Tag: Gaza - Page 21 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli soldiers open fire on 13 year-old boy in Gaza

11th August 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Maher Shitat, 13 years old, was shot in the leg on Friday night by the occupation forces.

Hi’s father sent him to bring his brother from a relative’s home and on the way there the soldiers shot him without previous advice. He was shot in El Zeraa area, in Beit Hanoun, at 8pm. He was walking at 500m from the fence when he was shot, on a frequently used road.

He was first taken to Beit Hanoun Hospital, where due to the lack of medical equipment the doctors where unable to treat him. After that he was transferred to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where the doctors decided not to remove the bullet, as they said it’s located very near to a vein, and removing it would most probably end up with his leg amputated.

Now they are trying to stabilize his condition. After a while they hope he will be able to walk again, and after 15 years, when his leg and veins are stronger, they’ll try to remove the bullet.

For the moment Maher is not allowed to walk, so he spends his days lying on a mattress.

His mother explains: “he is very afraid… he doesn’t want to speak and today spent more than 30 minutes just shaking.”

shot1 — Maher on the matress in is his home.

But as his family says, that’s not just because of this attack. During the last aggression his home was bombed, his cousin was killed and his father was injured in the leg.

They were not at home when it was bombed, they were already at the UNRWA shelter/school, but they were at home when the one next to theirs was bombed. Since that day Maher’s family says that his personality has changed. They think he has a trauma. In his short life Maher has already suffered 3 massive Zionist aggressions against the Gaza Strip.

Her mother explains that since the last massacre, and until now, he can’t go alone to the bathroom, as he is afraid the zionist soldiers will be inside.

She also explains how Maher and his brothers ask her all the time why the Israelis want to kill them, and that they keep crying because they don’t want to die.

The psychological effect of those aggressions are obvious on Maher, as on most of Gaza’s children, before the last massacre he had always been one of the first in his class, but this year he had very bad results in his exams and will have to repeat the course.

Gaza’s fishermen under constant attack by Israeli warships

27th July 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Ahmed: “Once I recover I’ll go fishing again…” Ismail (Ahmed’s father): “No, you won’t! That’s enough…”

As Ismail tells ISM, “the occupation establishes the fishing limits according to the season. When there’s fish within 3-6 miles they don’t let us go further than 2-3 miles… even 1’5… When there’s no fish before 7-10 miles they allow us to reach the 6 miles.”

gazafish — Doctors ordered Ahmed to stay two months in bed. After that they’ll decide if he needs another surgery.

ISM Gaza visited Ahmed Al Sharafi (20 years old) and his father, Ismail Al Sharafi. They explained how, after more than a month without going out to the sea, due to the scarce fish and the huge risk of getting shot and/or kidnapped by the zionist occupation forces, Ahmed tried to convince his father to go out. Finally Ismail accepted, as they didn’t have anything left to feed their 8 member family.

After throwing the nets for hours within the 6 miles limit imposed by the occupation without getting any fish, desperately, they decided to take an even greater risk and go further. When they were around 7 miles, an Israeli warship approached them and, without any prior warning, started shooting live ammunition around their boat. They then were told to stop the engine and to jump to the water. Ismail refused to obey and headed to the shore. At this point the Israeli ship started to make big waves around the small boat in order to overturn it, but failed, so then they started shooting live ammunition against them and their boat.

The engine was hit, as was Ahmed’s back, just a centimeter from the spine. Luckily the engine didn’t stop working, so Ismail could continue running away with his badly injured son lying on the floor of the small boat and leaving behind the expensive and extremely scarce nets.

At this point the zionist soldiers were satisfied and decided to let them go back to the besieged strip of land where they survive. Until they meet again.

Near there, Ahmed’s brother’s boat was also attacked and he was forced as well to leave behind its nets. In 2012 Ahmed and his brother were already kidnapped and their family boat stolen. As Ismail tells ISM, “the occupation establishes the fishing limits according to the season. When there’s fish within 3-6 miles they don’t let us go further than 2-3 miles… even 1’5… When there’s no fish before 7-10 miles they allow us to reach the 6 miles.”

On the same day Ahmed was shot, Youssef Barakat and Haizam Baker were injured with rubber-coated steel bullets, kidnapped, and their boat was stolen.

Haizam explained to ISM that this boat was his brother-in-law’s, as his was already stolen a month before. When they were around 5 miles away from the shore, the zionists approached and shot Haizam a rubber-coated bullet to the head just before shooting the engine, causing it to stop working. Haizam tried to cover the engine with his body, so they wouldn’t shoot it again, but failed. At this point he got shot in his legs with rubber-coated bullets.

Gazaafish — Haizam shows the side of his head, where he was shot with the rubber-coated bullet.

After that he was ordered to take off his clothes and stand naked on the front of the boat before being told to jump to the water and swim towards them, despite the injuries. Once in the warship, he was beaten by the soldiers with the butt of their guns and taken to Ashdod.

This boat was feeding 24 persons, who now lost their main source of income.

gazaaafish — Haizam’s little sister got burned in a domestic accident. Plastic surgery is not available in Gaza and due to the blockade she is not allowed to go abroad in order to get it.

Rare cancer caused by Israeli bombs in Gaza

21st July 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

During the 2012 Zionist massacre in Gaza, named by the occupation as Operation Pillar of Defense, many buildings near Mohamed’s home were bombed. Less than a year after the aggression, while playing with him, Mohamed’s mother found a lump in his neck. At this time he was eight years old.

They went to Shifa hospital, where he was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer. There he underwent the first surgery, but the operation was not successful.

After that he was allowed to travel to the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948, in order to be treated in the Hospital of Haifa. Where he underwent a second surgery and received radiotherapy, unavailable in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority pays the treatment to the Israeli hospital. For this reason, according to Mohamed’s family, the Palestinian Authority tries to prevent every journey of Mohamed from Gaza to Haifa’s hospital.

As Mohamed’s mother says, the Israeli doctors told them that this kind of cancer is due to the bombings near their home. They also told her that in 2016 the cancer rates in Gaza will rise 70% more, and that for the following 4 years it will keep growing.

Since the 2012 aggression Mohamed’s father has developed asthma as well.

The land bombed next to Mohamed's home. — The land bombed next to Mohamed’s home.

In 2014 Mohamed’s home was attacked by Zionist warships. Luckily they weren’t at home in this moment.

Mohamed’s family referred ISM to Fatimah, a 50 years old woman, mother of six children, who lives near them.

During the 2008 massacre, a mosque, a government building and a home were bombed next to her house. Four years ago she was diagnosed as well with thyroid cancer.

The home next to Fatima's that was bombed. — The home next to Fatima’s that was bombed.

The two oncologists interviewed by ISM in Shifa Hospital and Rantisi Children Hospital, in Gaza, agreed that these kinds of cancer are due to the Zionist bombs, and explained that they were very rare before the massive aggressions against the Gaza Strip.

* The names have been changed, as Mohamed and Fatimah are afraid of losing the permission to leave the Strip to receive the treatment.

Israeli forces continue abuses on Gaza fishermen, open fire at dawn

21st July 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

At 3:00 AM on the 21st of July 2015, Israeli forces once again opened fire on fishermen in the Gaza city area. 20 year old Ahmed Ismail al-Sharafi was shot in the right side of the back. The bullet exited very close to the spine. Two other fishermen were arrested and one of the boats was taken to Ashdod port.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that in May alone, there were a total of 51 incidents of shootings, incursions into the coastal enclave, and arrests. This included 41 shootings, which left nine injured, including one minor.

Despite Israeli promises at the end of the ceasefire to ease restrictions on Palestinian access to both the sea and the border region near the “security buffer zone,” these attacks continue on a very often basis.

More wounds on Ahmed's body. — More wounds on Ahmed’s body.

Photo credit to https://www.facebook.com/fishermengaza?fref=photo

Interview to Dr.Rami Mokdad, head of the Oncology Department from Shifa Hospital in Gaza

10th July 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

No private hospital in Gaza treats cancer, only the public ones, and that the treatment is free of charge.

“At Shifa Oncology Department we treat everyday 150 patients, and we are in total 3 doctors, 5 nurses and have just 15 beds. Obviously that’s not enough.“

Dr. Rami Mokdad:

“In the last 10 years it has grown a lot the number of patients with cancer in the Gaza Strip. Especially in young people and children, before most of the cases affected old people, but since the Zionist aggressions against Gaza started it became normal to receive children and young people with cancer.

The three kinds of cancer that have grown more in those years are thyroid cancer, leukaemia and multiple myeloma cancer.

For example, in 2005 we had less than 50 cases of thyroid cancer, in 2014 we had 300 cases. Actually we are receiving each month between 70 and 100 new cases of cancer patients. In this oncology department, the most important in the Gaza Strip, we treated in 2010 around 2800 patients. On 2013 the number grew to 5000 and the last year, 2014, we treated around 6000 patients. And I’m afraid these numbers will continue to grow even more. In 10 years we’ll have a huge crisis in Gaza, as the risk factors are getting worst; the use of war weapons by Israel in highly populated areas, the consumptions of polluted water, the use of polluted land for growing food, etc.

Another special case we find in Gaza is the nasopharyngeal cancer, especially in children. Those cases come from areas where the people had primary contact with the Zionist bombs, especially with white phosphorous, but also in cases where their home was bombed.

Due to the blockade we find a lot of difficulties for making the diagnosis and treating those patients. For example in Gaza we don’t have either radiotherapy or molecular therapy, and we find a lot of obstacles to send the patients to the West Bank to receive the appropriate treatment. We also don’t have PET scan, isotope scan or laboratory markers. We also suffer from an important shortage of chemotherapy supplies and other drugs, we could say that we work with the 40% of the supplies we really need. As even when we receive some of these drugs, we don’t receive them continuously, so we never know if the next week we’ll be able to provide the needed treatment to the patients.

The Palestinian Authority is responsible for this shortage of drugs, as they don’t send the supplies intended for Gaza due to its will to punish Hamas.

This attitude from the Ramallah based government, along with the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt that doesn’t allow the patients to leave the Strip in order to receive the treatment outside, and in the case of Egypt, that also doesn’t allow the entrance of medical supplies and drugs through Rafah Border; are responsible of our inability to treat properly the cancer patients from Gaza.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of resources of the local government we don’t have any serious studies addressing the cancer issue. And we don’t know why any of all the International Agencies or NGOs is studying that.”