5- Israel’s Battle for Peace - Prewar Updates 2008

Israel’s Battle for Peace
Prewar Updates: Israel/Gaza Conflict
Tuesday, March 04, 2008

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YNETNews.com gets us started off this early Tuesday morning with this report... Color Red alert system activated at around 6 am Tuesday, followed by rocket striking empty house; building sustains heavy damage. Meanwhile, IDF strikes and hits two Qassam launching cells in northern Gaza Strip...
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Qassam hits house in Sderot; no injuries

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* HAARETZ.com has this report... Legal experts in the government say it is difficult to decide whether Israel can move Palestinian civilians from areas in the northern Gaza Strip where rockets are fired against Israel. They say international law is based on precedents, and in Israel's case the matter is in many ways unprecedented... Defense Minister Ehud Barak had requested legal advice from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and the military advocate general on the possibility of moving Palestinian civilians from the rocket-launching areas... The idea would be to give the Israel Defense Forces greater room to maneuver and target rocket crews without endangering civilians...
Read the full report at link below...
Barak seeks legal okay to move Gazan civilians from homes

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* TimesOnline.co.uk put this report up around 8:00am CST this morning... Israel today threatened to reoccupy the Gaza Strip unless Hamas halted rocket attacks from the territory, as Condoleezza Rice appealed for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to the negotiating table... As the US Secretary of State began a visit to the region, Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, said that Israel had pulled out of Gaza in 2005 "not in order to come back - but we might find ourselves in a situation where we have no choice." ... "We cannot afford this kind of extreme Islamic state controlled by Hamas," she said, in a statement...
Read the full report at link below...
Israeli minister threatens Gaza reoccupation
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* JPOST.com reported Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni remarks this way... Israel has informed foreign diplomats that it would reoccupy Hamas-ruled Gaza if necessary, though it prefers not to do so...
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Livni: If necessary, Israel will reoccupy the Gaza Strip

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* MonstersAndCritics.com reports...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Tuesday, but failed to get the Palestinian leader to commit to a date for the restart of peace talks with Israel, frozen on Sunday in the wake of the worst violence between the sides in decades...Although he did not name a date for their resumption, Abbas said he remained committed to the talks...
Full article at link below...
Rice fails to get Abbas to name date for restart of talks.

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Livni BIO photo by MFA.gov.il

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Gods speed to the Israeli people
in their battle for peace
in their homeland.
AubreyJ.........
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
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