ISM Gaza | Fishing Under Fire
9 May 2009
Interview in Abou Yousef An Najar Hospital in Rafah with Randa Shalouf, a Palestinian woman from the village of Shawka, east of Rafah, injured on the 7th of May by Israeli gunfire in her hand and chest. In the video you can also see the x-ray photos with the bullet.
ISM Gaza | Fishing Under Fire
20 May 2009
These are some of the “hassakas” , small fishing boats of poor Palestinian fishermen in Salateen, Gaza Strip, damaged by the Israeli Navy. The first two were stolen in March 2009 and were returned after two months, about a week ago, in this condition. The third one was destroyed in 2006 by Israeli Navy shelling of the beach.
For Immediate Release:
Thursday, 21 May 2009: Five international human rights workers from the ISM-Gaza Strip will be accompanying 10 farmers from Khoza’a as they harvest crops several hundred metres from the Green Line.
In the morning, human rights workers will join Palestinian farmers in Khoza’a village, located east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, to farm land 300-350 meters from the ‘Green Line’.
Farmers and international accompaniers were last fired upon in Letaemat, Gaza by Israeli forces on the 9th of May.
Several farmers have been shot by Israeli forces while farming their lands.
Mohammed al-Buraim is the fourth Palestinian farmer to be shot by Israeli forces in the ‘buffer zone’ in the last months. The three shootings prior to Mohammed’s were: on 18 January, Maher Abu-Rajileh (24) from Khoza’a village, was killed by Israeli soldiers while working on his land 400m from the Green Line; on 20 January, Israeli soldiers shot Waleed al-Astal (42) of Al Qarara (near Khan Younis) in his right foot; and on 27 January, Anwar al-Buraim was shot in the neck and killed.
Haroon Siddique | The Guardian
19 May 2009
Three British medics began a hunger strike in Egypt today to protest against being refused entry into Gaza for a humanitarian mission.
Their aim is to establish a cardiac surgery unit at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which currently has no such facility, and to help train medical students and junior doctors there. But the British medics have been denied access to the Palestinian territory at the Rafah crossing since the beginning of May.
Omar Mangoush, a cardiac surgeon at Hammersmith hospital, in London, told guardian.co.uk he had been to the crossing with his colleagues every day since arriving in Egypt on 4 May, only to be told they did not have permission to enter.
“We are on hunger strike until they let us through,” he said. “We’ll stay [at the crossing] until they let us in. We want to put pressure on the British embassy. We believe if the British embassy wanted us to do this they could exert pressure [on the Egyptian authorities].”
Mangoush said he had been told by the British embassy that it had received a letter from the Egyptian foreign ministry saying the medics’ request for access to Gaza had been “postponed”.
But he claimed American aid workers had gained entry to Gaza at their first attempt with the support of the US embassy.
Mangoush named the other British medics on hunger strike as Christopher Burns-Cox, a retired consultant, and Kirsty Wong, a nurse at Hammersmith hospital. Another six people are on hunger strike, including three Belgians, he said.
The cardiac surgeon took a month’s holiday from work to take part in the mission for the Manchester-based charity Palestine International Medical Aid (PIMA)
“This is very important for us,” he said. “There are loads of people with heart disease [in Gaza]. They can’t get here [to Egypt], they can’t get to Israel. If it’s this hard for us to get to, how difficult is it for the Palestinians to get out?”
PIMA’s director, Dr Ahmed Almari, said: “It’s unbelievable. They’re a group of doctors, they went for education and teaching, to set up a cardiac unit. It’s unfair and sad that it is only as a result of a hunger strike that anybody pays attention. There’s no reason to stop them from crossing.”
Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing largely closed since Hamas won the Gaza elections three years ago. One of the main demands of Hamas has been that all crossings into Gaza should be allowed to reopen permanently. A number of aid groups have said the closure of the crossings is contributing to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Palestinian medical sources reported today that a one-year-old infant died yesterday at a local hospital in Rafah owing to several complications, including pneumonia, as his transfer to a hospital outside of the Gaza Strip was not possible due to the ongoing Israeli siege.
ISM Gaza | Farming Under Fire
18 May 2009
This is the village of Shofa, east from the town of Rafah, Gaza Strip. About 60 houses demolished by the Israeli occupation forces, during the recent war. People living in tents. Part of their agricultural land also destroyed. Palestinian farmers told us that after 5 pm they need to leave their fields because the Israeli troops along the Green Line, start to shoot.
