Disturbing video from the Gaza-based al-Manara media agency of two Israeli air attacks on a Gaza market.
Bodies kept arriving at the Alshifa hospital, after an attack on a market in Gaza on Wednesday. Seventeen people are reported to have have been killed and over 200 people injured in the attack, which rocked Alshejaeya Market shortly after Israel agreed to a four hour ceasefire. It has been reported that three airstrikes took place, with an ambulance and press cars also targeted
Church serves as shelter for war-hit Palestinians
GAZA CITY
Displaced Palestinians sleep on the floor inside Gaza City’s Greek Orthodox church on July 23, 2014. AFP Photo
Some 400 Palestinians fleeing Israeli raids that have destroyed their neighborhoods have taken shelter in a Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City.
Desperate Gazans escaping from Beit Hanoun and Shejaia, where more than 70 Palestinians – many of them women and children – were killed on July 20, have entered the Church of Saint Porphyrius after Archbishop Alexios opened the door.
The church is in Gaza’s historical district of Zeitoun which has a 1,400-person community and stands back to back with the Khatib Vilaye Mosque.
When a group of people came from Shejaia and discussed where they would take shelter and whether the church would allow them to stay, Alexios opened the door and extended a warm welcome. Some human rights groups have already begun providing aid.
A teacher from Shejaia, Mahmoud Abu Zehra, said his family of 22 had taken shelter in the church.
“We were able to escape from Shejaia when there was a truce. They destroyed our house but thanks to Allah there are no casualties,” he said. “In normal conditions we wouldn’t knock on the door of the church. Muslims go to a mosque and Christians go to a church, but there is no problem between us; we are all part of Palestine,” he added.
Muhammad Zanu, a resident from Beit Hanoun, said they tried to resist the Israeli bombardment but had to escape the neighborhood after a house near his residence was hit by a tank shell.
Since the start of the offensive, more than 100,000 Palestinians – about 6 percent of Gaza’s entire population – have sought shelter with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), crowding into 70 schools.
UN’s Navi Pillay warns of Israel Gaza ‘war crimes’ (74% of those killed in Gaza are civilians,)
The UN’s top human rights official has condemned Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, saying that war crimes may have been committed.
Navi Pillay told an emergency debate at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Israel’s military offensive had not done enough to protect civilians.
She also condemned Hamas for “indiscriminate attacks” on Israel.
Israel launched its offensive on 8 July with the declared objective of stopping rocket fire from Gaza.
“There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Ms Pillay said.
However Israel, which claims the UN Human Rights Council is biased, is unlikely to co-operate with any authorised UN investigation, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports.
‘Heart-wrenching split’
At least 649 Palestinians and 31 Israelis have been killed in the past 15 days of fighting, officials say. A foreign worker in southern Israel was also killed by a rocket fired from Gaza on Wednesday, police said.
The UN says about 74% of those killed in Gaza are civilians, with medical clinics among the facilities hit by air strikes.
Kyung-wha Kang, the assistant secretary-general at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said civilians in Gaza had no safe to place to go “as 44% of the land has been declared a ‘no-go zone’ by the Israeli army”.
“Families are taking the heart-wrenching decision to split to different locations – mother and son to one; father and daughter to another – hoping to maximise the chance one part of the family survives.”
Video: Shejaia massacre’ in Gaza prompts urgent UN Security Council meeting
RT Report
Following and Israeli forces’ shelling of a Gaza City district which killed at least 60 civilians, including children, Palestinian president Mahmoud 
Abbas has called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council over the “massacre in Shejaia.”
I am calling for an urgent session tonight of the UN Security Council,” he said in a televised speech from the Qatari capital Doha. “The situation is intolerable,” he said. “What the occupation forces did today in Shejaia is a crime against humanity,” Abbas said. “Those who committed it will not go unpunished.”
As the IDF continues the operation in Gaza, Abbas arrived in Qatar on Sunday to discuss a potential ceasefire with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
Ban condemned the “atrocious action” in Shejaia and urged Israel to “exercise maximum restraint.”
“Too many innocent people are dying (and) living in constant fear,” he said at news conference in Doha.
WARNING: Graphic video of the shelling aftermath in Shejaia
“At least 60 dead in Shejaia alone, and hundreds wounded,” Medhat Abbas, Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza told mondoweiss.net. He added, “I don’t have the number now because there is no electricity, no nothing.”
“The Israeli aggression against civilians should be stopped,” said al-Shifa’s hospital administrator.
So far the official death toll stands at 62 Palestinians, as Israel heavily shelled Gaza’s eastern suburb of Shejaia battling the alleged Hamas militants in the bloodiest fighting in the 13-day offensive, medical spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP. Officials said 35,000 people fled the fighting in Gaza on Sunday as the artillery bombardment began.
The ambulances and fire trucks moved in to Shejaia at 10:30GMT after the announcement of a two-hour truce to retrieve the dead and wounded.
Inside the shelled neighborhoods, scores of people lay dead, others were wounded with scenes of entire buildings destroyed. Houses were still ablaze from the IDF onslaught, with corpses burnt almost beyond recognition, with the dead being both young and old, including children.
But in a few hours, the shelling resumed as the IDF announced Hamas had breached the truce and it was responding “accordingly.”
The injured from Shejaia were rushed to Gaza City’s central Shifa Hospital. Chaos reigned inside the hospital as wounded children were brought to the overflowing emergency room, forcing the medical staff to treat the wounded in a hallway. Those who could still walk fled to some of the 61 UN shelters with more than 81,000 people from all over Gaza strip taking sanctuary in them, the refugee agency said.
Deadliest Day in Gaza War: 87 Palestinians and 13 Israeli Soldiers Killed
New York time report
As Israeli troops and war planes bombarded Gaza, both sides reported death tolls that made clear Sunday was the deadliest day so far in the war. The Palestinian 
Health Ministry reported 87 Palestinians had died and the Israeli military said 13 soldiers were dead.
The fighting signaled that what had begun as a limited ground invasion by Israel had moved into a more extensive and costlier phase for both sides.
Most of the Palestinians were killed in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City called Shejaiya. For the Palestinians, it was the deadliest episode since July 8, when Israel began its offensive, first from the air, which was intended to curb rocket fire against its cities and the danger of infiltration through tunnels running under the border from Gaza into Israel. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that more than 300 people were injured in Shejaiya. Tolls were not available from the refugee camps in central Gaza, where fleeing residents reported a similar Israeli advance, with artillery.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/world/middleeast/gaza-israel.html?emc=edit_na_20140720
Is Palestinian & Israeli Conflict yet another Turkish false-Flag Operation?
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel on Saturday of having “surpassed Hitler in barbarism” through its attacks on Gaza,
Erdoğan continued to ratchet up his rhetoric against Israel over its offensive, threatening to further harm already badly frayed relations between the two countries, once regional allies.
Hours earlier Israel advised its citizens against traveling to Turkey, citing “the public mood” after attacks on Israeli diplomatic missions during protests in İstanbul and Ankara against the Gaza offensive on Friday.
Palestinian officials say more than 330 people have been killed by Israeli strikes launched in response to rockets fired into Israeli territory by militants loyal to Hamas.
“(Israelis) have no conscience, no honor, no pride. Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism,” Erdoğan told supporters at a political rally in the Black Sea city of Ordu. He accused the United States of defending Israel’s “disproportionate” tactics, and bemoaned the failure of the Muslim world to take a stronger stance.
Egypt says Qatar, Turkey and Hamas hurt Gaza ceasefire bid
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, July 17. AP Photo
CAIRO – Reuters
Egypt’s foreign minister accused Qatar, Turkey and Hamas on July 17 of conspiring to undermine Cairo’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire between the Palestinian militant group and Israel in Gaza, Egypt’s state news 
agency reported.
Egypt sees Hamas as a threat because it is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the army removed from power last year, straining ties with the Gulf Arab state of Qatar and with Turkey, both countries that backed Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri made the accusation against Turkey, Qatar and Hamas in a briefing with local newspaper editors, the state news agency MENA reported.
“Had Hamas accepted the Egyptian initiative, at least 40 Palestinian souls would have been saved,” MENA quoted Shukri as saying.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 17 instructed the military to begin a ground offensive in Gaza, an official statement from his office said. Reuters witnesses and Gaza residents reported heavy artillery and naval shelling and helicopter fire along the Gaza border.
Egypt had proposed a permanent ceasefire plan on July 15, which Israel accepted. But Hamas, saying its terms had been ignored, rejected it.
Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to lift border restrictions that have deepened economic hardship among Gaza’s 1.8 million populace and caused a cash crunch in the movement, which has been unable to pay its employees for months.
Egypt accuses Hamas of supporting militant groups in the Sinai seeking to topple the Cairo government, an allegation it denies.
Israeli military starts ground operation in Gaza
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to start a ground operation in Gaza, his office has announced. The new phase of Operation Protective Edge has already resulted in tens of civilian 
casualties and one Israeli soldier.
“The prime minister and defence minister have instructed the IDF to begin a ground operation tonight in order to hit the terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel,” the statement said.
A large IDF force has launched a new phase of Operation Protective Edge, starting a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, an IDF spokesperson has confirmed.
Israel had originally organized about 48,000 reserve soldiers for the operation, but on Thursday another 18,000 were called up, as reported by the Associated Press. It’s unclear how many are actually involved in the ongoing ground offensive.