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Arab-Americans look to Obama - 15 Jan 09

Shihab Rattansi speaks to a panel of leading Arab-Americans in Washington DC about their hopes for the Obama administration, the Middle East crisis and more.

No place is safe for Gazans:

Mosques, hospitals, schools and homes have been hit as the Israeli air raids in Gaza City become more intense.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Gaza on the 20th day of the war, says there is no place of refuge left for Gazans in the densely populated territory.

It is speculation for the most part, cause Israel is not allowing foreign journalists in. What I am paying attention to is the weapons. And this is the article that completely crystallized my anti-war stance. These weapons? Are horrific. And abominable. And inhuman. And I can't believe that people are actually conceptualizing and building these weapons, much more using them. Is Israel using illegal weapons in its offensive on Gaza?

Last Saturday HRW hastened to publish a call to Israel to "stop unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza." The use of white phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield, explains Garlasco, but the side effects on humans and the environment are severe and highly dangerous. The statement notes that the "potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world."

The fireworks-like explosions, the thick smoke, suffocating gas, and flames that are not extinguished by water, but rather are heightened by it - all of these are characteristic of the white phosphorus bombs the IDF is using. Garlasco believes the decision to make such extensive use of these bombs, manufactured by America's General Dynamics Corporation, stems from conclusions drawn from the Second Lebanon War, in which the IDF lost many tanks.

"The phosphorus bombs create a thick smokescreen and if Hamas has an anti-tank rocket, the smoke prevents the rocket from tracking the tank," he explains. There are two ways to use the bombs: The first is to impact them on the ground, in which case the resulting thick smokescreen covers a limited area; the second way is an airburst of a bomb, which contains 116 wafers doused in phosphorus. The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen - it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood - anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.

And in the meantime, in the hospitals in Gaza there are people lying in beds - among them many children - whose severe injuries and burns have appalled the medical teams.

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DIME - the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."

He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left." Indeed, the injuries DIME causes are in general more severe than those caused by a "regular" bomb.
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Gazan babies born into war - 15 Jan 2009

Many of the more than 40,000 pregnant women in Gaza are unable to leave their homes for medical treatment because of the Israeli onslaught and hospitals swamped with the thousands of injured.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros has the story of one mother who has not seen her baby since he was born on the first day of Israel's offensive.