Tag: Gaza

Journal: Late post for Sat night

By Sharon in Gaza

To view Sharon’s blog please click here

Last night E rode with the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jabalia, where attacks have continued to be very heavy, and was witness to the collection of three martyred folks – one was 24 year old caretaker of the American school, whose body was in a terrible state as a result of the school being bombed during the night.

Our Jabalia friends, F’s family, had further near misses during the night and were very distressed, so E went to see them this morning. She found that Israel had dropped leaflets in the area announcing that everyone must leave their houses because they will be destroyed. So F’s family have today left behind what must now seem like the comparative safety of their basement. But E met the neighbours, who have ten children, and are not leaving – because they simply have nowhere to go. And also, Sara’s husband from F’s family is not leaving the neighbourhood, though he won’t stay in the empty house. I guess he’s just had enough, and perhaps only wants to join his wife in paradise.

Our local colleague Mo told us of a teenager from his youth group who died yesterday. 16-year-old Christian girl, Christine Wade’a al Turk, died of a heart attack brought on by a severe asthma attack, resulting from the stress of the ongoing strikes.

Bombing across the road from me at the port this morning destroyed further boats, filling the sky with thick black smoke. One wonders what the point is. V and I will be with Jabalia’s Red Crescent Service tonight.

THANK YOU for today’s rallies! I’ve made a new section on on the blog called Gaza Solidarity Worldwide, please post any reports there you’d like to share.

Shortly after I got this far with this draft, we had to go to Ramattan for a press conference stating that though 400 internationals left yesterday, many of us are remaining to stand beside our Palestinian friends. And to state our belief that Israel wants no outside witnesses to its next actions, and perhaps no possibility of being called to account for the deaths of any inconvenient Westerners. At about 5pm the rumour reached us that the army’s ground incursion was about to begin, and we dropped everything else to run to the Red Crescent in Jabalia…

What the medics see, do, and are subjected to; uncensored

By Eva Bartlett in Gaza

To view Eva’s blog please click here

On 31st December, around 2 am, two emergency medical services personnel were targeted by an Israeli missile as they attempted to reach injured in the Jabaliya region, northern Gaza. The first died immediately, the second soon after of complications from his internal injuries.

Two days later, 2 more medics were injured in the area east of Gaza, again in the line of duty, again trying to reach the injured.

Under the Geneva Conventions, Israel is obliged to allow and ensure safe passage to medical personnel to the injured. Instead, Israel routinely targets them.

At the Jabaliya Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) station, the team there tells me of their injuries. Half, they say, of emergency medics and drivers in Gaza have been injured by Israel while trying to perform the duties.

One shows me a scar from a gunshot wound to his arm. Another tells of being twice injured: once, shot in the stomach, another time, also shot in the arm. The bullet holes in their ambulances speak for themselves.

Internationals from the ISM (International Solidarity Movement) and the Free Gaza Movement have decided to join the EMT personnel in their work around Gaza.

I start in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza at the eastern border, where I meet an amiable team of professionals. After delivering a pregnant woman to hospital, our first serious call is to retrieve the bodies of two killed resistance fighters, hit by shells. The sight of the one in our ambulance is ugly, his face has exploded. The knowledge of his life and death is uglier: he was born into a life of occupation, and he has chosen to resist, as one would when being invaded. The ugliest aspect lies in the knowledge that he was undoubtedly a father, a husband, a man who probably has a mixture of photos on his phone: beautiful women, cute children, cats, a fighter with a gun, pictures of his family, random lovely scenes of nature, and the slapstick video clips that seem to be common among those with high tech-cell phones. He was a regular guy, of this I’m sure, thrust into an unbearable, deadly role. His silver lining is that at least he doesn’t have to live in hell on earth any longer.

The next call, at just after 4 am, is to retrieve one injured, one dead, at the American high school in Beit Lahia, the northwest of the Strip. We have to navigate roads that are more than pot-holed, destroyed by time, lack of construction materials (the siege), and more recently, the F-16 missiles. Finding only the one injured man, we take him to hospital, returning after daybreak to find the corpse.

After sunrise, we return to the northwest, passing a dead cow on the side of the road. En route, near the bombed high school, the van gets a flat. We walk in from there, moving quickly as drones and F-16s still circle, second and third strikes are all too common. In the light, I see what had been a large structure, a quality high school a friend had studied at. What’s left of the body has been found and brought out to the nearest clearing, the playground. [Later in the morning, I re-visit the site with a film crew, tell the story. I notice the sea beyond, hadn’t seen it in the dim morning light. Notice the twisted wreckage of the playground, and the pieces of shrapnel littering the ground. As we film, 2 missiles blast in the vicinity. It’s hard not to feel like prey in this open area, clearly visible]. I don’t immediately see the corpse unwrapped, but I suspect that he is not all there. The dead, a 24 year old night watchman, had no warning of the at least 2 missiles which leveled the school and tore him apart.

The medics work to load the corpse, first having to replace the flat tire. Working frantically, still fearful of potential strikes, they crowd the ambulance, hoist the van, replace the flat. A missile hits 50 metres away. Surely, undoubtedly, those warplanes above us know –from the markings of the ambulance, the clothes of the medics, the crystal clear photos their drones can take –that we are civilians and medics below. Yet they fire.

They change the tire, load the body, and we’re off, screeching as much as the tired ambulance and pathetic roads will allow. It’s straight around the back of the hospital, to the mortuary, where men mourning the latest dead before ours are ushered out, ordered to make room for this new body. In the cold room, the body is transferred to the fridge shelf, but while that happens the blanket comes undone. The patch of burned skin, in no way human, reveals itself to be a half-body, the head hanging loosely by what neck remains.

I see it, as I saw the dead man in the ambulance. And I write it, because everyone must see it, hear of it. The children of Gaza must see these images, or are these images, so we have no right to censorship from such gruesome deaths.

But I cry, too, at the disfigurement of the young corpse, and the knowledge that he is one of so many (over 470 now) killed in the last week.

The medics have seen ghastly things and urge me to keep it in, keep working. They must, and so I do.

We return to the centre, I leave them intending to return a day later, to spend my day reporting and writing. In the end I return to the ambulance station a half day later, as Israel ramps up its bloodletting.

ei: “They know no limits now”

By Eva Bartlett

To view original article, published by Electronic Intifada on the 4th January 2009, click here

In the haze of dust and smoke from the latest F-16 strike, a family self-evacuates. The dispatcher at the Jabaliya Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) receives call after call from terrified residents fleeing their homes. It’s a new year, a new Nakba, and an old scene; Israel is bombarding Gaza once again and the world is standing idly by, sitting on a fence very different from the electrified border fence encaging Gaza, or the separation wall dividing and ghettoizing the West Bank. The world sits on the fence, justifying Israel’s massacre of a civilian population already dying from the siege.

We are four ambulances out tonight, versus two last night. The ambulances weave nimbly along blacked-out streets of a manufactured ghost town — like the streets all over Gaza — dodging fresh piles of rubble,

It’s absolutely impossible, unbelievable, it’s a massacre. “They know no limits now,” the medics report. “They are going crazy.”

We pass shells of houses, mosques, schools and shops, and see streams of panicked residents fleeing for their lives. Many more began to flee this morning after yet another night of bombardment on and around their houses. I saw the remains of rubble. This morning when Israel dropped the flyers announcing their intention to bomb the northern regions in collective punishment, residents believed it. The lights in Jabaliya’s PRCS stations are out, the power has just cut. In the dark, and cold, the sounds of explosions outside are more pronounced.

Acrid smoke from the shelling poisons the air. The feeling of being utterly surrounded by war planes, tanks, bulldozers and warships increases as news comes of the latest attack around Gaza: an orphanage in Gaza City, near the Palestine Mosque, with whispers that the holy place is next, marking at least 10 mosques destroyed. The number of dead and injured from the attack on the Ibrahim al-Makadma Mosque today is 11 and 50 respectively, and rising.

The calls for help from the northwest region, and from 500 kilometers east of this ambulance station, must go unanswered. The medics must coordinate with Israel via the ICRC. A bitter irony; the occupier denies permission to leave, the occupier invades, the invader kills and injures, and — beyond belief — holds the power to grant permission to retrieve those that the invader has injured or killed.

My article ends in continued disbelief — to the thuds of explosions and Apache blades; to the staccato of firing into the night; and to blasts hitting unknown targets with an unknown end.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in the Gaza Strip after having arrived with the 3rd Free Gaza Movement boat in November. She has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, accompanying ambulances while witnessing and documenting the ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

The Guardian: Do Israeli pilots feel happy killing innocent women and children?

By Fida Qishta – ISM co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip

To view original article, published by The Guardian on the 3rd January 2009, click here

A Palestinian in Gaza chronicles life under Israeli bombardment

Saturday 27 December

I go to visit friends in the Block J neighbourhood in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. While I am in a friend’s house, my phone rings. It’s a friend from Gaza City, calling for a chat. Suddenly I hear the sound of an explosion at his end. At the same time I hear an explosion in Rafah too. Just outside, somewhere near. My friend says: “Fida, they are attacking nearby.” I say: “They are attacking here too.”

I run into the street and everybody is running, children and grown-ups, all looking to see if their relatives and friends are alive. It is the time for children to go to school for the second shift, after the first shift finishes at 11.30am.Naama is aged 13. This is what she tells me: “I was sitting in the classroom with my friends when the attack happened. We were scared and we ran out of our school. Our headmaster asked us to go home. We saw fire everywhere.”

People are looking at the remains of a police station. There are still bodies under the wreckage. It is scary because the attack isn’t over, and from where we are we can see an Israeli airplane attacking another police station.

At the hospital, I speak to a wounded police officer, aged 39. “We were at the police station,” he said. “The Israeli planes came and suddenly the building collapsed on us. I saw four dead bodies near me. They were in pieces. Outside there were more bodies. Everyone was shouting. I lost consciousness and then found myself in hospital.”

Later I am at home with my family. We’ve just received a phone call on our land line. It’s the Israeli defence ministry, and they say that any house that has guns or weapons will be targeted next, without warning and without any announcement. Just to let you know, we don’t have any weapons in our house. If we die please defend my family.

Sunday 28 December

I wake up at 7am after an Israeli F-16 attack. Our house is shaking. We all try to imagine what has happened, but we want to at least know where the attack was. It is so scary. We try to open the main door to our flat, but it’s stuck shut after the attack. I have to climb out of the window to leave the house. I am shocked when I find out our neighbour’s pharmacy was the target. It is just 60 metres from our house. They targeted a pharmacy. I still can’t believe it.

Om Mohammed says: “They [Israeli forces] attack everywhere. They have gone crazy. The Gaza Strip is just going to die … it’s going to die. We were sleeping. Suddenly we heard a bomb. We woke up and we didn’t know where to go. We couldn’t see through the dust. We called to each other. We thought our house had been hit, not the street. What can I say? You saw it with your own eyes. What is our guilt? Are we terrorists? I don’t carry a gun, neither does my girl.

“There’s no medicine. No drinks, no water, no gas. We are suffering from hunger. They attack us. What does Israel want? Can it be worse than this? I don’t think so. Would they accept this for themselves?

“Look at the children. What are they guilty of? They were sleeping at 7am. All the night they didn’t sleep. This child was traumatised during the attack. Do they have rockets to attack with?”

Monday 29 December

The Israeli army is destroying the tunnels that go from Rafah into Egypt. For the past year and a half the Israeli government has intensified the economic blockade of Gaza by closing all the border crossings that allow aid and essential supplies to reach Palestinians in Gaza. This forced Palestinians to dig tunnels to Egypt to survive. From our house we can hear the explosions and the house is shaking.At night we can’t go out. No one goes out. If you go out you will risk your life. You don’t know where the bombs will fall. My mother is so sad. She watches me writing my reports and says: “Fida, will it make any difference?”

Before the attack started we got some food aid from the EU. It’s not much, but it’s enough, we’re not starving. But some of our friends have nothing. My mum warns me: “Fida, don’t leave the house, it’s too dangerous outside.” Then she goes out to share our food with the neighbours who have nothing.

Wednesday 31 December

11.40pm: a powerful air strike somewhere nearby. I was sleeping but the blast wakes me up. I see my mum looking from the window. She points at one of the refugee camps. “The attack was there,” she said.

I went back to sleep – not because I don’t care, but because I can’t deal with it. If the attack was really aimed at one of the camps that means hundreds are going to be injured or even killed, the houses destroyed. I really can’t imagine it.

Thursday 1 January

In the morning I get up early and call a friend who lives in Alshabora camp. He confirms the attack had hit there and I go to meet him.

It looks like an earthquake. Many houses have been damaged, and many people have been wounded. The people who had escaped injury were trying to clean the place up – they have nowhere else to go. But the biggest shock is when I ask about the target. It was the children’s playground.

“We heard a strong explosion happen, but with all the smoke and the dust we couldn’t see well, and the electricity was off,” I am told by a small child.

“We saw everything fall down – the window broke on us. We went downstairs, and people were saying that the playground’s been targeted. This park is not a member of Hamas, it’s a park for playing. It’s for civilians – so why did they attack it?,” asks one 12-year-old girl who lives nearby.

The target was a civilian area – but there was no warning, not one phone call from the Israeli army to tell civilians to beware.

I visit the main hospital in Rafah. There are so many injured people, most of them children. In one ward, I meet four children aged five or six. They are in deep shock. They can’t speak, they just look at you.

Only one child could say his name: “Abdel Rahman”. That’s all he can say. Otherwise, he just stares. He’s five. His ear was wounded by shrapnel, his head is covered by bandages.

There is a 16-year-old girl also suffering from shrapnel injuries. Three of her brothers were killed; all her family were injured. She looks like a zombie and says nothing at all. Her mother is dying in the intensive care unit.

The hospital manger, Abu Youssef Alnajar, gives the statistics for 1 January: two dead – a young man aged 22 and a woman aged 33; 59 injured – 16 children, 18 women and the rest old people. Most of them had been sleeping when the bombs dropped.

I go back home and the first thing I do is take a shower. I feel really upset after what I have seen. As always I am trying to cope with the situation but sometimes it is too much to deal with.

A short message to the pilots in the Israeli F-16s: does it make you feel happy to kill Palestinian children and women? Do you feel it’s your duty? Killing every child and woman, man and teenager in Gaza? I don’t know what exactly you feel, what exactly you think, but please think of your mother and sister, your son and daughter.

Friday 2 January

I am in the hospital again. An ambulance crew has been called out to help an injured man somewhere near the ruins of the old Gaza airport. He’s a civilian, one of the bedouin who tend their sheep in that area. Four shepherds saw an explosion and went to investigate – when they arrived at the scene there was a second bomb and they were injured. An ambulance managed to rescue three of the men. But one of their friends is still there, bleeding.

The ambulance crew are afraid to go back for him. The wounded man is just 50 metres away from the green line so they are afraid the Israeli soldiers will target them.Outside there are still planes in the air. I have just heard a big explosion on the border area.

• Fida Qishta is a freelance Palestinian television producer and writer based in Gaza’s southern township of Rafah

International Human Rights Activists now working with medical teams in northern Gaza as Israel launches invasion of Gaza Strip

For Immediate Release

7:30pm, 3rd January 2009, Gaza: European, Australian and American Human Rights Activists are now based in northern Gaza as Israel has intensified shelling in what appears to be the beginning of a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

They will be accompanying ambulances and medical teams in the Jabaliya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun areas while working from the Northern Station of the Red Crescent in Jabaliya.

“Pieces of 10cm shrapnel are now flying into the Red Crescent Station. Ambulance crews cannot make it to injured people due to the massive Israeli shelling of the area” Alberto Arce (Spain) – International Solidarity Movement

“The ambulance crews have requested international assistance and so we will be working from the Red Crescent Northern Station in doing that. We have been working with the medics for the last three days and are first aid trained.” Sharon Lock (Australia) – International Solidarity Movement

Other International Human Rights Activists are now based in Rafah and Gaza City.

International Human Rights Activists have been accompanying ambulances in the Gaza Strip since the murder of medic Mohammed Abu Hassera and Doctor Ihab Al Mathoon by Israeli missiles on the 31st December 2008.
Human Rights Activists now in Gaza:
Alberto Arce – Spain
Ewa Jasiewicz – Poland/Britain
Dr. Haider Eid – South Africa
Sharon Lock – Australia
Fida Qishta – Palestine
Jenny Linnel – Britain
Natalie Abu Shakra – Lebanon
Vittorio Arrigoni – Italy
Eva Bartlett – Canada