Tag: Gaza - Page 212 - International Solidarity Movement

It’s a ceasefire…just not on the beach, not in your home

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Ahmed Hassanin, 7, shot in the head outside his home by Israeli soldiers from Gaza’s eastern border on January 22nd.

On the 5^th morning after Israel declared a ‘ceasefire’, Israeli gunboats began shelling, as they had on several mornings since halting the 22 day air and land bombardment of Gaza. The shelling, which began just after 7:30 am off Gaza city’s coast, injured at least 6, including one boy with shrapnel in his head.

Yasser Abed, 15, came out from his home in Gaza’s Beach camp, on the coast, to see where the shelling was occurring. A shard of shrapnel lodged in his forehead.

Nisreen al Quqa, 11, was out earlier, before the navy began to fire towards Palestinian fishermen. She and her brother were walking on the beach when the firing started. A piece of shrapnel lodged in her right calf muscle.

Other injuries included a 14 year old male who was hit in the thigh by one of the shrapnel fragments, a 35 year old male also with a shrapnel injury, and a 4 year old girl with a head wound from flying shrapnel.

To the east of Gaza city, in the Sheyjaiee district close to the eastern border, also on the same day, 7 year old Ahmed Hassanian was outside his house with friends around 9:45 am. He lies now in critical condition in Shifa hospital’s ICU, a bullet still lodged in his brain and with such brain hemorrhaging and damage that he is expected to die shortly.

Mu’awiyah Hassanain, the director of Ambulance and Emergency Services, reports shelling in the northwestern coastal area of As Sudaniya on the same morning, saying five fishermen were injured in the attacks.

Israeli warplanes, on the first day of the ceasefire, flew extremely low and loudly over areas of Gaza, leaving residents expecting the worst. Drones capable of photographing and of dropping lethal, targeted missiles, continued to circle in Gaza’s skies for the first 3 days after the tanks retreated and the air-bombing ceased. At 8:30 am, one of these drones dropped 2 missiles in the Amal area east of Beit Hanoun, wounding a woman and an 11 year old child, who later died of her injuries.

Mohammed Jarboua, 21, clinically brain-dead

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports further violations of the cease-fire.

At 10:40, Israeli troops killed Maher abu Rjaila, 23, shooting him in the chest as he walked on his land east of Khan Younis city.

Two days later, at 1:00pm, Israeli soldiers fired on residents of Al Qarara, near Khan Younis, shooting Waleed al-Astal, 42, in his right foot.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 1,330, with as many as 200 more bodies expected to be recovered from under the rubble of the over 5,000 destroyed houses and 20,000 buildings.

Dr. Fawzi Nablusi, director of Shifa’s ICU, said that of the cases in Shifa’s ICU, 90% were civilian, of these 50% were women and children. One of those civilians injured the day before Israel’s ceasefire was Mohammed Jarboua. Also from the Beach camp, the 21 year old is clinically brain dead, surviving only on mechanical life-support, after being shot in the head by Israeli naval forces.

The Director of Shifa hospital, Dr. Hassan Khalaf, and Mu’awiyah Hassanain confirmed that since the ceasefire began on January 18, three more Palestinians have been killed, and 15 more injured, 10 of those injured on January 22^nd.

These ceasefire violations are not a new precedent, as during the 6 month ceasefire which began on June 19^th, Israeli forces routinely targeted and fired upon fishermen and farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, injuring 62, according to Palestinian sources. During this period, 22 Palestinians were also killed, many of them members of resistance groups, and 38 fishermen and farmers were abducted. The truce period saw border crossings mainly closed, completely sealed them from November 4, 2008 with only the briefest of openings.

As the dust settles and noxious chemical fires continue to smolder, Gazans focus on their immediate needs: housing, food, and in many cases locating lost family members still under the rubble.

The root of the problem continues: the nearly 2 year old siege on Gaza, not relaxed under the 6 month ceasefire as agreed, and which had already decimated Gaza’s health and sanitation infrastructures, and had shattered the economy. From the ruins of Gaza, any signs of an end to the siege are far beyond the broken horizon.

Amid destruction, school resumes

Tara Jensen is an Australian Human Rights Volunteer in Gaza

“We have no bathroom, how can we wash ourselves? How can we go to school looking like this?”, implored 13 year-old Shaima al Samouni. It’s a pertinent question, given that schools reopened two days ago for the first time since the Israeli attacks on Gaza started.

With 29 family members killed during the attacks on the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City, however, it seems a strange concern. But life marches on, and the other children have gone back to school. Tugging at the clothes they were wearing, the children explain that, now, three weeks after their homes were destroyed, what they’re wearing is all they have. And, it seems, they’re not going to school wearing that.

They take us across the dirt, to a half-bombed house. On the way, we walk over the foundations of what used to be the house of Majid al Samouni and his family. The children stop to show us a drum of olives (zaytoun) that was destroyed. We pass by the carcass of a large sheep. Shot by the Israeli army. They show us their two pretty donkeys. “Donkeys quais”, I say in broken Arabic, relieved that they’re not taking us to more animal corpses. There used to be nine donkeys, they explain. But the Israeli soldiers shot seven of them. Then my colleague points out the gaping hole in the shoulder of the brown donkey – also shot by the Israeli army. Donkey mish quais.

One of the young girls, who is nine years old, is desperate for me to understand the extent to which their lives were destroyed. Not in terms of life lost, but livelihood. “Bas al shugul – al ard. Bas” (The land is the only work we have), and the land is totally destroyed. The children catalogue the types of fruit trees they had – lemon, guava, orange, mandarin, and the ubiquitous olive. They don’t talk about the battery-chicken shed that is crushed, chickens still in cages. When I finally ask just how many chickens there were, I find it difficult to believe the answer – two thousand chickens.

Her older cousin goes to great lengths to tell me repeatedly, at every opportunity, that they were just farmers, not Hamas. I know, I reply.

Inside the half-destroyed house, there is a clamour to show all of the atrocities crowded into one small space. Some of the children explain that their mother had given birth during the bombing, how they had to burn a knife over a candle to cut the umbilical cord. And about how their two-year-old sister was wounded on her face – lacerations from her eye across and down her cheek. Others point to where shells entered the house, some still stuck in the walls. They tell us how the soldiers had occupied the house, after the family had evacuated it. How they came back to find everything on the ground, including the Qu’ran. Then, worse, how one Qu’ran had been defecated on. Haram, was all I could say. I took photos somewhat helplessly, of everything they showed me. I’m well-practiced at documenting damage Israeli soldiers have done to Palestinian homes. And the families always seem to feel better if you take photos of everything. But the ridiculousness of what I was doing – taking photos of small holes in walls when half of the house was missing – hit, and I put the camera down.

A couple of the children – the ones who had been telling me that they were all farmers, and just farmers – led me around the corner to a house they said belonged to Arafat al Samouni. The house was leveled, just a small tarp erected in the middle of the debris. “Sleep here” one of the children informed. 10 people killed in that house. Just one left, seemingly. Haram.

I wanted to ask the children about their parents. I know at least some of them have surviving parents, saw them with their mother. Heard them talk about her. But I’m too scared to ask. I don’t want to hear a small child have to tell me that its parent or parents are dead. There’s so much I can’t bring myself to ask. I’ve taken a lot of reports in Palestine. I know how it goes. What you need to ask. What information is vital. I know it so well I don’t even need to think about it. I can ask with sympathy about how Israeli soldiers invaded a family home; beat people; abducted their children. But this is something else entirely. Here and now, such questions seem vile. I just want to hang out with the children. Let them show me what they want to show me. Listen to them talk.

While we’re hanging out with these kids, our friends encounter one of their cousins who watched both of her parents die when Israeli soldiers bombed a house that they had told everyone from neighbouring houses to shelter in. Later, watching the video they took, we’re all shocked by the confident way Mona talks about the night when so many from her extended family were killed. About how she watched her parents die, before the rest of the family ran from the house, in all directions, whilst they were being fired upon by the soldiers. How composed she is as she recalls how they ran to her school, which she had previously believed was a long way from here house. How she couldn’t believe she had walked all that way. How it didn’t seem like a long distance. And about how here grandparents told her that it was because they were scared and running that she didn’t notice the distance.

We’re not the only foreigners visiting this area – the al Samouni family have become famous for the tragedy they’ve endured. Teams of international journalists traipse around the dirt mounds and debris, making it seem like a macabre tourist attraction. “This is why the children don’t seem sad”, a local friend suggests later, while we watch Mona’s video. “When all the journalists leave, then they will feel sad”.

Driving back down the road towards Gaza city, we pass building after building bearing signs of shelling and bombing. Metre-wide holes punched through walls – some covered in plastic; a few already bricked in; most still open wounds in the masonry. It looks to me as though tanks drove down the street we now drive on, pausing to shell every apartment block and house they passed. As though for fun. It’s an idea I can’t get out of my mind. The possibility, that a large proportion of what the al Samounis and other families in Gaza have endured over the past month was done for kicks, haunts me.

Will there be time to recover?

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

Back in Gaza city late last night, we met by the sea to welcome back A, who returned through the Rafah border the day before, after his kidnap off a Gaza fishing boat by Israel late last year. It was hard to give him much of a festive welcome with the stories we had to tell.

Mo spoke of the Al Fukhary area, near his home, where due to lack of electricity for radios or phones, no-one had heard a thing about the danger of the phosphorous bombs, and thought they were just fireworks. Many people went out to see what they were, and received serious burns. C said that doctors treating phosphorous burns have been burnt themselves, she had unconfirmed reports that some even needed finger amputations.

And so many more stories, even just one or two steps from me.

Jilal, from Jabalia Red Crescent, who – like so many, many men – worked for ten years to afford his house, now destroyed.

Majed, my nurse friend from Al Awda hospital, whose aunt is in hospital with a fractured leg; her house fell on her.

Dr Halid’s wife and two little daughters, alone in their small tin-roofed house in Magazi refugee camp while he was cut off from them in Gaza city. They sheltered in the room they thought safest, but it was struck by a rocket. They moved to another room, it was struck by a second rocket. A final rocket struck the third room they tried. Now the family is living with Dr H’s father.

Basma from the UHWC, who tells me about the family that called her, crying, to say they had no home and no possessions and were going to have to sleep on the street that night.

Hamse, our 21 year old security guard with whom all the other internationals (who are not so stroppy about police guards as I am) made friends. He survived the first day attacks that killed so many police, but was killed later. He leaves a 5 month old daughter.

Dr Waleed, Medical Director Al Quds Hospital; his friend has a leg amputation with continuing complications. She woke in the night with the feeling she should move her family out of the room they were in. After shifting them, she went back there herself and the room was hit.

V interviewed Dalal, the 12 year old whose entire family died while she was with her grandma. Her house is destroyed, all that is left her is her cat.

And Amira, who crawled, injured, to the house of my friend Haider Eid ’s cousin. Haider wrote about her on Electronic Intifada:

You might prefer to talk to 14-year old Amira Qirm, whose house in Gaza City was shelled with artillery and phosphorous bombs – bombs which burnt to death 3 members of her immediate family: her father, her 12-year-old brother, Ala’a, and her 11-year old sister, Ismat. Alone, injured and terrified, Amira crawled 500m on her knees to a house close by – it was empty because the family had fled when the Israeli attack began. She stayed there for 4 days, surviving only on water, and listening to the sounds of the Israeli killing machine all around her, too afraid to cry out in pain in case the soldiers heard her. When the owner of the house returned to get clothes for his family, he found Amira, weak and close to death.

When I saw Dr Halid the other day, on the request of a journalist, I asked him about evidence of the weapon called gbu39 or “dime” (dense inner metal explosive) bomb. This is believed to have been used by Israel for the first time in Lebanon in 2006, and now here as well. Dr Halid said the ICU doctors were seeing something new to them: what appeared to be mild external shrapnel injuries coupled with disproportionate massive internal damage.

“There will be small chest wounds, but then the lungs will be destroyed. Or minor abdominal entry wounds but then kidneys and liver destroyed.” I heard today that it seems that the dense metal shrapnel splinters into tiny particles upon entry to the body, which are then carried by the bloodstream, swiftly shredding everywhere they reach. So many patients appear to stabilise, and then die shortly afterwards. As if that wasn’t enough, Lebanon experience suggests that those who do survive experience quick onset of cancer. What kind of mind dreams this stuff up?

I didn’t manage to finish writing this last night, and a quiet night made me hopeful. But just now, 11.45 am, we heard an explosion some distance from where I am sitting in the Red Crescent office. E, who had earlier reported the return of planes in the sky over the city, called to say it had rocked her building. I have on my lap the small son of one of the medics, a quiet child of a little over a year, who is wearing a thoughtful expression. What will happen to us all if this begins again?

One of the incredibly frustrating things about the last weeks was Israel deliberately attacking ambulances and killing medical workers who went to collect the wounded, resulting in Red Cross instructing Red Crescent not to move unless permission from Israel was in place. In the final days of attacks, C and EJ decided several times to move without permission (or co-ordination as the Red Cross calls it) along with a couple of intrepid medics. So around the same time as my hospital was on fire, EJ and C were going to some houses where 5 men had tried to go outside to get bread for their children. Their bodies were now in pieces on their doorsteps, within view of hysterical wives and children. EJ and C went in with stretchers, collected the body pieces, and evacuated the families.

If attacks begin again, we hope to play this role among others, because we have found it so distressing to realise how many injured died completely needlessly. Especially so many stories that involved parents left with dying children for days, or children left with dying parents.

Huge demonstration in Hebron in solidarity with Gaza

Another massive demonstration occurred in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood of Hebron on Friday. This marked the third consecutive weekly demonstration protesting the Israeli occupation and the atrocities in Gaza. The crowd numbered around 2500 people, somewhat smaller than the two previous weeks when the Israeli attack on Gaza was in progress.

The demonstration began after the Friday prayers at the Wasaya mosque in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood. Israeli police and soldiers had erected roadblocks around the area prior to the demonstration in an attempt to limit access to the protestors.

Seven Palestinians were arrested including two directly charged with stone throwing. Israeli soldiers entered several Palestinian residences and took up positions on rooftops to shoot at the demonstrators.

There were 20 injuries reported requiring medical intervention including 15 people suffering from tear gas inhalation, 4 people shot with rubber coated steel bullets, and one man seriously injured by a dum dum (exploding) live bullet. This man was shot in the upper leg, fragmenting the bone in several places and destroying all of the muscle tissue in the area of the wound. He was transferred from the local hospital to Al-Mizaan Hospital in Hebron.

Despite the lower numbers of protestors this week, the demonstration was successful in forcing a retreat of the Israeli forces in several instances, including the stopping of an advance of Israeli jeeps with a massive barrage of stones thrown from the street and from the surrounding rooftops.

Israeli forces fired large amounts of tear gas and rubber coated bullets and some live ammunition. Some of the tear gas canisters were of the type that have been used in recent weeks at Ni’lin village and other locations. These canisters are much heavier and of a much higher velocity than the normal canisters, posing a risk of serious injury or death to anyone hit directly by a canister.

On the previous Friday, a 17 year old man was killed by Israeli soldiers during the demonstration in the Abu Sneineh area of Hebron.

Back home in Jabalia

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

Baby H, out of the basement, with his uncle who lost both legs in past attack

This morning is the second that I woke to quietness; no shelling from the sea. E and I went today to see our Jabalia friends, F’s family. They are back in their house, one of the few standing in their neighborhood of Azbet Abed Rabbo. This is only the case because their fears were realized – it was again occupied by the army during the land incursion. However by this time they had left and gone to relatives elsewhere. Israeli soldiers don’t clean up after themselves so the family has been cleaning for a week solid – without running water.

It was so good to be able to sit in the sun with them and drink tea and watch the children playing in the garden. I’d not seen the children in a state other than fear, nor in a location other than the basement. Abu Nasser (the husband of Sara who was killed in the first attack as she was out looking for bread) came through the whole thing ok despite refusing to leave the neighborhood when the rest of the family did. He has been ill, not surprisingly, and was feeling chilly despite the sun. He described immediately coming back to the house as soon as he thought it was possible, and watching the Israeli soldiers dancing as they left. He always reminds me of a wiry old fisherman, with a white beard, bright eyes, and a woolly hat on. He says, and apparently other Palestinians in their 80s agree, that these attacks have been worse than anything they ever saw before. This is the fourth attack on the Jabalia area in three years.

On the way there we dropped into the Jabalia Red Crescent centre that we had to evacuate on the first night of the ground incursion; one room is burnt out, it has a lot of holes in, and the windows are all broken, but it could be worse. All the RC guys were there working hard to clear up. Even Hassan was there, limping and sound a bit shell-shocked still.

H took us around a part of the Azbet area I didn’t see the other day, and we recorded some more stories. We begin with Ayman Torban’s house, where he and his brother’s family lived, a total of 17 people. I was immediately intrigued because under the rubble was a paper on midwifery in Palestine (I have a degree place for this in Sept 09) and I spotted more crumpled midwifery books. It turned out this was an extensive medical and science library put together by his sister Amel, who did her midwifery masters in London, and taught here in Gaza, but now lives in Dubai.

We sat in the flimsy shelter Ayman has constructed beside his house and heard what happened. He told us this house was first shelled on January 4, when only the women and children were there. (In many cases the men feel their families are safer without them because of the Israeli army’s tendency to treat all men as militants.) It was attacked with 2 Apache helicopters and 5 tank shells.

Two days later the relatives realized everyone in the basement was still alive, and one of the women went to tell them it might be ok to come out. First she brought out the children, and three tanks came to confront them. But she went back, waited with the women inside for 2 hours, and then they all came out and reached safety.

Two days later the army went into the house and laid mines which collapsed it completely. This was the pattern for most Jabalia houses, which appears to be why the devastation is so complete. A young man sitting with us said “before these attacks I wanted to travel. But now I want to stay in our land. Who will protect it if we all leave?”

Next to the Turban house are the Badwan and Ayoub houses. Maher Badwan (who had taken most of the family to his cousin’s house), told us that Mousba Ayoub fled his own house and went to the Badwan house, where he hid with Maher’s mother in the kitchen while the house was hit with tanks shells and phosphorous. Both died, Maher’s mother survived a short time but no ambulance was able to reach her. The army then planted mines in the house (black crosses on the pillars to mark the best place for them are still visible) and collapsed it with the bodies still inside.

Mahoud Abed Rabbu lived in a 3 floor, six apartment building. On January 6 it came under shell attack from 10.30. At 2pm during the 1-4pm “ceasefire”, the army dynamited a wall open and told Mahoud and his family “leave here, go into the town, we’ll kill you if you return.” Everybody walked towards Jabalia center, until they reached a mosque, when other soldiers took all the men – about 60 of them – and put them in an animal shelter. Women and children were allowed to leave.

They took the ID of the men, made them strip, and then used them as human shields as they continued to dynamite houses open and enter them. Finally the army released the men about 10pm (again saying not to come back or the army would kill them) except for 10 who they arrested and who are believed to still be held in the Israeli Naqab prison.

His neighbor Khalid Abed Rabbu told us that on the same day, three tanks surrounded his house and the soldiers shouted at him to get out. He went outside with his wife, children, and mother, carrying a white flag. He remembers noticing that two of the soldiers in the tanks were eating chocolate. A third solider got out of the tank, and opened fire on the family with an M16. Khalid tried to take his family back into the house, but his daughters, Soad aged 7 and Armir aged 2, were killed. His mother received bullets in her arm and stomach. His 4 year old daughter Samir was hit with 3 bullets and was evacuated to an intensive care in Belgium; if she survives she will be paralyzed.

A few minutes away, his ambulance driver neighbor Samir Hassheikh heard his call for help and tried to bring the ambulance to them, but tanks stopped him. The army later destroyed the ambulance along with Samir’s house. After two hours Khalid managed to bring his injured mother and daughter to a point another ambulance could reach. E remembers bringing in Khalid’s mother while she was on duty with the Jabalia Red Crescent. The sadness on Khalid’s face as he told us his story, sitting beside the rubble of his home, has stayed with me. I couldn’t bring myself to ask to take his photo.

As we were walking the Azbet neighborhood, I got a text from V: “Israel radio says right now that they are ready to attack again today. Take care.” Wordlessly, I showed it to E. It took a while before we could face asking H if he knew anything. He said there had been something on the radio but everyone hoped it was just a rumor.

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