Tag: Gaza

When Killings Don’t Count: A Week of Israeli Restraint

By Tanya Reinhart

In Israeli discourse, Israel is always the side exercising restraint in its conflict with the Palestinians. This was true again for the events of the past week: As the Qassam rockets were falling on the Southern Israeli town of Sderot, it was “leaked” that the Israeli Minister of Defense had directed the army to show restraint. (1)

During the week of Israeli “restraint”, the army killed a Palestinian family who went on a picnic on the Beit Lahya beach in the Gaza Strip; after that, the army killed nine people in order to liquidate a Katyusha rocket.

But in the discourse of restraint, the first killing does not count, because the army denied its involvement, and the second was deemed a necessary act of self-defense. After all, Israel is caught in the midst of Qassam attacks, and must defend its citizens. In this narrative, the fact that Israel is content merely to bombard the Gaza Strip from air, sea and land is a model of restraint and humanity that not many states could match.

But what is driving the Qassam attacks on Israel? For 17 months, since it declared a cease fire, Hamas has not been involved in firing Qassams. Other organizations have generally succeeded in launching only a few isolated Qassams.

How did this evolve into an attack of an estimated 70 Qassams in three days?

The Israeli army has a long tradition of “inviting” salvoes of Qassams. In April of last year, Sharon took off to a meeting with Bush in which his central message was that Abbas is not to be trusted, has no control of the ground, and cannot be a partner for negotiations. The army took care to provide an appropriate backdrop for the meeting. On the eve of Sharon’s departure, on 9 April 2005, the Israeli army killed three youths on the Rafah border, who according to Palestinian sources were playing soccer there.

This arbitrary killing inflamed a wave of anger in the Gaza Strip, which had been relatively quiet until then. Hamas responded to the anger on the street, and permitted its people to participate in the firing of Qassams. In the following two days, about 80 Qassams were fired, until Hamas restored calm. Thus, during the Sharon-Bush meeting, the world received a perfect illustration of the untrustworthiness of Abbas. (2)

At the beginning of last week (11 June), Olmert set out on a campaign of persuasion in Europe to convince European leaders that now, with Hamas in power, Israel definitely has no partner. The USA does not appear to need any convincing at the moment, but in Europe there is more reservation about unilateral measures. The Israeli army began to prepare the backdrop on the night of the previous Thursday (8 June 2006), when it “liquidated” Jamal Abu Samhadana, who had recently been appointed head of the security forces of the Interior Ministry by the Hamas government. It was entirely predictable that the action may lead to Qassam attacks on Sderot. Nevertheless, the army proceeded the following day to shell the Gaza coast (killing the Ghalya family and wounding tens of people), and succeeded in igniting the required conflagration, until Hamas again ordered its people, on 14 June, to cease firing.

This time, the show orchestrated by the army got a bit messed up. Pictures of the child Huda Ghalya succeeded in breaching the wall of Western indifference to Palestinian suffering. Even if Israel still has enough power to force Kofi Annan to apologize for casting doubt on Israel’s denial, the message that Hamas is the aggressive side in the conflict did not go unchallenged in the world this time. But the army has not given up. It appears determined to continue to provoke attacks that would justify bringing down the Hamas government by force, with Sderot paying the price.

Even though it is impossible to compare the sufferings of the residents of Sderot with the sufferings of the residents of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the North of the Gaza Strip, on which 5,000 shells fell in the past month alone (3), my heart also goes out to the residents of Sderot. It is their destiny to live in fear and agony, because in the eyes of the army their suffering is necessary so that the world may understand that Israel is the restrained side in a war for its very existence.

This op-ed went to press an hour before the Israeli air force killed three more children in a crowded street in North Gaza, on Tuesday, June 20.

Tanya Reinhart is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University and the author of Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 and The Roadmap to Nowhere. She can be reached through her website: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart

NOTES

1. On Monday, June 12, the headlines announced that the Defence Minister Peretz blocked an initiative of the army to launch a massive land offensive in Gaza (e.g. Amos Har’el and Avi Issacharoff, Ha’aretz, June 12, 2006). In the inside pages of the weekend papers, it turned out that this was a “media spin” produced by Peretz bureau “based on a security consultation held the previous night” (Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, Lost innocents, Ha’aretz, June 16-17, 2006).

2. This sequence of events is documented in detail in my book The Road Map to Nowhere, to appear in July, 2006 (Verso).

3. Alex Fishman, Senior security analyst of Yediot Aharonot reports that at the beginning “the artillery shelling of the Gaza strip was debated”, but then, “what started ten months ago with dozens of shells a month that were fired at open areas today reached astronomical numbers of shells. The battery that fired the six shells on Friday [June 9] fire an average of more than a thousand shells a week towards the north of the Strip. This means that the battery which has been placed there for four weeks has already fired about 5000 shells” (Yediot Aharonot Sa! turday Supplement, June 16, 2006).
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart

To Israel: “You just want us all to die, and no one in the world seems to care”

A story from Maghazi Refugee Camp, central Gaza
by: Rami Almeghari

It was just after 1am when the Israeli jeeps and tanks, backed by war planes, invaded Maghazi, telling the story of Palestinian refugees anew. It is a story that not only pacifica radio, but all of us who live in Maghazi, know already, having seen it repeated again and again in Gaza. Less than one hour before, the Washington Based Pacifica had phoned me about doing a live interview about Maghazi camp in central Gaza, where I live. I laid down my head on the pillow, under darkness because there is no electricity, in order to have some peace of mind before the live interview the next day.

War planes began shooting heavily overhead. Abruptly, I rushed to my children beside me, waking them up and taking them downstairs in case of any stray bullets hitting from above. My mother was crying, my father was worried, my sister listening to newscasts.

In the darkness, everybody has been anxious, with kerosene lamps showing their wary faces and hushed voices.

My six year old son asked me, “Dad, will i be able to be in the second grade at school?”, as we got the news that Israeli war planes had dropped a missile on his school. The Palestinian News Network reported that this bombing killed one Palestinian cilivian and injured 20 others, who were all children. He noted that all of the children were transferred to a nearby hospital, where nine are being treated for “serious injuries.”

This morning’s raid marks what is merely the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on the Gaza refugee camp. Since Israeli attacks began on Maghazi Camp just a few days ago, eight civilians have been killed, and a staggering 90 have been wounded.

My eight year old daughter sat on the sofa, awake all night looking at me with frightened eyes, her face yellow and pale. I was worried about my brother and his children (like many refugee families, we all live together in one house), so i went upstairs to wake them up. I found my brother sleeping on the roof, due to the hot weather under darkness.

Unfortunately, I was sorry to break his rest, because the sky was raining in such a summer night, but an Israeli-made ‘Summer Rain’ [The Israeli military code-name for their ongoing Israeli invasion in the Gaza Strip is ‘Operation Summer Rains’].

Now, the whole family has been crowded in one small, much safer room, listening quietly to the summer rains and to my mother’s cries, which I tried to dry, but in vain. Because she was so worried, lest her other son, who was out with friends, seeking summer breeze and summer air, get wet by the ‘summer rains’ that have started to fall on Maghazi.

From 1 am to 9:30 am as I write this, the ‘summer rains’ have been falling, making a flow that has swept away six lives, wounded several others, devastated the camp’s transformer, hit a wall of my son’s elementary school, and inflicted damage to many homes and buildings.

My fear, as well as my family’s, is the same as that of thousands of Palestinian refugee families throughout the past six decades starting from 1948, 1956, 1967, and ending with 2006’s latest invasion of Maghazi and other refugee camps since june 27th.

However, Palestinians in the past century have found safe shelters to which they have fled. It now seems we have only one choice — staying in our homes under candlelight. This is the story of Palestinian refugees. Now, in the 21st century, I ask Israel — where else do you want us to go? It seems that you just want us all to die, and no one in the world seems to care.

I am writing this by pencil, on used paper, I can no longer type on my computer. The electricity is fully gone, the backup systems have all been hit. I have to dictate my writing by cell phone to a friend in the West Bank who can type it up – but soon, most likely, my cell phone reception will be gone as well. Now I have heard that two of my relatives were killed in the ongoing attack…..I’ll have to attend their funerals this afternoon. Will Israeli forces attack the funeral? Lately every time there is a funeral, their warplanes buzz overhead, dropping bombs on the attendees and making more funerals necessary. I just hope the next one will not be my own, or that of my dear, dear children.

Gaza Diaries: Cry Freedom

By Mona El-Farra

16th of July, 1.30 am
A loud explosion woke me up. My daughter was frightened and covered her head with the blankets as I switched on my little transistor radio. The F16 hit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building with one rocket, it is the second time in less than one week. Straight away I thought of Fawaz and Nawaf, my childhood friends, and their families. I did not dare to contact them! The sound of the explosion was too strong, it shook my flat (500 meters away).

16th of July, 7.30 am
After a struggle to sleep, I decided to get up and hurried to my friends’ house. They were not injured but, the scene was shocking: Fawaz was startled and unable to focus, causing his brother and the children to be traumatized. He showed me the garden: tall, old trees completely destroyed, so were the windows of their building, and the garden was covered with the rubble of the destroyed Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.

Why to hit the same building twice in one week? They did the same with the Ministry of Interior building, which my friend Hoda lives close to. It is a massive systematic terrifying collective punishment.

No electricity, no water, no milk for babies, no safety, closed borders. 1.5 million captured in their own country. 4 weeks of continuous shelling from sea, land, and air against civilian targets causing 145 deaths (45 were children) and hundreds of injuries in three weeks.

The captured soldier was a pretense for a well-planned systematic assault and collective punishment against a whole population. It is a desperate trial by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) to destroy our will and our determination to achieve our just national goals. But they will not succeed and they should learn from our people’s history: we get tired sometimes, we complain other times, but fortunately Palestinian people do not have the psychology of victims. We have the psychology of freedom fighters, and with the support and solidarity of other people who are fighting daily against injustice: we shall overcome.
With every pain and suffering we cry: Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

19th 0f July, 4pm
Al-Magazi Refugee Camp, East Gaza

Today is the second day of IOF incursion into the Al-Magazi camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip. Shelling continues from the sea, land, and air. So far 9 people are killed, at least 45 (mainly civilians) are injured in the first hours of the incursion. Still no water and no electricity. Hospitals are struggling with increasing causalities. They are working through the emergency off the alternative power source and medical supplies are exhausted.

Beit Hanoun village North Gaza
Today the IOF withdrew from the village, leaving 40 houses demolished, 12 people killed, tens injured, large areas of fruitful agricultural land were destroyed, 2 journalists and 2 health emergency workers were injured. Our surgical team at Al-Awda Hospital was overwhelmed with the large number of the casualities. The army stayed for 3 days in the village, and left it destroyed.The UN OSO team reported some very poor families are in great need of baby formula but the UN does not supply this sort of milk. I shall make sure to distribute this milk via Middle East Children Alliance (MECA) tomorrow.

While I write, continuous explosions can be heared from the gunboats, Apache helicopters fill the sky with a drone sound. Still no electricity. I do not find it easy to write with the candle light and the old fashioned kerosine lamp.

In Solidarity,

Mona El-Farra

While the World Watches Lebanon, the Israeli Army Tightens the Noose in Palestine

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Starting around 5am this morning and lasting until the evening, the Israeli army surrounded the Mukatah (local government building) in Nablus with close to 100 military vehicles. They killed three people inside who are a part of the preventative security force of the PA, that the Israelis claim were wanted persons. They detained the bodies of the fallen in Nablus after abducting them from an ambulance. The bodies have not yet been identified because their faces were so mutilated by gunfire. This comes on the same day that the Israelis stormed a government building in Ramallah, arresting five people. They also stormed the office of the Palestinian Wafa News Agency in a pre-dawn raid.

The Israeli military has invaded El-Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza and killed 6 people, including two children. They have bombed refugee camps, civillian infastructure and government buildings in Gaza in the last few days, killing many civilians. Since Israel stepped up the bombing of Gaza last month, the Israeli army has been enforcing more severe closures on the entire West Bank. It is currently impossible to travel to Nablus from the south.

Members of the ministry of security were held hostage in the Nablus building, surrounded by bulldozers, jeeps and tanks. It has since been reported that they were moved to another building and stripped of their clothing. The army has completely destroyed the preventative security building, part of the Nablus Mukatah, which was already mostly destroyed by the Israeli offensive in the West Bank of 2004.

The Israeli soldiers occupied buildings nearby in order to shoot into the Mukatah and people nearby. Palestinian Medical Relief, one of the many ambulance services, has reported that twenty people in Nablus have been injured including an Al-Jazeera technician who was shot in the leg by a rubber-coated metal bullet while he was helping shoot a live broadcast. BBC News Online has reported 45 people injured, according to hospital officials they have spoken to. The latest figures as collected by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in their latest press release are that 81 Palestinians have been injured and 9 killed, including 2 children.

For more information call:
Sam 054 647 8139

Updated 6:40pm

‘Blogging from Gaza’ – From bad to worse: the downpour continues

by Leila El-Haddad

Friday, July 14: Things are bad in Gaza. Very bad. Not to mention of course in Lebanon, where Yassine’s, my husband’s, family lives, in the Wavel refugee camp in Baalbeck, Hezbollah stronghold.

They, of course, along with all of Lebanon, are blockaded by air and sea, so Yassine has sort of become a double-refugee now: he can go back neither to Palestine, nor Lebanon. It brings back very bad memories for him, having grown up during the civil war there, and narrowly escaping mass slaughter at the hands of Syrian-backed, Israeli-advised, Phalangists in the Tel Zaatar camp, where his family originally lived, and where his uncle went missing.

Of course, what’s happening in Lebanon provides some uncertain relief for Gaza residents, where 82 Palestinians have been killed in the past 12 days, 22 of them children.

I was finally able to reach my Aunt…they had not gotten electricity in 24 hours when I spoke to her; people have been standing in long lines to purchase candles.

And of course, Rafah is still closed; 8 people have died waiting to get home. Egypt, following Israeli orders, is refusing to open the gates.

The nights are turning into days, and days into nights, as the sonic booming shocks them awake, shattering windows and terrorizing the population. The stress is taking its toll, but to quote my Aunt, though they are not living with ease, they are living with resolve.

Medicines are also running dangerously low. And to add to the misery, Israeli tanks have blockaded northern Gaza, where my Aunt lives, and where our house is, from southern Gaza, where my 84 year old grandmother lives on her own.

I think of them every day. I still cringe when I see news helicopters; or fireworks; or thunder; Today we had a thunderstorm, and the thunder was so loud it scared Yousuf, who thought it was gunfire and shelling, as I tried to assure him he was safe. But I wondered, inside of myself, does safe have an address?