"WHAT A BLACK DAY, THEY KILLED MY FAMILY."

It never ceases to amaze (or disgust) me how Western journalists can continue to refer to a ‘peace process’ in the Middle East, while the Israelis simultaneously continue to butcher Palestinians in their hundreds. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Palestinian death toll this year is worse, so far, than the previous three bloody years of the conflict. It said 312 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in 2008, including 197 unarmed civilians of whom 44 were children and another 14 were women.

Tragically, the latest killing includes both a woman and several children – shortly after 8am yesterday, a Palestinian mother and her four children were killed by an Israeli military attack as they sat around their breakfast table in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Two other children and 10 others who were nearby were also injured.

Here is the peerless Donald Macintyre reporting on this brutal incident in the Independent:

“The Israeli military said it had been targeting nearby gunmen and suggested the deaths had been caused when explosives it said were being carried by two militants blew up. The children were about to eat breakfast when they were killed.

“The deaths of the children, and the wounding of two older siblings, overshadowed efforts by Egypt to broker a ceasefire between Israel and the armed factions in Gaza. At least one militant and another unidentified man were killed by Israeli forces during the incursion.

“Palestinian medics identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Meatak, aged six and three; and their brothers, Saleh, four, and Mousad, 15 months. Their mother, Miyasar, who was in her late 30s, died later of wounds she sustained. Seven rockets were later fired into Israel, three claimed by Hamas in response to the deaths of the family.

“The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said that, according to its preliminary investigation, around 20 armoured vehicles moved over a kilometre into northern Gaza at around 6am, and that at around 8.15am Israeli aircraft had fired a missile at a group of militants. The missile landed 10 metres away from the Meatak home, seriously injuring a militant, it said.

“Less than a minute later, the PCHR said, two further missiles were launched at the same area, landing at the door of the same house and killing another militant. The centre said that shrapnel from the missiles destroyed the door and sprayed around the house, killing the children outright.

“…The children's father, Ahmad Abu Meatak, told Associated Press that he was on his way to a nearby market when his home was hit. "What a black day. They killed my family," he said, sobbing outside the local hospital where the bodies were taken.”

Donald Macintyre, incidentally, is a (British) Middle East correspondent who deserves praise and support for his rigorously honest and compassionate (not to mention brave and courageous) reporting from the Occupied Territories. In recent weeks, he has interviewed Israeli soldiers who have confessed to him the torture, beatings and abductions that they have inflicted on the residents of the occupied Palestinian town of Hebron in recent years (a story which remarkably appeared on the front page of the Independent, entitled 'Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army').

In fact, Macintyre – a former political commentator and domestic journalist who has transformed into an insightful Middle East reporter and foreign correspondent par excellence – has form in this area: it was nearly three years ago that he first reported on the former Israeli soldiers who have admitted to joining the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) simply out of a desire “to kill Arabs”. When I read such accounts, such confessions of brutality and abuse, my mind often harks back to a former (Jewish) colleague of mine who, despite being liberal and left-wing and ‘pro-peace’, used to be in continual denial about the IDF’s long history of killing, maiming and torturing Palestinian civilians. He once proclaimed to me: “I refuse to believe that a single Israeli soldier has ever deliberately killed or harmed a Palestinian civilian.” It’s both ironic and depressing that, thanks to the journalism of Donald Macintyre and others, we now know that Israeli soldiers themselves disagree with such a naïve and partisan statement.

By the way, on a related issue, the Guardian reports that warmonger-turned-peace-envoy Tony Blair yesterday presented to the Israeli government a list of checkpoints that he wanted lifted in the West Bank. There are currently 500 Israeli barriers in the West Bank, stifling trade, chocking the Palestinian economy, preventing mothers in labour from reaching hospital, blocking kids from getting to school, etc. Guess how many the Israelis decided to move after their meeting with the all-powerful Blair?

One.