18 Palestinians were massacred in an Israeli raid on Tuesday (video above). The raid also claimed the life of Hussam al-Zahar, the son of Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader and foreign minister in the unity government that Fatah President Abbas sacked when he took over the West Bank. Al-Zahar’s death led to Abbas calling his father to offer his condolences. It was the first contact between Abbas and Hamas since June.

Today, at least six Palestinians have been murdered in occupied Gaza and the West Bank by Israel as George W. Bush finishes up his extended photo-op promising that peace will come to the region. As Palestinians held a general strike over Tuesday’s massacre, an Israeli aircraft missile hit the wrong car in Gaza City and killed a 13-year-old boy, his father, and an uncle.

Medics said the bodies were so mutilated that it was hard to identify them.

Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said the civilians’ car destroyed in the earlier attack had been “unintentionally hit”.

Another Israeli strike in the Gaza strip killed two more Palestinians later in the day. A third strike left no casualties, but solidified the atmosphere of fear amongst all Gaza residents. In the West Bank, Israeli forces killed Walid al-Ubaidi, the leader of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades.

Khaled Meshaal, the exiled political chief of Hamas, spoke frankly as he held Bush and Israel accountable for the Palestinian deaths. “We would like to tell George Bush that this is the real terrorism. Arabs and Muslims are not the terrorists,” Meshaal said at a press conference in Damascus. He continued, “An Israeli official said that Bush gave Olmert the green light to launch a full scale military incursion on Gaza. Therefore, I hold the American administration responsible for what happened yesterday in Gaza. Bush is a man of war and crime, not peace and security.”

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