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There are of course many more articles on Gaza in the media - for instance see the Arab media. I chose Haaretz because they have proved accurate and trustworthy - and liberal - in the past.
8/5
Four Palestinians, including 2 siblings, killed in Gaza raid
By Avi Issacharoff and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies
Four Palestinians were killed and four wounded early Saturday in Israel Air Force air strikes in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.<snip>
Israel Defense Forces sources said its aircraft fired at several armed Palestinians. A spokesman said that the only strikes the IDF had carried out in Gaza close to the time of the attack on the family took place about 2 km (1.2 miles) away from Rafah, in which two groups of Palestinian militants were targeted.8/4
8/4
IDF enters south Gaza, killing eight Palestinians By The Associated Press
GAZA CITY - Israeli troops raided southern Gaza early yesterday morning, killing at least eight Palestinians, including four militants and an eight-year-old boy, Palestinian officials said.
Israel's Gaza campaign began just over a month ago, with the aim of rescuing a captured Israeli soldier and halting rocket fire on southern Israel.
About 50 tanks, accompanied by bulldozers, pushed into an area near the Gaza-Egypt border before dawn yesterday, taking up positions near the long-closed Gaza airport, residents and Palestinian security officials said. The forces advanced about eight kilometers (five miles), the farthest since the offensive started in late June, and blocked a main highway and the eastern entrance to Rafah, a town on the Egyptian border.
As the tanks took up positions, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at four groups of gunmen, killing four. Twenty-six Palestinians were wounded in the air strikes, at least 10 of them militants, security and hospital officials said. <snip>
The Second Front / Meanwhile in Gaza By Amir Oren
On the first Saturday of the war in the north, the head of Israel Defense Forces' Southern Command, Major General Yoav Galant, visited the air force command and control center in Tel Aviv, where he observed the utilization of aerial power. After emerging from the bunker, Galant pondered ways that he could make similar use of lesser resources in the campaign he was busy managing in the Gaza Strip.
The idea he came up with is called "tele-wonder," and this is how it works: The phone rings in a Gaza Strip apartment and the landlord picks up the receiver; an Israeli with an accent garnered from the Shin Bet security service's language lab says, "Hello," and informs him that since there are weapons stored in his apartment, he and anyone else is in the home must evacuate it immediately because an air strike is on the way.
The warning can be relayed by means of cellular telephones, text messaging, cutting in on radio programs, or with leaflets.
The threat is carried out; the home is destroyed; and the message hits home.
It turns out that the precedent of Lebanon, that "whoever goes to sleep with a Hezbollah missile in their home will wake (or not) with an Israeli bomb," also applies to Gaza, according to an IDF officer. <snip>
The videos of the air attacks show how Hamas makes use of the Gaza youth; they are sent to collect Qassam rocket launchers, after they have been used, and the IDF holds back from targetting them. This is the input in the equation; and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who visited one of the command headquarters on the border with the Gaza Strip yesterday, asked Galant and the officers there to speak in terms of output. And the output is not encouraging - even though Hamas is losing men and infrastructure on a daily basis, and at a rate that is raising concerns among its leadership.
8/3
Why I will not go By Oded Naaman
AMSTERDAM - Last week I "fled," and also - as most readers of this article will say - I "betrayed." I have put the two words in quotation marks in order to sound ironic, self-aware and not melodramatic, but on most of the occasions when the words arose in my thoughts, I did not attach those marks to them and they were definitely melodramatic.
I completed my service in the Israel Defense Forces three years ago. About a week later I rented an apartment and began to study philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the university I met Tamar. We have been together for a year and four months now, and four months ago we moved together to a small apartment in the Nahlaot neighborhood. During the past year I decided that I would try to pursue my studies in the United States, and for the past few months I have been busy with the exhausting admissions process.
The present war broke out in the middle of the university examinations period. Even before the fighting began in the north - when most attention was focused on the Qassam rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip and the Israeli bombardments that followed in reaction - my nerves began to fray. It was clear to me that no one views the shelling of a civilian population as a price that we pay for the security of Sderot's residents (of course, the answer to the question "Were the Israeli shells that were fired at the Gaza Strip beneficial to the security of Sderot's residents?" is steeped in controversy). Public debate in Israel never regards harming innocent people who are not Israelis as an act that could pain or hurt Israelis themselves directly or unconnected to its implications, but always as something that is liable to adversely affect the image of Israelis. As though we must avoid harming innocent people only for reasons of courtesy.
After the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit and the entry of IDF units into the Gaza Strip, I understood already that it was pointless even to dream about a logical solution to this mess. This time, too, public discourse did not generate the necessary questions. For example, despite the warm attitude toward the soldiers "who are protecting us," and despite the identification with the image of Shalit as it was portrayed in the media and the effort "to save him," the question that was not asked was how the actions that the soldiers were about to carry out in Gaza would personally affect those soldiers, "our kids." The young men who entered Gaza are not soldiers "whom we love," just as we do not really "love" Gilad Shalit. We love to take pride in them, we love to fantasize that we are like them, we love to photograph them, love to be buddy-buddy with them. In the end, we love to exploit them for the good of our self-image, even if that screws up their lives.
Edinburgh film festival warns Israeli director not to attend film's screening by Reuters
Israeli director Yoav Shamir said Thursday he has been advised by organizers of the Edinburgh film festival in Scotland not to attend the screening of his new work due to Israel's offensive in Lebanon.
Shamir's previous films include the critically acclaimed documentary "Checkpoint," which showed the daily travails facing Palestinians at crossings in occupied territory interspersed with interviews with Israeli military personnel.
In an email seen by Reuters, Shamir was informed by the organizers that due to expected protests over Israel's attacks on Lebanon, "it might be in your best interest not to attend the festival this year for your own sake, rather than for ours." The organizers said they would continue with the screening of Shamir's new documentary, "Five Days." It chronicles Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip last year from the viewpoints of settlers, the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinians. The nearly two week-long festival, which begins on August 14, is one of the key events on the world movie calendar.
8/2
Lebanon II: The first war run by Peace Now By Bradley Burston
It was opposition to a war in Lebanon that made Israelis first sit up and take notice of Peace Now.
Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, some of the founders of Peace Now find themselves again consumed by Lebanon - but this time, they are running their first war. Perhaps this should come as no contradiction. The Israeli left reinvents itself at every war. Particularly, wars fought in Lebanon. Still, there is something qualitatively different this time.
It's not only the fact that among the first leaders of Peace Now were Defense Minister Amir Peretz, formally the architect, chief engineer and standard bearer for the war, and his close cabinet associate Education Minister Yuli Tamir, one of the government's most effective and vocal advocates for the Lebanon campaign.
It's also the fact that Peace Now itself has gone on record as declaring this war justified. Earlier this week, as shocking footage of the Qana killings was screened on news broadcasts the world over, Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer was asked why he wasn't out demonstrating for an end to the war.
"It is certainly difficult for me with the pictures, certainly with the pictures," he told Israel Radio, referring to the images of the corpses of children, the disabled and others who had huddled together in the building when the Israeli bombing began.
"Still, I believe that Israel is doing what it should be doing, defending its international border in the north. Until there's some possibility of an agreement that speaks of security in the north, I don't think that it's possible to end this operation." <snip>
8/1
Israel frees Palestinian Authority parliament official By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Israel has freed the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, an independent lawmaker close to the governing Hamas Islamist group, after detaining him for a month, he said on Tuesday.
Hassan Khreishe was arrested along with dozens of Hamas officials and ministers about a month ago. Khreishe told Reuters he had been freed late on Sunday.
Unlike the Hamas members, Khreishe was not charged. "I was arrested and interrogated for incitement," Khreishe said. "I am not Hamas. I ran as an independent, but the Hamas ministers who were with me in jail are in a difficult position ... It doesn't look like they will be released soon."<snip>
Although an independent, Khreishe had the support of Hamas at the parliamentary elections in January, in which the Islamist group trounced the long dominant Fatah movement.
7/31
Meshal: Captive soldier Shalit is still being held in the Gaza Strip By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit remains in Gaza, exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal said in an interview published Saturday in the Egyptian daily, "Al-Ahram."
"Gaza is under total siege," Meshal said from his Damascus headquarters. "How can the jihad fighters smuggle him out?"
Meshal called for a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, claiming Shalit was not kidnapped, but taken as a prisoner of war.
Meshal was asked why Hamas is not allowing the Palestinian Authority to represent it in negotiations for a prisoner exchange, as Hezbollah is doing with the Lebanese government.
In response, he said, "the matter of our prisoners held in jails of the occupation touches every member of our nation, and all of us are responsible for their release."
Meshal denied the existence of an agreement between the PA and the various Palestinian militant factions on the issue of a cease-fire with Israel. <snip>
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