Tag: Humanitarian relief - Page 2 - International Solidarity Movement

Aid agencies denounce Gaza blockade

17 June 2009

A group of 38 United Nations and non-governmental organizations issued a denunciation of Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The groups, which include UNRWA, the United Nations Development Fund for Women and Oxfam International, the amount of goods now allowed into Gaza is still one-quarter of what it was before the imposition of the blockade in 2007.

Israel locked down Gaza’s borders following the June 2007 Hamas takeover, trapping 1.5 million Palestinians inside and creating scarcities of numerous items, including food, medicine, and fuel. Currently, construction materials, needed to rebuild the Strip from last winter’s war, are completely barred.

The following is the full text of the humanitarian agencies’ statement:

We, United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian organisations, express deepening concern over Israel’s continued blockade of the Gaza Strip which has now been in force for two years.

These indiscriminate sanctions are affecting the entire 1.5 million population of Gaza and ordinary women, children and the elderly are the first victims.

The amount of goods allowed into Gaza under the blockade is one quarter of the pre- blockade flow. Eight out of every ten truckloads contains food but even that is restricted to a mere 18 food items. Seedlings and calves are not allowed so Gaza’s farmers cannot make up the nutritional shortfall. Even clothes and shoes, toys and school books are routinely prohibited.

Furthermore the suffocation of Gaza’s economy has led to unprecedented unemployment and poverty rates and almost total aid dependency. While Gazans are being kept alive through humanitarian aid, ordinary civilians have lost all quality of life as they fight to survive.

The consequences of Israel’s recent military operation remain widespread as early recovery materials have been prevented from entering Gaza. Thousands of people are living with holes in their walls, broken windows and no running water.

We call for free and uninhibited access for all humanitarian assistance in accordance with the international agreements and in accordance with universally recognized international human rights and humanitarian law standards. We also call for a return to normalized trade to enable the poverty and unemployment rates to decrease.

The blockade of the Gaza Strip is creating an atmosphere of deprivation in Gaza that can only deepen the sense of hopelessness and despair among people. The people of Gaza need to be shown an alternative of hope and dignity. Allowing human development and prosperity to take hold is an essential first step towards the establishment of lasting peace.

Signed By:

Action Against Hunger

Acted

Acsur-Las Segovias

American Friends of UNRWA

American Near East Refugee Aid

Asamblea de Cooperacion Por la Paz

Austcare

Biladi

CARE International West Bank and Gaza.

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions

DanChurchAid

Defense for Children International

Enfants du Monde-Droits de l’Homme

International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy – Canada

Japan International Volunteer Centre

Life Source

Medecins du Monde France

Medecins du Monde Spain

Medecins du Monde Switzerland

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Movement for Peace

Mujeres por la Paz y Acción Solidaria de Palestina

Norwegian People’s Aid

Norwegian Refugee Council

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Oxfam International

Paz Ahora

Peace and Solidarity Haydée Santamaría, Cultural Asociation

Premiere Urgence

Relief International

Spanish Committee of UNHCR

Spanish Committee of UNRWA

Swedish Organization for Individual Relief

Terre des Hommes Italy

United Nations Development Fund for Women

United Nations Relief and Works Agency

War Child Holland

World Vision International

Leftists protest siege on Gaza

Daniel Edelson | YNet News

7 June 2009

Dozens of left-wing activists arrived at the Erez crossing Sunday morning with sweets, toys, food items and medicines they asked to transfer to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli siege on the Hamas-ruled territory.

In protest of the IDF’s ban on the transfer of humanitarian aid to the Strip, the activists, all members of the Coalition of Women for Peace and the American group Code Pink, erected a playground on the Israeli side of the crossing.

“We came here despite knowing that the chances of transferring these ‘goods that threaten Israel’s security’ were slim. We want to send a message that Gaza is the biggest prison in the world,” activist Lena Haskiya (24) told Ynet.

“The Israeli army won’t allow children to play on a swing set because it’s a security risk? It’s just a playground,” she said. “We want the entire world to see what the IDF is preventing us from transferring to Gaza.”

Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin said, “The US allots $3 billion worth of the taxpayers’ money to the Israeli army each year, and as citizens it is our responsibility to see what is being done with this money and document it.

“Those of us who have already been to Gaza were left heartbroken by what they saw,” she added.

“We have no doubt that war crimes had been committed. The use of the American taxpayers’ money for these purposes is against the law.”

UK medics go on hunger strike after being refused entry into Gaza

Haroon Siddique | The Guardian

19 May 2009

Three British medics began a hunger strike in Egypt today to protest against being refused entry into Gaza for a humanitarian mission.

Their aim is to establish a cardiac surgery unit at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which currently has no such facility, and to help train medical students and junior doctors there. But the British medics have been denied access to the Palestinian territory at the Rafah crossing since the beginning of May.

Omar Mangoush, a cardiac surgeon at Hammersmith hospital, in London, told guardian.co.uk he had been to the crossing with his colleagues every day since arriving in Egypt on 4 May, only to be told they did not have permission to enter.

“We are on hunger strike until they let us through,” he said. “We’ll stay [at the crossing] until they let us in. We want to put pressure on the British embassy. We believe if the British embassy wanted us to do this they could exert pressure [on the Egyptian authorities].”

Mangoush said he had been told by the British embassy that it had received a letter from the Egyptian foreign ministry saying the medics’ request for access to Gaza had been “postponed”.

But he claimed American aid workers had gained entry to Gaza at their first attempt with the support of the US embassy.

Mangoush named the other British medics on hunger strike as Christopher Burns-Cox, a retired consultant, and Kirsty Wong, a nurse at Hammersmith hospital. Another six people are on hunger strike, including three Belgians, he said.

The cardiac surgeon took a month’s holiday from work to take part in the mission for the Manchester-based charity Palestine International Medical Aid (PIMA)

“This is very important for us,” he said. “There are loads of people with heart disease [in Gaza]. They can’t get here [to Egypt], they can’t get to Israel. If it’s this hard for us to get to, how difficult is it for the Palestinians to get out?”

PIMA’s director, Dr Ahmed Almari, said: “It’s unbelievable. They’re a group of doctors, they went for education and teaching, to set up a cardiac unit. It’s unfair and sad that it is only as a result of a hunger strike that anybody pays attention. There’s no reason to stop them from crossing.”

Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing largely closed since Hamas won the Gaza elections three years ago. One of the main demands of Hamas has been that all crossings into Gaza should be allowed to reopen permanently. A number of aid groups have said the closure of the crossings is contributing to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Palestinian medical sources reported today that a one-year-old infant died yesterday at a local hospital in Rafah owing to several complications, including pneumonia, as his transfer to a hospital outside of the Gaza Strip was not possible due to the ongoing Israeli siege.

Urgent call to all social movements

Open Gaza Borders!

We reiterate the need for a call from Palestinian community based organisations and the over 130 grassroots NGOs in the Palestinian NGO Network for an immediate opening of all border crossings currently controlled by Israel and Egypt.

Gaza is in the grip of a man-made humanitarian crisis. Thousands of tons of food, medical and emergency shelter aid including blankets and mattresses, donated by countries including the United States and aid organisations, is being denied entry through crossings by both the Israeli and Egyptian governments.

The United Nations has stated that 900,000 Gazans are now dependent on food aid following Israel‘s 22-day assault on the tiny coastal territory. Only 100 aid trucks are being allowed into Gaza each day – 30 less than were being brought in last year and substantially less than before Israel’s operation ‘Cast Lead’: an attack that has left over 1,300 Palestinians dead, the vast majority of them civilians massacred in their streets and homes. With over 5,000 injured and 100,000 homeless, admittance of aid is crucial at this time.

This is a fraction of the estimated 500-600 trucks deemed necessary to sustain the population of Gaza according to the United Nations. According to UNRWA, food trucks are delivering enough food to feed just 30,000 people per day.

Hundreds of medical patients, the injured from this war and Israel’s previous invasions, are being prohibited from leaving Gaza for indispensable medical treatment. Over 268 people have died of preventable and treatable conditions after being denied access to treatment since the beginning of the ongoing siege two years ago.

Israel and Egypt have designated February 5th as the final day for all foreign nationals to leave Gaza through the southern Rafah border. Egypt has said it will close the Rafah border indefinitely. Despite a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Health that humanitarian cases will be allowed through, many patients have already been turned back, before the closing of the border. Hundreds of patients and some of those wounded from ‘Cast Lead,’ are still waiting for permission to exit Gaza through Rafah for medical treatment.

The Gazan community is concerned that Israel will be stepping up its’ economic, political, cultural and militarised stranglehold on Gaza in the upcoming weeks.

Post Israeli elections, Gazans fear the Israeli government will conduct extra judicial killings and continue their deadly strikes on Palestinian governmental figures, targeting of social and economic infrastructure and indiscriminate killings of civilians in the process. Actions that have proven to not only end lives but successfully cripple Palestinian development including reconstruction of homes destroyed by Israeli bombings and bulldozing during and before Operation ‘Cast Lead’.

Thousands of internally displaced people face an uncertain future residing in flimsy canvas tents reminiscent of the mass dispossession through the ethnic cleansing of 1948 when the state of Israel was first established on Palestinian land.

A de-facto land grab and re-colonisation of Gaza is underway, with the demolition of hundreds of homes and destruction of farms in the Israeli defined ‘buffer zone’ areas of Rafah, Eastern (Shijaye) and Northern (Beit Hanoun) areas of Gaza. Killings, shelling and shootings of farmers and residents in border areas are continuing.

The ‘buffer zone’ has been expanded to cut into Palestinian lands by one kilometre. Israeli occupation forces have shot at residents that have attempted to retrieve their belongings from the bombed and bulldozed remnants of their homes along the border of Beit Hanoun. The army also continues to fire at farmers planting their fields in village areas such as al Faraheen near Khan Younis.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israeli occupation forces have destroyed 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land during this winter’s war.

Effective international direct action and an escalation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign is necessary to resist the intensification of the collective punishment, imprisonment and ongoing war on the people of Palestine.

The situation is worsening: the stranglehold on the people of Gaza is tightening, humanitarian relief is being deliberately choked, trauma is deepening, people are being humiliated on a daily basis and development is not just blocked but in the process of being actively reversed.

We call on social movements, particularly No Borders networks, and people of conscience to target Israeli and Egyptian embassies, institutions, and corporations. Particularly in the coming days of intensified border closure, we must work to pressure both governments to abide by international law and open Gaza for the free movement of aid, goods and people.

End the collective punishment of the Gazan people, open the borders.

‘Unity of Ni’lin to Gaza urgently’

On the 17th of January 2009, residents of Ni’lin began a collection of clothes and food to be sent to the besieged people of Gaza. Calls from the mosques announced that contributions of clothes, shoes and food could be brought to the village center.

Ni'lin residents fill village center with supplies for Gaza

Aid collection for Gaza from the people of Ni’lin had been organized during a meeting with municipalities from all over the West Bank. The Ni’lin Municipality and the Social Club arranged the plan for the mass effort. The aid will be sent to Gaza with the Red Crescent via the Erez checkpoint.

The mobilization for aid began before a women and children’s demonstration near the girls’ school. Lasting several days, the community came together to show their support for Gaza. According to the Municipality President Ayman Nafi, 10,000NIS was raised to buy olive oil that will be put in bottles of Top Drink at the factory in Ni’lin with special labels that say ‘Unity Ni’lin (from all the people of Ni’lin) to Gaza Urgently.’ About 20,000NIS worth of food and clothes was also collected. The formal assembly of aid for Gaza will continue for another three days.

A Palestinian community that regularly demonstrates against construction of the Apartheid Wall, Ni’lin has lost lives and land in their struggle. Two boys from the village were shot and killed with live ammunition in a solidarity with Gaza demonstration on the 28th of December.

Local Ni'lin business will send olive oil with special message: 'Unity Ni’lin to Gaza Urgently'

With an ongoing blockade on Gaza, the Israeli government severely limits the amount of aid that can enter Gaza. On the constant brink of humanitarian crisis, amplified significantly by Israel’s latest attacks, many Gazans have almost no access to basic foodstuffs or water. Even if the supplies are prevents from entering Gaza by the Israeli authorities, the act of organizing a delivery is a way in which Ni’lin and the West Bank can show that their hearts and thoughts are with Gaza.