Author: ISM Media Group - Page 29 - International Solidarity Movement

Jan 18: At the Samouni house

Sharon Lock | ISM Volunteer

The planes are still buzzing overhead, but there have been no explosions near me today. However this supposed ceasefire from Israeli’s side since 2am does not seem to have extended to Beit Hanoun, where there was shelling this morning and F16s were attacking.

You can see 4 video clips I took during the attacks on the Al Quds hospital and local people, including my medic mates rescuing Jasmeen after she’d seen her sister and dad shot.

This morning the Al Quds Red Crescent headed out to Zaytoun, to the area we had a few approved evacuations and far more refused ones. Local people had begun excavating the rubble of the Sammouni house. You remember we heard some of their story before. I helped correct the English of some of the testimonies from the survivors that the Red Crescent was collecting. One of the more vivid images was one of the trapped and injured children describing the only food being tomatoes covered in the blood of his family, and having to sleep on their corpses amidst the rubble for 3 days. My nurse friend R at the hospital said treating one of the children that they got out to Al Quds was the first time she couldn’t help but cry. He was begging her for food and water which she had to deny him until his injuries were assessed.

Anyway, today we arrived in the devastated Zaytoun area, where medics, friends and family began to remove the bodies of the Samounis from a hole in the roof of their flattened home. During the hour we were there, they brought up a body every ten minutes, 7 total, and I believe locals brought up at least two more after the Red Cross told us to take those we had to Al Shifa and withdraw, as a further army incursion threatened. A relative was clutching a list of 25 names of the dead.

Meanwhile, THANK YOU Brighton and friends for the direct action on EDO weapons manufacturers – see a series of short clips on Youtube and Wikio.

ITT/EDO MBM arms factory in Moulescombe, Brighton which supplies Israel has been wrecked by activists campaigning against war. Swords into waste skips at least. Prior to entering the factory, the activists made a video (attached) in which they explained their reasons for the action. One commented: “Israel are committing a gross crime now in Gaza. Israel have killed hundreds of children…

Summary execution in southern West Bank

Palestine News Network

During the killing of over 1,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the demonstrations against them the occupation remains in the West Bank. This week a family lost their father in Hebron.

Yasser Saqr Ismail Tameizi had his six year old son with him. They were working on their land in Ithna Village, west of the city.

It was Tuesday morning and the 35 year old farmer’s death served as a violent reminder, commented the Al Haq Human Rights Organization, “that even as Israel engages in horrific and illegal attacks against the Gaza Strip, its oppressive occupation policies continue to undermine the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Tameizi had an Israeli-issued permit to reach his lands that the Wall had divided him from. Two eyewitnesses were in an adjacent field grazing their cattle and Tameizi and his six year old were 500 meters east of the Wall which is incomplete in this area of Hebron. Instead of a 10 meter concrete wall, it consists of barbed wire fencing that cuts through the village.

On 13 January at 11:00 am four Israeli soldiers entered Tameizi’s land through a gate in the Wall. They told the little boy to leave, which he did, and one of the soldiers kicked the father. Tameizi made a move to defend himself and his son and two of the soldiers knocked him to the ground and ties his hands behind his back. He was held down on his back by two soldiers sitting on his stomach while the others watched.

At noon an Israeli military jeep with four soldiers entered Tameizi’s land. After 15 minutes the man was thrown, blindfolded and still handcuffed, into the back of the jeep.

The eyewitnesses report, “The jeep then moved toward the gate, with four soldiers inside and the other four walking behind it.”

At 1:30 an APC, Armored Personnel Carrier, arrived and still on the side of the Wall facing the Israeli boundaries it left after 10 minutes with the jeep driving quickly to Tarqumiya Checkpoint.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reports that its Hebron branch office received a phone call at approximately 3:00 pm in which Israeli soldiers told them to pick up Tameizi who was still in their custody.

He was dead before reaching the hospital.

The 35 year old man had been shot and died of the bullet wound to his stomach which exited through his lower back. The Red Crescent said it indicates he was shot at point blank range most likely while sitting down by someone above him aiming down.

Ramallah’s Al Haq referred today to the severe violation of international law, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in addition to tenets of the Geneva Conventions and United Nations resolutions, as a “summary execution.”

Waiting

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Today was the first day that medics and journalists were able to reach areas occupied by the invading Israeli troops. Palestinians by this

point, by weeks ago, were desperate for any semblance of a normal life, though normality here is far from normality anywhere else. They were desperate to return to their homes, survey the damage and if possible repair it, find displaced family members, or their corpses, as well as neighbours, friends.

Not everyone returned home to stay; many could be seen returning to where their homes were, or had stood, to retrieve anything worthwhile. Donkey carts and taxis were piled with blankets, clothes, cooking pots, cupboards, pieces of furniture, people…

I went straight to Ezbat Abed Rabbo, the area east of Jabaliya which had been cut off since day 1 of the ground invasion, over 2 weeks ago. The Red Crescent had been receiving calls to evacuate the injured and dead since day 1, and were prevented, at gunpoint, by gunfire, from reaching those needing evacuation. We heard the cries of those who managed to escape, their stories of being locked in homes at gunpoint, losing family members to point-blank assassinations or house-bombings.

And although the area was crammed with troubled, panicked, residents, many of them injured, without water, without food, with homes occupied by Israeli soldiers, I worried particularly about one man: the father of my friends.

We had no idea if he was alive, though we knew he’d stayed in the area. My panic was great, daily, I felt like I had said goodbye to a grandfather.

I bee-lined for his house, though had a hard time doing it since the streets and the land were turned upside-down, torn apart, filled with carcasses of houses and animals.

He was there, miraculously, noble in his traditional gown, long beard, hat. But he looked shattered.

“He cried for us,” his son told me. “He didn’t know if we were alive or dead.” So the confusion and desperation was both ways. Utterly cut off from one another, we were but mirror examples of families and loved ones all over the Gaza Strip. And we were luckier, because we are all alive. Except his wife, my friend’s mother, who was killed on the very first day of attacks. But now everything is relative and we cling desperately to the positive, for its all there is to cling to.

I have so much to tell, so many photos that don’t do justice to the suffering, heart-break, trauma, psychological damage, and despondency of people here. So many smells ingrained in my memory, that when sniffed will bring images of dead children, burned houses, chemical fires.

Slamming doors will forever remind of the missiles slamming the earth, the life below.

And just visiting the few areas I saw today, so many people, so desperate to tell their stories, tell of their anguish. For some the anguish is immense: pulverized homes, killed family members, corpses unretrieved, sanctimony and all that is sacred defiled. For others, the suffering is in the tragedy of shattered dreams, of every personal item destroyed or lost. It all matters, and they were all desperate to tell me. And I to listen. But quickly their words became a blur, a swirl of agony. My basic Arabic began to fail me as I wrote their ailments, their losses.

I will go back, to take careful inventory of the destruction, physical and emotional. Many of those who returned to where their homes were have to return to overcrowded schools with memories of slaughters even within school premises.

While the bombs may have stopped, for now, the terror remains. F-16s still flew low, terrifyingly low, today, so loud, so unpredictable. No one here has any reason to believe any words Israeli leaders proclaim. Only reason to believe in the worst. But out of necessity, we must hope for the best.

Saturday January 17 – Starting again

Sharon Lock | Tales To Tell

Let me start with the good news. I found it surprisingly destabilising having to evacuate the hospital. Since the strikes began, I have spent

more nights here than anywhere else, and it began to feel like coming ‘home’ each time I arrived, especially with the welcome I unfailingly received. There is a sense of order in a hospital, of safety and care and compassion. When a handful of us came back to mind the hospital at about 3 am after evacuation, with the remains of the fire still resisting the fire-fighters, it felt very bleak. Beds were scattered in the road; inside, things were overturned and broken after the hurried leaving, the place was covered with mud. In most rooms there were waterfalls. Two out of three of our buildings were blackened and smoldering.

I wandered about in the operations room, clearing things up so it wouldn’t look so sad. If I felt displaced, when I had a perfectly good flat to go to, what about all the medical folks here whose homes have been destroyed in the last weeks, for whom this was their only warm, comfortable, safe place?

But yesterday the Red Crescent met and decided they wanted to work from Al-Quds again, and even better, the hospital will be open on Monday. I forgot to allow for the fact that they have no choice. Today I arrived to a completely revived atmosphere on the ground floor – lights working again, most things back in place, mud washed away, and disaster team boys sliding around their room on a cloth to dry their floor. I haven’t been to visit the bits of the hospital that were burning two days ago. Right now I think I’ll just enjoy what I see. Some of the medics are making us a potato chip dinner. The triplets are now at Nasser childrens hospital, by the way.

So you remember I wrote this about Wed morning Jan 14:

While there, heard shouting, went up stairs to see medic S covered in blood, he had just carried a little girl in from the street who snipers had shot in face and abdomen. We saw her father fall on the hospital stairs, having been shot in the leg. Mother was panicking, shouting there was another girl left behind. S, I and other medics went out to get her, found her not far away, S took her on his shoulders into the hospital. The other medics and I realised they were just the beginning of a stream of desperate people fleeing their buildings, many of which were on fire.

This was the Badran family. Faddel al Badran, 54, was shot in the leg. Yasmine, 12, was the girl we went to bring in. Haneen, 9, was the one shot in the face and abdomen: I knew she had been taken straight into surgery at Al-Quds. today I found out that she was transferred to Al-Shifa and died shortly afterwards.

Last night they bombed another UNRWA school in which homeless people had taken refuge in Beit Lahia. There are 36 wounded, including 14 children. Two boys aged 3 and 8 are dead. John Ging of UNRWA was on the TV being coldly furious. But as I type (I’ll be reading this out over the phone to the UK for uploading) a truce has apparently begun. It is strangely quiet. Everyone desperately wants to hope it’ll have some meaning.

Israel accused of war crimes over 12-hour assault on Gaza village

Fida Qishta in Khuza’a and Peter Beaumont in London | The Observer

White flags ignored and houses bulldozed with families inside, claim residents

Israel stands accused of perpetrating a series of war crimes during a sustained 12-hour assault on a village in southern Gaza last week in which 14 people died.

In testimony collected from residents of the village of Khuza’a by the Observer, it is claimed that Israeli soldiers entering the village:

attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside;
killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags;
opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded;
used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.

If the allegations are upheld, all the incidents would constitute breaches of the Geneva conventions.

The denunciations over what happened in Khuza’a follow repeated claims of possible human rights violations from the Red Cross, the UN and human rights organisations.

The Israeli army announced yesterday that it was investigating “at the highest level” five other attacks against civilians in Gaza, involving two UN facilities and a hospital. It added that in all cases initial investigations suggested soldiers were responding to fire. “These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence,” said Yigal Palmor, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman.

Concern over what occurred in the village of Khuza’a in the early hours of Tuesday was first raised by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Although an Israeli military spokesman said he had “no information that this alleged incident took place”, witness statements collected by the Observer are consistent and match testimony gathered by B’Tselem.

There is also strong visible evidence that Khuza’a came under a sustained attack from tanks and bulldozers that smashed some buildings to pieces.

Pictures taken by photographer Bruno Stevens in the aftermath show heavy damage – and still burning phosphorus. “What I can tell you is that many, many houses were shelled and that they used white phosphorus,” said Stevens yesterday, one of the first western journalists to get into Gaza. “It appears to have been indiscriminate.” Stevens added that homes near the village that had not been hit by shell fire had been set on fire.

The village of Khuza’a is around 500 metres from the border with Israel. According to B’Tselem, its field researcher in Gaza was contacted last Tuesday by resident Munir Shafik al-Najar, who said that Israeli bulldozers had begun destroying homes at 2.30am.

When Rawhiya al-Najar, aged 50, stepped out of her house waving a white flag, so that the rest of the family could leave the house, she was allegedly shot by Israeli soldiers nearby.

The second alleged incident was on Tuesday afternoon, when Israeli troops ordered 30 residents to leave their homes and walk to a school in the village centre. After travelling 20 metres, troops fired on the group, allegedly killing three.

Further detailed accounts of what occurred were supplied in interviews given to a Palestinian researcher who has been working for the Observer, following the decision by Israel to ban foreign media from the Gaza Strip. Iman al-Najar, 29, said she watched as bulldozers started to destroy neighbours’ homes and saw terrified villagers flee from their houses as masonry collapsed.

“By 6am the tanks and bulldozers had reached our house,” Iman recalled. “We went on the roofs and tried to show we were civilians with white flags. Everyone was carrying a white flag. We told them we are civilians. We don’t have any weapons. The soldiers started to destroy the houses even if the people were in them.” Describing the death of Rawhiya, Iman says they were ordered by Israeli soldiers to move to the centre of the town. As they did, Israeli troops opened fire. Rawhiya was at the front of the group, says Iman.

Marwan Abu Raeda, 40, a paramedic working for the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: “At 8am we received a phone call from Khuza’a. They told us about the injured woman. I went immediately. I was 60 or 70 metres away from the injured woman when the Israeli forces started to shoot at me.” As he drove into another street, he came under fire again. Twelve hours later, when Rawhiya was finally reached, she was dead.

Iman said she ended up in an area of rubble where a large group of people had sought cover in a deep hole among the debris of demolished houses. It is then, she says, that bulldozers began to push the rubble from each side. “They wanted to bury us alive,” she said.