1. ACTION ALERT: Stop the bombing of Gaza! Prevent a humanitarian crisis!
2. Laila El-Haddad: “Just another Gaza Friday”
3. Laila El-Haddad: “And suddenly, the seams of childhood disappeared”
4. Video: Shelling of Gaza Continues
5. Amnesty International Calls for Halt to Gaza Attacks
6. Human Rights Watch: “UNRWA Director: ‘Counting down to a crisis in Gaza’ ”
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1. ACTION ALERT: Stop the bombing of Gaza! Prevent a humanitarian crisis!
Eight days and thousands of shells later, the assault on Gaza continues. Israel has vowed that it will continue to intensify the attack. Eighteen people are dead, including at least two children, and many more are injured.
Amnesty International is “calling on the Israeli army to end immediately its air bombardments and shelling of civilian residential areas in the Gaza Strip.” Amnesty says, “Israeli forces…must put an immediate end to the frequent, disproportionate and excessive use of force against Palestinians. Such attacks continue to cause death and injury to Palestinian children and other bystanders, and constitute violations of international law.”
John Ging, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, stated that “from a humanitarian perspective the outlook here in Gaza is bleak at the moment. We are once again facing imminent food shortages, insecurity is making delivery of humanitarian services difficult and we are very concerned about the public health risks from the outbreak of avian influenza. All of this is likely to add up to more refugees falling below the poverty line and becoming dependent on humanitarian assistance.”
Please help stop these atrocities:
1. Contact your local representatives and demand they raise the issue of the bombardment of Gaza and the closure of the Karni checkpoint (see information below).
2. Contact your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and demand they put pressure on Israel to stop the bombardment of Gaza and open the Karni checkpoint (see information below).
3. Hold a protest, vigil, or rally in front of your Israeli embassy or consulate and demand that Israel stops bombarding Gaza and opens the Karni checkpoint. To find the address of the Embassy or one of the Consulates, go to (www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Israel.cfm#171)
UK
Contact MPs
politics.guardian.co.uk/aristotle/
Fax your MP direct from this site
www.faxyourmp.com/
USA
Contact local representative
www.house.gov/writerep/
Contact your Senators
www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
US (Department of State)
www.state.gov/
Websites for Ministries of Foreign Affairs
For all countries see www.usip.org/library/formin.html
Australia
www.dfat.gov.au/contacts.html
Denmark
www.um.dk/en/servicemenu/Contact/?wbc_purpose=basi
France
www.diplomatie.gouv.fr
Greece
www2.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/en-US
Germany
www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/en/index_html
Japan
www.mofa.go.jp/feedback/index.html
Spain
www.mae.es/en/Home/
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2. Laila El-Haddad: “Just another Gaza Friday”
from her blog: http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com
I’ve always loved Fridays in Gaza. In the mornings, save for the lone garbage collector futilely sweeping the abandoned streets and Municipality park, littered with plastic cups, watermelon seeds, and strangled straws from the night before, the hustle and bustle of the city comes to a standstill.
It is a serene if lethargic time, an escape from the sea of chaos, uncertainty and violence that grips our lives each waking day and night. For a few hours, things seem ordinary in a place where ordinary is an illusion. And it doesn’t seem like anything can disrupt those moments, as if some force is saying to the madness that envelopes us: “come back another hour!”
Slowly, the streets come to life again as evening takes hold. This is Yousuf’s favorite time. He likes to go out to the balcony, as we did yesterday, and “people watch”-just take in the incongruent and cacophonous sites and sounds of another Friday in Gaza.
In the park in front of us, children boisterously played football, women licked ice cream cones and chatted, and wedding motorcades ( “zaffit sayyarat”), which, no matter what the season or situation, you can always except to hear on Thursday and Friday evenings like clockwork-made their way to beachside hotels and lounges. They tirelessly honked their horns in sync with live wedding dabke music, blaring out from portable speakers or played by live for-hire bands seated in the back of rented pick-up trucks decorated with carnations.
Boys and relatives clamored for a standing space in the back of the trucks, dancing and clapping feverishly along with the music. Young children chase them down the street to join in the fun. If the wind is just right, the sky becomes a showcase of homemade kites, dancing and flirting with each other, challenging the physical bounds imposed upon this battered area’s residents, reaching to places they can only dream about, allowing them to navigate freedom, no matter how purposeless, for just a little bit.
In the distance, the ubiquitous double-thuds of artillery fire could be heard exploding a few kilometers away, increasing in number and intensity, it seemed, as the evening progressed, only to be drowned out ever-so-slightly by the cacophonous symphony of Friday blitheness, as if to say-“not today! Today, you will not steal our moment.”
The evening passes, the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly, the carriage tranforms into a pumpkin again. The magic dissipates. And 6 people are dead.
Just another Gaza Friday.
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3. Laila El-Haddad: “And suddenly, the seams of childhood disappeared”
from her blog: http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”
Hadil Ghabin, 9 years old, was killed Monday night after an Israeli shell struck her family’s home. 13 other members of her family were injured, including her pregnant mother, several toddlers, and her 10-year-old brother Ahmed, who lost his eye sight.
One-year old Rawan comforts her other sister, Rana
Hadil’s mother was baking bread when the shells began to fall around them. She gathered her children and they huddled inside the house for safety.
According to her aunts, Hadil loved reading, writing stories, and playing “make-believe”. Her Aunt told me :”She would always gather all the neighbourhood children and tell them all sorts of wild stories” .
And why not, for sometimes imagination is the only refuge we have here, the only realm that cannot be invaded.
The Israeli Army asserted today that despite the civlian deaths, which resulted from narrowing their range of attack, the shelling will continue.
Overcome with emotion, Hadil’s mother collapsed when the body of her daughter, limp and expressionless, was brought to the house for a final farewell.
Hadil’s 10-year-old brother Ahmed lost his sight in the attack.
Neighbours tried to comfort the grieving family, as they wept alongside them and threw fragrant basil flowers on her lifeless body before the burial.
Even as Hadil was being carried away, shells continued to pound the area, leaving billows of white smoke in the distance and an acrid smell lingering in the air.
The Ghabin household. The mother was baking bread when the shelling began, and gathered her children together in the living room when their house was hit.
“And suddenly, the seams of childhood
disappeared
And the stories and dreams
flew away
like a kite”
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4. Video: Shelling of Gaza Continues
Watch footage of the Israeli shelling of northern Gaza:
http://dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/video/7/mvi_0036.avi
Also watch footage of a family mourning in the aftermath of recent deaths caused by shelling:
http://dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/video/2/mvi_0031.avi
Both are from Laila El-Haddad’s blog:
http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com
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5. Amnesty International Calls for Halt to Gaza Attacks
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
11 April 2006
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGMDE150312006
Israel/Occupied Territories: Israel must halt attacks on Gaza residential areas – children killed
Amnesty International is calling on the Israeli army to end immediately its air bombardments and shelling of civilian residential areas in the Gaza Strip. At least two Palestinian children have been killed and tens of other civilian bystanders injured in recent days during the course of such attacks; at least 15 other Palestinians, most of them reported to be members of armed groups, were killed.
Hadeel Ghaban, a seven-year-old girl, was killed on 10 April 2006 when Israeli troops fired artillery shells at her home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. The child’s mother and a dozen of her siblings and other relatives, including several children, were injured in the attack. Three days earlier, a five-year-old boy, Bilal Abu al-‘Einein, was killed in an Israeli air strike as he was standing near a car with his 14-year-old brother and their father. The boys’ father and three other men were also killed and several other bystanders, including two children, were injured in the attack. The four men who were killed in the attack were reported to be members of a Palestinian armed group but not to have been involved in any armed confrontation at the time when they were targeted by the air strike.
Commenting on this 7 April attack, the Israeli army stated: “In a security forces activity tonight in the southern Gaza Strip, the IDF carried out an aerial attack against a vehicle carrying terrorists as it was leaving a training camp of the Popular Resistance Committees organization. Terrorists were using the camp for terror training and weapons training.” The statement failed to mention the killing of the five-year-old child.
Israeli army and Defense Ministry sources were reported by the Israeli media to have expressed regret over the killing of Hadeel Ghaban but to have vowed to continue intensive attacks on the Gaza Strip. On 11 April, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was reported to have stated that “As long as it’s not quiet here [in Israel], it won’t be quiet there [in Gaza.]”
Expressions of regret by Israeli army and government officials for the killings of Palestinian children and other bystanders ring hollow as repeated attacks by Israeli troops on densely populated residential areas continue to claim the lives of Palestinians, including children, in situations where they pose no threats to the lives of Israelis.
Another example is the killing of three Palestinian children, 14-year-old Ahmed al-Sweifi and Ra’ed and Mahmud al-Batash, aged 11 and 17, in an Israeli air strike in the afternoon of 6 March in Gaza City. The children were walking in the street when an Israeli missile hit a passing car in which two members of a Palestinian armed group were travelling, killing the two passengers of the car and the three children.
More than 15 Palestinian children have been killed and dozens have been injured in Israeli army attacks throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the beginning of this year. They were among some 75 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops in the past three months, during which scores of Palestinians, including children, have been injured. Many of those killed were members of Palestinian armed groups who were targeted while they were not involved in armed attacks or confrontations.
The Israeli authorities have long pursued a policy of extrajudicial executions as a substitute for arrest and prosecution of Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis. Hundreds of bystanders have been killed in such attacks, in addition to the targets of the attacks. Since Israel redeployed its troops from inside the Gaza Strip in September 2005, Israeli forces have stepped up air strikes and artillery attacks against different areas of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli authorities contend that such attacks are in response to frequent mortar and rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza Strip. Although they have rarely caused Israeli fatalities or casualties, these Palestinian attacks are unlawful and should stop immediately.
Israeli forces, for their part, must put an immediate end to the frequent, disproportionate and excessive use of force against Palestinians. Such attacks continue to cause death and injury to Palestinian children and other bystanders, and constitute violations of international law.
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6. Human Rights Watch: “UNRWA Director: ‘Counting down to a crisis in Gaza’ ”
From UNRWA: http://www.un.org/unrwa/
PDF Version of Press Release:
http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/releases/pr-2006/hqg06-06.pdf
Gaza – Another week of closure at Karni commercial crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip adds to the mounting woes facing Palestine refugees living in Gaza. This follows a weekend that saw the killing of 14 Palestinians, protests by refugee farmers who have yet to receive any compensation for bird flu and widespread public demonstrations protesting the cutting of donor funding.
John Ging, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, warned that “if Karni remains closed, we are, once again, counting down to a food crisis.” 765,000 refugees depend on UNRWA’s food distribution of flour, oil, sugar and other basic items. Ging stated that “the clock is now ticking and distribution will have to be shut down entirely for the second time in less than a month if the crossing does not open immediately.”
Returning from a visit this morning to an UNRWA primary school in Beit Lahia, where parents and teachers protested that the children are in very real danger from the daily Israeli shelling in close proximity to the school, Ging stated that “from a humanitarian perspective the outlook here in Gaza is bleak at the moment. We are once again facing imminent food shortages, insecurity is making delivery of humanitarian services difficult and we are very concerned about the public health risks from the outbreak of avian influenza. All of this is likely to add up to more refugees falling below the poverty line and becoming dependent on humanitarian assistance.” However, Ging warned that UNRWA does not yet have the money to meet today’s needs and is facing a bill of almost $900,000 in penalties for port and other charges arising from the Karni closure.
-Ends-
For more information please contact:
Jerusalem: Johan Eriksson
Office: 972-2-589-0249
Mobile: 972-59-428-056
Gaza: Adnan abu Hasna
Office: +972-8-677-7531
Mobile: +972-59-428-61
Jamal Hamad
Mobile: 972-599-416-877
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
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