Gaddafi Launches Airstrikes On Libyan Rebels

Libyan rebels lose ground to Kadhafi forces

By Agence France-Presse via Raw Story

Monday, March 7th, 2011 — 8:33 am

RAS LANUF, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels ceded ground to Moamer Kadhafi’s advancing forces Monday as the United States came under increasing pressure to arm the opposition and the UN appointed a special envoy to Tripoli.

The rebels began pulling back from the key oil terminal town of Ras Lanuf on Monday as a fighter jet blasted defences on the edge of town, throwing up palls of smoke amid rumours that government forces were gearing for an attack.

Amid the bloodiest fighting of the three-week old conflict Sunday, the United Nations demanded urgent access to scores of “injured and dying” in the western city of Misrata and rebels were forced to withdraw from the front line at Bin Jawad, 30 kilometres (19 miles) west along the coast from Ras Lanuf.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Kadhafi’s foreign minister agreed to let a “humanitarian assessment” team visit Tripoli and he named former Jordanian foreign minister Abdulilah al-Khatib as special envoy to deal with the regime. Khatib was to undertake “urgent consultations” with the Tripoli government.

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Top Ten Myths about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, June 17, 2010

Myth #1 – Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region.

Although Arabs were a majority in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel, there had always been a Jewish population, as well. For the most part, Jewish Palestinians got along with their Arab neighbors. This began to change with the onset of the Zionist movement, because the Zionists rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and wanted Palestine for their own, to create a “Jewish State” in a region where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land.

For instance, after a series of riots in Jaffa in 1921 resulting in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, the occupying British held a commission of inquiry, which reported their finding that “there is no inherent anti-Semitism in the country, racial or religious.” Rather, Arab attacks on Jewish communities were the result of Arab fears about the stated goal of the Zionists to take over the land.

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Israel Hit UN Headquarters In Gaza; U.N. Chief Outraged

Israel Shells UN Headquarters In Gaza

IBRAHIM BARZAK and AMY TEIBEL | January 15, 2009 10:32 AM EST |

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, demanded a “full explanation” and said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a “grave mistake.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the U.N. compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location. Three people were wounded.

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