5.30pm: at Ramattan media office. Shelling has noticeably increased in the city in the last hours. Rumours increase that the Israeli Occupation Force will begin the land incursion tonight. We hear that a mosque in Beit Lahia has been attacked during the prayer time just past, resulting in 50 injured and maybe 10 dead. We decide to head immediately to Jabalia's Red Crescent Ambulance Operations Centre, which is a walk from F's house which the family has left.

6pm: When we arrive, there is an air of chaos and anxiety, as the ambulance workers have just finished dealing with the mosque injuries which included children. Explosions are constant and nearby. We understand that these are now coming from tanks shelling the area from the other side of the border, a new development.

7pm: Some semblance of calm has returned to the Centre but not the surroundings. A magnesium rocket (we understand this is designed to set things on fire) lands in the field beside the Centre. The explosions continue through the whole night without pause, rocking the building. We can see many people leaving the area on foot. We hear a water tank is destroyed.

7.30: Ambulances called out. We are unable to pass a huge crater in the road into which a car has already nosedived. Taking the long way round, we collect a man in traditional dress, in his 60s, from what seems to be his family farm. He is bleeding from the face and very frightened. On the way to Karmel Adwan hospital a particularly close explosion rocks the van. I mustn't have jumped enough, beacuse the driver mimes "did you hear that?" to me. I am beginning to realise Palestinians are fond of rhetorical questions, such as "how do you find Gaza at the moment?

8pm: We collect a man in his 30s from a family house in a main street. He is continually bleeding from the face near his eye and also has wounds to his hand and upper and lower legs. He has made makeshift bandages for himself. We take him to Al Awda hospital. On the way back we pick up a woman and her daughter who are in danger having gone to collect water.

8.20: Bread and tea at the Centre. Ambulances called out.

8.40: Medic worries "we are taking too long; ten minutes." However at our dangerous and darkened destination no-one arrives in response to the ambulance loudspeaker, the electricity lines are down, and smoke fills the air. The ambulances retreat, describing it as a no-go area. Immediately beside it, a peasant family of about 10 emerge from the smoke, looking bewildered. Some of the children are crying, everyone is holding tight to each other's hands. One woman is pregnant. The medics shout at them to leave the area, then decide to evacuate them in the ambulances. We drop them in the nearest town, to go god knows where.

8.55: we hear the Israeli army has crossed the border - in Rafah, in Gaza centre near Bureij camp, and here in Jabalia. We hear Israel has told the Red Cross (the communication medium) that people must evacuate to a distance of 1km in this area. I glimpse a teapot and tea but we are called out again.

9.10: We collect a young woman and an older. I am not sure what the issue is, although the younger woman appears pregnant. We deliver them to Al Awda hospital where we are given tea. H, one of the medics, tells me about his 3 children and his wife, who is very worried about him.

9.30: Back to the Centre for short period of quiet (except for the noise.) Our driver has decided he likes me because my beret reminds him of Che Guevara. He is driving with his arm in plaster.

10pm: Ambulances called out. A family of about 12 was round the fire outside their house, having no other way to cook or get warm. They were hit by a rocket and all are injured. Many ambulances converge at Karmel Adwan to transfer them to Al Shifa in Gaza city which has more resources. The wounded are pushed into one after the other. We have a young man, perhaps a teenager, whose breathing is being done for him by a medic with a handheld pump. I can't help but wonder if one of the 29 ventilators is free right now. But our driver says afterwards that he probably won't survive the night.

10.55: We leave Al Shifa to head back to the Jabalia Centre. There is coffee. Mo makes a coffee sandwich, which is just weird. There is a pause in the calls. Hassan asks me about my book, "Nature Cure"; I explain it is about an ecologist's route out of depression. "People get depressed in the West?" he asks in surprise. Understanding how implausible that must sound right now, I say that many people get caught up in a life that mainly holds work and buying stuff, and without some sort of meaning - religion, or the dream of your land being free, or something like that, people can get very lost.

"Actually Israel is trying to force us into a meaningless life like this," he says. "Like, sometimes I feel that all that really matters to me right now is a kilo of gas. I built a stove for my family and I feel like I did something amazing." The discussion becomes animated as all the medics join in, but it's in Arabic. We have a quiet stretch - again, despite the noise.

1am: This is a call to a woman in labour. V has a similar call. What a night to give birth. The stress is bringing on labour early for many women. Hassan says he should have documents for her to hand in at Al Awda, but they've not been allowed through from the West Bank for some time.

At this point I lose track of the time for a while and also get a couple of hours sleep. When I wake I find that A has come back from a grim call. The ambulances were called to the Beit Lahia Salatin area, outside the Mu'a'ia School to assist the Atar family. However the IOF forced them to turn back by dropping a bomb in front of the ambulances and shooting in front of them, so they were not able to access the wounded.

However, as they turned back, a donkey cart pulled in front of A's ambulance. On it were an older man and woman, probably the parents of the three teenage boys on the cart. One of the teenagers was attempting to shield the other two with a blanket. One of these two had a serious head wound and his eye was detached. The other had an open chest wound, and his arm was partially detached. Despite this he was conscious and shouting. A could see his lungs, one appeared punctured, and the clearly disturbed mother was patting his wounds. Back at the Jabalia Centre, A quietly described how he had assisted the medics to lift this boy off the donkey cart, and in doing so, found his hand inside the boy's body.

6am: My ambulance goes to three women, waiting in the dark street. They are young and quietly weeping. One carries a boy of about 4 years old wrapped in a blanket. His head flops back and his eyes are half open. I find myself hoping maybe he has just fainted from fright. Eventually I understand, perhaps from the weight of grief on their faces, that he is dead. We deliver them to the hospital.

6.30: several of the ambulances leave again to try again to reach the Atar family. Mine only gets a short way before rubble bursts the tire. This appears to happen nightly. While the medics try to fix it, we see a rocket strike very close to the Ambulance Centre. By the time we get back from getting spare tires, we have been told not to return to the Centre as the shooting is now right near it.

8.15: We return to evacuate the Centre as the army is now very close. People on the streets are running away. We move our base to someone's shop in a Jabalia main street. No more tea kettle or generator.

9.30: 3 ambulances attempt to reach wounded. We wait to have access co-ordinated with Israel by the Red Cross. Israel refuses.

9.45: Israel broadcasts the message all over the Gaza strip: "for your own safety, leave your homes immediately and head towards the city centre." Many people have been on the streets this past night, carrying children and bundles, and now the number increases. But there are also many people simply waiting at home, without any belief in a safe place. A rocket hits near us while the ambulances are all off. The injured man is pushed into a car, which rushes off.

10.50: We collect an old women from a farming area. She is very distressed and has a bullet wound to her upper shoulder. The medic inserts a cannula into her arm despite the bumpy road.

11.30: We go straight from the hospital to another call. As with many of our calls, locals line the way, pointing the ambulance to the correct turn. A house has just been bombed. Neighbours are frantically dragging out the wounded and the medics cram four people into our ambulance, which is meant for one. (I took some footage of this which may be available via www.palsolidarity.org later).

The stretcher place is taken by the dead body, covered in dust, of a man in his 30s. His abdomen is ruptured and damaged organs visible. His legs look as if they no longer contain bones and are twisted implausibly. One foot detaches as he is put in the ambulance. Another man, maybe older, looks to have internal injuries and might also have had injured legs, but the chaos is such that I can't clearly identify his injuries, neither can I with the man in his sixties, who is shoved into the remaining space. He is in shock, sweat covering his grey face. I helplessly stroke his cheek, wondering if he is about to stop breathing. Halfway through the journey, his eyes focus slightly. I hope not enough to realise he is crushed against a corpse. The injured boy of about 3 is held in the front seat by his father.

At Karmel Adwan hospital, a wail of grief goes up from all waiting there at this scene of disaster. They haul out the living, and we are left with the dead man. We move the ambulance away from the delivery area. Our medic strokes the man's face. "Actually, he was my friend." he tells me. "His name was Bilal Rabell." We are told that since last night 47 people are dead, 12 of them children, and more than 130 injured. These numbers are increasing as more people are found and as more die from their injuries.

3.55pm Just after I posted the above, E heard that one of the medics of the Jabalia team - Arafat - was shot and killed.

4.55pm Unconfirmed report another medic has been killed in Al Sheikh Ejleen. . . read more

In the report, published in Sweden's leading tabloid, a freelance journalist accused the Israeli army of stealing body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.

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Since then, we have not even chastised Israel when its actions hurt the United States. During the 6-Day war in 1967, for example, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy signals intelligence ship, in international waters, and murdered over 30 American sailors. The Israelis, of course, claimed it was an accident -- but the Israeli claim was at least questionable, to put it charitably, because the Israeli fighter bombers made multiple attack passes, before Israeli gunboats machine gunned survivors in the water. Moreover, festooned with antennas, the Liberty had a very distinctive profile and was flying a huge American flag. Yet the US Congress never held an inquiry into Israel's culpability (the only time in our history Congress failed investigate the root causes of a Naval disaster) and the DoD inquiry was as a disgraceful white wash.

Viewed in retrospect, the pusillanimous reaction to the assault on the USS Liberty by the United States government had a decisive grand strategic effect, however. It told Israel in no uncertain terms that it was now free to ignore or even hurt the interests of its patron in the pursuit of its own venal ambitions. History certainly suggests as much, because since that attack, Israel has operated without even a modicum of cosmetic restraint by the US. The Israelis have felt free to plant spies in the US government, like Jonathan Pollard. Most recently Israeli Prime Minister Omert bragged to Israeli citizens and the press about about he made Bush dance to his tune by interrupting a speech Bush was making in Philadelphia and telling Bush to humiliate the inept Condolezza Rice by forcing her to abstain on the UN resolution calling for a halt in fighting in Gaza -- a resolution that she had helped to draft, presumably with Bush's blessing.

Nevertheless, the American taxpayers continued to finance Irsrael's arrogant behaviour year after year by repeatedly shovelling billions of dollars for new weapons and military/economic aid to Israel. The transfer of our front line weapons has been justified repeatedly as being necessary for Israel's self defense, yet the Israelis have repeatedly used those weapons for offensive attacks, recently in Lebanon (2006) and now in Gaza. In the case of Gaza, it used the distraction of the US election in Nov 08 to break the cease fire (again using US weapons), and after triggering the desired response from Hamas, it unleashed its long-planned murderous attack on Gaza in late December, just weeks before the innauguration of President Barack Obama, in effect, pulling the rug out from under Obama and painting him into a corner at the very time when Obama was trying to focus his energies on and build bipartisan political support for dealing with the worst internal economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The GBU-39 guided bomb is perhaps the most egregious case point illustrating how our aid directly helps Israel to wage aggressive war regardless of American interests. After the disastrous Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, the Pentagon pushed for and Congress approved the transfer of thousands of precision bombs to replenish Israel's stocks in August and September 2007. The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was not included in this gift. But then, more recently, and for no apparent reason, four months before its assault on Gaza, the Pentagon first notified Congress of the GBU-39 transfer in August 2008. Congress was in recess during August, but transfer of GBU-39s to Israel was one of the first items it disposed of in after reconvening in September, in dutiful obedience to the demands of the Israel Lobby and its wholly owned subsidiaries in the Pentagon. These weapons and their delivery racks were then rushed to Israel, and in less that 3 months from the time of Congressional approval, 1000 GBU-39s were cleared aerodynamically for release from Israel's planes and placed in the operational inventory, just in time for Israel's attack on the Gaza Ghetto. The GBU-39 is one of the most modern weapons in the American inventory.

Last September, the GBU-39s were trumpeted by the Israeli press as bunker busters of choice for an attack on Iran. But that claim was preposterous and most likely deliberate misinformation, given that we now know the Israelis had been planning the assault on the Gaza Ghetto for at least three months. It was preposterous because GBU-39 has a tiny warhead (only 50lbs encased in a 280 lb bomb). Its small size and (theoretical) high accuracy, however, makes the GBU-39 a far more appropriate as a weapon of choice for assassinating individuals and small groups in densely populated urban areas, like Gaza, than for taking out deeply-buried nuclear components in Iran.

Unfortunately for the mass of innocent Gazans, the GBU 39 does not work as accurately as advertised. It has reliability problems, among other things, according to my sources some of whom have experience in using this weapon (indeed, one told me he thought its problems made it a step backward in effectiveness). To make matters worse, targeting intelligence is never as good as claimed by airpower enthusiasts. In the real world, once the bombing starts, the feed back from the effects of the attacks is ambiguous at best, and consequently target lists proliferate wildly, as was the case in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq (I & II), Kosovo, Lebanon (I & II), and now again in Gaza.

None of this matters, however. It does not matter that the Israelis have slaughtered over 1300 people in the Gaza Ghetto against a loss of of only 13 Israelis, because Congress is cheering, having passed a resolution of overwhelming support (390 to 5) in the House. And it does not matter that Obama is hosed and will probably be humiliated into toeing the line from the git go, because he has pledged to preserve the special relationship.

Franklin "Chuck" Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com . . read more