Tag: Gaza - Page 120 - International Solidarity Movement

Children and youth under fire in Gaza: two killed and more than ten injured

13 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

WARNING: Contains graphic images some may find disturbing.

On Friday April 8th at approximately 5.30 pm a drone dropped a bomb on a group of children and young people who were playing football next to a school in the Al-Shijaija neighborhood, east of Gaza City, near the border. People hurried to come to the rescue of the injured when a second bomb hit the exact same place. A child and a young man were killed, while 10 more civilians were injured, including a paramedic and six children.

It took a day to identify the brutally dismembered body of a young man after initially only a headless body was found. It belonged to 23 year old Bilal Mohammed Al A’arer.

Mahmoud Wa’el Al-Jaro is the name that goes with the other young face, drained of the joyous expression it had until the vicious attack. The bewildered dead darkness in his eyes and his half open mouth makes one feel and see the moment. A split second: the abrupt discontinuity of his activity, the inner alarm that causes panic, the anxiety that instantly swells to mortal fear and is immediately followed by death, mercilessly cooling the intensity of his last life experience. Ten years old he was and he has paid dearly for trying to enjoy his young life, playing football under Gaza’s dangerous sky.

In the mourning tent, one of Mahmoud’s cousins, Yasser el-Jaro, explains how this is not the first time that the Israeli army has targeted children. Ramadeen Mohammed el-Jaro was nine when in 2003 a bullet, fired from an Apache, hit him in the head. He was on his way home from school when he was killed.

“They deliberately target children, it can’t be an error. They have the most advanced technological weaponry. They kill civilians because they want the population of Gaza to rise up against the resistance. They want people to start hating the resistance, but it is not the resistance who kills our children. We ask the international community to protect our children and our women from Israel.”

The injured were brought to Shifa hospital in Gaza City. 12 year old Jaber El-Kouss was one of the boys playing football when they were directly targeted by one of the drones, that have been buzzing loudly in Gaza’s sky over the last two weeks. But life goes on, despite the constant threat of violence. “This is our life. What else can we do?”, sighs one of the men in the hospital room, indicating that life in Gaza is uncertain and the threat of destruction and violence is always there. Jaber’s father, Salim, jokingly says the injured have themselves to blame as they have chosen to live despite the risks. While the people around him are laughing, Jaber misses the joke and feels accused. Softly he says: “But daddy, I was only playing…” His punishment for playing is severe: seven pieces of shrapnel pierced his chest and belly, while other pieces are stuck in his arm.

Next to him lays Osama Mahmoud El-Ghoula (15), he wasn’t playing football with his friends, but he heard the bomb and ran to the scene to see what was going on. While running a second bomb dropped from the sky, injuring young Osama. He went home, but was afraid to tell his parents what had happened and did not want to worry them. “He said; ‘Mom, I just want water and need some sleep’. I saw the blood coming through his shirt and lifted it to see what had happened to him and then he lost consciousness”, says his worried mother, Sana El-Ghoula. Osama is now waiting for surgery to remove the shrapnel from his belly.

In the third bed lays Riziq Said El Imalwi, an 18 year old university student. He was returning home after visiting the graveyard where his two brothers, who were martyred by the Israeli occupation forces, are buried. While walking, the ambulance stopped to ask for directions of the bombed place. He drove along with them to point out the place and when he got out, he was hit in the arms, chest and legs by shrapnel from the second bombing. Riziq lays silent in the hospital bed, while his saddened father Said says: “These are crimes against humanity, they shoot civilians! We are all sad, but keep on hoping for peace in all of the country.”

We left Gaza city early …

13 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

We left Gaza city early; we were going to Faraheen, a small village near the buffer zone to help farmers plant peppers. Israel has declared a 300 meter “buffer zone” along the entire border with Gaza. What does the buffer zone mean? Simply, that Israel will shoot anyone who approaches within 300 meters of the border. They don’t really have rulers though; usually they don’t even have soldiers. Just remote control guns controlled by teenage conscripts in the basement of a military base somewhere, maybe an office park, maybe the soldiers telecommute, that would be more convenient for them. For the soldiers, it is basically a video game, push a button on your mouse, and shoot a farmer.

The fields that we were planting aren’t actually in the buffer zone, but they are close, and even being close to the buffer zone is dangerous – it isn’t easy to judge distance with a mouse. April 6th was a beautiful day; the weather was perfect, no wind and not too hot. A drone hovered overhead; occasionally bursts of remote controlled shooting came from the Israeli gun towers that line the border. They weren’t shooting at us; they were shooting at some other anonymous farmer trying to work on his land. Maybe they were shooting at an unemployed man who went to collect rocks near the buffer zone? The importing of cement is banned by Israel, and it is in desperate need to repair the damage from Operation Cast Lead and to accommodate the needs of the growing population.

We didn’t manage to finish planting all of the peppers on Wednesday, so we went back to work on Thursday. The ‘weather’, the farmers joked, wasn’t so good on Thursday, there were a lot of drones, and occasionally the thunder of distant bombing reached our ears. We kept working, what else could the farmers do? They have to plant their peppers to feed their families. The weather kept getting worse as the day wore on, more drones, more thunder. We finally broke for lunch when the Apaches arrived. They hovered over the border like giant evil mosquitoes. Lunch lasted for three hours while we waited for the Apaches to leave. Then back to work. We quit at sundown.

We still hadn’t finished planting all of the peppers, so back to work on Friday. The goal was to finish before noon so the men could go to the mosque. The weather was even worse and the thunder of the bombs was closer; Israel had killed three in Khuzaa, the neighboring village, overnight. There was no electricity, and therefore no water. There is no 24 hour electricity in Gaza, they aren’t allowed to import enough fuel for the power plant, and it was attacked during Operation Cast Lead, so you get electricity when you get electricity. Not having electricity to run the irrigation pumps makes planting peppers rather painful. You take two fingers, jam them into the earth, make a hole, and put the pepper in the hole. If the earth is wet and the soil is loose it is ok, but if the earth is dry it isn’t easy.

The thunder finally reached us just as we finished planting the last of the peppers. It was loud, somewhere in Faraheen. We hadn’t noticed any Apaches in the air, but the noise of the drones had become like background noise – always there. The men took me to my friend’s house. Faraheen was on the news. The younger children were afraid of the bombing, but a bit excited to see their village on the news. The excitement didn’t last. Etufa, the oldest daughter came into the room. She had just heard that a friend of hers had been killed in the bombing. The room grew silent. Etufa went to her room to cry.

Gaza under attack: death and destruction in Rafah

10 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

On the afternoon of Thursday April 7th, Israeli forces escalated their attacks on the Gaza Strip. The murderous offensive has killed 18 people so far, the majority of them being civilians. Among the massacred are a mother, her daughter, two children, two elderly men and four members of Al Qassam Brigades. More than sixty people have been injured, some are still fighting for their lives. Since Thursday afternoon the Gaza Strip is besieged by drones, Apache helicopters, F16 and E15 fighter planes, gunboats in the south and tanks by the border.

At approximately 16:00 on Thursday, Israeli forces targeted areas surrounding the previously destroyed Gaza International Airport in the far southeast of Rafah city, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces positioned along the border fired approximately 10 artillery shells, while Apache helicopters opened machine gun fire. A number of the artillery shells landed near three Palestinian civilians who were sitting near the airport. Two of them, Mohammed Eyada Eid el-Mahmoum (25) and Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari (17) were killed immediately and the third civilian, Saleh Jarmi Ateya al-Tarabin (38) died of his wounds in the hospital on the evening of the same day.

Israeli forces continued to fire as a number of Palestinian civilians attempted to rescue the wounded; Musaab Mohammed Ubeid Sawwaf, 20, was killed and another 14 civilians, including five children and a paramedic from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, were wounded.

Salama El-Dabari is seated in a tent, mourning the loss of his nephew, the 17 year old Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari, while he explains to ISM volunteers what has happened.

“Khaled was following the ambulances on his motorbike, to assist the medics in evacuating the injured people. As soon as the ambulances arrived, an Apache helicopter shelled the site again. Khaled got stuck under his motorcycle, which caught fire during the shelling. The ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were not able to evacuate him immediately. They recovered his body the next morning, covered in burns, with open head wounds, a hole in the abdomen, bullets in the legs and without hands. His father, my brother, was looking for him, but we didn’t want him to see his son in such a condition, so we sent him home before evacuating Khaled’s body.”

Salama switches to the inequality of the conflict and says the following: “Look at us, the Palestinians; we are a peaceful people who are trying to shake off the occupation to live in freedom. But we don’t have any meaningful military power: we have no drones nor F16’s, we don’t have any of Israel’s modern weaponry. There is no comparison possible. We are desperate. Nobody seems to care about the Palestinians and our struggle for justice.”

21 year old Abdel Hadi Jumma el-Sufi is one of the injured and is currently hospitalized in Shifa hospital in Gaza City. He stares at the ceiling of his hospital room while recalling the murderous event.

“One of the men was hit in the beginning of the attack, so me and my friends approached to evacuate him. We found out that the man was already dead. Tanks kept on shelling and killed another man. We managed to get the two dead bodies and one severely wounded man out of there, into the ambulance, but could not reach the fourth man as shelling prevented us. I thought he was still alive, but in the morning the ambulance recovered another dead body from the scene.” Abdel himself sustained shrapnel wounds to his legs, lungs and the back of his head and is currently awaiting surgery.

20 year old Mahdi Joma’a Abu Athra is worst of: the doctor at Europa hospital in Khan Younes describes him as a dead body kept alive by machinery. His maternal uncles are sitting around the hospital bed and are explaining that Mahdi got married a couple of months ago: his wife is pregnant. It seems unlikely that Mahdi will ever lay eyes on his firstborn.

One of the uncles bursts out: “How come the West is so interested in defending the Lybian’s human rights and is doing nothing for the Palestinians? You, who come here in solidarity with us, should send a clear message to your countries: it is not us that is attacking Israel, it is Israel that is attacking us! They are the terrorists and the criminals! Our rockets and missiles are fireworks compared to Israel’s weaponry! They have the most high-tech accurate equipment: they can target very precisely. When they kill civilians, it’s because they intend to kill civilians!”

A new Israeli massacre in Gaza

09 April 2011 | One Democratic State Group, Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, University Teachers’ Association in Palestine, Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Information

Besieged Gaza, Occupied Palestine.

The latest round of Israeli massacres committed against the people of Gaza has resulted in the brutal killings since Thursday afternoon of sixteen, including a mother and daughter, 4 children and an elderly man. Over the last 5 days, Gaza City has been bombed by Apache helicopters and F16 and E15 fighter planes. These terrible massacres come only one day after a statement issued by the disgraced Ehud Batak, the Israeli Minster of War, in which he calls upon his generals to intensify the attack against Gaza .

The slow motion genocide itself has killed more than 600 patients so far. We condemn in the strongest possible terms these heinous crimes and reiterate our call upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.

Gaza has been enduring Israeli policies of extermination and vandalism since June 2006. We equally condemn the international conspiracy of silence and impotence in the face of these continuous Israeli crimes. Not a single action against Israel has been taken by the UN. The failure of the United Nations and its numerous organizations to condemn such crimes indicates complicity. We therefore reiterate our urgent appeal, not to the United Nations and the sanctimonious international community, but rather to all civil society organizations and solidarity groups to intensify the anti-Israel sanctions campaign to compel Israel to end to its aggression against Gaza. We also reiterate our call on all Arab revolutions to compel their governments to sever their diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel. This was the demand of thousands of Egyptian men and women who demonstrated opposite the Israeli embassy in Cairo yesterday.

We ask, how many more dead corpses of Palestinian children and women does the international community need to see in order to act? What more do Arab governments need to see to translate their words of support into action? What would convince the UN and its Security Council that Palestinians are also human beings?

One Democratic State Group
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Information

Five Palestinians killed, 40 injured by Israeli missiles in Gaza

08 April 2011 | Palestine News Network

Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported on Thursday that five Palestinians were killed and at least 40 residents, including children, were wounded in several Israeli air strikes and a ground attacks that were initiated on Thursday at noon.

A fighter of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas movement, was killed when the army bombarded Al Shouka area, in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The fighter was identified as Saleh Al Tarabeen.

Three residents, identified as Mohammad Al Mahmoum, 22, Mos’ab Al Soufy, 17, and Khaled Ad-Dabary, 23, were killed when the army bombarded Al Jaradat area in Rafah.

On Thursday at noon, resident Mahmoud Al Manasra, 50, was killed, and at least five residents, including a child, were injured when the army fired more than 20 artillery shells into Al Shijaeyya neighborhood, east of Gaza City.

Furthermore, four Palestinians were moderately wounded when the army fired three shells into the Gaza International Airport in Rafah. The airport remains nonoperational since 2000, and was repeatedly bombarded and bulldozed by the army.

The army also bombarded several homes east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip; causing damage; no injuries were reported. One child was wounded by an Israeli artillery shell that hit Al-Qarara area, east of Khan Younis.

The Israeli Air Force fired missiles at a training camp using by the Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas in Beit Lahia, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and also bombarded an open area close to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

In southern Gaza, the army fired a missile at a local ambulance causing damage and mildly wounding the driver.

Medical sources reported that another ambulance was targeted by the Israeli Air Force in Rafah, and that eight Palestinians, including children, were wounded.

Five Palestinians, including a journalist, identified as Mohammad Al Madhoun, were wounded when the army bombarded a Police training base west of Jabalia, in northern Gaza. The reporter was seriously wounded.

A Palestinian farmer was also wounded when the Israeli Air Force fired missiles into the Al Waha area, north west of Gaza city.

Several Air Strikes also targeted areas east of Dir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, and Al Hawouz area in addition to the Al Rantissi Base, north of Gaza, leading to excessive damage.

Visiting Cairo, Palestinian Chief Negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erekat, told the Maan News Agency that the Israeli threats and escalation jeopardize the security of the region, and that Israel must halt all of its violations against the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, Israeli Army spokesperson, Avichai Adraee, told Maan that the army is evaluating the situation and could resort to a larger scale attack against Gaza.

He added that “what the army is conducting right now is only a routine operation that precedes a larger attack” likely to be carried out after the army and the political leadership in Israel evaluate the situation.

Adraee further stated that the Hamas movement is responsible for the latest escalation.

Also on Thursday, two Israelis, including a school student, were wounded when a shell fired from Gaza hit a school bus in southern Israel.

Furthermore, the Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas fired shells at the Sofa military base, near the Gaza border.

The Brigades said that attack comes in retaliation to the assassination of three fighters who were killed in an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli army chief of Staff, Benny Gant, visited the military base and toured the area speaking to locals urging them to remain calm, adding that “the army will do whatever it can to ensure their security, even if this means a military operation against Gaza”.

Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, said that the army is acting against the attacks and will do whatever it can to ensure they stop.

He further stated that the Iron Dome system that was installed to intercept shells fired from Gaza is operational, but added that Israel cannot claim that the system provides full protection.

On Thursday night, approximately at 11, Palestinian factions in Gaza declared a ceasefire while Israeli tanks were seen moving towards the border area.