Category: Features

It’s a ceasefire…just not on the beach, not in your home

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Ahmed Hassanin, 7, shot in the head outside his home by Israeli soldiers from Gaza’s eastern border on January 22nd.
Ahmed Hassanin, 7, shot in the head outside his home by Israeli soldiers from Gaza’s eastern border on January 22nd.

On the 5th morning after Israel declared a ‘ceasefire’, Israeli gunboats began shelling, as they had on several mornings since halting the 22 day air and land bombardment of Gaza. The shelling, which began just after 7:30 am off Gaza city’s coast, injured at least 6, including one boy with shrapnel in his head.

Yasser Abed, 15, came out from his home in Gaza’s Beach camp, on the coast, to see where the shelling was occurring. A shard of shrapnel lodged in his forehead.

Nisreen al Quqa, 11, was out earlier, before the navy began to fire towards Palestinian fishermen. She and her brother were walking on the beach when the firing started. A piece of shrapnel lodged in her right calf muscle.

Other injuries included a 14 year old male who was hit in the thigh by one of the shrapnel fragments, a 35 year old male also with a shrapnel injury, and a 4 year old girl with a head wound from flying shrapnel.

To the east of Gaza city, in the Sheyjaiee district close to the eastern border, also on the same day, 7 year old Ahmed Hassanian was outside his house with friends around 9:45 am. He lies now in critical condition in Shifa hospital’s ICU, a bullet still lodged in his brain and with such brain hemorrhaging and damage that he is expected to die shortly.

Mu’awiyah Hassanain, the director of Ambulance and Emergency Services, reports shelling in the northwestern coastal area of As Sudaniya on the same morning, saying five fishermen were injured in the attacks.

Israeli warplanes, on the first day of the ceasefire, flew extremely low and loudly over areas of Gaza, leaving residents expecting the worst. Drones capable of photographing and of dropping lethal, targeted missiles, continued to circle in Gaza’s skies for the first 3 days after the tanks retreated and the air-bombing ceased. At 8:30 am, one of these drones dropped 2 missiles in the Amal area east of Beit Hanoun, wounding a woman and an 11 year old child, who later died of her injuries.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports further violations of the cease-fire.

At 10:40, Israeli troops killed Maher abu Rjaila, 23, shooting him in the chest as he walked on his land east of Khan Younis city.

Two days later, at 1:00pm, Israeli soldiers fired on residents of Al Qarara, near Khan Younis, shooting Waleed al-Astal, 42, in his right foot.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 1,330, with as many as 200 more bodies expected to be recovered from under the rubble of the over 5,000 destroyed houses and 20,000 buildings.

Dr. Fawzi Nablusi, director of Shifa’s ICU, said that of the cases in Shifa’s ICU, 90% were civilian, of these 50% were women and children. One of those civilians injured the day before Israel’s ceasefire was Mohammed Jarboua. Also from the Beach camp, the 21 year old is clinically brain dead, surviving only on mechanical life-support, after being shot in the head by Israeli naval forces.

The Director of Shifa hospital, Dr. Hassan Khalaf, and Mu’awiyah Hassanain confirmed that since the ceasefire began on January 18, three more Palestinians have been killed, and 15 more injured, 10 of those injured on January 22nd.

These ceasefire violations are not a new precedent, as during the 6 month ceasefire which began on June 19th, Israeli forces routinely targeted and fired upon fishermen and farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, injuring 62, according to Palestinian sources. During this period, 22 Palestinians were also killed, many of them members of resistance groups, and 38 fishermen and farmers were abducted. The truce period saw border crossings mainly closed, completely sealed them from November 4, 2008 with only the briefest of openings.

As the dust settles and noxious chemical fires continue to smolder, Gazans focus on their immediate needs: housing, food, and in many cases locating lost family members still under the rubble.

The root of the problem continues: the nearly 2 year old siege on Gaza, not relaxed under the 6 month ceasefire as agreed, and which had already decimated Gaza’s health and sanitation infrastructures, and had shattered the economy. From the ruins of Gaza, any signs of an end to the siege are far beyond the broken horizon.

Two shot with live ammunition at Ni´lin prayer demonstration

January 23, 2009

On Friday, 23 January 2009, the residents of Ni’lin gathered with international and Israeli solidarity activists in their continued resistance against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Around 100 demonstrators participated in the weekly Friday prayer demonstration, a gesture of protest to the annexation of Ni’lin’s land and apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people. The Israeli army responded to the non-violent manifestation by invading the village and injuring 15 people, two with live ammunition.

Around 12.00, residents prayed next to the clinic. Immediately afterwards, the demonstrators marched through the olive grove, towards the site where the Occupation is building the Apartheid wall. Protesters were attacked by Israeli soldiers with tear gas, rubber and plastic coated steel bullets. After 20 minutes of shooting at the demonstrators in the olive groves, the army invaded the village.

The soldiers invaded the village from the main road and the olive groves taking up several positions in the town. Soldiers were stationed at the clinic and main street, marching to the town centre. They fired tear gas, rubber-coated steal bullets, sound bombs and live ammunition from inside the village, endangering the community. Two were shot in the leg with live ammunition and required medical attention.

The whole town was affected by the military incursion, forcing people to take shelter from the attack in their homes and shops. Teargas landed in many places in the town away from any demonstrators and one person by a tear gas canister that hit his head. Soldiers were targeting houses and nearly created a catastrophe by shooting next to the petrol station. Soldiers in the main street used speakers to make a high pitched alarm, known as the ‘scream’, to panic and disorientate the demonstrators and later they played classical music as they shot at people. Additionally, soldiers occupied the medical centre and removed the Palestinian flags at Arafat and Mohamed al Khawadja’s graves (two youths murdered by the occupation forces during a solidarity with Gaza demonstration in Ni’lin).

The demonstration ended around 4:30pm when the army withdrew from the town after injuring over 15 people. This is the fourth consecutive occasion where the army has aggressively occupied the town of Ni’lin during the demonstration: a means of collective punishment on the entire village of Ni’lin for the resistance to the Apartheid Wall.

Ground Zero

Tuesday 20th January, 2009

Earlier this week, following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, residents returned to some of the areas which had jabalia-17become no-go zones during the attacks, such as Jabalia just outside Gaza City. On Tuesday 20th January, ISM Gaza Strip volunteers joined a university professor as he visited his house in the east of Jabalia. We were shown from room to room around the bombed-out shell of what had once been a beautiful home. When asked if he and his family would continue to live there, he replied calmly that it was their right to and that they would never leave their land.

As we made our way up the hill through the orange grove beyond the professor’s house, we encountered evidence of where tanks had been positioned – churned up ground, tank tracks, uprooted olive trees. At the top of the hill, from where the Green Line was clearly visible, we began to see homes which had been totally destroyed, several stories concertinaed. Families sat together on the rubble of their homes. Children collected firewood from the dismembered limbs of fruit trees.

At first it seemed as though it was ‘just’ a cluster of ten or fifteen destroyed houses, which would have been bad enough in its own right. However, as we continued walking it became apparent that the devastation extended into the next street and the next, more and more destroyed and damaged homes following one another. This entire neighbourhood on this easternmost edge of Jabalia had been virtually wiped off the face of the earth. It resembled the site of some massive natural disaster. However this ground zero was entirely man-made.

The gouged-out windows of some of the homes still standing were filled with dark green sand bags. This was a sign these houses had been used by the Israelis as sniper positions. One could barely imagine how the situation must have been in this neighbourhood when it was under attack.

jabalia-28We met a blind woman who had been held prisoner for 11 days in one room of her home, along with a paralysed man, whilst Israeli soldiers used it as a base. Terrified and expecting to be killed at any time, they were given water twice during their ordeal. When the Red Crescent evacuated them, the woman said she could finally breathe for the first time since the soldiers arrived. The walls had been daubed with Hebrew graffiti, empty plastic food trays were strewn around and the stairway stank of urine.

In the wake of a Gazan holocaust, thousands of people are finding themselves in truly desperate situations. A traumatized but resilient population is somehow beginning to pick up the pieces. Merely continuing to exist is a form of resistance.

First views of Attattra, northwestern Gaza

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

On January 18, the first day that Israel stopped most of the bombing all over Gaza (navy shelling continues to this moment), after

No choice but to leave with all belongings
No choice but to leave with all belongings

learning that my friend’s father was alive in eastern Jabaliya, I went on to Attatra, the northwest region, which had been cut off since Israeli troops invaded. As expected, the destruction was great, the death toll high and still unknown. People streamed in both directions: going to see how their homes had fared or leaving from the wreckage and bringing as many surviving possessions as possible.

“This is our main road,” Yusef said dryly, gesturing at the undulating pavement and sand that served the towns in this region. “There should be houses here. Now there is nothing,” he added, seemingly more to himself than to me.

I’d noticed the road right off: torn through the centre, ripped up by a bulldozer’s claw or a tank’s tools, a theme that re-surfaced on various main streets. There were the horse or donkey carts, piled as high as possible with mattresses, blankets, clothing, and furniture, trying to maneuver on these newly-rutted, overcrowded streets, or around earth plowed into peaks.

I’d met my friend Yusef at the main crossroad. He’d come from Gaza city much earlier, to confirm that his own house was devastated: “There is nothing left. They gutted it. I took two pairs of pants, that’s all,” he said. “I was expecting it. There’s no house the Israeli soldiers didn’t enter, damage or destroy. We couldn’t get here to see it until today,” he had told me, Israeli troops’ fire and shelling preventing all from entering, wounded from leaving, ambulances from arriving. This point must be mentioned again and again.

We came to Anis, another Ramattan media employee, standing in front of his destroyed home. “It was hit in the first days of the land invasion,” he said. “F-16. We had evacuated, thank God. When the shelling started, I was crying. I just wanted to get my kids out of here,” he confessed. “Anyway, thank God none were killed. My mother, father, and children, we’re all okay,” he said.

“But nothing is left,” he added. “Walla ishi,”–nothing at all.

I looked down the road and

Gaza film shows white phosphorus from alleged Israeli attack

Two more videos shot by the International Solidarity Movement taken by The Guardian as proof of use of banned weapons by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Robert Booth | The Guardian


Ayman al Najar, 13, tells how he lost his sister, grandfather and cousin in a bomb attack

The Guardian has obtained vivid footage of the effect of white phosphorus allegedly used by Israel during a bomb attack on Gaza last week.

The film was made by Fida Qishta, a camerawoman working for the International Solidarity Movement, a non-governmental organization operating in Gaza. It was shot on Wednesday 14 January in Khoza’a, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

It shows clumps of the burning chemical on the ground as locals try to put it out by covering it with dust, mud and grass. The chemical, which locals describe as phosphorus, fails to go out and continues to burn through the debris piled upon it. As they kick it about, it subdivides into smaller lumps and continues to burn.

The use of white phosphorus as a weapon – as opposed to its use as an obscurant and infrared blocking smoke screen – is banned by the United Nation’s third convention on conventional weapons, which covers the use of incendiary devices. Though Israel is not a signatory to the convention, its military manuals reflect the restrictions on its use in that convention.

A second film reveals the impact of the white phosphorus on the human body. A 15-year-old boy is shown in a Gaza hospital receiving treatment for burns to his back and right arm which a doctor explains were caused by the chemical, which appears to have eaten into his flesh in several places.


Palestinians try to put out burning chemical banned as a weapon under United Nations convention

Lying on his hospital bed, the boy tells how he was sitting with his family in their four-story house when an Israeli bomb hit, killing his sister with shrapnel.

His testimony follows an earlier film by Qishta which contains graphic descriptions of attacks by Israeli forces in the same area.

Amnesty International said today that Israel has committed a war crime by using phosphorous over Gaza’s densely populated residential neighborhoods. The human rights organization also said they had fresh evidence of its use.

“Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert who is in Gaza as part of a four-person Amnesty International fact-finding team. “White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield. It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it that should never be used on civilian areas.”