16th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
After a night of heavy shelling in the area, the day is dawning in Gaza. The clock ticks pass 08:00; past the evacuation time the Israeli military gave to el-Wafa hospital the previous evening.
The patients were not evacuated; there is nowhere for them to go. The entire Shajajia area where the hospital is located, with a population of around 100,000 inhabitants, has also been ordered to evacuate, as well as other areas around the Gaza Strip. For so many people to move to other areas cannot be done, and without shelter they can only rely on God and their luck.
During the night’s bombardment, when el-Wafa hospital shook several times with explosions, suspicions were raised that the hospital had been hit. In fact, the building close by, el-Wafa Elderly Nursing Home was shelled by the Israeli military.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The upper part of the Nursing Home was peppered with machine gun fire and non-explosive grenades penetrated the concrete walls.
Photo by Charlie AndreassonPhoto by Charlie Andreasson
Lying on the floor lay the used grenades, business cards from the world’s “most moral” army.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The news that gradually circulates tells the story of a violent night in Gaza, with Israeli air strikes across the Strip. The number of deaths has now risen to over 200, higher than the death toll of the last war two years ago. From a window in el-Wafa hospital, the characteristic clouds of smoke, sand, and dust rise towards the sky.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
The violence will apparently continue for another day.
11th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
We managed to get a lift in an armoured Land Rover belonging to French journalists, and at crazy speed we went through intersections with only the cat horn as protection. The goal was Jabalya refugee camp and the latest targeting killing using a drone.
Ambulances left the site shortly after we arrived, and the fire brigade were just about to pull away from the car. Or what had once been a car.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
What was in front of me was a complete wreck with twisted metal parts. Although the real shock and disgust came when I saw the license plate. It ended with 22. It had been a taxi.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
We caught a ride with another journalist to Kamal Hospital, where the bodies of the three men, Mahmoud Walaid, Hazim Balouska, Alaa Abdelnabi, were taken. On a stretcher was one of the men, crumbling, burnt, with no identity left, he would now be placed into cold storage.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
But there were problems. The storage was full. Too many people have been killed in the past three days since “Operation Defensive Edge” began.
As I’m writing the number of people murdered is 80 [the number has now risen], the cold storage is full, awaiting their funerals.
Two bodies were lying on the same stretcher.
Now we no longer had a car from the press to hitch a ride with. By taxi, we headed to the border crossing at Erez, which we heard had been attacked earlier.
It was the first time I’d seen the gate stand wide open on the Palestinian side, and the building appeared deserted. We didn’t step out of the taxi.
To walk into the area towards the Israeli part of the border crossing, although it’s a kilometer apart, is not a good idea.
Instead we went on to another one of Israel’s bombing target from the day before. Opposite a petrol station was an enormous crater among overturned and broken citrus trees, and from the apartment building next to it, a lemon tree hung upside down with the roots wedged on the roof.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
We looked at each other, and all felt that it was enough death and destruction for one day, and when the driver asked if we wanted to go to the next bombed place, we said no in a unified voice.
For two days, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) bombed and shelled civilians in the Gaza Strip. Five Palestinian civilians including 3 children were killed. 52 civilians including 6 women and 12 children were wounded. Many of the injuries remain critical, some have amputations. 2 members of the Palestinian resistance were also killed in the attacks.
Four of these deaths and 38 of the injuries resulted from an Israeli attack on a football playground in al-Shoja’iya neighborhood East of Gaza City, many of whom had gathered for a funeral close to where the attack took a place . Some civilian facilities were also destroyed or damaged.
16 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The Israeli air force has conducted several air raids at night starting on the 12th of October, and ending on the morning of the 13th.
“I felt a huge explosion at midnight while in a cafè with some friends. The first attack hit a Hamas military base north of Gaza City (in Nafaq street). Later, empty spaces in the refugee camps of Al Bureij and Nuseirat were hit, in the central Gaza Strip. Military aircraft continued to fly sporadically that night.
At 3:20pm on the 13th I heard another huge explosion caused by an Israeli strike on a site belonging to the resistance, north of Gaza City.
F-16 fighters flew for at least half an hour longer. An attack was also reported in an uninhabited area in the Bedouin village Um Al Nasser in Beit Lahia, which is located in the northern Gaza Strip. Later I learned that in this area the shelling had damaged a kindergarten.
Israeli forces have subsequently claimed to have struck, “a site of terrorist activity in the northern Gaza Strip and two others in the central area”. Given that they are centers for the Palestinian resistance and that terrorism is daily implemented by the Israeli army with attacks by sea, air and/or by land, this statement is false. The objectives that were hit are sites of the resistance, north of Gaza City, but are also vacant spaces in the central area. In addition to these attacks took place in Beit Lahia. These statements, which have been copied by the Italian media are patently incorrect and are useful to specifically justify the attacks.
With the idea to show what happened during that evening, there was a consultation with centers for human rights and other local contacts. Today I went in the village of Um Al Nasser to photograph the damaged kindergarten.
I discovered that the ‘Um Al-Nasser kindergarten was built through the project “Education for Peace and Architecture in the Gaza Strip” that had been promoted by the Italian NGO Vento di Terra, and financed by Italian Government Cooperation.
I went there with a Palestinian activist, we were accompanied by local people to visit the inside of the kindergarten. The walls have cracks and some pieces have fallen.
Then the village men met with us outside to see the cavity in the ground caused by the bomb dropped from an F-16. The bomb was dropped near the nursery, where there is also an agricultural land and a chicken farm.
I must admit that I risked a lot to be in that place at such a late hour, it was about 6:00 to 6:30 in the evening. Drones flew over us while we were in the agricultural land about 700 meters from the border with Israel.
“Get away from us, if they hit, they will hit the entire group,” said the Palestinian activist.
At such times it is difficult to remain focused-
It was completely dark, the only light was on a cell phone. I did not want to be separated from other people and at the same time I contemplated my own personal survival. I began to imagine our bodies suddenly reduced to pieces. Nausea and dizziness encroached upon me, as drones continued to be there… right on top of us.
I took pictures quickly on the spot where the bomb exploded and on the outside walls of the asylum. I just had to do this work, then I would go. I would do this in spite of my fingers trembling on the camera.
-Luckily everything went well this time.
We also found pieces of the bomb. Once we left the kindergarten we visited a house nearby damaged by the attack. Abu Idrees Sharikh, age 52, told us that the attack occurred around 1:45 at night. He invited us to come in and began to point out the cracks on the walls of his home caused by the explosion. She told me that her daughter, Sabrin, age 16, is shocked and unable to speak. Their family is originally from Ashkelon. The families of this Bedouin village are extremely poor and live under constant threat of air strikes. They are refugees yet they do not receive any services from UNRWA because it does not consider the area included among those to receive aid. The village of Um Al Nasser is definitely one of the worst areas of the Gaza Strip concerning living conditions.
I left and went back to Gaza City.
I went to an outdoor cafè for a moment of calm. I hoped I could connect my computer and start working, but suddenly I heard an explosion at about 20:15.
There is no peace.
An Israeli raid killed two men on a motorcycle in Massoud street in Jabalia, north of Gaza City.
The first man died on the spot, Fayeq Abu Jazar, he arrived at the hospital without a head. The second man, in critical condition, died later in the hospital. Hesham Ali Su’eidani, age 43, was the leader of the Salafist group. Hesham Ali Su’eidani was also the leader of the Salafist whose release had been asked by the killers of Vittorio Arrigoni.
A second attack at about 8:30 am hit the Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City where there is a site of Al Qassam Brigades, which is the armed wing of Hamas. No injuries were reported.”
10 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
On the afternoon of Thursday April 7th, Israeli forces escalated their attacks on the Gaza Strip. The murderous offensive has killed 18 people so far, the majority of them being civilians. Among the massacred are a mother, her daughter, two children, two elderly men and four members of Al Qassam Brigades. More than sixty people have been injured, some are still fighting for their lives. Since Thursday afternoon the Gaza Strip is besieged by drones, Apache helicopters, F16 and E15 fighter planes, gunboats in the south and tanks by the border.
At approximately 16:00 on Thursday, Israeli forces targeted areas surrounding the previously destroyed Gaza International Airport in the far southeast of Rafah city, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces positioned along the border fired approximately 10 artillery shells, while Apache helicopters opened machine gun fire. A number of the artillery shells landed near three Palestinian civilians who were sitting near the airport. Two of them, Mohammed Eyada Eid el-Mahmoum (25) and Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari (17) were killed immediately and the third civilian, Saleh Jarmi Ateya al-Tarabin (38) died of his wounds in the hospital on the evening of the same day.
Israeli forces continued to fire as a number of Palestinian civilians attempted to rescue the wounded; Musaab Mohammed Ubeid Sawwaf, 20, was killed and another 14 civilians, including five children and a paramedic from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, were wounded.
Salama El-Dabari is seated in a tent, mourning the loss of his nephew, the 17 year old Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari, while he explains to ISM volunteers what has happened.
“Khaled was following the ambulances on his motorbike, to assist the medics in evacuating the injured people. As soon as the ambulances arrived, an Apache helicopter shelled the site again. Khaled got stuck under his motorcycle, which caught fire during the shelling. The ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were not able to evacuate him immediately. They recovered his body the next morning, covered in burns, with open head wounds, a hole in the abdomen, bullets in the legs and without hands. His father, my brother, was looking for him, but we didn’t want him to see his son in such a condition, so we sent him home before evacuating Khaled’s body.”
Salama switches to the inequality of the conflict and says the following: “Look at us, the Palestinians; we are a peaceful people who are trying to shake off the occupation to live in freedom. But we don’t have any meaningful military power: we have no drones nor F16’s, we don’t have any of Israel’s modern weaponry. There is no comparison possible. We are desperate. Nobody seems to care about the Palestinians and our struggle for justice.”
21 year old Abdel Hadi Jumma el-Sufi is one of the injured and is currently hospitalized in Shifa hospital in Gaza City. He stares at the ceiling of his hospital room while recalling the murderous event.
“One of the men was hit in the beginning of the attack, so me and my friends approached to evacuate him. We found out that the man was already dead. Tanks kept on shelling and killed another man. We managed to get the two dead bodies and one severely wounded man out of there, into the ambulance, but could not reach the fourth man as shelling prevented us. I thought he was still alive, but in the morning the ambulance recovered another dead body from the scene.” Abdel himself sustained shrapnel wounds to his legs, lungs and the back of his head and is currently awaiting surgery.
20 year old Mahdi Joma’a Abu Athra is worst of: the doctor at Europa hospital in Khan Younes describes him as a dead body kept alive by machinery. His maternal uncles are sitting around the hospital bed and are explaining that Mahdi got married a couple of months ago: his wife is pregnant. It seems unlikely that Mahdi will ever lay eyes on his firstborn.
One of the uncles bursts out: “How come the West is so interested in defending the Lybian’s human rights and is doing nothing for the Palestinians? You, who come here in solidarity with us, should send a clear message to your countries: it is not us that is attacking Israel, it is Israel that is attacking us! They are the terrorists and the criminals! Our rockets and missiles are fireworks compared to Israel’s weaponry! They have the most high-tech accurate equipment: they can target very precisely. When they kill civilians, it’s because they intend to kill civilians!”Abdel Hadi Jumma el-Suffi
