3 jan 2009
what the medics see, do, and are subjected to; uncensored
On 31st December, around 2 am, two emergency medical services personnel were targeted by an Israeli missile as they attempted to reach injured in the Jabaliya region, northern Gaza. The first died immediately, the second soon after of complications from his internal injuries.
Two days later, 2 more medics were injured in the area east of Gaza, again in the line of duty, again trying to reach the injured.
Under the Geneva Conventions, Israel is obliged to allow and ensure safe passage to medical personnel to the injured. Instead, Israel routinely targets them.
At the Jabaliya Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) station, the team there tells me of their injuries. Half, they say, of emergency medics and drivers in Gaza have been injured by Israel while trying to perform the duties.
One shows me a scar from a gunshot wound to his arm. Another tells of being twice injured: once, shot in the stomach, another time, also shot in the arm. The bullet holes in their ambulances speak for themselves.
Two days later, 2 more medics were injured in the area east of Gaza, again in the line of duty, again trying to reach the injured.
Under the Geneva Conventions, Israel is obliged to allow and ensure safe passage to medical personnel to the injured. Instead, Israel routinely targets them.
At the Jabaliya Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) station, the team there tells me of their injuries. Half, they say, of emergency medics and drivers in Gaza have been injured by Israel while trying to perform the duties.
One shows me a scar from a gunshot wound to his arm. Another tells of being twice injured: once, shot in the stomach, another time, also shot in the arm. The bullet holes in their ambulances speak for themselves.
Shocking photos
|
Internationals from the ISM (international solidarity movement) and the Free Gaza movement have decided to join the EMT personnel in their work around Gaza.
I start in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza at the eastern border, where I meet an amiable team of professionals. After delivering a pregnant woman to hospital, our first serious call is to retrieve the bodies of two killed resistance fighters, hit by shells. The sight of the one in our ambulance is ugly, his face has exploded. The knowledge of his life and death is uglier: he was born into a life of occupation, and he has chosen to resist, as one would when being invaded. The ugliest aspect lies in the knowledge that he was undoubtedly a father, a husband, a man who probably has a mixture of photos on his phone: beautiful women, cute children, cats, a fighter with a gun, pictures of his family, random lovely scenes of nature, and the slapstick video clips that seem to be common among those with high tech-cell phones. He was a regular guy, of this I’m sure, thrust into an unbearable, deadly role. His silver lining is that at least he doesn’t have to live in hell on earth any longer. The next call, at just after 4 am, is to retrieve one injured, one dead, at the American high school in Beit Lahia, the northwest of the Strip. We have to navigate roads that are more than pot-holed, destroyed by time, lack of construction materials (the siege), and more recently, the F-16 missiles. Finding only the one injured man, we take him to hospital, returning after daybreak to find the corpse. After sunrise, we return to the northwest, passing a dead cow on the side of the road. En route, near the bombed high school, the van gets a flat. We walk in from there, moving quickly as drones and F-16s still circle, second and third strikes are all too common. In the light, I see what had been a large structure, a quality high school a friend had studied at. What’s left of the body has been found and brought out to the nearest clearing, the playground. [Later in the morning, I re-visit the site with a film crew, tell the story. I notice the sea beyond, hadn't seen it in the dim morning light. |
Notice the twisted wreckage of the playground, and the pieces of shrapnel littering the ground. As we film, 2 missiles blast in the vicinity. It's hard not to feel like prey in this open area, clearly visible]. I don’t immediately see the corpse unwrapped, but I suspect that he is not all there. The dead, a 24 year old night watchman, had no warning of the at least 2 missiles which leveled the school and tore him apart.
The medics work to load the corpse, first having to replace the flat tire. Working frantically, still fearful of potential strikes, they crowd the ambulance, hoist the van, replace the flat. A missile hits 50 metres away. Surely, undoubtedly, those warplanes above us know –from the markings of the ambulance, the clothes of the medics, the crystal clear photos their drones can take –that we are civilians and medics below. Yet they fire.
They change the tire, load the body, and we’re off, screeching as much as the tired ambulance and pathetic roads will allow. It’s straight around the back of the hospital, to the mortuary, where men mourning the latest dead before ours are ushered out, ordered to make room for this new body. In the cold room, the body is transferred to the fridge shelf, but while that happens the blanket comes undone. The patch of burned skin, in no way human, reveals itself to be a half-body, the head hanging loosely by what neck remains.
I see it, as I saw the dead man in the ambulance. And I write it, because everyone must see it, hear of it. The children of Gaza must see these images, or are these images, so we have no right to censorship from such gruesome deaths.
But I cry, too, at the disfigurement of the young corpse, and the knowledge that he is one of so many (over 470 now) killed in the last week.
The medics have seen ghastly things and urge me to keep it in, keep working. They must, and so I do.
We return to the centre, I leave them intending to return a day later, to spend my day reporting and writing. In the end I return to the ambulance station a half day later, as Israel ramps up its bloodletting.
The medics work to load the corpse, first having to replace the flat tire. Working frantically, still fearful of potential strikes, they crowd the ambulance, hoist the van, replace the flat. A missile hits 50 metres away. Surely, undoubtedly, those warplanes above us know –from the markings of the ambulance, the clothes of the medics, the crystal clear photos their drones can take –that we are civilians and medics below. Yet they fire.
They change the tire, load the body, and we’re off, screeching as much as the tired ambulance and pathetic roads will allow. It’s straight around the back of the hospital, to the mortuary, where men mourning the latest dead before ours are ushered out, ordered to make room for this new body. In the cold room, the body is transferred to the fridge shelf, but while that happens the blanket comes undone. The patch of burned skin, in no way human, reveals itself to be a half-body, the head hanging loosely by what neck remains.
I see it, as I saw the dead man in the ambulance. And I write it, because everyone must see it, hear of it. The children of Gaza must see these images, or are these images, so we have no right to censorship from such gruesome deaths.
But I cry, too, at the disfigurement of the young corpse, and the knowledge that he is one of so many (over 470 now) killed in the last week.
The medics have seen ghastly things and urge me to keep it in, keep working. They must, and so I do.
We return to the centre, I leave them intending to return a day later, to spend my day reporting and writing. In the end I return to the ambulance station a half day later, as Israel ramps up its bloodletting.
Gaza: ICRC medical team still banned from Gaza
03.01.2009 Palestinians sit on the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
For the second consecutive day, Israeli authorities have refused to allow an ICRC emergency medical team into Gaza. The ICRC had notified the authorities of the team’s arrival in advance, but they have been awaiting authorization to enter the Strip since Friday morning, even though the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel has been open for other humanitarian workers and foreigners to leave the Strip.
The team, which consists of four specialists led by an experienced ICRC war surgeon, is to help the staff of Shifa hospital with complex operations on people injured by the bombing.
" It is absolutely essential that this team get into Gaza now, as this is when they are most needed, " said Pierre Wettach, the ICRC head of delegation in Israel and the occupied territories.
For the second consecutive day, Israeli authorities have refused to allow an ICRC emergency medical team into Gaza. The ICRC had notified the authorities of the team’s arrival in advance, but they have been awaiting authorization to enter the Strip since Friday morning, even though the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel has been open for other humanitarian workers and foreigners to leave the Strip.
The team, which consists of four specialists led by an experienced ICRC war surgeon, is to help the staff of Shifa hospital with complex operations on people injured by the bombing.
" It is absolutely essential that this team get into Gaza now, as this is when they are most needed, " said Pierre Wettach, the ICRC head of delegation in Israel and the occupied territories.
03.01.2009 A Palestinian family rest in a United Nations aid centre in Rafah after fleeing their home.
A week after the outbreak of hostilities, air strikes in Gaza continue to cause civilian casualties. Kamal Edwan Hospital and other hospitals in Gaza report the arrival of many new victims, including children. |
The Palestine Red Crescent society (PRCS) reports that between mid-day Friday and mid-day Saturday, their ambulances transported the bodies of nine children who had been killed.
Uncertainty and fear as to what will happen next are mounting, particularly since the Israeli military dropped leaflets by air on the northern part of Gaza, warning citizens to leave the area for their own safety. People are worried that attacks on homes will intensify.
Uncertainty and fear as to what will happen next are mounting, particularly since the Israeli military dropped leaflets by air on the northern part of Gaza, warning citizens to leave the area for their own safety. People are worried that attacks on homes will intensify.
In southern Israel, the sirens indicating the launch of a rocket continue to go off at regular intervals, sending people running to air-raid shelters. Over the week to Saturday 3 January, the Ma gen David Adom reported four deaths and 55 persons injured.
ICRC action Hospitals
Essential services
The ICRC is working with the Israeli authorities to coordinate the movements of Palestinian Water Authority technicians carrying out repairs on water installations damaged by air strikes so that they can move around safely. Similarly, the ICRC is coordinating the movements of Palestinian Telecom technicians with the Israeli authorities so that generators for vital communications with the Gaza S trip can be refuelled.
Action by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Magen David Adom
The Palestine Red Crescent Society continues to work around the clock. From Friday to Saturday mid-day, its ambulances transported 78 casualties to hospitals and collected fifteen bodies.
In addition to helping Israeli civilians affected by rockets fired from Gaza, the Magen David Adom (MDA) also continues to assist wounded children from Gaza who are evacuated through the Erez crossing point. One severely wounded 16-year-old Palestinian boy was transported by an MDA ambulance from Erez to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
ICRC action Hospitals
- The main generator at Shifa Hospital has been repaired with spare parts provided by the ICRC and is now running smoothly. This is an important improvement as it ensures a steady supply of electricity to the hospital, including all life-saving equipment.
- Tal Al Sultan Maternity Hospital near Rafah has received four pallets of medical equipment and spare parts.
- One pallet of basic medical equipment, plus blankets to keep patients warm, has been handed over to Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
- One generator is to be delivered today to Beit Hanun Hospital, north of Gaza City.
Essential services
The ICRC is working with the Israeli authorities to coordinate the movements of Palestinian Water Authority technicians carrying out repairs on water installations damaged by air strikes so that they can move around safely. Similarly, the ICRC is coordinating the movements of Palestinian Telecom technicians with the Israeli authorities so that generators for vital communications with the Gaza S trip can be refuelled.
Action by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Magen David Adom
The Palestine Red Crescent Society continues to work around the clock. From Friday to Saturday mid-day, its ambulances transported 78 casualties to hospitals and collected fifteen bodies.
In addition to helping Israeli civilians affected by rockets fired from Gaza, the Magen David Adom (MDA) also continues to assist wounded children from Gaza who are evacuated through the Erez crossing point. One severely wounded 16-year-old Palestinian boy was transported by an MDA ambulance from Erez to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Gaza and the world: Will anything change?
by Ramzy Baroud
In times of crisis, most Arabs tune in to Al-Jazeera television. Sometimes it’s comforting for the truth to be stated the way it is, with all of its gory and unsettling details, without blemishes and without censorship.
When Israel carried out massive air strikes against Gaza on Saturday, 27 December, terrorizing an already hostage and malnourished population, I too tuned in to Al-Jazeera.
Within seconds I learned of the tally: 290 deaths and climbing, with 700 more wounded, all in one day. But as dramatic as this event may have seemed – the highest Israeli inflicted death toll in one day in Palestine since Israel’s establishment in 1948 – there was nothing new to learn. Tragedies anywhere – natural or manmade – tend to lead to social, cultural, economic and political upheavals, revolutions even, that somehow alter the social, cultural, economic and ultimately political landscapes in the affected regions, save in Palestine.
I gazed pointlessly at the screen. Learning of the aftermath of such tragedies seems more of a ritual than a purposeful habit. The Arab and international responses to the killings can only serve as a reminder of how ineffectual and irrelevant, if not complacent their timid mutterings are.
Once again the US blamed Palestinians, and the Hamas “thugs” using words that defy logic, such as “Israel has the right to defend itself.” The statement remains as ludicrous as ever, for a country like Israel with an army that possesses the world’s most lethal weapons, including nuclear arms, cannot possibly feel threatened by an imprisoned population whose only defense mechanism are fertilizer-based homemade rockets.
While Israel has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians in Gaza (one thousand on Saturday alone) a handful of Israelis have reportedly died as a direct result of the Palestinian rockets in years. Do numbers matter at all?
European governments chose their words carefully, “expressing concern,” or “calling on Israel to use restraint” and so on. Arab governments were, as usual, distracted with trivialities, protocols and easily lost sight of the crisis at hand.
Then, the same, ever predictable outbursts began. Passionate callers from all over the world called various TV and radio stations in the Middle East and shouted, yelled, cried, vented, called on God, called on Arab leaders, called on all of those with “living conscience” to do something. In turn, audiences too cried at home as they listened to the heated commentary and watched footage of heaps of Palestinian bodies throughout the Gaza Strip.
The passion soon spilled to the streets of Arab capitals, of course under the ever-vigilant eyes of Arab police and secret services. Flags of US and Israel, and in some cases Egypt were set ablaze along with effigies of Bush and Israeli leaders.
‘Rising up to the occasion’ some Arab governments declared, with much hype their intention to send an airplane or two of medicine and food to Gaza, a few boxes clad with the donor country’s flag, flashed endlessly on local media. Meanwhile, news reports spoke of Palestinians attempting to flee the Gaza prison into the Sinai desert. They were met with decisive Egyptian security presence at the border.
Strangely enough, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas remained faithful to the script, despite Gaza’s unprecedented tragedy. On Sunday, he blamed Hamas for the bloodbath. "We talked to them (Hamas) and we told them, 'please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop,’ so that we could have avoided what happened."
Was Mr Abbas informed of the fact that Hamas hasn’t carried out one suicide bombing since 2005? Or that the ‘truce’ never compelled Israel to allow Palestinians in Gaza access to basic necessities and medicine? Or that it was Israel that attacked Gaza in November, killing several people, claiming that it obtained information of a secret Hamas plot?
Even stranger that while Abbas has chosen such a position, many Israelis are not convinced that the war on Gaza was at all related to the Hamas rockets, and is in fact an election ploy for desperate politicians vying for Israel’s dominating right wing vote in the upcoming February elections. In fact, the Israeli design against Gaza had little to do with the ‘escalation’ of the rocket attacks of mid December.
"Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip," wrote the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz on 28 December, which also revealed that the plan had been in effect for six months.
"Like the US assault on Iraq and the Israeli response to the abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser at the outset of the Second Lebanon War, little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians," said Haaretz.
And why should Israel devote a moment to the question of harming civilians or violating international law or any such seemingly irrelevant notions – as far as Israel is concerned - as long as their “Palestinian partners,” the Arab League, or the international community continue to teeter between silence, complacency, rhetoric and inaction?
By Thursday 1 January the death toll climbed to 420, according to Palestinian medics and news reports, and over 2000 wounded. A doctor from a Khan Younis clinic in Gaza told me on the phone, “Scores of the wounded are clinically dead. Others are so badly disfigured; I felt that death is of greater mercy for them than living. We had no more room at the Qarara Clinic. Body parts cluttered the hallways. People screamed in endless agony and we had not enough medicine or pain killers. So we had to choose which ones to treat and which not to. In that moment I genuinely wished I was killed in the Israeli strikes myself, but I kept running trying to do something, anything.”
Until Arab countries and nations translate their chants and condemnations into a practical and meaningful political action that can bring an end to the Israeli onslaughts against Palestinians, all that is likely to change are the numbers of dead and wounded. But still, one has to wonder if Israel kills a thousand more, ten thousand, or half of Gaza, will the US still blame Palestinians? Will Egypt open its Gaza border? Will Europe express the same “deep concern”? Will the Arabs issue the same redundant statements? Will things ever change? Ever?
In times of crisis, most Arabs tune in to Al-Jazeera television. Sometimes it’s comforting for the truth to be stated the way it is, with all of its gory and unsettling details, without blemishes and without censorship.
When Israel carried out massive air strikes against Gaza on Saturday, 27 December, terrorizing an already hostage and malnourished population, I too tuned in to Al-Jazeera.
Within seconds I learned of the tally: 290 deaths and climbing, with 700 more wounded, all in one day. But as dramatic as this event may have seemed – the highest Israeli inflicted death toll in one day in Palestine since Israel’s establishment in 1948 – there was nothing new to learn. Tragedies anywhere – natural or manmade – tend to lead to social, cultural, economic and political upheavals, revolutions even, that somehow alter the social, cultural, economic and ultimately political landscapes in the affected regions, save in Palestine.
I gazed pointlessly at the screen. Learning of the aftermath of such tragedies seems more of a ritual than a purposeful habit. The Arab and international responses to the killings can only serve as a reminder of how ineffectual and irrelevant, if not complacent their timid mutterings are.
Once again the US blamed Palestinians, and the Hamas “thugs” using words that defy logic, such as “Israel has the right to defend itself.” The statement remains as ludicrous as ever, for a country like Israel with an army that possesses the world’s most lethal weapons, including nuclear arms, cannot possibly feel threatened by an imprisoned population whose only defense mechanism are fertilizer-based homemade rockets.
While Israel has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians in Gaza (one thousand on Saturday alone) a handful of Israelis have reportedly died as a direct result of the Palestinian rockets in years. Do numbers matter at all?
European governments chose their words carefully, “expressing concern,” or “calling on Israel to use restraint” and so on. Arab governments were, as usual, distracted with trivialities, protocols and easily lost sight of the crisis at hand.
Then, the same, ever predictable outbursts began. Passionate callers from all over the world called various TV and radio stations in the Middle East and shouted, yelled, cried, vented, called on God, called on Arab leaders, called on all of those with “living conscience” to do something. In turn, audiences too cried at home as they listened to the heated commentary and watched footage of heaps of Palestinian bodies throughout the Gaza Strip.
The passion soon spilled to the streets of Arab capitals, of course under the ever-vigilant eyes of Arab police and secret services. Flags of US and Israel, and in some cases Egypt were set ablaze along with effigies of Bush and Israeli leaders.
‘Rising up to the occasion’ some Arab governments declared, with much hype their intention to send an airplane or two of medicine and food to Gaza, a few boxes clad with the donor country’s flag, flashed endlessly on local media. Meanwhile, news reports spoke of Palestinians attempting to flee the Gaza prison into the Sinai desert. They were met with decisive Egyptian security presence at the border.
Strangely enough, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas remained faithful to the script, despite Gaza’s unprecedented tragedy. On Sunday, he blamed Hamas for the bloodbath. "We talked to them (Hamas) and we told them, 'please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop,’ so that we could have avoided what happened."
Was Mr Abbas informed of the fact that Hamas hasn’t carried out one suicide bombing since 2005? Or that the ‘truce’ never compelled Israel to allow Palestinians in Gaza access to basic necessities and medicine? Or that it was Israel that attacked Gaza in November, killing several people, claiming that it obtained information of a secret Hamas plot?
Even stranger that while Abbas has chosen such a position, many Israelis are not convinced that the war on Gaza was at all related to the Hamas rockets, and is in fact an election ploy for desperate politicians vying for Israel’s dominating right wing vote in the upcoming February elections. In fact, the Israeli design against Gaza had little to do with the ‘escalation’ of the rocket attacks of mid December.
"Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip," wrote the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz on 28 December, which also revealed that the plan had been in effect for six months.
"Like the US assault on Iraq and the Israeli response to the abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser at the outset of the Second Lebanon War, little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians," said Haaretz.
And why should Israel devote a moment to the question of harming civilians or violating international law or any such seemingly irrelevant notions – as far as Israel is concerned - as long as their “Palestinian partners,” the Arab League, or the international community continue to teeter between silence, complacency, rhetoric and inaction?
By Thursday 1 January the death toll climbed to 420, according to Palestinian medics and news reports, and over 2000 wounded. A doctor from a Khan Younis clinic in Gaza told me on the phone, “Scores of the wounded are clinically dead. Others are so badly disfigured; I felt that death is of greater mercy for them than living. We had no more room at the Qarara Clinic. Body parts cluttered the hallways. People screamed in endless agony and we had not enough medicine or pain killers. So we had to choose which ones to treat and which not to. In that moment I genuinely wished I was killed in the Israeli strikes myself, but I kept running trying to do something, anything.”
Until Arab countries and nations translate their chants and condemnations into a practical and meaningful political action that can bring an end to the Israeli onslaughts against Palestinians, all that is likely to change are the numbers of dead and wounded. But still, one has to wonder if Israel kills a thousand more, ten thousand, or half of Gaza, will the US still blame Palestinians? Will Egypt open its Gaza border? Will Europe express the same “deep concern”? Will the Arabs issue the same redundant statements? Will things ever change? Ever?
Molten Lead
United Nations school in Jabalya jan 6 2009
by Uri Avnery
Just after midnight Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.
It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.
“Israel must defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas spokesmen declared.
As a matter of fact, the ceasefire did not collapse, because there was no real ceasefire to start with. The main requirement for any ceasefire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again.
The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.
Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real ceasefire under these conditions.
That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence.”
From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the ceasefire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the ceasefire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.
What was the aim? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.
Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of Folly.” After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”
For years, the occupation authorities favored the Islamic movement in the occupied territories. All other political activities were rigorously suppressed but their activities in the mosques were permitted. The calculation was simple and naive: at the time, the PLO was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the current Satan. The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was therefore viewed as an ally.
With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987 the Islamic movement officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of “Islamic Resistance Movement”) and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.
Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch of the Zionist organization. The logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the rise of Hamas for sure.
But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a “plucked chicken.” Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement. The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life. Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting “gestures.”
Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election – the most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.
And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to “liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza” – with blood, fire and columns of smoke.
The official name of the war is “Cast Lead,” two words from a children’s song about a Hanukkah toy.
It would be more accurate to call it “the Election War.”
In the past, too, military action has been taken during election campaigns. Menachem Begin bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor during the 1981 campaign. When Shimon Peres claimed that this was an election gimmick, Begin cried out at his next rally: “Jews, do you believe that I would send our brave boys to their death or, worse, to be taken prisoner by human animals, in order to win an election?” Begin won.
Peres is no Begin. When, during the 1996 election campaign, he ordered the invasion of Lebanon (operation “Grapes of Wrath”), everybody was convinced that he had done it for electoral gain. The war was a failure and Peres lost the elections and Binyamin Netanyahu came to power.
Barak and Tzipi Livni are now resorting to the same old trick. According to the polls, Barak’s predicted election result rose within 48 hours by five Knesset seats. About 80 dead Palestinians for each seat. But it is difficult to walk on a pile of dead bodies. The success may evaporate in a minute if the war comes to be considered by the Israeli public as a failure. For example, if the rockets continue to hit Beersheva, or if the ground attack leads to heavy Israeli casualties.
The timing was chosen meticulously from another angle too. The attack started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders are on holiday until after New Year. The calculation: even if somebody wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That ensured several days free from outside pressures.
Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush’s last days in the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet entered office and had a readymade pretext for keeping silent: “there is only one President.” The silence does not bode well for the term of president Obama.
The main line was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This was endlessly repeated on all the news programs and talk shows.
This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica of the second Lebanon war.
The strategic concept is the same: to terrorize the civilian population by unremitting attacks from the air, sowing death and destruction. This poses no danger to the pilots, since the Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons at all. The calculation: if the entire life-supporting infrastructure in the Strip is utterly destroyed and total anarchy ensues, the population will rise up and overthrow the Hamas regime. Mahmoud Abbas will then ride back into Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.
In Lebanon, this calculation did not work out. The bombed population, including the Christians, rallied behind Hizbullah, and Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. Something similar will probably happen this time, too. Generals are experts on using weapons and moving troops, not on mass psychology.
Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it did not succeed. Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by other means.
It may be that the army will “have no alternative” but to re-conquer the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams – except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to government policy. When the ground invasion starts, everything will depend on the motivation and capabilities of the Hamas fighters vis-à-vis the Israeli soldiers. Nobody can know what will happen.
Day after day, night after night, Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel broadcasts the atrocious pictures: heaps of mutilated bodies, tearful relatives looking for their dear ones among the dozens of corpses spread out on the ground, a woman pulling her young daughter from under the rubble, doctors without medicines trying to save the lives of the wounded. (The English-language Al-Jazeera, unlike its Arab-language sister-station, has undergone an amazing about face, broadcasting only a sanitized picture and freely distributing Israeli government propaganda. It would be interesting to know what happened there.)
Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in Israel.
But there is another thing that is being imprinted on the minds of these millions: the picture of the miserable, corrupt, passive Arab regimes.
As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of shame.
For the million and a half Arabs in Gaza, who are suffering so terribly, the only opening to the world that is not dominated by Israel is the border with Egypt. Only from there can food arrive to sustain life and medicaments to save the injured. This border remains closed at the height of the horror. The Egyptian army has blocked the only way for food and medicines to enter, while surgeons operate on the wounded without anesthetics.
Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.
This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.
This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand.
My taxi driver in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form them into a combat unit and send them off to head the coming ground attack on Gaza?
by Uri Avnery
Just after midnight Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.
It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.
“Israel must defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas spokesmen declared.
As a matter of fact, the ceasefire did not collapse, because there was no real ceasefire to start with. The main requirement for any ceasefire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again.
The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.
Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real ceasefire under these conditions.
That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence.”
From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the ceasefire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the ceasefire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.
What was the aim? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.
Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of Folly.” After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”
For years, the occupation authorities favored the Islamic movement in the occupied territories. All other political activities were rigorously suppressed but their activities in the mosques were permitted. The calculation was simple and naive: at the time, the PLO was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the current Satan. The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was therefore viewed as an ally.
With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987 the Islamic movement officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of “Islamic Resistance Movement”) and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.
Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch of the Zionist organization. The logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the rise of Hamas for sure.
But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a “plucked chicken.” Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement. The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life. Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting “gestures.”
Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election – the most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.
And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to “liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza” – with blood, fire and columns of smoke.
The official name of the war is “Cast Lead,” two words from a children’s song about a Hanukkah toy.
It would be more accurate to call it “the Election War.”
In the past, too, military action has been taken during election campaigns. Menachem Begin bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor during the 1981 campaign. When Shimon Peres claimed that this was an election gimmick, Begin cried out at his next rally: “Jews, do you believe that I would send our brave boys to their death or, worse, to be taken prisoner by human animals, in order to win an election?” Begin won.
Peres is no Begin. When, during the 1996 election campaign, he ordered the invasion of Lebanon (operation “Grapes of Wrath”), everybody was convinced that he had done it for electoral gain. The war was a failure and Peres lost the elections and Binyamin Netanyahu came to power.
Barak and Tzipi Livni are now resorting to the same old trick. According to the polls, Barak’s predicted election result rose within 48 hours by five Knesset seats. About 80 dead Palestinians for each seat. But it is difficult to walk on a pile of dead bodies. The success may evaporate in a minute if the war comes to be considered by the Israeli public as a failure. For example, if the rockets continue to hit Beersheva, or if the ground attack leads to heavy Israeli casualties.
The timing was chosen meticulously from another angle too. The attack started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders are on holiday until after New Year. The calculation: even if somebody wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That ensured several days free from outside pressures.
Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush’s last days in the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet entered office and had a readymade pretext for keeping silent: “there is only one President.” The silence does not bode well for the term of president Obama.
The main line was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This was endlessly repeated on all the news programs and talk shows.
This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica of the second Lebanon war.
The strategic concept is the same: to terrorize the civilian population by unremitting attacks from the air, sowing death and destruction. This poses no danger to the pilots, since the Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons at all. The calculation: if the entire life-supporting infrastructure in the Strip is utterly destroyed and total anarchy ensues, the population will rise up and overthrow the Hamas regime. Mahmoud Abbas will then ride back into Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.
In Lebanon, this calculation did not work out. The bombed population, including the Christians, rallied behind Hizbullah, and Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. Something similar will probably happen this time, too. Generals are experts on using weapons and moving troops, not on mass psychology.
Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it did not succeed. Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by other means.
It may be that the army will “have no alternative” but to re-conquer the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams – except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to government policy. When the ground invasion starts, everything will depend on the motivation and capabilities of the Hamas fighters vis-à-vis the Israeli soldiers. Nobody can know what will happen.
Day after day, night after night, Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel broadcasts the atrocious pictures: heaps of mutilated bodies, tearful relatives looking for their dear ones among the dozens of corpses spread out on the ground, a woman pulling her young daughter from under the rubble, doctors without medicines trying to save the lives of the wounded. (The English-language Al-Jazeera, unlike its Arab-language sister-station, has undergone an amazing about face, broadcasting only a sanitized picture and freely distributing Israeli government propaganda. It would be interesting to know what happened there.)
Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in Israel.
But there is another thing that is being imprinted on the minds of these millions: the picture of the miserable, corrupt, passive Arab regimes.
As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of shame.
For the million and a half Arabs in Gaza, who are suffering so terribly, the only opening to the world that is not dominated by Israel is the border with Egypt. Only from there can food arrive to sustain life and medicaments to save the injured. This border remains closed at the height of the horror. The Egyptian army has blocked the only way for food and medicines to enter, while surgeons operate on the wounded without anesthetics.
Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.
This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.
This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand.
My taxi driver in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form them into a combat unit and send them off to head the coming ground attack on Gaza?
Analysis: Operation Cast Lead extends a war doomed to fail
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has not, and will not, achieve its stated goals. Either the goals are different from what has been stated publically, or the military establishment has backed itself into a corner and has no option other than proceeding with a course doomed to failure.
Israel is losing at a game for which it wrote the rules. It started when Israel closed the borders to the Gaza Strip; the rules were that inhuman treatment could lead to Gaza calm.
Any expectation that inhuman treatment, that direct provocation from regular incursions during the so-called truce would lead to a Gaza friendly to Israel is asinine. Israel changed hands-on occupation to asserting control from the borders and the tactics amounted to the same thing.
The current action in Gaza is an indication that Israel’s “hands off” war against Gaza was a failure, and it appears that the current Operation Cast Lead is an escalation of the war game Israel began in 2005. It too will fail.
Days before the Israeli Air Force launched its first missile at Gaza, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced that the goal of an Israeli operation would be root out faction leaders responsible for launching projectiles into southern Israel.
This appears to have been a long-time goal for the Israeli forces. In his first security briefing Israeli army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said airstrikes and artillery fire on Gaza targets could only decrease the number of projectiles launched from the Strip. If Israel wants to stop the rockets completely, he said, Israel would have to launch a ground invasion. That was in early 2007, but the country decided to first try the “hands off” war of crossing closures.
Since Israel escalated its tactics over 700 separate airstrikes, constant tank fire and the pounding of the warships lining the Gaza shore. This first stage meant to slow the projectile fire has not come close to achieving its goal.
Despite having killed close to 450 Gazans, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead has managed to increase the number of projectiles fired on southern Israel. Every day since the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip began between 18 and 150 projectiles have been launched from Gaza at Israeli targets. Notwithstanding this first failure Israel is poised to enter a third and even more gruesome phase, ensuring massive loss of life and utter chaos on the ground in Gaza.
If Israel upgrades the assaults on Gaza to a ground war they will not root out projectile launchers.
The resulting chaos in Gaza will lead to one of three outcomes in Gaza:
1) Anarchy
2) Total Israeli re-occupation of Gaza
3) Israel handing the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority (PA)
None of these scenarios are real options for Israel, or any other party.
A power vacuum benefits no one and will certainly not result in a halt to the projectiles. The Israeli government is unlikely, with an election looming, to commit to the huge numbers of Israeli casualties it would take to put troops back on the streets of Gaza’s population centers. Finally, the PA is unlikely to accept overt Israeli assistance in retaking Gaza, a step that would deal a death blow to the Authority’s already fragile legitimacy.
So far Israel has targeted “Hamas assets” that have ensured the destruction of the de facto government. This includes the death of ministry workers, including all manner of civil servants from the party leadership to accountants and support staff. They have also ensured the death of huge numbers from the de facto government police force. Some of these dead may have doubled as fighters, but many were mere government employees.
If Israeli troops enter Gaza it will become even more clear that fighters and ministry workers and farmers and metal workers are indistinguishable from one another; as much on the ground as from a hundred feet above it. The aim of rooting out those launching the projectiles will be no less difficult to achieve and no less costly in terms of Palestinian and Israeli lives.
When speaking to the specifics of the current attack on Gaza, Israeli officials consistently deny that their intention was to topple the Hamas government in Gaza as opposed to the party’s military wing. And while uttering these words, the Israeli fighter jets targeted the very apparatus of Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip: police, prisons, the interior ministry. This was
Though Israel never stated that the goal of the operation was to topple the Hamas government -as opposed to the party’s military wing – they have destroyed all elements of the government and left only independent factional groups including Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, with no central power or infrastructure to control them.
Israel has not conducted an operation that will stop the launch of projectiles, and it is not prepared to face any of the possible outcomes of its current path.
With tanks massed at the Gaza border and 11,000 Israeli reservists called up for duty, however, it seems Israel will push forward with the ground invasion, following a track to a goal that either never existed or was never made public. From its crossing closures to its airstrikes to a ground invasion Israel has either misread Palestinian politics in Gaza or are fulfilling a long-range and unstated agenda.
Whatever the goal, the only instance of de-escalation between Israel and Gaza factions was through the deeply-flawed truce that lasted until Israeli provocation destroyed it.
It is time for all parties to realize that if a deeply flawed truce can achieve results, a real truce could actually create change.
Israel is losing at a game for which it wrote the rules. It started when Israel closed the borders to the Gaza Strip; the rules were that inhuman treatment could lead to Gaza calm.
Any expectation that inhuman treatment, that direct provocation from regular incursions during the so-called truce would lead to a Gaza friendly to Israel is asinine. Israel changed hands-on occupation to asserting control from the borders and the tactics amounted to the same thing.
The current action in Gaza is an indication that Israel’s “hands off” war against Gaza was a failure, and it appears that the current Operation Cast Lead is an escalation of the war game Israel began in 2005. It too will fail.
Days before the Israeli Air Force launched its first missile at Gaza, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced that the goal of an Israeli operation would be root out faction leaders responsible for launching projectiles into southern Israel.
This appears to have been a long-time goal for the Israeli forces. In his first security briefing Israeli army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said airstrikes and artillery fire on Gaza targets could only decrease the number of projectiles launched from the Strip. If Israel wants to stop the rockets completely, he said, Israel would have to launch a ground invasion. That was in early 2007, but the country decided to first try the “hands off” war of crossing closures.
Since Israel escalated its tactics over 700 separate airstrikes, constant tank fire and the pounding of the warships lining the Gaza shore. This first stage meant to slow the projectile fire has not come close to achieving its goal.
Despite having killed close to 450 Gazans, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead has managed to increase the number of projectiles fired on southern Israel. Every day since the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip began between 18 and 150 projectiles have been launched from Gaza at Israeli targets. Notwithstanding this first failure Israel is poised to enter a third and even more gruesome phase, ensuring massive loss of life and utter chaos on the ground in Gaza.
If Israel upgrades the assaults on Gaza to a ground war they will not root out projectile launchers.
The resulting chaos in Gaza will lead to one of three outcomes in Gaza:
1) Anarchy
2) Total Israeli re-occupation of Gaza
3) Israel handing the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority (PA)
None of these scenarios are real options for Israel, or any other party.
A power vacuum benefits no one and will certainly not result in a halt to the projectiles. The Israeli government is unlikely, with an election looming, to commit to the huge numbers of Israeli casualties it would take to put troops back on the streets of Gaza’s population centers. Finally, the PA is unlikely to accept overt Israeli assistance in retaking Gaza, a step that would deal a death blow to the Authority’s already fragile legitimacy.
So far Israel has targeted “Hamas assets” that have ensured the destruction of the de facto government. This includes the death of ministry workers, including all manner of civil servants from the party leadership to accountants and support staff. They have also ensured the death of huge numbers from the de facto government police force. Some of these dead may have doubled as fighters, but many were mere government employees.
If Israeli troops enter Gaza it will become even more clear that fighters and ministry workers and farmers and metal workers are indistinguishable from one another; as much on the ground as from a hundred feet above it. The aim of rooting out those launching the projectiles will be no less difficult to achieve and no less costly in terms of Palestinian and Israeli lives.
When speaking to the specifics of the current attack on Gaza, Israeli officials consistently deny that their intention was to topple the Hamas government in Gaza as opposed to the party’s military wing. And while uttering these words, the Israeli fighter jets targeted the very apparatus of Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip: police, prisons, the interior ministry. This was
Though Israel never stated that the goal of the operation was to topple the Hamas government -as opposed to the party’s military wing – they have destroyed all elements of the government and left only independent factional groups including Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, with no central power or infrastructure to control them.
Israel has not conducted an operation that will stop the launch of projectiles, and it is not prepared to face any of the possible outcomes of its current path.
With tanks massed at the Gaza border and 11,000 Israeli reservists called up for duty, however, it seems Israel will push forward with the ground invasion, following a track to a goal that either never existed or was never made public. From its crossing closures to its airstrikes to a ground invasion Israel has either misread Palestinian politics in Gaza or are fulfilling a long-range and unstated agenda.
Whatever the goal, the only instance of de-escalation between Israel and Gaza factions was through the deeply-flawed truce that lasted until Israeli provocation destroyed it.
It is time for all parties to realize that if a deeply flawed truce can achieve results, a real truce could actually create change.
International Human Rights Activists now working with medical teams in northern Gaza as Israel launches invasion of Gaza Strip
For Immediate Release
7:30pm, 3rd January 2009, Gaza: European, Australian and American Human Rights Activists are now based in northern Gaza as Israel has intensified shelling in what appears to be the beginning of a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
They will be accompanying ambulances and medical teams in the Jabaliya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun areas while working from the Northern Station of the Red Crescent in Jabaliya.
“Pieces of 10cm shrapnel are now flying into the Red Crescent Station. Ambulance crews cannot make it to injured people due to the massive Israeli shelling of the area” Alberto Arce (Spain) – International Solidarity Movement
“The ambulance crews have requested international assistance and so we will be working from the Red Crescent Northern Station in doing that. We have been working with the medics for the last three days and are first aid trained.” Sharon Lock (Australia) – International Solidarity Movement
Other International Human Rights Activists are now based in Rafah and Gaza City.
International Human Rights Activists have been accompanying ambulances in the Gaza Strip since the murder of medic Mohammed Abu Hassera and Doctor Ihab Al Mathoon by Israeli missiles on the 31st December 2008.
7:30pm, 3rd January 2009, Gaza: European, Australian and American Human Rights Activists are now based in northern Gaza as Israel has intensified shelling in what appears to be the beginning of a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
They will be accompanying ambulances and medical teams in the Jabaliya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun areas while working from the Northern Station of the Red Crescent in Jabaliya.
“Pieces of 10cm shrapnel are now flying into the Red Crescent Station. Ambulance crews cannot make it to injured people due to the massive Israeli shelling of the area” Alberto Arce (Spain) – International Solidarity Movement
“The ambulance crews have requested international assistance and so we will be working from the Red Crescent Northern Station in doing that. We have been working with the medics for the last three days and are first aid trained.” Sharon Lock (Australia) – International Solidarity Movement
Other International Human Rights Activists are now based in Rafah and Gaza City.
International Human Rights Activists have been accompanying ambulances in the Gaza Strip since the murder of medic Mohammed Abu Hassera and Doctor Ihab Al Mathoon by Israeli missiles on the 31st December 2008.
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