing civilians and that is their intentions.

What is the real reason of Israel attack on Gaza?

Israel says the reason is to stop resistance groups from attacking Israeli villages with rockets. Whether this is true is a totally different story. During the six month truce, Israel constantly attacked Gaza and imposed a heinous siege on its people. Israel stifled the whole population without food, medicine or Gas.

This is during the truce, when no rockets were fired. So,the reason then for the Israeli massive attack on Gaza is something different from what they claim. Now the only reason I can think of as an individual who lives in Gaza is this:

Gaza has proved its resistance to the Zionist project for building empire in the Middle East. They (Zionists) want to crash the last strongholds of Resistance in Palestine to make it easy then to take over it and bring back their armed settlers.

source - http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/Browse.asp?hGuestID=5f2550