Category: In the Media

The Observer: ‘It was like an earthquake on top of your head. My son was terrified. I held him to my chest’

Eyewitness report by Dr Eyad Al Serraj

To view original report, published by The Observer on the 28th December, click here

The bombing went on for about 10 minutes. It was like an earthquake on top of your head. The windows were shaking and squeaking. My ten-year-old son was terrified; he was jumping from one place to another trying to hide. I held him tight to my chest and tried to reassure him. My 12-year-old was panicking and began laughing hysterically – it’s not normal. I held her hand and calmed her and told her she would be safe. My wife was panicking. She was also running around the apartment looking for somewhere to hide.

We live on the ground floor so we headed to the basement.

Not very far from our home are the headquarters of the police and there was a massive bomb. The chief of the police was killed. Two streets away there was another bomb and more people were killed. The office of the president is about a kilometre from our house and it was also bombed.

We went downstairs to the basement and tried to hide ourselves from the shelling. The child of one of our relatives, who lives in our building, finally came home from school. We hadn’t been able to find her. All the phone connections were jammed. She came home and she was in a very serious state of shock. She was pale and trembling and she was describing dead bodies in the streets. On her way home she passed Hamas people in uniform and they were dead.

I had been very apprehensive when I woke up this morning. I had some bread, some cheese and a glass of tea. Like all the people in Gaza I felt that something was going on and something very serious. When Israel allowed the delivery of food and fuel I said to myself and my friends that Israel is really planning a massive strike. They don’t want to be blamed for starving the people.

I was sitting in the living-room with my family trying to figure out what to do today for lunch – it’s our main meal. What to cook and how to cook, whether we have enough to eat. There was no rice so I wanted to have lentil soup and my wife said, ‘No, there’s no lentils in the market’. I said, ‘What else can we do?’ She said ‘I bought some cans of food’. We were discussing this when suddenly the whole thing erupted. Suddenly there was a big explosion.

Right now I feel very anxious about what’s going to happen. I’m worried about how many more people are going to die.

• Dr Eyad Al Serraj is a psychologist in Gaza city

IMEMC: Christmas tree lit in protest tent in Jerusalem

To view original article, published by the IMEMC on the 23rd December, click here

Archbishop Moneeb Younan, of the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land and Jordan, lit a Christmas tree on Tuesday in a protest tent in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. He was joined by Jerusalem governor, Adnan Al Husseini and resident Um Kamel Al Kurd.

Al Kurd was forced out of her home by extremist Israeli settlers. Since then, the Israeli authorities have removed her protest tent a total of three times.

Archbishop Younan said that this feast should be the time that human rights are returned, and the oppressed have a taste of freedom and justice.

Dozens of residents, including children, attended the symbolic act. The children in attendance received gifts.

Governor Al Husseini gave his best wishes to the Christians celebrating Christmas, “today we celebrate the birth of Christ while his essence is passing through this historical place”. He added that the Palestinians; Muslims and Christians, are facing oppression by the Israeli occupation, and are determined to remain steadfast in their land.

On his side, Archbishop Younan said, “we are lighting this tree because we are looking towards the light of peace and justice, and we believe that peace starts in Jerusalem. Today’s symbolic act resembles the Palestinian unity, the unity of Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem for thousands of years.

Meanwhile, Um Kamel said that she will never forget this night, and expressed hopes that the coming feats for Muslims and Christians will be celebrated with prevailing peace and justice in the region.

Ynet: Israeli activist charged with violating disengagement order

Police claim Neta Golan, who sailed into Gaza on activists’ boat, will be charged with violating order prohibiting Israelis from entering Gaza. Meanwhile Lebanese boat prepares to sail for Strip on Jan. 3

By Tova Dadon

To view original article, published by Ynet on the 23rd December, click here

The Magistrates’ Court in Kiryat Gat on Tuesday remanded the arrest of peace activist Neta Golan, who attempted to cross into Israel after arriving in Gaza on an activists’ boat from Cyprus. She was arrested at the Erez crossing on Monday.

Police stated an indictment would be filed against Golan, charging her with the violation of the order implementing the State’s Disengagement Plan of 2006. The order prohibits Israeli citizens from entering Gaza.

Police representatives asked the court to remand Golan’s arrest in order to provide for time to prepare the indictment and to consult with the Prime Minister’s Office in order to estimate the danger of Golan’s actions.

Golan’s attorney, Adanan Aladdin, told the court that his client “may have been endangering herself by entering Gaza, but the Gazans welcomed the arrival of the boat carrying a minimal amount of medical equipment to cure the seriously ill.”

Aladdin added, “There is no criminal offense in Golan’s actions. The siege Israel is imposing on Gaza is causing a serious humanitarian crisis endangering the lives of thousands of Gazans.

“Golan was taking personal responsibility as she believed the entire Israeli public should be doing, and boarded the ship that eventually docked in Gaza, otherwise the ship would have been banned. The fact that there were Israelis on board forced the Israeli forces to allow it to dock in Gaza.”

First Lebanese boat follows suit

Meanwhile it was reported that another cargo ship will set sail for Gaza on January 3 to defy the Israeli blockade, the organizer said Tuesday. On board the ship will be Lebanese activists, journalists, and supplies. Authorities at Larnaca port in Cyprus are expected to inspect the cargo and passengers before it proceeds to Gaza.

Hani Sleiman, a lawyer and university professor, said the indirect route is designed to deprive Israel of any excuse not to allow the ship into Gaza.

Five ships carrying activists and goods have run the blockade since the summer, but it will be the first time a ship carrying people and goods from Lebanon.

A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, said Israel will not comment prior to the event and “will react accordingly when it happens.”

AP contributed to this report

The Observer: Israeli blockade ‘forces Palestinians to search rubbish dumps for food’

UN fears irreversible damage is being done in Gaza as new statistics reveal the level of deprivation

By Peter Beaumont

To view original article, published by The Observer on the 21st December, click here

Impoverished Palestinians on the Gaza Strip are being forced to scavenge for food on rubbish dumps to survive as Israel’s economic blockade risks causing irreversible damage, according to international observers.

Figures released last week by the UN Relief and Works Agency reveal that the economic blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza in July last year has had a devastating impact on the local population. Large numbers of Palestinians are unable to afford the high prices of food being smuggled through the Hamas-controlled tunnels to the Strip from Egypt and last week were confronted with the suspension of UN food and cash distribution as a result of the siege.

The figures collected by the UN agency show that 51.8% – an “unprecedentedly high” number of Gaza’s 1.5 million population – are now living below the poverty line. The agency announced last week that it had been forced to stop distributing food rations to the 750,000 people in need and had also suspended cash distributions to 94,000 of the most disadvantaged who were unable to afford the high prices being asked for smuggled food.

“Things have been getting worse and worse,” said Chris Gunness of the agency yesterday. “It is the first time we have been seeing people picking through the rubbish like this looking for things to eat. Things are particularly bad in Gaza City where the population is most dense.

“Because Gaza is now operating as a ‘tunnel economy’ and there is so little coming through via Israeli crossings, it is hitting the most disadvantaged worst.”

Gunness also expressed concern about the state of Gaza’s infrastructure, including its water and sewerage systems, which have not been maintained properly since Israel began blocking shipments of concrete into Gaza, warning of the risk of the spread of communicable diseases both inside and outside of Gaza.

“This is not a humanitarian crisis,” he said. “This is a political crisis of choice with dire humanitarian consequences.”

The revelations over the escalating difficulties inside Gaza were delivered a day after the end of the six-month ceasefire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, which had been brokered by Egypt in June, and follow warnings from the World Bank at the beginning of December that Gaza faced “irreversible” economic collapse.

The deteriorating conditions inside Gaza emerged as Tony Blair, Middle East envoy for the Quartet – US, Russia, the UN and the EU – warned explicitly yesterday that Israel’s policy of economic blockade, which had been imposed a year and a half ago when Hamas took power on the Gaza Strip, was reinforcing rather than undermining the party’s hold on power. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Haartez, Blair warned that the collapse of Gaza’s legitimate economy under the impact of the blockade, while harming Gaza’s businessmen and ordinary people, had allowed the emergence of an alternative system based on smuggling through the Hamas-controlled tunnels. Hamas “taxed” the goods smuggled through the tunnels.

It was because of this that Blair wrote to Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, earlier this month demanding that Israel permit the transfer of cash into Gaza from the West Bank to prop up the legitimate economy.

“The present situation is not harming Hamas in Gaza but it is harming the people,” Blair said yesterday. Calling for a change in policy over Gaza, he added: “I don’t think that the current situation is sustainable; I think most people who would analyse it think the same.”

Blair’s comments came as an Israeli air strike against a rocket squad killed a Palestinian militant yesterday, the first Gaza death since Hamas formally declared an end to a six-month truce with Israel.

Also yesterday, a boat carrying a Qatari delegation, Lebanese activists and journalists from Israel and Lebanon sailed into Gaza City’s small port in defiance of a border blockade. It was the fifth such boat trip since the summer. The two Qatari citizens aboard the Dignity are from the government-funded Qatar Authority for Charitable Activities.

“We are here to represent the Qatar government and people,” said delegation member Aed al-Kahtani. “We will look into the needs of our brothers in Gaza, and find out what is the most appropriate way to bring in aid.”

The arrival of the delegation reflects the growing anger in the Arab world over the Gaza siege, directed at Israel but also at Egypt, which has allowed the border crossings at the southern end of the Strip to remain sealed.

On Friday, thousands of people joined a rally in Beirut organised by Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah movement against Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Addressing the Beirut crowd, Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem called on Arab and Islamic governments to act to help lift the Gaza blockade, and urged Egypt to take an “historic stance” by opening its border crossing with Gaza.

“Silence on the [Gaza] blockade is disgraceful. Silence on the blockade amounts to participation in the [Israeli] occupation,” Kassem said.

The Guardian: My expulsion from Israel

When I arrived in Israel as a UN representative I knew there might be problems at the airport. And there were

By Richard Falk (Special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories)

To view original article, published by The Guardian on the 19th December, click here

On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel’s compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law. Meetings had been scheduled on an hourly basis during the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.

I knew that there might be problems at the airport. Israel had strongly opposed my appointment a few months earlier and its foreign ministry had issued a statement that it would bar my entry if I came to Israel in my capacity as a UN representative.

At the same time, I would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in. Israel was informed that I would lead the mission and given a copy of my itinerary, and issued visas to the two people assisting me: a staff security person and an assistant, both of whom work at the office of the high commissioner of human rights in Geneva.

To avoid an incident at the airport, Israel could have either refused to grant visas or communicated to the UN that I would not be allowed to enter, but neither step was taken. It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel’s occupation policy.

After being denied entry, I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed.

I was separated from my two UN companions who were allowed to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.

Of course, my disappointment and harsh confinement were trivial matters, not by themselves worthy of notice, given the sorts of serious hardships that millions around the world daily endure. Their importance is largely symbolic. I am an individual who had done nothing wrong beyond express strong disapproval of policies of a sovereign state. More importantly, the obvious intention was to humble me as a UN representative and thereby send a message of defiance to the United Nations.

Israel had all along accused me of bias and of making inflammatory charges relating to the occupation of Palestinian territories. I deny that I am biased, but rather insist that I have tried to be truthful in assessing the facts and relevant law. It is the character of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel’s approach, especially its harsh blockade of Gaza, resulting in the collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants. By attacking the observer rather than what is observed, Israel plays a clever mind game. It directs attention away from the realities of the occupation, practising effectively a politics of distraction.

The blockade of Gaza serves no legitimate Israeli function. It is supposedly imposed in retaliation for some Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that have been fired across the border at the Israeli town of Sderot. The wrongfulness of firing such rockets is unquestionable, yet this in no way justifies indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the entire civilian population of Gaza.

The purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the UN the urgency of the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Such work is particularly important now as there are signs of a renewed escalation of violence and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.

Before such a catastrophe happens, it is important to make the situation as transparent as possible, and that is what I had hoped to do in carrying out my mission. Although denied entry, my effort will continue to use all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation as truthfully as possible.

• Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories