Gaza ongoing

I just got a very moving email from my friend Sharyn, who is still in Gaza, still bearing witness to the effects of the Israeli atrocities there. As she says, it is hard not to wonder why the Israelis permitted several hundred international passport holders – mainly foreign women with Palestinian husbands – to leave via the Erez checkpoint today. As Sharyn puts it, “and we wonder what they have planned next that they don't want outsiders here to witness.”
The focus, rightly, is on the human horrors, the children killed by indiscriminate bombing and missile strikes. But as Sharyn observes, the architectural heritage of Gaza is also being reduced to rubble – beautiful old mansions and mosques destroyed, in a similar (if more extreme) destructive frenzy to that which my friend Naseer, a conservation architect in Nablus, spends his working life struggling against in the old city there.
Another distressing aspect of the news is now the Israeli response to protests against its actions. In the West Bank village of Nil'in, the army shot dead two young men. Arafat Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back and died that day (last Sunday). Mohammed Khawaje, 20, was shot in the forehead and died in a Ramallah hospital a couple of days later. Today, protesters from the nearby village of Bil'in report that they've been fired on with a type of bullet they haven't come across before, a small plastic sphere filled with some kind of liquid, but which breaks the skin and causes bloody lacerations.
Gush Shalom reports 'mass arrests' amongst Palestinian citizens of Israel and have called for as many people as possible from all Israeli communities to attend a demonstration at Sakhnin on Saturday 3rd, as well as the main peace movement protests planned for Tel Aviv later that day. And the Ma'an News Agency reports that five people have been injured in Hebron as demonstrators clashed with the ever-present soldiers there, and that the West Bank is being subjected to prolonged Israeli-imposed curfews aimed at preventing people from answering Hamas' call for mass demonstrations. Reports of turnouts of thousands suggest that this tactic has been unsuccessful... but the bombing goes on.