NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.

Israel is facing mounting pressure to agree a ceasefire after an attack on a UN school in Gaza left 43 dead and around 100 wounded.

On Tuesday, the Israelis launched an attack on the school which is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) in the northern town of Jabaliya.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were sheltering in the building, which is the third school in Gaza to come under Israeli fire in 24 hours.

Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp.

Around 15,000 Palestinians have had to flee their homes because of the fighting amid concern there are no safe havens in Gaza.

John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, said three artillery shells landed near the school where people were taking shelter from the Israeli offensive that is now entering its 12th day.

'Casualties inevitable'

Ging said Unrwa regularly provided the Israeli army with exact geographical co-ordinates of its facilities and the school was in a built-up area.

"Of course, it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in the area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.

When asked if Tel Aviv would allow such an investigation, Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, said Israel had already held an "initial investigation" which found that troops had returned fire from the UN building.

Regev accused Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip, of committing a "war crime" by using those sheltering in the UN school as "a human shield".

However, the attack has provoked strong international condemnation with Ban-Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, branding the incident "unacceptable".

"These attacks by Israeli military forces which endanger UN facilities acting as places of refuge are totally unacceptable, and should not be repeated.

In addition, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, expelled the Israeli ambassador in Caracas in protest over the Israeli military operation in Gaza.

'Humanitarian corridor'

At least 680 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and nearly 3,075 wounded since the war began on December 27. Seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died in the same period.

Heba, a Gaza resident and mother of two, told Al Jazeera there was no place left in Gaza that can be considered safe.
 
"What happened in the school was a hugely offensive and inhumane thing. We never expected that people who sought refuge in a UN building would be attacked and killed," she said.

Randa Seniora, from the Independent Commission on Human Rights, told Al Jazeera: "What is happening in Gaza are crimes against humanity.

"Israel cannot claim, as an occupying authority, that it is acting in self defence because simply it is considered a war crime to create harm and damage among civilian populations."

The Quartet of international powers has "lost its grip" on the Middle East peace process which it is meant to foster, a group of aid agencies says.

In a damning report, the agencies say the Quartet - Russia, the US, the EU and the UN - is failing in its mission.

Conditions for Palestinians, which it was meant to improve, have worsened since peace talks recommenced under US sponsorship in 2007, the agencies say.

In the West Bank there was an increase in Israeli settlement and travel curbs.

The report was issued ahead of a Quartet meeting in New York on Friday.

"The Annapolis process [launched by the US in November 2007] was meant to herald a new dawn for the Middle East peace process," said Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji.

"Nearly one year on, we are seeing exponential settlement growth, additional check-points and - because of this - further economic stagnation.

"The Quartet is losing its grip on the Middle East peace process."

There has been no immediate response from the Quartet, whose representative in the region is former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.