Gaza City, GAZA — The first thing you notice about Gaza: the donkeys. Attached to carts invariably driven by middle-aged men, they weave in and out of traffic, hauling fruits and vegetables through the city center.

Gaza still bears the scars of the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel. The 51-day conflict resulted in the deaths of 2,300 Gazans, with 10,000 others wounded; 66 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians also lost their lives. Gaza’s infrastructure was decimated: A recent U.N. report stated that only 17 percent of the 18,000 homes destroyed during the conflict have been repaired, and an estimated 75,000 Gazans remain displaced.

Tensions are once again high in the strip. On April 18, a bomb exploded on a Jerusalem bus, injuring 21 people — the first attack of this type since the Second Intifada ended 10 years ago. The Palestinian group in control of Gaza, Hamas,admitted that the culprit, Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour, was a member of its organization.

Shortly after the explosion, Israeli security services discovered a 120-foot-deep tunnel running from Gaza to Israel. The tunnels are of particular concern to Israel — it was by using a similar cross-border tunnel that Hamas fighters were able to kidnap Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, and which Hamas used to hide weaponry and militants during the most recent war.

The Israeli government responded in no uncertain terms. “If Hamas tries to challenge the State of Israel, or disrupt the lives of Gaza border residents, it will be hit very hard. We will not tolerate such attempts,” said Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who recently stepped down amid a political reshuffling. The new defense minister, Avigdor Liberman, is even more hawkish, arguing in April that Israel should kill Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh if the Islamist group did not immediately return the bodies of two Israelis killed during the 2014 war.Gazans are fearful that another war looms on the horizon.

I wanted to know if Hamas members felt the same. My fixer Mahmoud and I went to find out, driving through Gaza City and eventually arriving in a narrow street, where a man in robes greeted us. This is “Mostafa,”* a senior advisor to a Hamas minister.

He opened a tall, metal door and ushered us inside. We took a seat inside a large room with just two sofas furnishing the entire space.

“What is happening in Jerusalem is a normal reaction to what is happening in the West Bank — the arrests of people day and night, killing people day and night, the burning of children,” he said.

This is the so-called stabbing Intifada, which began late last year. Lone Palestinians have attacked Israeli civilians with knives or scissors, or run them over with cars. Thirty Israelis have been killed, with 443 wounded; 216 Palestinians have been slain in response. So far it was been confined to Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank, but many fear it could be the beginning of a larger wave of violence.

The Fatah movement officially rules in the West Bank, but Mostafa was not willing to cede responsibility for the territory to its Palestinian rival.

“There are a lot of people from Hamas in the West Bank — Fatah is trying to kill or erase them, but Hamas exists everywhere,” Mostafa said. “The Hamas West Bank leaders, [men] like Yahya Ayyash [a Hamas bomb-maker killed by the Israelis in 1996], are professionals when it comes to exploding buses. No one can forget Hamas operations in the West Bank. We are everywhere.”

Mostafa wasn’t coy when I asked him if Hamas is preparing for another war. “The military is training,” he said. “We control all the security in the strip, and we are hidden, so I am sure Israel has few obvious military targets. If they start a war, thousands of civilians will die.”

I wanted to understand what he thinks of the Israelis as an enemy. When I asked him, he pointed to a photo of a man dressed in a kuffiyah on the wall opposite us. “They killed my brother. What do you think I think of them?”

I made myself clearer: As an enemy, I continued, do you respect them?

He smiled and motioned again to the poster of his dead brother. “They are a very weak enemy,” he says. “Our al-Qassam soldiers hear them shouting in fear when they attack. War is about how religious you are — the al-Qassam soldier knows he is going to heaven so he fights to the end. The Israeli soldier wants to go back to his girlfriend.”

Near the center of Gaza City stands a monument: a rocket belonging to the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. It points in the direction of Israel.

But despite the recurring wars with Israel in the past decade and the devastation they have wrought, my fixer Mahmoud contended, Hamas’s dominance in the strip is as strong as ever.

“Ten years ago, if we had walked down a street in central Gaza at night someone would have come up to us, put a gun to our head and demanded all our money — and we would have given it,” he told me. “With Hamas in power, that changed. Order has been brought to Gaza.”

As we drove through Gaza, Hamas police were everywhere — occasionally checking vehicles, thoroughly but not aggressively. The strip was calm. As we entered the port, Mahmoud pointed out what he said were a couple of Qassam Brigade soldiers standing by the side of the road, automatic machine guns at the ready.

“What you have to understand is that every 200 meters along the strip there is a Hamas operative watching over his particular patch,” Mahmoud said. “If there is something out of the ordinary he will report and action will be taken it. They are in total control.”

But Hamas isn’t the only armed group in Gaza. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is, if anything, a more extreme organization. Founded in 1981, like Hamas it seeks the total destruction of Israel — and it also will not countenance a long-term cease-fire with Israel, which Hamas has offered on several occasions (albeit with difficult terms for Israel to accept).

The day after my meeting with Mostafa, Mahmoud and I drove out of Gaza City early in the morning. We went to meet “Yasser,”* a PIJ fighter who lives in the Nuseirat refugee camp, a cramped maze of alleyways housing 60,000 people that lies roughly three miles northeast of Gaza City.

PIJ is largely funded by Iran, which makes it unique among Sunni militant groups. The group claims to have 8,000 fighters in its ranks. Its relationship with Hamas is often strained: Hamas has struggled to rein in PIJ rocket attacks against Israel. Last month, Israel accused PIJ of firing rockets into the country from Syria at Iran’s behest.

Yasser greeted us in camouflage uniform, carrying an AK-47. He was all smiles and offered us coffee and a Palestinian version of a Kit-Kat bar.

“The Prophet Mohammad teaches us that the Jews don’t keep their promises and they never tell the truth,” he said. “So I can never envisage living side by side with them. My original village is near Ashkelon [a city in southern Israel], so I am fighting to return to the land my grandfather was kicked out of.”

In Yasser, one sees both the tragedy and the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He claims to come from Ashkelon, a place he has never been and will almost certainly never go. Meanwhile, an Israeli baby born there today could have parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents born in Ashkelon after the State of Israel was founded. Can he not see their sense of belonging, too?

He replied almost instantly. “They know it’s not their land. These days people are emigrating from Israel because they know the people fighting them are fighting for their land. And we will win.”

Yasser might dream of the day he wins a total victory over Israel, but in the here and now, life in Gaza is tough. The strip cannot sustain electricity for 24 hours a day, and blackouts are frequent. Israel announced on April 4 that it would suspend private cement imports into Gaza, arguing that a substantial proportion was being diverted for use by Hamas, prompting the United Nations to warn that the policy was slowing reconstruction of the territory.

Many Gazans are tired of this destruction and bloodshed. Most of the Gaza residents with whom I spoke just wanted to live normally, free from war. Hamas and PIJ call the shots in Gaza, however, and insist they are ready to fight to the bitter end.

“We as a population don’t want a war,” Yasser said. “We just want them to leave us alone and leave. The Israelis thought we would give up the land easily. We kicked them out of Gaza, and we will kick them out from the rest of Palestine.”

* Names have been changed at the request of interviewees.

MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

The makeshift mortar looked like something from an old pirate ship, and it took the Kurdish fighters several days to figure out how to use the improvised weapon seized in a skirmish with ISIS.

When they finally did, they crouched behind sandbags and launched a series of homemade shells found with the device at a village held by the terrorist group a mile away. As each projectile blasted off from the 8-foot tube mounted on a pair of tires, culminating in a puff of smoke on the horizon, members of Kurdistan’s army, known as the Peshmerga, laughed and slapped each other on the back.

”I hope they felt it like I felt the pain I felt in my arm," said a soldier named Ali, still nursing a wound from the recent fight near Sinjar where the curious armament had been found.

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When it was ready to fire, the Peshmerga fighters crouched behind sandbags in case the mortar blew up. (FoxNews.com)

The incident, which occurred last week in Kurdish-held territory on the plains just north of Mosul, typified the resourcefulness of both sides. A makeshift rocket launcher crafted from spare parts and ingenuity found in the aftermath of a battle and then turned on its builders.

It was also a snapshot of the clashes occurring in the villages that lie between ISIS’ Iraqi stronghold of Mosul and the Kurdish capital of Erbil. To the south, Iraqi government forces backed by U.S. air power are fighting to retake Fallujah. In neighboring Syria, the de facto capital of ISIS’ caliphate, Raqqa, is under siege from Syrian, Russian, U.S. and Kurdish forces. But in northern Iraq, the battle for Mosul looms, with near-daily skirmishes serving as deadly dress rehearsals.

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Success took the form of a puff of smoke on the horizon, in a village held by ISIS. (FoxNews.com)

Iraqis caught in the crossfire – Christians, Kurds, Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Yazidi and other minorities – do their best to survive as they wait for the coming all-out assault on the black-clad jihadist army.

“Our soldiers believe in the people here and they see the need to protect the people,” Brig. Gen. Omer Khalid told FoxNews.com. “We see what ISIS has done with Mosul and [Sinjar] and the people there and we don’t want that to happen here.”

Khalid spoke in Hogna, a tiny village on the outskirts of Zummar City and the largest Kurdish-held base near Mosul. On wind-swept, rolling hills dotted with sparse vegetation, the Peshmerga keep watch on ISIS soldiers inhabiting the village in the distance.

For soldiers earning the equivalent of $200 per month to face off against the world’s most dangerous terrorist army, morale-boosting moments such as the firing of the strange mortar break the tense monotony.

Last weekend, ISIS mounted a rare midday raid on the Kurds dug in at Hogna, peppering the base with mortar fire. When the smoke cleared, no Kurds were injured. But the nearly reflexive donning of surgical masks was an unmistakable sign that the threat of a chemical attack is always on their minds.

The attack left the Kurds itching to return fire, but equipment and ammunition is short. International aid is channeled through Baghdad, which maintains often strained relations with the northern, semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

“We need bazookas, rocket-propelled grenades, small arms,” said Khalid.

For now, a homemade mortar, stolen from the enemy and turned on him, would have to do.

(foxnews.com)

By Claire Bernish

In one fell swoop, Scotland banned fracking — permanently — when parliament narrowly voted in favor of cementing the country’s temporary moratorium on the controversial practice.

With the original intention of conducting full health and environmental impact assessments before continuing with all unconventional oil and gas extraction — including fracking — Scotlandimplemented a temporary halt to all such procedures in January 2015.

Members of the ruling Scottish National Party abstained from the vote, which passed 32 to 29, though SNP Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse claimed the government remains “deeply sceptical” of fracking and none would be allowed to proceed unless distinct evidence proved the practice ‘causes no harm,’ the Guardian reported.

Scottish Labour Party environment spokesperson, Claudia Beamish, said following the vote,

The SNP government must now clarify whether or not they will respect the will of parliament and introduce an outright ban on fracking. It would be outrageous for this important vote to be ignored.

While ignoring the will of lawmakers could potentiate serious divisions — and, as the Guardiannoted, represents a “significant defeat” for the new parliament — SNP has no explicit obligation to follow the non-binding vote.

“There is no doubt about the science,” Beamish continued, “to meet our climate change goals and protect our environment we need to develop low carbon sources of energy, not another fossil fuel. Labour’s position is clear: no ifs, no buts, no fracking.”

In sharp contrast to the vote in Scotland, the U.K.’s North Yorkshire County Council recently gave the go-ahead to resume drill tests for shale gas — after five years of being frack-free — despite significant protest.

One council planning officer claimed 36 letters supported restarting fracking — while 4,375 had opposed the move.

Friends of the Earth and Frack Free Ryedale issued a joint “People’s Declaration” condemning the decision, which stated, in part:

We, as people united across Yorkshire and across Britain, declare that we remain opposed to fracking in Yorkshire, in Britain, and across the world. We know that fracking carries serious risks to local people, to our health, our water, our wildlife, and contributes to climate change.

We are extremely disappointed that North Yorkshire County Council has not listened to the overwhelming wishes of the locally elected representatives of Ryedale and local people and has approved Third Energy’s application to frack our county.

This decision is not in our name.

On the Scottish vote, Lothian MSP and Land Reform spokesperson for the Scottish Greens, Andy Wightman, introduced a successful amendment calling for “radical and ongoing reform to democratise land.”

Following the vote, he said, “With the notable exception of the Tories, there is clearly an appetite for radical land reform in this session of parliament and tonight’s vote puts the pressure on government to deliver on that expectation” the Guardian reported.

Activists within the SNP agitating for bolder action on land reform should question their party’s decision in chamber today.

This article (Scotland Just Banned Fracking Forever) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish andtheAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

(activistpost.com)