Palestinian Death Toll Tops 1,000 in Gaza

Palestinian officials say more than 1,000 people have been killed during Israel's 19-day offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The head of the United Nations children's agency, Ann Venemen said Wednesday that 300 children were among the dead. She said 1,500 others have been wounded and said the casualties were "tragic" and "unacceptable."


Israel has tightly controlled access to the Palestinian territory, so the numbers can not be independently verified. But U.N. officials have said previous estimates have been generally credible. Thirteen Israelis have died in the conflict.

Also on Wednesday, the head of the International Red Cross called the situation in Gaza "shocking." Jakob Kellengerger visited the densely-populated territory Tuesday, as well as the Israeli town of Sderot, which has been repeatedly hit by Hamas rockets. He called on both sides to differentiate between military targets and civilians.

Meanwhile, Israel bombed more Hamas targets in Gaza on Wednesday, including smuggling tunnels. Hamas launched at least a dozen rockets into southern Israel.

Israeli launched the offensive in Gaza on December 27 to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks.

Separately, police say three rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Wednesday, landing outside the town of Kiryat Shmona. There were no reports of casualties, and no claim of responsibility. The Lebanese government denounced the rocket fire.

It was the second such attack in less than a week.

Officials say Israel fired shells into Lebanon in response.

Also Wednesday, Israeli police said militants fired a phosphorus shell from Gaza into Israel.

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of illegally using the shells in populated areas. The phosphorus mortars create a smokescreen but also cause burns.

Israel said Wednesday that an Iranian ship carrying two thousand tons of aid to Gaza was turned back Tuesday because it violated a general maritime blockade of the territory, not because of the ships point of origin.

Iran, which does not recognize Israel, has condemned its offensive in Gaza.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

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Israel rejects Hamas truce offer

Jerusalem, Israel said yesterday it would not agree to a temporary cease-fire in the Gaza Strip that Hamas could use to rearm, underscoring the gap between the two sides in Egyptian brokered talks. Hamas has rejected an open-ended truce, seeking instead a more limited six-month agreement that could be renewed, Arab diplomats said. Israel will not accept a situation where Hamas gets a temporary period of quiet just to rearm and regroup and that ends


with further rocket barrages on Israel,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.Israel seeks a durable quiet that contains a total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and a working mechanism to prevent Hamas from rearming.Israel said senior defence official Amos Gilad would travel to Cairo today for talks on a cease-fire after 19 days of fighting in which more than 1000 Palestinians have been killed, along with 13 Israelis.Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called for a jihad over the Israeli offensive in Gaza in an audio tape that appeared on Islamist websites. The Saudi-born militant said the global financial crisis had exposed the waning US influence in world affairs and would in turn weaken its ally, Israel. The authenticity of the tape, produced and released yesterday by al-Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, could not immediately be verified but the voice sounded like that of bin Laden. Backing its demand that any cease-fire ensure that Hamas cannot rearm, Israel sent warplanes to drop bunker-busting bombs on smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border. In the 22-minute tape, bin Laden said the US was losing its dominant position in the world and that this was due to al-Qaeda’s campaign. Bin Laden last spoke on an audio tape in May, also focusing on Gaza and calling on Muslims to try to help end the blockade. The al-Qaeda leader has placed growing emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and yesterday’s tape was accompanied by a still picture of him and al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest shrine.

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How the Gaza War Could End: Three Scenarios

Pressure is mounting on Israel and Hamas to find a way of ending the war in Gaza. Both sides have responded positively, if tentatively, to Egyptian proposals for a phased truce that would begin with a lull in fighting for a defined period (10 days by some accounts). That interlude would then allow for the brokering of a more comprehensive cease-fire. But each side's goals from any truce remain antagonistic to those of the other, and reaching an agreement that bridges the vast gap between them remains a Herculean diplomatic challenge.

Even before the Israeli invasion began late December, Hamas had offered to renew its six-month cease-fire with Israel on condition that the border crossings from Egypt and Israel into Gaza be opened. Those crossings have been closed as part of a strategy of imposing economic deprivation on the people of Gaza in the hope that they would turn on Hamas; Israel remains reluctant to agree to reopen them as part of a cease-fire deal, since that would be claimed as a victory by Hamas. Hamas also insists on a full and immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza. Israel is reluctant to comply until mechanisms are in place to prevent Hamas rearming.

Israel's declared purpose in launching Operation Cast Lead was to halt Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza, and prevent Hamas from being able to rearm through smuggling weapons from Egypt. Israel remains committed, however, to a long-term goal of ending Hamas control of Gaza, and it insists that the movement should gain no "recognition" or "legitimacy" as part of any truce — a tough call since Hamas is the key combatant on the Palestinian side. (See pictures of the Gaza ground war)

So how will the Gaza conflict be resolved? Israel's dominant military position puts its leaders in a position to decide how the hostilities will. But those leaders remain locked in debate among themselve over the best way to do that. Here are the three most likely scenarios, each with different political consequences for the main players and the future of the conflict:

Scenario 1: Regime Change
Given Israel's long-term goal of ousting Hamas in Gaza, some key military and political leaders have urged that it expand the goals of its current operation, and use its momentum to take control of Gaza City and decapitate Hamas. Most vocal in advocating this option is Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish front-runner in the race for prime minister, who will portray any outcome that leaves Hamas intact in Gaza as a failure — bad news for his chief rivals, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

But the "regime-change" option is even reported to have support from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who sees it as a way to restore the control over all Palestinian territories of his peace partner, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Skeptics, including Barak and Livni, warn that pursuing regime-change would require the Israeli military operation to continue for months, risking diplomatic isolation and dramatic increases in casualties. And the Israeli security establishment is justifiably skeptical of the prospects for re-imposing the already enfeebled Abbas on a hostile Gaza. Rather than boost his power, the latest confrontation has seen Abbas further marginalized. Even his future control over the West Bank has come into question.

Even if forced out of power, Hamas would maintain a resistance role that would prevent anyone else from governing the territory. (The organization is estimated to have close to 20,000 men under arms in Gaza, of which Israel claims, so far, to have killed no more than 2.5%.) That would force Israel to reoccupy a territory from which it sought to separate in 2005. Still, Israeli leaders hope that the military operation can deal a powerful enough blow to hobble Hamas. They still hope to see the Abbas' authority re-imposed as part of any truce. More realistically, perhaps, Arab mediators and the U.N. Security Council have urged that cease-fire plans restore reconciliation between Abbas and Hamas. Arab countries previously brokered a national unity government between the two, and Hamas remains the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority's legislature. But Israel has long insisted it will not deal with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

Scenario 2: Long-term Cease-fire
Israel has insisted that a cease-fire be "sustainable," by ensuring that Hamas is unable to rearm itself. An actual disarming of Hamas' current militias is unlikely without a full-scale reoccupation of Gaza, which would involve tens of thousands more Israeli troops over many months. Anything less will see Hamas continue to be the dominant security presence inside Gaza. So, Israel's priority will be to choke off the supply of rockets and mortar shells, which have been smuggled through tunnels from Gaza and fired at Israel. The Israelis want Egypt to police those tunnels, under U.S. supervision. Egypt has been reluctant to take on the potential domestic political headache of having foreign troops policing the Gaza border on its soil, and fears that Israel will seek to force Cairo to accept increasing responsibility for the territory — a role Cairo steadfastly refuses to play.

Egypt is reportedly proposing that an immediate truce, in which Israeli forces retain their current positions but advance no further, be followed by negotiations on a full withdrawal and reopening the crossings. Egypt will likely agree to enhanced mechanisms for policing the smugglers' tunnels, but those tunnels were also Gaza's economic lifeline, and Egypt will insist they can be closed only if the legitimate crossings into Gaza are reopened to allow the flow of normal humanitarian and commercial traffic. That, of course, is what Hamas has been demanding, which will make Israel — and Egypt — uncomfortable. Neither wants to see the radical movement emerge from this confrontation with an enhanced status, but the scale of the humanitarian disaster wrought by Operation Cast Lead renders maintaining the economic blockade untenable. Hamas may claim vindication, but it will not be allowed to directly control the crossings itself, as it had demanded, and will be forced to swallow many other compromises.

Policing the crossings on the Palestinian side will likely be the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, although that will require new agreements between Hamas and President Abbas. Any cease-fire is likely to implicitly recognize Hamas' dominance as an inescapable reality in Gaza. Hamas will claim victory from any truce that results in the crossings being reopened, and its claim may well be echoed by Netanyahu on the campaign trail. After all, ending the current operation on the basis of a formal long-term truce in Gaza will codify Israeli-Hamas coexistence. That's why Israeli journalist Aluf Benn dubbed the conflict "Gaza's War of Independence," an allusion to the conflict 60 years ago in which Israel established its existence as an intractable political-military fact.

Scenario 3: The Guns Go Silent Without a Formal Truce
If the offensive cannot deal Hamas a death blow, Israel may see benefit in holding its fire, in line with the first phase of the Egyptian plan but not necessarily concluding a comprehensive cease-fire. It would simply maintain the halt to hostilities and even withdraw its forces on an open-ended basis. Israeli leaders saw Operation Cast Lead as an opportunity to restore Israel's "deterrent" power, which it believed had been damaged when it was fought to a draw by Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006. But the Gaza operation, with its almost 100-to-1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli casualties, has issued a painful reminder of Israel's capacity and willingness to abandon restraints and rain devastation on the heads of all challengers.

By simply stopping its operation without a formal truce, Israel can claim to have reestablished its "deterrent" on future rocket fire without "recognizing" Hamas' authority in Gaza. This option would also allow Israel to avoid accepting any new restraints on its actions in Gaza. It would also bypass the need to deploy international forces, a move that would complicate any future offensive. Israel ended its 2002 offensive against militants in Jenin and other West Bank cities on its own terms, choosing where to remain deployed and continuing to raid those cities as deemed necessary. The six-month truce that maintained calm in Gaza from June until November last year was never formally codified — each side had its own interpretation of understandings reached with the Egyptian mediator, and there was no publicly agreed text or mechanism for monitoring or arbitrating disputes.

Some Israeli reports suggest that halting the offensive without an agreement is the option favored by Livni. And its prospects may be enhanced by the fact that negotiations over a formal cease-fire may take more than 10 days and may, in fact, not be resolved before Israel has elected a new government — possibly, one with little interest in a truce with Hamas. But even an unspoken truce would have to involve the opening of crossings to relieve the humanitarian catastrophe, and would require mechanisms for monitoring the flow of goods into Gaza, and tunnel smuggling. In other words, even an unspoken cease-fire will require many of the features of a formal one. Hamas has also insisted that it won't accept another vague or open-ended ceasefire without defined timetables and verifiable goals, although its ability to hold out for its terms will be determined by the resilience of its forces on the ground. But Egypt and other regional players will press Israel to formalize the truce terms in order to prevent a recurrence of the horrors seen in Gaza over the past three weeks.

Whichever of these three permutations defines the Gaza outcome, the likelihood is that Operation Cast Lead will not have ended the conflict between Israel and Hamas, but will instead have propelled it into a new phase.

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OWNERSHIP OF FARM STATUS AT COASTAL AREA AND MANGROVE FOREST INTRODUCTION

Indonesia as an archipelagic country consisted of 17508 big islands and small as a whole has coastline length around 81000 km. Some of the areas are grower by mangrove forest with wide some metre until tens of kilometre. Each coast area and mangrove forest at islands is upper having historical of different development. The change situation of coastal area and mangrove forest are hardly influenced by nature factor and man interference factor. Estimate 60% of Indonesia population life and lives in coastal area. Out of 64439 country sides in Indonesia, there are 4735 country sides which can be categorized as coast countryside. Even, public living in coast town region has reached around 100 million. Historically, spreading and improvement of number of residents mastering coastal area in Indonesia started by the merchants / fisherman or the religion broadcasters that is often sails either from other state and also going about from island which one to other islands. Gradually some of they are permanent and masters’ farm at coast area between by it is mangrove forest. Till now difficult to do data ownership of farm in coast area, because history, condition of cultural social and other factor resulting traditional public of coastal dweller gone. At development residence of the coast public, now change of status function and ownership of coastal area and mangrove forest in coastal area regions given on to problems has not existence of arrangement by government about status ownership of farm, dredging and reclamation of river estuary and coast.

Education about function and ownership of farm status at coastal area and mangrove forest is very importance in striving inwrought coordination in management of coastal area region on an ongoing basis. Based on development of development of urban region and coast countryside, allotment and ownership of farm at coastal area and mangrove forest highly varied, as according to condition of biophysics, economic social and level of civilization of local public. For the reason, changes function of from status ownership of the farm must be straightened and supported with completion of regulation.
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