16th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
After a night of heavy shelling in the area, the day is dawning in Gaza. The clock ticks pass 08:00; past the evacuation time the Israeli military gave to el-Wafa hospital the previous evening.
The patients were not evacuated; there is nowhere for them to go. The entire Shajajia area where the hospital is located, with a population of around 100,000 inhabitants, has also been ordered to evacuate, as well as other areas around the Gaza Strip. For so many people to move to other areas cannot be done, and without shelter they can only rely on God and their luck.
During the night’s bombardment, when el-Wafa hospital shook several times with explosions, suspicions were raised that the hospital had been hit. In fact, the building close by, el-Wafa Elderly Nursing Home was shelled by the Israeli military.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The upper part of the Nursing Home was peppered with machine gun fire and non-explosive grenades penetrated the concrete walls.
Photo by Charlie AndreassonPhoto by Charlie Andreasson
Lying on the floor lay the used grenades, business cards from the world’s “most moral” army.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The news that gradually circulates tells the story of a violent night in Gaza, with Israeli air strikes across the Strip. The number of deaths has now risen to over 200, higher than the death toll of the last war two years ago. From a window in el-Wafa hospital, the characteristic clouds of smoke, sand, and dust rise towards the sky.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The violence will apparently continue for another day.
16th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Just one or two hours after the ceasefire talks broke down, Sohil Deeb Mahmoud al Hosris’ house was completely demolished in the densely populated refugee camp of Shati in an air strike.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
It was a miracle nobody were killed or injured.
Where the former house stood, only a large pile of building blocks remained, along with smashed furniture and other belongings.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
Volunteers helped with clearing the narrow footpath from stones, while others are helping to rescue the few belongings that can be saved. It is of little comfort to Sohils and his family when he has lost everything that he is not alone; 570 houses have been demolished, in Gaza alone, since the current military operation was launched, this number does not included the houses demolished by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
A ceasefire, without having resolved the root cause of the situation in Gaza, can never lead to lasting peace. Withdrawing to ’67 borders, respecting international law, and lifting the siege appears to be a painful idea for this occupying power, but it is the only way to provide protection to all citizens. This does not even begin to touch on the idea of a one-state solution.
Colonisation policies will not bring peace and security, only a continued escalation in violence, more uncertainty, and more demolished homes.
16th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday evening (July 15th) at approximately 23:05 el-Wafa Rehabilitation hospital in Gaza, near Gaza City, received a call from someone claiming to be from the “Defense department of the Israeli forces”. The caller informed the hospital to evacuate everyone by this morning, and then hung up.
At 23:10, a recorded message was left on the hospital’s answer phone stating that the downtown area of the Shajaia neighbourhood should also be evacuated by tomorrow morning. The Shajaia area is two kilometers from the hospital and has a population of approximately 100,000 people.
At 23:55, a third call was placed to the hospital from the Israeli military. This caller repeated the evacuation message, stating that it should be carried out by 08:00, “because we don’t want innocent people to get hurt, we care about innocent people, and ask you to leave because we are doing a mass operation in your area.” This message was also written on leaflets dropped on the Beit Hanoun neighbourhood two days ago.
“The patients in the hospital are already in fear. With this new threat, the terror has rocketed sky-high. There is mass confusion.” stated Rina Andolini, UK activist now staying the the hospital along with seven other international volunteers.
The board director of el-Wafa hospital called the World Health Organisation (WHO) who then contacted the Israeli military at 00:15. Israeli forces told the WHO that the hospital do not need to evacuate and will not be bombed as, “it is a hospital so we won’t bomb it”.
However El-Wafa hospital has already been struck by five Israeli missiles on 11th July, and international activists have been maintaining a constant presence ever since.
Photograph by Manu Pineda on July 11th
Basman Alashi, executive director of el-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital, stated that the callers spoke in Arabic and did not give any other information, apart from the evacuation demand.
“We are not going to evacuate,” Stated Alashi. “We are staying. I believe it is part of their [the Israeli military] propaganda, part of the scare tactics they use.”
A patient at el-Wafa hospital, photograph taken by Joe Catron on July 15th
14th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
The war is now in its seventh day, the death toll is rising briskly, 17,000 people have fled Beit Lahia in the north after the threat of a land invasion, fishermen are prevented from accessing their fishing grounds, and sewer and water pipes for 70,000 people have been bombed.
It is no longer a question that the Israeli military is targeting civilians, and civilian infrastructure.
Charlie Andreasson
On the way to my shift to provide protective presence at al-Wafa hospital in the northeast, we stop at one of the many residential buildings that have been bombed, this one last night.
Charlie Andreasson
We see the devastation, with floors hanging vertically down, cars overturned by the blast, shattered windows on the street, and people, Palestinian civilians, trying to find belongings that might be salvageable.
Charlie AndreassonCharlie AndreassonCharlie Andreasson
The hospitals, which are already suffering from chronic shortages of medicines and essential medical supplies, are forced to prioritize patients. I have witnessed hospital staff forced to place two bodies on the same stretcher since it was full in the cold storage. I have seen dismembered and burnt people after a drone attack.
It is a war against civilians.
It is a war against the political unity between Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
It is a war against striving towards a Palestinian state.
It is a war for continuing occupation and colonization.
Yesterday, Saturday, 12th July, Jews Against Genocide (JAG) held a memorial service for Palestinian children killed by Israel in its current attack on Gaza. JAG set aflame to a pile of dolls covered in red paint at Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust memorial museum. JAG is a movement of Jews from all over the world, including Israelis, who are protesting against Israel’s intent to commit genocide against the non-Jewish indigenous people of Palestine.
The Yad Vashem security guard attempted to disrupt the memorial, confiscated JAG’s fire extinguisher, and called the Israeli police to arrest the participants.
We, Jews Against Genocide, came to Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial of the genocide committed against Jews, to honor the Palestinian children who are dying in a genocide committed by Jews.
We brought dolls to symbolise the children of Gaza, and tried to bring a glimpse of the horror that Gazan’s face, to Israel’s doorstep. We hope to show Israel, and the world, the absurd reality of using the memory of one genocide to justify another.
We invite compassionate people from across the globe to join the outcry by staging similar protests in front of Israeli embassies and consulates around the world on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th July, 2014.
Just as we honor the people who were murdered seven decades ago in Europe because they were Jews, we are here to honor the people who are being murdered at this very moment because they are the indigenous people of this land who are not Jews.
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines Genocide as, “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; […]“
The children of Gaza, who are being systematically murdered as we write this article, constitute 52% percent of the population under siege in the strip. The vast majority of these children are descendants of refugees from historical Palestine.
In the current round of atrocities committed by the Israel occupation army, so far dozens of children have been murdered in their homes, with Israel’s war-making leadership vowing “much higher costs” on the Palestinian side as the bombing and shelling continues.
The war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza today are the latest stage of an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the indigenous people of this land.
The Jewish State was founded on the Zionist principle of “maximum Jews on maximum land, and minimum Arabs on minimum land”, which was made reality through sixty-six years of continued assault against Palestinians, denying them the right to live freely and peacefully in their historical homeland.
The Israeli regime has turned the beautiful Gaza strip into a densely populated ghetto, with unsafe water, untreated sewage, and insufficient resources and electricity. This ghetto has become a concentration camp, through repeated Israeli massacres in what the Goldstone Report described as an effort to, “humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish[ing] its local economic capacity.”
We express our support and solidarity for the Palestinian civil society’s call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it complies with the three basic demands of:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
