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--It destroyed the electricity plant providing about 45% of the electricity needs of the Gaza Strip and also repeatedly attacks electricity networks and transmitters in Gaza.--It destroyed the main pipe providing water for the Nusairat and al-Boreij refugee camps.
--It destroyed 6 important bridges linking Gaza City with central Gaza thus preventing transportation from moving normally to provide essential goods and other needs to the people.
--It destroyed the buildings of the Palestinian Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs, National economy and government compound in Nablus as well as the office of the Palestinian Prime Minister.
--It uprooted many hundreds of donums of vital agricultural land and destroyed many dozens of homes used only as residences.
--Israel continued building its annexation/separation wall throughout this period and razed and expropriated Palestinian land in al-Sawhra as-Gharbiya village, east of Jerusalem, to complete one section of it in that area. It also razed other agricultural land in Jourat al-Shama village, south of Bethlehem, to construct another section southeast of "Efrat" settlement.
--The IDF arrested hundreds of Palestinian civilians and is holding them without charge. It also arrested eight government ministers, 26 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and now on August 6 besieged the home of Dr. Aziz Dweik, PLC Speaker, forced him to surrender and placed him under detention without charge. All this is part of an illegal attempt to undermine and destroy the democratically elected Hamas government because Israel can't control and co-opt it to serve its interests - meaning act as its enforcer and not as a legitimate government. Also, on August 6, unknown masked assassins shot and killed Major Mohammed Mousa al-Mousah, chief of Palestinian Military Intelligence, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel's Assaults on Lebanon and the OPT Were Planned Long Before They Began
It's now known that both Israeli assaults were jointly planned many months earlier with their US allies that aided the Israelis with their support, funding, supply and replenishment of weapons as needed, and satellite tracking and intelligence information from National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts. Retired US General Wesley Clark also revealed in his book Winning Modern Wars that in late 2001 (after 9/11 and the attack on Afghanistan began) the Pentagon was planning to attack Lebanon as part of a five year campaign targeting seven countries beginning with Iraq, then going on to Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.
It's all part of the US imperial plan to redraw the map of the strategically important Middle East and its vast oil and scarce water reserves, establish client states throughout the region, remove independent leaders standing in the way, and replace them with more receptive ones willing to sacrifice their nations' sovereignty in service to the de facto ruler of the world. Israel is part of the scheme as well and has its own imperial aims. It's the only country in the world without declared borders because it's plan is to extend them beyond where they are now to wherever it's able to lay claim and get away with it.
Most important to the Israelis is their plan to include as part of Israel the ancient lands of "Judea" and "Summaria," the West Bank biblical parts of Israel comprising the OPT the Palestinians justifiably claim as their homeland. In addition, the most extreme Zionists in the country, who have great influence on policy, want all the land of "Eretz Israel," the total biblical Jewish homeland they believe God gave to the 12 tribes of Israel which includes all of present-day Israel and the OPT, Lebanon, most of Syria, part of Egypt and a large part of Jordon. Israel already controls the choicest parts of the West Bank including 50% of its fresh water resources and all of Gaza any time it chooses to enter and reoccupy it, the Syrian Golan Heights that supply it with one-third of its total water, and the 25 kilometer Shebaa Farms area of South Lebanon it never relinquished after seizing it as well in the 1967 war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Likudnik right-wing spin-off allies in his Kadima party apparently want still more territory seized and under its control well within the timetable they set to declare permanent Israeli borders in 2007. South Lebanon has long been one such area Israel covets. It seized and occupied this land for 22 years but failed to keep it and was finally driven out by a determined Hezbollah resistance that was born out of the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the oppressive occupation that followed.
Why Israel Attacked Lebanon
Israel claims this area is important to it for so-called security reasons, but its greatest value is as a source of fresh water from the Litani River in South Lebanon and also the Wazzani springs that feed directly into the Hasbani River which is a tributary of the Jordan River. The Hisbani flows into Israel two miles downstream from the Wazzani and runs into the Sea of Galilee that's Israel's largest source of fresh water. Lebanon wants to pump about 350,000 cubic feet of water daily from the Wazzini to supply its villages in the south which it has every right to do, of course, but Israel opposes that plan and now effectively stopped it since invading the country.
The prime motive of Israel's assault on Lebanon and invasion in the south is to seize, occupy and then annex the 20 mile stretch of territory into the country up to the Litani to be able to use for its own needs what now supplies a major portion of Lebanon's fresh water. The Litani's annual flow is estimated at about 920 million cubic meters. If Israel can incorporate and control South Lebanon up to the Litani, it would augment its annual fresh water supply by up to 800 million cubic meters or nearly 40% of its annual consumption. That amount would be in addition to the one-third of its supply now gotten from the Golan Heights Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war, never returned for obvious reasons, and never intends to. And, as mentioned above, Israel also controls half the fresh water resources of the West Bank it uses for its own needs and denies them to the Palestinians for theirs.
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