Tag: Gaza

Resident of Rafah refuses to leave home despite Israeli attacks

29th December 2008, Rafah, Gaza Strip:

A resident of Yibna camp is staying in his house despite the evacuation of the camp by the Red Crescent following expectations of intensified Israeli attacks on the area.

In Yibna Camp in Rafah, Ahmed Mansour has been forced to choose between his life and his home.

“I cannot leave my home. If I leave and they destroy it, what can I come back to? They have taken away any stability in my life, I will not give up my house. I know the Israeli’s will destroy homes close to the border, but I cannot leave.”

This night, the Red Crescent in Gaza is evacuating people from the neighborhoods in Rafah located along the border with Egypt. Mansour has ensured that every one of his family members is in another location, away from a probable incursion. He has decided to stay in his home tonight.

Since the deadly air strikes by the Israeli Air Force, Mansour’s family has been abandoning their homes at midnight to stay in other areas of Gaza. The twenty-two members of his family must find relatives and friends to stay with on a nightly basis, for fear of attacks in the Rafah area. They come back in the early morning, hoping that their houses are intact and that they can still return. The air strikes against Palestinians in Gaza are not restricted to one area, so every time they leave Rafah it is in hope that another area will be less dangerous.

He is one of the 1.5 million people that have no choice, but to make impossible decisions. Civilians are left with one option, to hope that their homes are not the targets of Israel’s military offensive.

Mansour is staying in his house, the last piece of his former life.

“Under the guise of humanitarian efforts, people are being informed that their homes are about to be destroyed. After an inhumane siege that left Gaza with little to lose, people are being asked to say goodbye to the last remains of their former lives. ” Fida Qishta, Palestinian resident of Rafah, International Solidarity Movement

“After days of coordinated bombings all over Gaza, the pretense of avoiding civilian casualties is nonsensical. The offensive bombing of sites in Gaza has already lead to over 300 deaths and 1,000 injuries. To pretend that Israel wants to avoid unnecessary deaths is to ignore the facts.” Jenny Linnel, British citizen, International Solidarity Movement

Journal: Attacks last night in Gaza

By Sharon in Gaza

To view Sharon’s blog please click here

This will be hurried as very short collision of internet, electricity, and me, before we have to head for our night time locations before dark.

Last night my group went to Al Awda hospital in order to be in the Jabalia region in case of incursion. One of the targets bombed by Apaches was a mosque near us; the next door shop and house were also destroyed, the rubble collapsing on top of the six daughters of the Belusha family.

I watched live footage as they tried to extract the single traumatised little girl who survived. The others were dead. We visited the site this morning, catching a ride back to Gaza city with a driver whose eyes were full of tears.

In Gaza I went to see the Kabariti family in the port area, who you will recall hosted us for Christmas Eve. They confirmed the entire Gaza coast was shelled all night from about 1am, with the shells apparently coming from Israeli ships too far out at sea to be visible. We could see this happening from the top of Al Awda hospital, counting 14 shells in a row at one point to the little port where the Dignity docks. Any boats linked to the government were bombed, as well as several which weren’t, including that belonging to human rights defender Dr Eyyad Saraj. When the extinguisher boat tried to put out resulting fires, it was bombed. The port offices were bombed.

The Kabariti family, whose 6 children range from 4 to 18 years old, had spent a frightened night and appeared exhausted. As they talked to me this morning, another missile hit the port across the road. I had not seen the family since the strikes began on Saturday; I spoke to their oldest son and daughter who described being at Karmel High School when rockets hit the building in the initial strikes. H said he had stayed outside the gate for a last 5 minutes studying for his exam, thus avoiding injury when this happened. Now he doesn’t know if the exams will even happen.

The children told me their 11 year old cousin had to carry an injured kindergarten child to the hospital when Al Wahda school was hit at the same time. The children’s mother R is worried about her parents; they live above a money exchange and the rumour is these will be targetted next; this has happened twice before in past Israeli attacks. They told me that in another area of Gaza a medical supplies storage building was bombed and the gas station next door to it exploded.

EJ and Mo visited the Islamic University which had 5 rockets dropped on it by F16s at around midnight; the 5 story Women’s Building (in which I had attended some Midwifery degree classes), the Admin Building, and the Technical Building were reduced to a pile of rubble. The damage extended to the neighbouring Al Azahar University.

Please bear in mind that these are only a number of the multiple hits that have occurred, they are just the ones I have been made aware of in a hectic day.

Tonight we are going to the same regional locations as last night. We have several arrangements to ride with ambulances visibly in case of incursion.

Thank you so much for all your messages of support, demonstrations and actions and media work. I am so sorry I can’t reply individually to such supportive emails.

Red Crescent evacuating neigbourhoods in Rafah

The Red Crescent in Gaza is evacuating people from the neighborhoods in Rafah located along the border with Egypt.

According to the international Human Rights Volunteers in Gaza, people are being mobilized to leave the area as urgently as possible.

“Under the guise of humanitarian efforts, people are being informed that their homes are about to be destroyed. After an inhumane siege that left Gaza with little to lose, people are being asked to say goodbye to the last remains of their former lives.” Fida Qishta, Palestinian resident of Rafah, International Solidarity Movement

“After days of coordinated bombings all over Gaza, the pretense of avoiding civilian casualties is nonsensical. The offensive bombing of sites in Gaza has already lead to over 300 deaths and 1,000 injuries. To pretend that Israel wants to avoid unnecessary deaths is to ignore the facts.” Jenny Linnel, British citizen, International Solidarity Movement

Human Rights Activists working with the International Solidarity Movement and the Free Gaza Movement have been witnessing and working to document the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Due to Israel’s policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement’s boats that have repeatedly broken the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Maan: Five Palestinian sisters killed in Israeli raid on Jabalia

To view original article, published by Maan News Agency on the 29th December, click here

Gaza – Ma’an – No sooner had a Gazan mother run away with her baby boy and two other baby girls seeking shelter did an Israeli airstrike kill her five daughters before she could return and transfer them, as well.

The girls were identified by Palestinian medical sources as Ayah, Eiman, Ikram, Tahrir and Samar Ba’lousha. They were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit their family home near the Imad Aqil Mosque in Jabalia, which was subsequently destroyed.

Dozens of houses in Jabalia have been destroyed and several victims remain under debris since shortly before midnight on Saturday; Palestinian rescue workers are still trying to get them out.

Israeli air raids also killed three children from the Al-Absi family in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, as well as a brother and his sister from the Kishku family in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

On Saturday, an Israeli missile claimed the lives of seven students from a vocational training center affiliated with the United Nations on Al-Muhafadha street in Gaza City while they were waiting for a school bus to take them home.

Three other Palestinians from the Ar-Rayyis family were killed in front of their own shop on the same street. A father and his son were later killed in the same area.

Seeking shelter for Gazan children became impossible as the strip lacks fortified places to protect Palestinians from air raids, unlike nearby Israeli towns.

On Monday, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, confirmed that at least 51 innocent civilians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the airstrikes began on Saturday, purportedly to root out armed groups that have been firing barrages of rockets toward southern Israeli targets.

Since Saturday, two Israelis have been killed and about 20 others are injured from projectile attacks.

Gaza is the most densely populated place on the planet, with nearly 1.5 million Palestinians contained to a 20 square meter strip on the Mediterranean coast. Palestinians living in Gaza have been without food, electricity or water in their homes for several weeks.

Free Gaza Movement: Dignity leaves for Gaza – Challenges world to “Stop this madness!”

To view the Free Gaza Movement website click here

Monday 29th December 2008

(Larnaca, Cyprus 29 December 2008) – There is a time when silence is complicity and inaction is unacceptable. On Saturday, December 27, Israel began Operation “Cast Lead,” a military onslaught against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip that has – so far – massacred more than three-hundred men, women, and children, and seriously injured over a thousand.

In response to Israeli butchery, the Free Gaza ship, the DIGNITY, will depart Larnaca Port at approximately 5pm (UTC), on Monday, December 29, bound for besieged Gaza. The ship is on an emergency mission carrying in physicians, human rights workers and over three tons of desperately needed medical supplies donated by the people of Cyprus. Coordinating with the Gaza Ministry of Health, the doctors will be immediately posted to overburdened hospitals and clinics upon their arrival.

We are not asking Israel for “permission” to go, and we will not stop until the DIGNITY lands in Gaza. We are answering urgent calls from hospitals and health care workers in Gaza by taking in three physicians who will stay and work in Gaza for several weeks. We will hold Israel responsible for the safety of our passengers and our cargo of emergency medicine.

Even before the present Israeli blitzkrieg, Karen Koning Abu Zayd, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), asserted that, “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and – some would say – encouragement of the international community.”

Ewa Jasiewicz, a Free Gaza organizer living in Gaza, agreed with Abu Zayd, saying: “Where is the United Nations? Where is the Arab League? Where is the outrage against Israeli cruelty and Egyptian complicity? Every hospital in Gaza is already overwhelmed. Israel is committing war crimes here in Gaza, and words of condemnation are no longer enough. The world must act now to stop this madness.”

The Free Gaza Movement continues to do what the governments of the world will not do – take direct action to defend the health, lives, and dignity of 1.5 million Palestinians under siege in the Gaza Strip.

This catastrophe is still unfolding, and humanitarian needs in Gaza are quite literally devastating. The world can no longer stay silent as the Palestinian people are deliberately massacred, starved and humiliated. We have to create a new consciousness that turns the practice of human rights from rhetoric into reality. Palestinians have an inalienable right to live, and the undeniable right to a life with dignity.

The passengers on this Free Gaza emergency delegation include:
* International humanitarian and human rights workers from Cyprus, Australia, Ireland, Great Britain, Tunisia, and the United States.
* Doctors going to Gaza to volunteer in local hospitals, including Dr. Elena Theoharous, surgeon and Member of Parliament from Cyprus.
* Journalists going to Gaza to report on the massacre, including Al-Jazeera reporter Sami al-Haj, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay.
* The Hon. Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate.

For more information, please contact:
(Gaza) Ewa Jasiewicz, +972 598 700 497 / freelance@mailworks.org
(Cyprus) Lubna Masarwa +357 99 081 767 / lubnna@gmail.com
(U.S.) Greta Berlin, +1 310 422 7242 / iristulip@gmail.com

The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, physicians, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel’s draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza.