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US SECRETARY OF State Hillary Clinton is to travel to Israel and Egypt amid efforts to reach a truce between Israel and Hamas militants whose seven day conflict has now claimed over 100 lives.
US officials have said that the Clinton will visit Jerusalem, Ramallah and Cairo for talks on the conflict as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called for an immediate cessation of the violence.
Over night seven Palestinians were wounded in strikes on Gaza but no one was killed in the first night without fatalities since Israel began its air campaign a week ago in response to rockets being fired by Hamas into Israeli cities.
The Israeli military said it attacked about 100 targets in the coastal strip during the night, using aircraft, warships and artillery.
An army spokeswoman told AFP that at least three rockets hit southern Israel overnight, and two more were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system.
As Israeli troops amass at the border with Gaza there are growing fears of an invasion similar to that which 2008-09 which claimed the lives of over a thousand people.
The relative peace overnight was in contrast to events on Monday which was the bloodiest day of the conflict with 32 people killed.
The latest violence on Monday night killed a family of four who died in an attack on the northern town of Beit Lahiya, and two teenage brothers who were killed in the southern city of Rafah.
The conflict has so far claimed the lives of 109 people, mostly Palestinians.
Egypt is attempting to broker a ceasefire with the help of Qatar and Turkey. Ban Ki-Moon will visit Jerusalem today to further those efforts.
Meanwhile in a strongly-worded op-ed in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, Gilad Sharon, has said that all of Gaza should be flattened.
“The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas,” he writes. “The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.
He adds: “The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.”
- with reporting from AFP
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You can make tea and take long breaks when at home. It’s a good fit right enough
@v39e84kK: You can make tea in the office aswell. Whats your point?
@v39e84kK: I’ll try again. You last reply to me was deleted by The Jouranal. Don’t attempt anything like that again, unless you want to end up in court.
@v39e84kK: You can make tea and take long breaks in the office environment too. Have seen many examples of this over the years in private and public sector jobs.
@Belebopz: That’s the joke.
@David A. Murray: Sound.
@v39e84kK: It’s not a joke, more a backhanded aside about public and civil servants. Go make me a cup of tea will you seeing as you have time on your hands there.
@v39e84kK: I trust me understand each other. What’s typed on the Internet is permanently there (even if deleted, it’s still on record). I want no public association (either visible or not) with that person. I can understand that we can all react on the Internet and type something we would wish to take back (or have worded differently), but I cannot afford any connection to be made, even if it was indirect.
@v39e84kK: Do not question authority.
If there’s any inefficiency or increased agro for tax payers then they should have to go back in person. I don’t trust civil service or state sector to ensure people are actually working from home.
@Damon16: maybe you should talk to someone about you’re trust issues ?
@Damon16: This implies you trust them currently!
Policy documents like this are all well and good but it will never be implemented as it’s written down, as it always comes down to the managers to do things right. I’ve a friend in the civil service who was being forced into the office, to do virtual meetings. Absolutely no rhyme or reason, other than micromanagement. In another Dept, all stats have gone up since wfh and backlogs greatly decreased.
Of course there will be people who will do nothing when at home … but they are the same people who do nothing when they’re in work either
Any chance the Motor Tax office can open ?
I know the folks in there will be filled with dread at the thought of risking their lives returning to work during a , eh , pandemic. The rest of seemed to fair ok returning to work long ago , with a low enough body count .
An anomaly on the online platform has been preventing me from donating to the tax fund for 9 months with no help on line .
@Keith Flood: Motor Tax Office in my local authority has been open to the public for months now
Let’s pretend there was no pandemic. Get up off your a*r*s*e*s & get to the office. Like retail staff, like doctors & nurses. Like every other hard working employee around the country.
@John Barry: Working from home does not make you less hard working or less effective. Some tasks I can do from home and some require me to be on site. Depends on the task. Just because hard-working shop workers, doctors and nurses jobs need to be on-site, doesn’t mean every hard-working worker should be on site. The pandemic has meant that thinking on working from home has changed. We can’t unknow what we learned, so going back to all pre-pandemic work practices makes no sense.
@Mickey Finn: very true. In general I have been more productive since working from home as I don’t get those constant interruptions from small talk or general office noise. Also, I am more likely to finish off a task in the evening, as I am not worried about missing a train/bus, and not shattered from the commute.
Hope that some private companies will follow this example, as the Right to Request Remote Work Bill as not been enacted yet, and it is already facing some serious opposition from Employers’ groups.
@Dr. Emmett Lathrop: It’s so Ireland that we are making a bill on allowing people to ASK for things. Amazing. Truly is a microcosm of everything wrong with Irish politics.
@Dr. Emmett Lathrop:
We only have to go in one day a month now for team meetings.
They’re after pulling out most of the desks & converting the office space to blocks of meeting rooms with all the latest tech in them.
100” Microsoft surface screens in the larger ones and 50” ones in the smaller. Full digital conference facilities. Really quite impressive.
@Dr. Emmett Lathrop: You already have the right to request wfh from your employer. As long as your employer has the right to refuse said request then I’d be more than happy for the bill to proceed. He who pays the piper calls the tune as the saying goes.
Or to put it another way they will work from the office 80 percent of the time (4 days a week).
What a crock of nonsense.
We were allowed to WFH one day a week before covid. So they are just reverting back to what was there before. Very progressive.
the kind of article to stir up envy…
It doesn’t effect me one way or the other but this government is bizarre with its reversals, it depends which way the wind is blowing
40,000 civil servants, huh, I live off Fishamble street, next to the Dublin City Council building, the street has missive pot holes and graffiti on the street bins. What do they do again? Their a joke, privatize it all.
have your say