Tag: Gaza - Page 14 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli airstrike kills 10 year old boy and injures others in Gaza

12th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil Team |Ma’an, Occupied Gaza

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Update

Isra Abu Khosa, 6 year old sister of Yassin Abu Khusa, has died from the injuries she sustained in the bombing raid on Gaza by Israeli forces on Friday.

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Children were the latest victims of last nights continued assault on besieged Gaza by Israel. The young boy who was killed in the attacks has been identified as Yassin Abu Khusa, 10 years old. His sister Isra Abu Khusa, 6 years old, was wounded in the same attack, suffering severe head injuries and is in critical condition while another brother, Ayub Abu Khusa, 13 years old, is also seriously injured.

A young boy amidst the damage of the home in which a young child was killed

A Ma’an reporter based in Gaza said the children were in their house at the time the strike happened, located in northwestern Beit Lahiya. The family was still living in their home that was partially destroyed during the most recent offensive on the strip by the zionist regime in 2014.

Rubble from the attack — Rubble and a blood soaked mattress from the attack

The Israeli army claims the Israeli air force targeted four Hamas sites in the northern Gaza Strip after four rockets were reportedly fired from the strip on Friday evening.

Several rockets were fired from the blockaded coastal territory into southern Israel last year, with the Israeli military launching retaliatory air strikes in virtually every case with signature excessive force and more often than not leading to the deaths of many innocent civilians.

Children in the war torn buildings left by Israeli forces

Although the majority of last years’ rocket fire was attributed to small, rather insignificant militant groups operating in Gaza, Israel consistently holds the territory’s de facto leaders Hamas responsible, targeting the group’s military infrastructure in response.

Israeli navy attacks and seriously wounds Gaza fishermen

1st March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza-team | Deir El Balah, Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine

One month ago Mohamed Said El Saidi, 23 years old, and his brother went back to the sea around 5am in order to pick up the nets that they had previously left 2 miles offshore in Deir El Balah.

When they arrived they saw an Israeli warship waiting for them in the distance, once they had collected their nets the Israeli navy vessel approached and told them to stop. “We decided to try escape… we couldn’t afford loosing the boat and the nets”.

However they couldn’t go too far, as the Israeli soldiers immediately shot Mahmoud 11 times with a unique kind of projectile that consists of a cloth bag full of buckshots. They soldiers shot him 8 times in the leg and 3 times to the head. The damage from the shots left him unable to walk, as he couldn’t feel his leg, he was also left very dizzy and disoriented.

Immediately after that, the warship from the occupation rammed them, destroying their small boat and nailing a metal bar on Mahmoud’s neck. In the collision he also got his jaw and nose broken.

The occupation forces then took Mahmoud to the hospital and kept his brother for one day before sending him back to Gaza. Mahmoud’s mother explains, “I received a call from the Israeli hospital telling me that my son might die at any moment, and when my other son came back he told me that Mahmoud was dead”.

Mahmoud’s mother was then given a permission slip to leave Gaza in order to see him. He was unconscious for 6 days and couldn’t begin to speak again until 12 days after, as all his vocal cords had been cut by the metal bar. The doctors have told him not to eat anything solid, during the next year he is only able to drink juices and soups through a straw.

The situation of the family has become tragic, “we live in a rented house that we have been paying with the money that Mahmoud provides. Now we also should pay for his care and medicines, but we can’t… his cousin is taking care of his wounds as we can’t pay a nurse to do it”. “Please let the world know what they do to our children… they shoot them, steal their boats, kill them… they leave whole families without income… this is not life”. She continues, “I have another son who was kidnapped by the occupation a year ago… he has 3 children who have stopped going to school because we can’t pay for it”.

Soldiers harass farmers preparing fields in Gaza

23rd February 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza-team | Khuzaa, Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine

On Wednesday 17th February at 8 am, around 30 farmers from the village of Khuzaa reached their lands near the border. They intended to clean them from weeds before the beginning of the harvest season.

They could work peacefully for about an hour, just until an Israeli military jeep stopped in front of them and a group of soldiers came down from it. Immediately the soldiers leaned behind a mount, pointing their weapons towards the farmers, and everyone started to fear that someone could get shot.

Shortly after, the soldiers started to shoot with live ammunition to the ground in front of the farmers and into the air. At that point more than half of the farmers started to flee from their lands, some of the farmers however, decided to keep working despite the harassment.

After around 20 minutes the soldiers returned to the jeep and left the place, so the farmers that stayed thought that they would be able to continue working in peace.

Unfortunately, after 30 minutes another jeep came and the same chain of events started again. At that point the farmers that were left got really afraid and decided to go home without finishing the work they planned to do in their own lands.

That was another small battle in that long struggle for the defence of the land that Palestinian farmers fight on a daily basis. As M.Q. (42) said to us, “that’s our land, here we are supposed to live and also to die… we will not give it up”.

https://youtu.be/8cyenIdFXiY

Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria seek home in Gaza

February 11, 2016| International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Khan Younis, Gaza strip, occupied Palestine

Palestinian refugee Heesham Ahmed El Khoranin and his family have already survived 2 Israeli assaults against the Gaza Strip since he returned after fleeing from Syria in 2011.

Heesham grandparents were born in Masmiya, 42km north of Gaza, one of the many villages wiped out by the Zionist militias during the Nakba. In 1948 they were forced to flee and settled in Khan Younis, where Heesham was born. He lived there until the Israeli army occupied Gaza in 1967 and forced his parents to flee from Palestine. They then moved to the Syrian city of Daraa, where he married a Syrian woman and had 6 children.

They lived in peace until 2011, when the war started in Syria, Heesham explained. “Snipers were shooting anything that moved in our city, people, animals . . . they killed children as young as 10 years old in front of my eyes.” Several of their neighbours were kidnapped and tortured by the Syrian army, including children. Heesham spoke of how “one of the fathers refused to handle his 13 years old son to the army, so they took both of them and the father could listen how they tortured his son.”

Heesham's neighborhood in Daraa — Heesham’s neighborhood in Daraa, after the bombing

Four months after the beginning of the war Heesham and his family managed to escape to Egypt and entered Gaza through the tunnels. Once in Gaza he received the news that “our home and my small factory had been bombed . . . we had lost all we had.” A few months later, in another bombing, one of his sons who had stayed in Syria was killed.

Heesham's son killed in Syria wm 2 — Heesham’s son, killed in Syria

In Gaza they lived 3 years in a rented flat, until they ran out of money and were kicked out by the owner. A few months before the 2014 Israeli attack they moved to a caravan provided by an NGO and settled on land that the government ceded to them. “Now I just want to find a job and live in peace with my family… I hope we’ll be able to build a home and stay in Gaza” Heesham said. “[W]e don’t have a place where to return in Syria and at least here we are in Palestine, our homeland.”

Heesham's caravan in Gaza wm — Heesham’s caravan in Gaza

Support for political prisoner, Mohamad AlQueeq, after more than 70 days of hunger strike

4th Feburary 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, occupied Palestine

Yesterday there were several events in Gaza supporting the Palestinian political prisoner Mohamed AlQeeq, who is actually in the 72nd day of hunger strike and has lost his sight and hearing.

Palestinians protesting for the release of political prisoners

Moataz Dalul, spokesman for the prisoners, stressed that “Mohamed AlQeeq is not fighting just for him but for all the prisoners and the freedom of Palestine” and “we want the Palestinians inside the green line to support him and stand with him until his freedom”. He also demanded the human rights organizations inside and outside Palestine to “just say the truth… we don’t need your support, we just want you to tell the truth”.

After Tahsin AlAstal, official of the journalists union, claimed “we speak a lot with international associations and organizations for human rights, but we are quite certain that this is useless, as they don’t do anything. Everyday Mohamed is dying and the Red Cross and the high commissioner of the UN are silent. People in Palestine is understanding that all those NGO and associations don’t move a finger for them, so we question them, what’s their reason to be here?” “We don’t need the people to say that they are worried for Mohamed or to denounce with empty words, we just need real moves and our prisoners to be saved”.

PCHR and other human rights associations, on their side, denounced Mohamed situation “administrative detention is a crime, as it is force feeding, and Israel is using both of them with Mohamed and other palestinians in front of the eyes of all the world, but they choose to look to the other side. Mohamed united all the spectrum of the Palestinian people under the motto: freedom or martyrdom”.