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U.N. Protests at Israeli Killing of 8 of its People
The United Nations special envoy to the Middle East on Monday protested strongly to Israel after air strikes on the Gaza Strip hit two U.N. buildings and killed eight of its people.
U.N. envoy Robert Serry and the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Karen Abu Zayd wrote an urgent letter to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak "to protest these incidents in the strongest possible terms," a statement said.
The first incident came on Saturday shortly after Israel launched its massive air offensive on the Hamas-ruled territory, when a missile targeting a Palestinian policeman standing next to the UNRWA training centre hit a group of UNRWA training students, killing eight and wounding 19.
The second incident was on Monday, when the U.N. headquarters in Gaza was damaged by two missiles, the U.N. statement said.
"U.N. premises must be protected and inviolate. The Government of Israel has all coordinates of U.N. premises in Gaza," the statement said.
"These strikes occurred without prior warning. Military attacks in these circumstances, so close to U.N. premises as to recklessly endanger U.N. personnel and property, must not be repeated."
Nearly 350 Palestinians -- among them at least 57 civilians -- have been killed since Israel launched its aerial blitz on the Islamist-controlled enclave at mid-morning on Saturday.(AFP)
Beirut, 30 Dec 08, 07:12 LINK
The United Nations special envoy to the Middle East on Monday protested strongly to Israel after air strikes on the Gaza Strip hit two U.N. buildings and killed eight of its people.
U.N. envoy Robert Serry and the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Karen Abu Zayd wrote an urgent letter to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak "to protest these incidents in the strongest possible terms," a statement said.
The first incident came on Saturday shortly after Israel launched its massive air offensive on the Hamas-ruled territory, when a missile targeting a Palestinian policeman standing next to the UNRWA training centre hit a group of UNRWA training students, killing eight and wounding 19.
The second incident was on Monday, when the U.N. headquarters in Gaza was damaged by two missiles, the U.N. statement said.
"U.N. premises must be protected and inviolate. The Government of Israel has all coordinates of U.N. premises in Gaza," the statement said.
"These strikes occurred without prior warning. Military attacks in these circumstances, so close to U.N. premises as to recklessly endanger U.N. personnel and property, must not be repeated."
Nearly 350 Palestinians -- among them at least 57 civilians -- have been killed since Israel launched its aerial blitz on the Islamist-controlled enclave at mid-morning on Saturday.(AFP)
Beirut, 30 Dec 08, 07:12 LINK
My friend is alive! I just spoke with him on messenger, thanks God! His neighbours lost 2 children, little girls last night.
The freeGaza ship was also attacked by Israel, luckily no one got hurt!
The death toll has rise to 365 dead and 1700 injured, hospitals can't even treat all the wounded ones, not even those who are in critical condition.
URGENT! Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship! TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!
The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.
There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.
It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
CALL the Israeli Government and demand that it immediately STOP attacking the Dignity and endangering the lives of its passengers!
CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5062 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il
CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:
+972 33697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Dignity departed from Larnaca Port in Cyprus at 7pm (UST) on Monday 29 December, bound for war-devastated Gaza with a cargo of over 3 tons of desperately needed medical supplies donated by the people of Cyprus. At our request, the ship was searched by Cypriot Port authorities prior to departure, to certify that there was nothing "threatening" aboard - only emergency medical supplies.
TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY TO STOP THE ISRAELI NAVY FROM ENDANGERING THE DIGNITY AND ITS PASSENGERS!
The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.
There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.
It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
CALL the Israeli Government and demand that it immediately STOP attacking the Dignity and endangering the lives of its passengers!
CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5062 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il
CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:
+972 33697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Dignity departed from Larnaca Port in Cyprus at 7pm (UST) on Monday 29 December, bound for war-devastated Gaza with a cargo of over 3 tons of desperately needed medical supplies donated by the people of Cyprus. At our request, the ship was searched by Cypriot Port authorities prior to departure, to certify that there was nothing "threatening" aboard - only emergency medical supplies.
TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY TO STOP THE ISRAELI NAVY FROM ENDANGERING THE DIGNITY AND ITS PASSENGERS!
Last night I was talking to my other friend in Gaza and suddenly he said he hears planes everywhere and a big shell and then his msn went offline. I haven't got a word from him since! His friend wrote to the forum that he has no longer windows in his home, one bomb was so close.
Also the Islamic Uni or what was left of it got hit again last night and the fire department headquarters and ministry building too.
I just hope my friends are ok there, I wish to hear from them?!
The previous posts I promised to forward here, it is written by a teacher from Gaza
What will YOU Do?????
These students were to defend their graduation project on 15/1/2009. Now, all their one-year-long work is under the pile. What may they do??!!!
This “building” was of 5 floors, the left part contained labs for physics, chemistry, biology and geology... this place where all students of Science Faculty used to do their pedagogical experiments. The right part of the building contained labs for Electrical, Computer, Industrial and Civil Engineering labs. Personally, I spent 6 years of my life inside this “building”...
uni1.jpg)
The Israeli attack on the Islamic University of Gaza...
By: Zohair M. Abu-Shaban - London, UK
I earned my degree from this university... I used to study in its lecture classes and labs... I also taught some labs there... Now, from UK, I am deadly sad to see the picture of the places where I have memories destroyed by Israeli shells...
the two buildings BEFORE
A Palestinian father of five young girls, who were killed in an Israeli air strike, mourns as he holds his wounded son, during their funeral in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008. Palestinian medics said five young sisters died in an air strike in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza and three other young children were killed
Gaza is a death trap now, Israel is targeting on houses in heavily populated areas. There is no escape from Gaza because all the crossing are closed. 1,5million human lives are a bullseye to Israeli bombers.
The death toll is rising, now there has been 313 people killed in Israelis massacre and more than 1000 injured!
And there nis nothing we can do to help. Just sit and wait.
Last night my friend left her home suddenly, near by was 5 bombings and she had to flee.
My night went in thinking, I slept so badly!
This morning I were so happy to see her online in msn again! She was ok and the bombing had been the Islamic Univercity which had been destroyed last night.
This time has been very stressfull for me to try to find the news and information about the situation and constantly read diffrent forums and sites to know the casualtys as early as possible. And ofcourse thinking about the people I know; are they ok, alive, how is their homes and familys? Are they scared? How they manage to survive this in a small place like Gaza? How is the children doing in Gaza? And how will the people who lost their loved ones survive after this?
From a forum where I am as a member is updates and there is written that almost a missile per minute, that was last night. Must have been a scary night to try to sleep.
I can't even imagine!
I am talking to my friend again, she just hearded a bomb, but didn't know where it hit. She also hears F1 warplane going above her somewhere.
Still the young people of Gaza has the strenght to study and write poems! the people there is amazing!
Brave words from young womans mouth; "we are used to this, I am not scared."
I am talking to Gaza as we speak and my friend there told me that the electricity has been cut off from her house for three days and is now on maybe til 12 pm. The schools and universitys has not been open. Air raids, missiles, bombing and shelling goes on all the time.
My 2 other friends have both lost their cousin.
Many mosques has been destroyed, hundreds of houses and many other buildings.
Electricity situation is very very bad and ofcourse everything else too.
I think I will stay up this night and try to see what is happening there.
My prayers with Gaza and Palestine
My 2 other friends have both lost their cousin.
Many mosques has been destroyed, hundreds of houses and many other buildings.
Electricity situation is very very bad and ofcourse everything else too.
I think I will stay up this night and try to see what is happening there.
My prayers with Gaza and Palestine
370 slain so far- kuollutta tähän mennessä
700 injured 100 of them serious- 700 haavoittunutta 100 niistä vakavasti
300 civil organisation- 300 siviili organisaatiota
hundreds of houses - satoja taloja
major assault took place while school boys were leaving schools to their homes
and it came at the rush our to maximise casualties
mainly police cadets were the targets! -
- merkittävin hyökkäys tapahtui kun koululaiset olivat matkalla koulusta kotiin ja isku tapahtui ruuhka aikaan maksimoidakseen uhrimäärän. pääasiassa poliisikokelaat olivat kohteena.
700 injured 100 of them serious- 700 haavoittunutta 100 niistä vakavasti
300 civil organisation- 300 siviili organisaatiota
hundreds of houses - satoja taloja
major assault took place while school boys were leaving schools to their homes
and it came at the rush our to maximise casualties
mainly police cadets were the targets! -
- merkittävin hyökkäys tapahtui kun koululaiset olivat matkalla koulusta kotiin ja isku tapahtui ruuhka aikaan maksimoidakseen uhrimäärän. pääasiassa poliisikokelaat olivat kohteena.
Israel begun a huge attack operation in Gaza and many has died because of it!
One of my friends told that a bomb came only 5 metres from her home, thank God it didn't hit her house!
Israel has told that this is only the beginning. Maybe they will erase all Gaza out of the map?
My mind is not in focus, I have no words..
Latest news can be read from here http://www.maannews.net/en/
One of my friends told that a bomb came only 5 metres from her home, thank God it didn't hit her house!
Israel has told that this is only the beginning. Maybe they will erase all Gaza out of the map?
My mind is not in focus, I have no words..
Latest news can be read from here http://www.maannews.net/en/
Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning'
By Ewa Jasiewicz
As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal
in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the
internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows
nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the
house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.
UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al
Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another
was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.
Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge
the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only
perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their
lifetimes.
Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that
shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and
unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of
humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity,
fuel and freedom of movement.
Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating
theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to
transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had
12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.
There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and
blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.
Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire
hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and
lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the
spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red
Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.
Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had
over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the
operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were
sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital
in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short
space of time.’
And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this
morning, ‘This is only the beginning.’
But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective
punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It
has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread,
revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking:
If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?
11.30am
Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border
village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven
there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief
Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided
villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents
about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves,
family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for
Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks
were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on
the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us
the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would
shoot into his fields.
Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile
attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire
from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by
the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family,
caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.
I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us
off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16
bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas
authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit
Hanoon.
We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to
Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police
station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of
dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere
Bala, Diere Balak – take care.
Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had
soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable
market before impacting on its target.
Civilians Dead
There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead
donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and
splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken
English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead,
many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head
threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this!
Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they
are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are
they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader,
present during the attack.
He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking
them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a
small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his
legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain
and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.
The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of
concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree
split the road.
We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache
helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK ’s
Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares –
a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.
Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force
headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road.
‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.
We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be
target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The
apaches rumbled above.
Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work
smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the
ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around
20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a
motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.
Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under
the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it
everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a
captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3
feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks,
blocks and debris to reach the man.
We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the
men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and
speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without
interruption.
Hospitals on the brink
Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief,
horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed
by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of
shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not
even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who,
because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred,
in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.
The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against
the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds
temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically
injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in
scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel
cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area,
wards and operating theatres.
We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care
unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting
downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk
again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six
months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to
show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was
making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.
A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The
hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground,
Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic
police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying
force.
At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the
hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to
cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah,’ there is not god but Allah.
Who cares?
And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out
for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the
brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in
and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said
to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world?
Where is the action to stop these attacks?’
Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she
had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near
Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s
attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down
her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We
didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the
biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.
The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa
hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one
group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head
injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the
weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a
teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’.
He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of
human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’
It’s true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human
Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva
Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague
Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help
generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity
for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to
as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the
realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied
or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on
’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps
in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate
from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both
here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by
Israel , with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported
this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against
Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on
Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.
In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza ’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into
a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the
morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for
civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and
exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of
a lack of access to essential medicines.
A light
There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At
the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you
consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel
and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running
from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in
the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education,
see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are
reportedly big enough to drive through.
Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel,
there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to
make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring
the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take
on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end
of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of
international governmental complicity and silence?
There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity
in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of
conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn
a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring
injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and
pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and
occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and
for a genuine Just Peace.
Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light
at the end of the Gazan tunnel.
-----
Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer,
and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for
the Free Gaza Movement.
http://www.FreeGaza.org
By Ewa Jasiewicz
As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal
in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the
internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows
nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the
house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.
UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al
Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another
was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.
Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge
the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only
perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their
lifetimes.
Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that
shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and
unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of
humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity,
fuel and freedom of movement.
Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating
theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to
transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had
12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.
There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and
blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.
Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire
hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and
lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the
spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red
Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.
Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had
over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the
operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were
sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital
in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short
space of time.’
And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this
morning, ‘This is only the beginning.’
But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective
punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It
has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread,
revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking:
If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?
11.30am
Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border
village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven
there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief
Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided
villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents
about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves,
family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for
Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks
were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on
the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us
the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would
shoot into his fields.
Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile
attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire
from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by
the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family,
caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.
I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us
off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16
bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas
authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit
Hanoon.
We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to
Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police
station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of
dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere
Bala, Diere Balak – take care.
Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had
soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable
market before impacting on its target.
Civilians Dead
There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead
donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and
splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken
English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead,
many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head
threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this!
Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they
are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are
they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader,
present during the attack.
He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking
them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a
small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his
legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain
and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.
The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of
concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree
split the road.
We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache
helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK ’s
Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares –
a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.
Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force
headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road.
‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.
We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be
target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The
apaches rumbled above.
Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work
smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the
ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around
20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a
motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.
Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under
the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it
everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a
captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3
feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks,
blocks and debris to reach the man.
We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the
men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and
speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without
interruption.
Hospitals on the brink
Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief,
horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed
by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of
shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not
even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who,
because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred,
in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.
The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against
the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds
temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically
injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in
scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel
cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area,
wards and operating theatres.
We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care
unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting
downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk
again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six
months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to
show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was
making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.
A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The
hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground,
Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic
police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying
force.
At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the
hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to
cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah,’ there is not god but Allah.
Who cares?
And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out
for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the
brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in
and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said
to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world?
Where is the action to stop these attacks?’
Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she
had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near
Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s
attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down
her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We
didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the
biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.
The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa
hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one
group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head
injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the
weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a
teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’.
He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of
human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’
It’s true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human
Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva
Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague
Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help
generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity
for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to
as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the
realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied
or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on
’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps
in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate
from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both
here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by
Israel , with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported
this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against
Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on
Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.
In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza ’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into
a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the
morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for
civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and
exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of
a lack of access to essential medicines.
A light
There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At
the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you
consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel
and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running
from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in
the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education,
see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are
reportedly big enough to drive through.
Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel,
there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to
make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring
the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take
on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end
of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of
international governmental complicity and silence?
There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity
in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of
conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn
a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring
injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and
pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and
occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and
for a genuine Just Peace.
Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light
at the end of the Gazan tunnel.
-----
Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer,
and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for
the Free Gaza Movement.
http://www.FreeGaza.org
International Witnesses speak out from Gaza
27th December 2008, Gaza, Palestine - Human Rights Defenders from Lebanon, the UK, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia are present in Gaza and are witnessing and documenting the current Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Due to Israel's policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the
Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement's boats.
"At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars - anything that can move is bringing injured to
the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the bloodbanks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp." - Eva Bartlett (Canada) International
Solidarity Movement
"Israeli missles tore through a children's playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate
restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza" - Ewa Jasiewicz
(Polish and British) Free Gaza Movment
"The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital." - Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and Cultural
Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza
"The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5
year old girl ran sobbing into my arms."- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement
"This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now
calls of revenge are everywhere." Dr Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza
Community Mental Health Centre
"As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I
live in Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the
bodies. As we arrived one more was found." Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement
"The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been
severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An
eight year little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car,
completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and the Israel's message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion outside!" Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement
Human Rights Defenders in Gaza:
Dr. Eyad Sarraj (Arabic and English) -+972 599400424
Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Co-Ordinator in Gaza (Polish, Arabic, and
English) - +972 59 8700497
Dr. Haider Eid (English and Arabic) - + 972 59 9441766
Sharon Lock (English) - +972 59 8826513
Vittorio Arrigoni (Italian) - +972 59 8378945
Fida Qishta (English and Arabic) +972 599681669
Jenny Linnel (English) - +972 59 87653777
Natalie Abu Shakra (Arabic and English) 0598336 328
For more information on the Free Gaza Movment (FGM) or the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM) contact in the West Bank:
Adam Taylor (ISM) - 972 59 8503948
Lubna Masarwa (FGM)- 972 50 5633044
It was too good to happen anyway.. the truce..Israel has begun their air strikes again injuring alot of people already.
One resistance group attacked on the invading Israeli soldiers in Gaza strip..
A news paper said that some arab states has given Israel the permission to murder Hamas leaders if they do not continue the truce..
Very disturbing news.. I don't agree on killing anyone, no matter what is the reason or in whos side this happens. Killing people is not the answer. Not to anything.
We should be protecting life, not taking lives.
There should be a better way to ease the situation in between Palestin and Israel. This continuos fighting and killing has been going on now for "quite some time" and has not lead to an answer what would be good for both sides!
I don't understand why Israel doesn't let Palestiniasn keep the little peace of what is left from their country, this few percent peace of land is no use for Israel and it is obvious that they will never get it too.
But Israel is greedy. They wan't it all, and they wan't it empty. No Palestinians, that is their goal.
So what can people do then? They have no other choise but to resest. Resist on this on-going evillness and killing. Resist this wipeout of the Palestinian people and life. Resist air strikes. Resist torture. Resist the Israeli goal to decay all the Palestinians and the Palestinian lifestyle and heritage.
Resist is the only thing left in their life, because all the efforts what Israel claims that they make to get the peace and justice to this situation is a lie, it's a fake, they are only comitting horrible crimes at the area and they lie to us and lie to the world and makes us belive that the Palestinians are the bad people that they are the ones who is comitting crimes.. But it is the opposite..
The world should intervene this already! How is that England who begun this thing is not getting it to an end? It is Palestinians right to get some justice, peace to their life! How come EU, UN, nobody want's to get involved here?? Why do we let this go on and on?? Where is the justice here huh??
Many human right organisation and report has made it clear that crimes happen there everyday, but why do we let this go on?! Is 1,5 million people not enough lives to save??
Dear friends,
Israeli journalist, Amira Hass has been arrested as she attempted to cross back into Israel from Gaza, after spending three weeks there (coming into Gaza on one of the Free Gaza Movement boats). Over the past few weeks, Hass has been filing on the ground reports from Gaza about life under the siege.
Hass, the child of Holocaust survivors, became the first and only Israeli journalist to be ever based in Gaza, moving there in 1993 to live and work. Today, she is still the only Israeli journalist to based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories moving to Ramallah in 1997. Three weeks ago, she once again became the only Israeli journalist to enter Gaza since the current illegal Israeli siege began, as not only has the Israeli military have prevented Israeli journalists for some time and recently also began preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
Please find below the brief article on her arrest which appeared in the Haaretz, the paper she writes for.
In solidarity,
Kim
www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com
www.directaction.org.au
When questioned, Hass pointed out that no one had stopped her from entering the Strip, which she did for work purposes.
Chief Superintendent Shimon Nahmani, commander of the Sderot police station, said Hass had entered Gaza by sea three weeks ago.
Hass was released under restriction, and Nahmani said her case will be sent to court in the coming week.
Israel Press Council chairwoman Dalia Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice, commented that even journalists are subject to the law and the council cannot defend a reporter who breaks the law. Instead, she said, local journalists ought to petition the High Court of Justice against the army's order.
Israeli journalist, Amira Hass has been arrested as she attempted to cross back into Israel from Gaza, after spending three weeks there (coming into Gaza on one of the Free Gaza Movement boats). Over the past few weeks, Hass has been filing on the ground reports from Gaza about life under the siege.
Hass, the child of Holocaust survivors, became the first and only Israeli journalist to be ever based in Gaza, moving there in 1993 to live and work. Today, she is still the only Israeli journalist to based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories moving to Ramallah in 1997. Three weeks ago, she once again became the only Israeli journalist to enter Gaza since the current illegal Israeli siege began, as not only has the Israeli military have prevented Israeli journalists for some time and recently also began preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
Please find below the brief article on her arrest which appeared in the Haaretz, the paper she writes for.
In solidarity,
Kim
www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.
www.directaction.org.au
| |||||
| Haaretz journalist Amira Hass arrested for illegal stay in Gaza | |||||
| By Tomer Zarchin, Haaretz Correspondent http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/ | |||||
| Tags: Haaretz, Amira Hass | |||||
Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass was detained by Sderot police last night for having entered the Gaza Strip without a permit. By order of the army, Israeli journalists have been barred from entering Gaza since the abduction of soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. Hass was stopped by soldiers at the Erez Checkpoint, on the Gaza-Israel border, as she was returning to Israel from the Strip. Upon discovering that she had no permit to be in Gaza, the soldiers transferred her to the Sderot police. | |||||
When questioned, Hass pointed out that no one had stopped her from entering the Strip, which she did for work purposes.
Chief Superintendent Shimon Nahmani, commander of the Sderot police station, said Hass had entered Gaza by sea three weeks ago.
Hass was released under restriction, and Nahmani said her case will be sent to court in the coming week.
Israel Press Council chairwoman Dalia Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice, commented that even journalists are subject to the law and the council cannot defend a reporter who breaks the law. Instead, she said, local journalists ought to petition the High Court of Justice against the army's order.
The snow is gone from Finland.All is back to foggy, rainy and gray.
I hate when the weather is like this!
It makes me so depressed..
European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel expressed his “increasing concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza,” in a Saturday press release. "I am extremely concerned by the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the continued closure of the Gaza crossings,” Michel stated. His statement stressed the point that since 4 November only the Karem Shalom crossing has been open, and even then only for a total of four days. Michel noted that only a limited amount of food and supplies were allowed into Gaza on 17, 24, 26 and 27 November. Though he stressed his earlier condemnation of Palestinian projectile attacks, he said called the continued closure of Gaza crossings “a form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians, which is a violation of International Humanitarian Law."
I copied that from maannews. Isn't that unbelievable; many has condemned Israels actions as violations, but Israel still keeps doing it?
Israel don't care about anything but their own little jewish state to the jeweish people. Nothing else matters to them. Not even the menory of their own suffering; the same torture and killing what they do now to Palestinians..
As they don't respect their survivals, as it was nothing that someone survived from the nazi death camps. And as it don't matter that so many died in those camps. Israel don't care about what happened to their people.
Israel only want's to concentrate on stealing land from someone else and use it for their own little illegal state where no one else but jews are allowed to be the first class citisens.
Im very sure that some day Israel will be so sorry for what they have done. Maybe not today, but the day will come, I'm sure of that. And I'm waiting for that day to come.. And I hope it comes soon!
Free Gaza movements update:
The three human rights observers from the International Solidarity Movement who were accompanying the fishermen at the time of the Israeli assault were held at Maasiyahu detention centre in Ramle, despite charges never having been brought against them. All have now been illegally deported by the Israeli authorities. Vittorio Arrigoni was deported to Italy on Sunday 23rd November, Andrew Muncie to the UK on Tuesday 25th and Darlene Wallach to the US early on Thursday.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday 27th November, 2008 – Gaza City , Gaza Strip, Palestine
Three Palestinian trawling vessels confiscated by Israeli naval forces whilst fishing in Gazan territorial waters on 18th November were returned today. Fifteen Palestinian fishermen were also abducted during the operation but have since been released.
The fishing boats, held in Ashdod , were transferred into Palestinian waters six nautical miles offshore at approximately 16:00 Gaza time and reached the port of Gaza City shortly before 18:00.
This action follows an appeal filed yesterday in the Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of the vessels' owners for the return of their property. Lawyers intended to challenge the arbitrary limits imposed on Gazan fishermen by the Israeli navy which contravene prior agreements and international regulations.
The boats' captains reported damage to their vessels – indeed one trawler had to be towed in by a second due to engine damage. Equipment such as GPS devices were also missing. The fishermen's loss of earnings over the last ten days is still being estimated.
Israel keep punishing the whole nation of Palestine for resisting Israel's humanrights crimes.Israel broke the truce by invadin Gaza and killing many people and braking many homes etc. and for response some resistance groups launched few rockets to israel but not hitting anyone. For this Israel shut all border crossings and is trying to starve and keep Plaestine in the dark now.
From maannnews:
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israeli forces to shut down the Gaza Strip's borders again on Thursday, turning away a truck convoy bearing food. Two so-called Qassam rockets, small homemade projectiles of metal tubing packed with explosives, hit an empty field near the Israeli town of Sderot. No injuries were reported. A later projectile caused slight damage to a house. Following the first projectile attack Israeli authorities reversed an earlier decision to open the Karem Shalom crossing in the south of Gaza on Thursday to allow food and other goods into the area. Conversely, the An-Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, the wing of the Popular Resistance Committees based in Gaza said that the continued launch of the homemade rockets was itself a response to the ongoing blockade. The Brigades added in a statement that the closure is a clear violation of the June 2008 Israel-Hamas. The group said Palestinian factions “are no longer committed to the truce.” Israel has maintained a near-complete blockade of the Gaza Strip since 4 November, causing widespread blackouts and shortages of food. Israel also launched several military incursions into Gaza, threatening an Egyptian-brokered truce that went into effect in June. Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of National Economy in the Gaza-based government Nasser As-Serraj said Israel informed the ministry of their intention to open the crossing early Thursday morning. Forty-five trucks were to be permitted to pass into Gaza, 20 of which carried food for UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees. The remaining trucks carried frozen meats, flour, oils, animal feed and chlorine used in water sterilization. All trucks were refused passage or goods transfer. Also on Thursday energy officials warned that the electrical grid in the northern Gaza Strip is on the verge of collapse. The closure of Gaza means that no spare parts to repaire the grid, which has been under increased pressure due to the shutdown of Gaza's main power plant.
Gaza has electricity about 6 hours per day.
The rest of the day is total blackout.
Gaza survives in total darkness.
Darkness from the light.
Darkness from the world.
Darkness from the hearts.
I want You to think about that. Try to
imagine life without electricity.
The newspaper in my city wrote on todays news that Israel is keeping Gaza in dark because of the rockets that was fired to Israel from Gaza.
Again! Again they forget to tell why are these rockets fired! They forget to tell how Israel steals peoples homes everyday! How Israel kills and captures innocent civilians without any reason everyday!
How Israel violates human rights everyday. How Israel makes living in Palestine territories almost impossible by their crimes and violence towards palestinians! They totally ignored the cituation when Isreal made an attack to Gaza killing 7 people and braking homes and the most of all they broke the ceasfire, the truce! After this the Palestinians launched their rockets.
But no one in the media is allowed to tell us this.
You should see these facts from human rights organisations websites, because this is no imagination, this is what really happens in Palestine everyday, but we do not get the information about this acts as they really are; we get the Israelis story, what has been fabricated so we would not judge what they do..
Here is few links:
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/
http://www.freegaza.org/
I hope you have the time and interest to see these links. Thank you , if you do.
The rest of the day is total blackout.
Gaza survives in total darkness.
Darkness from the light.
Darkness from the world.
Darkness from the hearts.
I want You to think about that. Try to
imagine life without electricity.The newspaper in my city wrote on todays news that Israel is keeping Gaza in dark because of the rockets that was fired to Israel from Gaza.
Again! Again they forget to tell why are these rockets fired! They forget to tell how Israel steals peoples homes everyday! How Israel kills and captures innocent civilians without any reason everyday!
How Israel violates human rights everyday. How Israel makes living in Palestine territories almost impossible by their crimes and violence towards palestinians! They totally ignored the cituation when Isreal made an attack to Gaza killing 7 people and braking homes and the most of all they broke the ceasfire, the truce! After this the Palestinians launched their rockets.
But no one in the media is allowed to tell us this.
You should see these facts from human rights organisations websites, because this is no imagination, this is what really happens in Palestine everyday, but we do not get the information about this acts as they really are; we get the Israelis story, what has been fabricated so we would not judge what they do..
Here is few links:
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/
http://www.freegaza.org/
I hope you have the time and interest to see these links. Thank you , if you do.
I wanted to copy this story that I received to my email this morning. It is written by one of the passengers entering Gaza with freedom boats. He writes everything that he had experienced and saw there. This is a long story, but woth of reading. Enjoy :)
Gideon Spiro was on the second voyage. Here is his long and detailed report about what he saw and what he experienced. Of interest besides his report on Gaza is the report at the end on what happened to him when he passed through the Israeli checkpoint. Thank you Gideon. Greta
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=30176
Gideon Spiro was on the second voyage. Here is his long and detailed report about what he saw and what he experienced. Of interest besides his report on Gaza is the report at the end on what happened to him when he passed through the Israeli checkpoint. Thank you Gideon. Greta
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_
| In besieged Gaza, Journal of a voyage by Gideon Spiro : A call for civil disobedience |
| Gideon Spiro Red Rag. Weekly Column, 14 November 2008 In besieged Gaza (end October 2008). Journal of a voyage. Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent Original Hebrew: http://www.hagada.org.il/ |
27 October 2008 When Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Northern Ireland, called me and asked me to join the sea-voyage of the humanitarian delegation from Larnaca (Cyprus) to Gaza to break the Israeli closure and to bring medicine to the besieged city, I answered positively without hesitation. It was to be the second sea-voyage to Gaza, the first having arrived in August. I oppose the closure of Gaza because it is a collective punishment of a million and a half residents, including babies, children, women and old people, not to speak of sick people whom the siege prevents from getting medicine; a completely innocent population that is suffering because of no crime it has committed. Therefore I had no difficulty in agreeing to the invitation to be part of the international delegation. I also considered my participation to be important because I am a journalist, whose duty is to report from places to which most people do not have access. I departed early in the morning from Israel to Cyprus, a flight that lasts no more than 45 minutes, and at 8:30 we landed in Larnaca. After a quick passage through passport control I was in a taxi that took me to the hotel where the delegation was staying. Most members of the delegation had already arrived; I was among the last. The delegation comprised 25 members, and together with the boat's crew we were 30 people. Its composition was diverse and interesting. Most of them from Europe (Britain, Ireland, Italy), but also from the USA. There was a fair representation of Palestinians, most from the diaspora. Among the participants was Mairead Maguire, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize from Northern Ireland who, as I have said, initiated my participation, and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament and former member of the Palestinian unity government. As a delegation bringing medicine, we also included 4 doctors. The age of the members was very diverse, starting from the 20s up to a doctor from Scotland who is pushing 80. During the whole trip we were accompanied by a crew from Al Jazeera. Members of the delegation met for several preparatory discussions, mainly regarding the Israeli government's announcement that it would not permit the boat to pass. A number of possible scenarios were raised, including how much time the boat could hold up if the Israeli navy barred its route in the open sea. The food would suffice for three days. After that we would have to go to the nearest port, the preferred option being Beirut. I was already imagining landing in Beirut and what would be awaiting me there, but the Palestinians in the delegation reassured me: don't worry, nothing bad will happen to you. You are not alone but with the delegation, and we're all guarantors for each other. 28 October 2008 At midday we headed towards the place where the boat was docked. The local media was already waiting for us. Interviews, photographs and leave-taking from the organizers, who remained in Larnaca as liaisons for assistance from shore in case we encountered difficulties during the voyage. Among those who saw us off was a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in a wheelchair, who had been seriously wounded by the Israeli occupation army's gunfire. His leg was entirely cut off, and he had arrived in Cyprus with the boats of the first flotilla that returned from Gaza. There is no medical facility in Cyprus that can take care of him and he is waiting to be accepted for treatment in a European country. The vessel or the boat is in fact a medium-sized yacht from the 1970s, acquired by the Free Gaza movement which is organizing the entire trip. The yacht was intended for a family of four or five people at the most, but not 30 people. It was indeed crowded. All the space in the yacht up to the last millimetre was taken up for the passengers' baggage and crates of medicines. We also took a megaphone with us, in case our way should be blocked by the navy, and I was assigned the task of addressing the sailors in Hebrew and explaining to them that blocking our way would violate international law and that it was an illegal order that they were obliged to refuse to carry out. We left the marina at 5 PM. The crowding did not affect the good atmosphere among members of the delegation. Before sleeping, we arranged sitting-places. But at night, the yacht looked like a refugee boat. Everyone grabbed whatever place they could and tried to sleep. It was not easy. It was not a large boat, and it was unstable even when the sea was not particularly stormy. Every trip to the toilet, especially at night, practially required the skills of a contortionist in order not to step on those who were sleeping, and moreover walking involved losing one's balance because of the fluctuations of the boat, and everyone was knocked around a little as a result of the tipping. Some suffered from seasickness and vomited their guts out. And there were also those who managed to sleep for several hours. A night sail in the Mediterranean Sea in a small boat with very limited lighting is a unique experience. Complete darkness all around, clear skies and stars lighting the cosmos. 29 October With the dawn we were approaching the coast of Gaza. Someone sees vessels of the Israeli navy on the horizon. I was the pessimist in the group and thought that we would be stopped. I lost a bet on that with Greta Berlin, one of the leaders of the organization that had taken the initiative to break the closure. We receive a radio communication from the Israeli coast: what is the name of the boat? How many are you? What is your port of destination? The captain replies: Gaza, and the reply: thank you and shalom. The way is free, no one stops us, and there is much joy among members of the delegation. The naval vessels remain at a distance from us. I was happy about losing the bet. I said to my friends in the delegation that contrary to expectations, the Israeli government was behaving with wisdom this time, someone in the ruling circles there understood that to detain in the open sea a boat that is bringing medicines and a delegation including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate would give Israel a bad reputation all over the world. Definitely a pleasant surprise. After 15 hours of sailing we approach the Gaza coast. Palestinian fishermen blow their horns and cheer at us. At 8:30 in the morning we docked. On the shore dozens of television cameramen were waiting for us. Dozens of Palestinian police were on the scene. As soon as we docked armed police approached in order to prevent any unauthorized person from boarding the boat. We went on shore and got a warm reception from everyone. "Welcome" was heard again and again. As we were about to arrive at Gaza, I experienced a certain degree of stress. I did not know how I would be received by the Gazans in the knowledge that I am Israeli. The surprise was total. Not only was I warmly welcomed everywhere I went, but I received repeated requests for interviews. Gaza, I learned during my stay there, contains scores of TV camera operators. Some of them represent famous international channels, others are freelancers who hope to sell their product to a TV station, whether in Gaza or in the Arab world. In all the interviews I was asked: what is my message to the people of Gaza? My reply was: my message to Gazans and Israelis is identical: don't shoot, talk; and I added that the closure is a crime, the collective punishment of innocents. I am not the only Israeli who opposes the closure; there are many others like me. We are neighbours and must learn to live together with mutual respect and respect for human rights. A precondition for all that is the end of the Occupation. I got the impression that the words fell on receptive ears. I also emphasized in all the interviews that there must be an exchange of prisoners between Israel and the government of Gaza. That is a confidence-building measure. That too was welcomed. After we got off the boat, and after the members of the delegation finished being interviewed, which lasted a not insubstantial length of time, we got onto a bus that the government of Gaza put at our disposal during our tour in Gaza. The bus had known better days, but no one complained, for we knew that it was a consequence of the siege. They treated us as very important guests. The bus was always escorted by police cars with flashing lights and sirens which took care to clear the way for us. Security people travelled with us and guarded us to make sure nothing bad would befall us. I have never felt more secure. Our first stop was the Marna House hotel. The hotel manager Basil Shawwa gave us a warm and courteous welcome. The hotel has a beautiful courtyard that serves as a restaurant and a café. Every two members of the delegation received a room. The rooms were large, there was a TV (which I did not succeed in turning on, maybe because of my general incompetence with remotes) and a bathroom. The hardships were manifest in small things, the flow of water was not always adequate and such things as that, but we always received extremely courteous service. After we deposited our bags in the rooms and drank a cup of coffee, we got on the bus for a visit to the Shifa hospital. In the hospital we were received by the Health Minister, Dr. Basim Naeem. As would be the procedure in subsequent visits, we first assembled to hear a report on the place and its hardships. Naturally the closure and the siege played a starring role in all the lectures as the primary reason for the great distress that was everywhere in evidence. The Shifa hospital is the biggest of the Palestinian hospitals. A complex with several buildings. After the ceremony of handing over the medicines that we had brought, we toured the various departments, cancer, radiology and others. My layman's impression is that the hospital is making efforts to give as much as it can to the patients, but that is not enough. We saw this in every department: it would be possible to give much better and more efficacious care were it not for the closure and the shortage of medicines. After it became known that one of the members of the delegation was Israeli, a man wearing a jalabiyya approached me, and in fluent Hebrew requested that I help him to transfer his brother, who is a cancer patient, to Israel. The man is Ismail Yusuf Abu-Zor, who worked for years in renovations in Tel-Aviv. He said to me with much emotion, look what the closure is doing to us, it kills sick people. His brother, Muhammad Yusuf Abu Zor, is sick with blood cancer and the doctors at Shifa recommended that he receive treatment in Israel. There is a chance that he will recover if he receives appropriate treatment. But the cruel closure does not permit that, and few succeed in crossing the seven circles of Hell of the Israel Security Agency [ISA, also known as Shin Bet or Shabak – trans.], which determines who will live and who will die, and in most cases it sentences patients to death for "security reasons", and Ismail is bursting with frustration. I explained to him that I do not have the right connections to the ISA, that I am here because of my opposition to its policy. I told him about the organization Physicians for Human Rights in Israel which perhaps can be a life-line for him. The attending physician in Gaza has connections with the organization and we hope that he can help. From the cancer department we passed on to the MRI machine. The doctors inform us that the machine is only partially functional because Israel does not permit the passage of additional parts that would permit it to be fully exploited. Another example of the wickedness and evil that are at the base of the closure which harms patients who need the machine. The hospital has set aside two rooms for a modest museum that is dedicated to the consequences of Israel's bombing. The museum contains mainly pictures of citizens who have been harmed by the bombs, including children and women, certainly not a combatant population, and also tables on which fragments of Israeli bombs and missiles are displayed. The museum is impressive due to its very modesty. Not the splendour and the technology of Yad Vashem (Israel's official Holocaust Museum), but it clearly demonstrates the hellish consequences of the Israeli bombardments. As an Israeli I felt the unpleasant feeling that comes over Germans who visit Yad Vashem. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize that I am not equating the bombing of Gaza to the Holocaust; only expressing the feeling of discomfort that afflicts the visitor who comes from the country that has committed the crime. From the hospital we returned to the hotel for lunch. Not a gourmet meal at a fancy Tel Aviv restaurant, but definitely a tasty and satisfying meal. At the end of the meal we received an announcement from the organizers that our agenda had been changed a little because the Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, wanted to meet the delegation. The Prime Minister's office is in a villa at the end of a quiet street. At the entrance to the premises stood two policemen, who saluted the delegation. What impressed me was the simplicity of entering the building, compared to the practice in Israel. No checking of bags, no machines to detect metal, no guards scanning the visitor's body with metal-detectors, no need to empty our pockets. The whole time I was thinking to myself: there is an Israeli in the delegation. But they did not discriminate against me; I did not undergo a more rigorous inspection. Comparison to the Israeli practice cannot be avoided. When any delegation, no matter how friendly, meets with the Prime Minister in Israel, its members have to undergo a very strict inspection, and if it includes an Arab, he will be separated and humiliated by a series of inspections reserved for Arabs only. The Prime Minister's office is definitely impressive. In the reception room the government ministers stood in a line. Each of us shook hands with the ministers until we reached Haniyeh, a man of large dimensions, wearing a suit but not a tie. I introduced myself by name and the country I came from, added a few words in condemnation of the closure and I expressed the hope that there would soon be an exchange of prisoners between the two sides, and he replied, inshallah. Not for nothing was the reception room full of photographers. The Gaza government had planned a ceremony in the full sense of the word. Ismail Haniyeh spoke first. He highly praised the delegation's members, called them heroes who had risked their lives, and he offered Palestinian citizenship to each one of us. The Palestinian people, he continued, is a people that loves peace and justice, but they will not waive their legitimate rights. He did not mention Israel by name, but spoke of the Occupation and the occupiers that deprive the Palestinians of their rights, and as long as it continues, the resistance too will continue. We are not against the Jews, he said, and in fact there is a Jew in the delegation – he said while facing in my direction – but against the Occupation and the occupiers that are depriving the Palestinian people of their basic rights. Gaza is a place that is tolerant of all religions, and as evidence of that he pointed in the direction of the Catholic priest of Gaza who was present. Some members of the delegation spoke after Haniyeh. The first was Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who as we have said is a member of the Palestinian parliament and formerly a minister in the national unity government. Barghouti, a secularist who heads the Palestinian National Initiative, received much honour because he refused to be a part of Abu Mazen's government (which he criticizes harshly as collaborating with the Israeli Occupation and to which he referred in conversation with me as a "Pétain government"). He called for Palestinian unity and Haniyeh jumped in and invited him to participate in a session of the government in Gaza. Barghouti replied something that caused much laughter, but was not translated into English (my guess: "I have enough problems, and now you want to get me into more trouble?"). This is what is known as a "bear-hug". Other members of the delegation also spoke, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, who condemned the closure and stressed the importance of non-violent struggle. The problems that must be dealt with in the conflict between the two peoples are difficult and complex, but the peace accord in Northern Ireland proved that even protracted and difficult conflicts can be resolved by negotiations, and she expressed the hope that Israeli-Palestinian peace would be achieved to the benefit of both peoples. After the speeches, Ismail Haniyeh presented each member of the delegation with a scarf in the colours of the Palestinian flag and a gilt medallion on which was printed a map of Palestine with Gaza outlined in red with the words "Free Gaza" in Arabic and English. At the end of the ceremony we accompanied the entire entourage of ministers and other VIPs to another room where light refreshments were awaiting us, cans of non-alcoholic drinks and cakes. After the ceremony, I tried my luck with the issue of the captive Gilad Shalit. I turned to the Catholic priest, a short-statured man with a full body, wearing a beret, who smiled a lot and exchanged words with everyone, and I got the impression that he was an insider on the Gazan political scene. I approached him, introduced myself, and told him about my desire to meet Gilad Shalit. I told him that it was important that Shalit meet during his captivity with an Israeli from the Israeli peace movement, and hear about the circumstances of his long captivity from the lips of a man who opposes the policies of the government of Israel. He thought it was an excellent idea. I asked him whom I should speak to among the present public figures, and he pointed to the Health Minister as one who is very close to Haniyeh. The Health Minister was a kind of half-acquaintance, for we had met that morning during the visit to the Shifa Hospital, and I had exchanged a few words with him there. That made my mission a little easier. I turned to the Minister and requested to meet with Gilad Shalit. I repeated the reasons I had mentioned to the priest. I told the Minister that I was aware of the sensitivity of the subject, and I was prepared to be taken to the place of captivity with my eyes blindfolded, to be uncovered only in the room where Gilad Shalit is located, and for the conversation between us to be in the presence of one of his captors who speaks Hebrew, so that nothing would be hidden. The Minister did not reply in the negative, only said that this is a very complex issue, but he promised to look into it and give me an answer the next day. To my regret it did not work out. From conversations with people of lower rank, I understood that there are very few people who know where Shalit is located, and the main reason why visits are not permitted (for example by representatives of the Red Cross) stems from the fear that Israel, with its technological superiority, could trace the route of the visitors and thereby find the place where he is being held. Paradoxically, it can be said that Hamas wants to keep Gilad alive at all costs, and to prevent Israel from carrying out a military rescue operation that could cause his death, as happened with Nahshon Waxman, who was captured ("kidnapped" in the language of the Establishment that has been adopted by the media), and whose place of captivity was found. Instead of conducting negotiations for an exchange of prisoners they sent a military unit to "liberate" him, and in consequence, Waxman was killed with his captors and during the action another Israeli soldier was killed. In other words, as things look from Gaza, Gilad will be freed only as a result of negotiations in which Israel will accede to Hamas' demand that it free prisoners, or he will not be released at all. (Until, God forbid, he evaporates like the navigator Ron Arad). To the government of Israel, Gilad Shalit is no longer a soldier who must be liberated in an agreement for exchange of prisoners, but merchandise on which the price-tag is too high. Thus does the government betray its soldiers. In the evening we met with civil society, which is composed of various organizations the greater part of which are secular in orientation. In the room we saw pictures of Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi, a physician by training, among the foundation-stones of the secular Palestinian left. In the Second World War he fought against the Nazis in the desert army that the British army set up. He was among the founders of the PLO, he founded the Palestinian Red Crescent, was an interlocutor of the Israeli left and the head of the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation at the Madrid Conference (1991). He supported the two-state solution but opposed the Oslo Accords because they circumvented the issue of the settlements. Of course he was a strong opponent of the Israeli occupation from the beginning, and he was exiled several times from his home in Gaza, once to Sinai, another time to Lebanon, but he always returned to his home in Gaza. He died in 2007 at age 88. There is no doubt that Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi is the political polar opposite of the Hamas regime. But the circumstances under which we met with the civil society did not permit a serious discussion of the problems of Palestinian society. The closure and its problems cast their shadow over everything. Left and right suffer together and resist together, the main message at the meeting with the guests from abroad was: lift the closure. One of the civil society leaders is Dr. Mona El-Farra, a veteran Palestinian secular and feminist activist, with whom I talked a little in the evening at the hotel. She is a fervent supporter of a secular democratic state for the two peoples. If a two-state solution cannot be avoided, then she sees it as a transitory stage to the single state. Since we're already talking about vision, I said to her, let us dream of a free democratic and secular Middle East. The idea definitely appealed to her. There is no doubt that the Hamas regime and the Israeli closure are not the optimal environment for secular and democratic political activism, but it is clear that she and her comrades are active in grassroots organizing among the population. 30 October 2008 In the morning we set out for a tour of the Strip, on our way to the Jabaliya refugee camp and Beit Lahiya. The traffic on the streets of Gaza is conspicuous for its absence. The guide who accompanied us told us that we were now travelling on the main street of Gaza, a road usually packed with traffic, but the results of the Israeli closure that had drastically reduced the supply of petroleum transferred to Gaza are clearly visible. There are hardly any walls without slogans written on them, some of them political, not just Hamas, but mostly so, and some of them praise the martyrs who fell in battle for Gaza. The route to Jabaliya goes by partially-paved roads and others that are still sand roads full of holes and puddles. The guide explained to us that it was all a consequence of a shortage of construction materials. Buildings that had begun to be constructed and roads that had begun to be paved, all stopped due to the closure which keeps construction and paving materials out of Gaza. The sides of the roads are full of garbage, junk, and suchlike devastation. The regime is not free at the moment to clean the streets and collect garbage. Most energy is devoted to survival, both that of the regime and of the residents. The refugee camp, home to over a hundred thousand people, is a very congested place. Houses touch houses, some of the streets are very narrow and the bus has difficulty maneuvering between the parked and moving cars. As things look from the moving bus the traffic seems to be heavier in the camp, the shops are open but the merchants sit outside awaiting customers. We are on our way to Beit Lahiya and from there to the point nearest to the Israeli border. We got off the bus and found ourselves with a small group of demonstrators, most of them youths, some of them children, waving flags, yelling and chanting slogans against Israel and the closure. Photographers accompanied us the whole time. We walked towards a demolished house, the house of a farmer near the Israeli border that was destroyed by one of the bombs. Not far off a heavily-fortified position of the Israeli army was visible. Speeches were given which I did not understand but the contents of which I could guess. Michele Giorgio, the Middle East correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, asked me how I felt here, facing an Israeli army position, in the midst of a Palestinian demonstration against Israel? I replied to him that undoubtedly it is not a comfortable position, but I came to Gaza because I oppose the closure, and that is my message to the Palestinians as an Israeli and as a citizen of the world, even here in front of the Israeli army. On our way back to Gaza, we stopped at the Jabaliya camp in order to visit the community centre. At the entrance to the building we were welcomed by a group of young men and women who were waiting for us, dressed in traditional costumes. A secular hand had left its imprint on this centre, which among other things was manifest in the fact that we shook hands with the young women – usually not the practice in a very religious Muslim society. In the centre we received a crash course on the situation in Gaza by means of a projector and the explanations of the director. Most of the facts were known to me, for example that this is the most densely-populated place in the world and that Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into the biggest prison in the world, but I also learned one or two new things, for example, that the birthrate in the Strip is 5.7 per woman, which the speaker pointed out with pride. I thought to myself that that is not a cause for celebration, because societies in which the birthrate is high are usually also societies that suffer from poverty and underdevelopment. After the lecture the community centre's dance troupe, boys and girls together, performed dabke dances for us, into the circle of which most members of the group were drawn. At the end of the artistic segment we got onto the roof of the building where the children drew a large mural, and each of us was asked to sign our name on the drawing. Before our departure we received an album of photos of Gaza, which, if we did not know where we were and the circumstances under which we had gone there, might have given the impression that Gaza was one of the most beautiful touristic and recreational places in the Middle East, if not the world, for truth to tell, Gaza has the potential for tourism, if only peace would come. We proceeded to a rehabilitation centre. A new and well-equipped building, contributed from abroad. There children and youths wounded by Israel's bombing undergo rehabilitation. Most of them had serious disabilities as a result of loss of limbs. All of them sat in the hall in wheelchairs. I felt ashamed to be Israeli. This visit, like all the previous ones, was accompanied by speeches, and they were not pleasant to the Israeli ear, for the consequences of the bombings were displayed before us in their full ugliness. It was one of those moments when solidarity and compassion come very close together. At the end of the visit the delegation received a large map of historical Palestine as it existed before the birth of the State of Israel. Return to Israel I took leave of the group in the afternoon, on my way to the Erez checkpoint. I was compelled to leave a day and a half before the others because of a previous commitment to participate in a symposium on Friday 31 October 2008 that was organized by the Committee Against Torture at Artists' House in Tel Aviv as part of the events around the exhibition "Silence over the abyss". Those who were responsible for the group immediately arranged for a police car to take me to the Erez checkpoint. It was the scariest ride of my life. The driver drove through the narrow streets of Jabaliya at an insane speed, and the siren was operating non-stop as if they were transporting a head of state for whom the route had to be cleared. Beside the driver sat an armed policeman, and another one sat beside me in the back seat, lest, God forbid, any harm befall me. We arrived at the last point to which Gazan vehicles are allowed to go, I thanked the policemen for their services, and proceeded on foot to the Erez checkpoint. Between the last Palestinian point and the Israeli checkpoint there is a zone devoid of humanity for about a kilometre or two, which must be crossed on foot. While the official policy is "not to talk to Hamas", the reality is that they talk to it all the time. The last Palestinian inspection point reports to the ISA at Erez on every person who is about to arrive, in my case as well. After I crossed the demilitarized zone I arrived at the entrance gates of Erez. A small group of people were already waiting there, most of them journalists and UN people and a few Palestinians, and me, the only Israeli. The doors to the "inspection palace" (and indeed they have built a structure of impressive dimensions) were sealed and all the area was surrounded by a mighty wall which conveys the message that only an atom bomb could destroy it. Suddenly a Palestinian approached me and handed me his cellular telephone to talk to somebody from Israeli security. The Palestinian worked at the place under orders from the ISA, which instructs him whom to let in and who must return to Gaza. The anonymous voice asked me my name, my ID card number (pure bureaucracy, they already knew everything from the information that had been transmitted to them from the Palestinian inspection point) and hung up. A few more minutes passed and the Palestinian (who was anonymous to me – there was no time to start a conversation) asked me to accompany him to one of the steel doors which opened like in a James Bond movie. I found myself in a vast hall, full of electric doors and electronic inspection cubicles. The Palestinian worker asked me to open the zipper of my suitcase, put it on a conveyor belt that undoubtedly transported it to a sealed room made of reinforced concrete in case there was a bomb in it. That was the last time I saw a flesh-and-blood human being in that vast inspection hall. From that point I was addressed by means of loudspeakers like in Big Brother, but here it was not a TV game, but more like 1984 than George Orwell's book. The anonymous voice from the loudspeaker constantly gives me instructions. Enter by the door on the right when the green light is lit, then enter the inspection cubicle, spread your legs and put them on the foot marks impressed on the floor, raise your hands, take everything out of your pockets and hold it in your hand. A machine scans me all over, 360 degrees. I exit the cubicle and then the voice tells me to enter the door on the right (or to the left facing me) on which there is a green light and I find myself again in a locked and sealed area awaiting the next order. I wait and wait and then the voice instructs me to open another door. I look for it. The voice sees all, and tells me not there; to the left (or to the right facing me, it depends where you're standing) and after a process of trial and error I find the door and lo, I am in the baggage-inspection room and I see people again, thank God. Now comes baggage-inspection stage. I am permitted to watch the inspection, but at a distance more than an arm's length. The female inspector wears white gloves and goes through each item. Every sock, all underwear undergo a meticulous inspection lest explosives be concealed in them. Even my medications are inspected one by one, as if she knows what they are. (How is it that there is no pharmacist or doctor on the premises who can verify which medications are legitimate and do not contain explosives? Such laxity!) The inspector informs me that she will take the suitcase for an additional inspection without my presence. I protest and request to be present, but the officer responsible for security informs me that that is the procedure. I protest and tell him that just as you do not believe me I do not believe you, maybe you will plant something incriminating, and the reply – typically Israeli – was: "don't worry". Blessed be he who always worries, I tell him. You have the power, and the fact is I have no real option to resist apart from verbally. The suitcase is taken for that secret inspection. While I was waiting for my suitcase to return from the secret inspection, the security officer approached me and informed me that I must return to the body-search hall where they spoke to me, as I said before, through a loudspeaker. What happened? What more is there to check after they scanned me from all directions? "Supplementaries" he calls it. And so I find myself once again in that inspection cubicle, spreading my legs and raising my hands, but this time, upon completion of the additional scan, I am taken to another sealed room where I am asked to strip down to my underwear. "Big Brother" orders me to put the clothes into a scanning machine. Of course they found nothing suspicious. But that was not enough. In the twisted brain of the ISA at Erez, maybe I had swallowed an unexploded Israeli cluster-bomb unit, which the Palestinians wanted to return to Israel my means of me, and so a security inspector came into the room, equipped with a metal detecting device which he passed over my naked body. Nothing incriminating was found. After the inspection I was permitted to get dressed. With my clothes – which had been suspect until a moment ago – now on my body, I wait for the instruction from the loudspeaker to open the steel door and again find myself in the baggage inspection hall. What was the purpose of the additional body search? In my opinion it was intended for humiliation only. They treated me like a suspect Palestinian. I am filled with hate for the harassment, the harassers and those who came up with the idea for that course of humiliation. If that is how I feel after a single inspection, it is not hard to imagine what Palestinians feel who undergo that measure of humiliation, which has nothing to do with the security of the State, hundreds of times. Maybe here can be found one of the sources of willingness to carry explosive belts or pipe bombs. The conclusion of the security orgy was stage 1 of my return to Israel. My passport was transferred to immigration control, but it was not stamped, and so in that sense I am still outside Israel. My passports were transferred to the border station police post. I have more than one passport, including a World Citizen passport, which was produced by an organization that believes in a world without borders according to which all humanity are citizens of the globe. That passport aroused the suspicions of the ISA people and they photographed it several times. As I learned later, they transferred it to the police with a note indicating that they suspected that it was a falsified document. For the ISA people at the Erez checkpoint a World Citizen is a suspicious thing, for in their world-view, which is as small as an ant, whoever wants to live in a world without borders is at least a forger if not worse. I was asked to wait in the departure lounge where I sat for about an hour. Suddenly I hear a policeman shouting from the other end of the hall "Sapiro (thereby mispronouncing my name), come here". I rebuked him for the way he addressed me. The last time anybody talked to me like that was when I was an army recruit 55 years ago. I was transferred to another policeman, who informed me that I would now be transferred to the Sderot police station for questioning. My passports were in his hand. Bravo for the police, which sent a special vehicle to transport a perpetrator from a well-known crime family directly to the police questioners. I arrived at the Sderot station at nine in the evening in full police glory, and I was led to the investigator on duty. The policeman who transported me gave the investigator the passports as well as the ISA note according to which the World Citizen passport was suspected to be fake. The investigator, Command Sergeant Meir Abergil, read me the accusation, the main point of which was that I had violated a military order that bars Israeli citizens from entering the Gaza Strip. I am not obliged to say anything, but anything I say may be used against me. If I say nothing, that too will be considered against me. I am entitled to consult with a lawyer before the interrogation begins. The investigator strikes me as businesslike, and he does not make a fuss, which is a pleasant surprise. I waived my right to consult with a lawyer. Even though I face what is formally a criminal offence, in reality it is a political investigation, and I have lots of experience with those. My policy is always to talk and to elaborate so much that sometimes my testimony turns into a political speech; and who knows, maybe it will even influence the investigator. I do not intend to report on all my testimony, which lasted more than an hour. It is already late and besides, this report has stretched out longer than planned. In essence, I focused on the fact that I had been invited to participate in a delegation as a journalist and also as a person who is known as an activist and opponent of the Occupation and the closure. It is the duty of a journalist to be in places where other citizens have difficulty going. Regarding the military order: it is not clear to me that it applies universally, and certainly there are situations in which it does not apply. If I were returning after having met Gilad Shalit I certainly would not be investigated but rather welcomed very warmly. Therefore the application of the order derives from political considerations which are necessarily arbitrary. I explained to my questioner that for the purposes of the investigation I declare that I visited Gaza, not just as an Israel but as a citizen of the world who opposes collective punishment of the kind that Israel is imposing on Gaza. I elaborated on my explanations, that not only is my World Citizen passport not fake but it expresses a humanistic and democratic world view. I got the impression that that point persuaded the investigator to agree that it was not a falsified document, but the edict of the ISA is stronger than any logical explanation, so the passport remained with the police for "verification". (On 12 November the Sderot police informed me that there was no reason the passport could not be returned to me. I asked them to send it to me, but the investigator insisted that I go to pick it up personally, and so I was bullied into going once again from Tel Aviv to Sderot). At the end of the interrogation I was released on bail, with a commitment not to visit Gaza in the next 30 days. I got home near midnight. The second part of my return to Israel was over. The next day, according to plan, I participated in the symposium at Artists' House in Tel Aviv. In conclusion I am full of satisfaction that I had the honour of being part of the humanitarian delegation that set out on the second voyage to break the Israeli closure of Gaza. (My friend Jeff Halper, chairman of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, participated in the first voyage). Aid for a million and a half besieged human beings outweighs any military order. And besides: in a democratic state, generals do not give orders to civilians. Another example of how Israel is not a normal democracy. In Gaza I found people who yearn for peace. If I may be permitted to use a somewhat flowery expression: they thirstily drank my messages of peace, which of course were not just mine but spoke for a large constituency in Israel, even if it is not a majority, it is still a great many people. The closure affects everything. There is no aspect of civil life in Gaza that is not affected by it, and of course those who suffer worst are the sick, especially babies and children. In the Gaza Strip there is no hunger of the type that is seen in parts of Africa, but there is great hardship, and we do not have to wait until the situation gets to such a low point. The Hamas regime is a concrete political fact, at least at this stage. The refusal to talk to it is reminiscent of the old refusal to talk to the PLO. It was not wise then and it is not wise today. The impression that I got was that there are people to talk to and there is something to talk about. I have no doubt that Israeli gestures such as lifting the closure would be more fruitful – including on the Gilad Shalit issue – than a continuation of Israel's policy of force would be. These days it is becoming clear that the Defence Minister has gotten tired of the calm that has been respected by the Hamas regime, and has decided on baseless grounds to return to the language of missiles, bombs and raids. As usual, the military correspondents have acted as an extension of the IDF Spokesperson's office and they have justified the violation of the calm by the Israeli invasion army. During the two very full days I spent in Gaza, I also succeeded in making several acquaintances with impressive people, and I hope to strengthen my ties with them. My sojourn in Gaza did not turn me into a Hamas supporter, for as a secular person I oppose all religious fundamentalism, whatever form it takes. There are many Israelis who believe that the internal Palestinian rift that the Israeli Occupation encourages and to a great extent creates is good for Israel. That is the short-term wisdom of fools. The Palestinian people must be permitted to choose their own path free of the shackles of the Occupation. I call on peace-loving Israelis who oppose the closure to implement Nobel Peace Prize laureate Reverend Martin Luther King's principles of civil disobedience. The appeal is directed mainly to retirees in their 60s and 70s whose health permits them to sail from Cyprus to Gaza. The youth among us, like the brave Occupation refusers who are sitting in military prisons, are implementing civil disobedience with their refusal to enlist in the Occupation army. We retirees can fulfill a similar role by breaking the closure of Gaza. The Gazans warmly welcomed those who went. The greater the number of people who refuse to obey the military order, the harder it will be to put them on trial. It will be difficult for the State to jail scores and maybe hundreds of old people who tell the regime: any law that forbids us to express solidarity with suffering people through non-violent action is patently illegal. |
