Gaza's Healthcare Fails Thousands of Injured. Thousands are forced to seek emergency care in Egypt and Israel after Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip as healthcare system in crisis. . - Precis In 2011, over 9,000 patients from Gaza received emergency care in Israeli hospitals. Many of the admitted were injured in Israeli attacks on the strip. In August, The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke with Muhammad Zaza, a fifteen year old who was hit by a drone missile near the Wafa hospital in the northern Gaza Strip while playing with his 12 year-old cousin (who did not survive). Last week, Muhammad and his father Ataf returned to Gaza after fourteen surgeries and nearly eight months in Israeli hospitals. Comments Our automatic spam filter blocks comments with multiple links and multiple users using the same IP address.
OneVoice Movement: OneVoice moves to reestablish Gaza presence. In coordination with Save Youth Future Society, OVP-Gaza Director Ezzeldin Masri gave an introductory session for 30 university students on Monday in Gaza city. New York, April 3, 2012—Nearly two years after fleeing with his family, Ezzeldin Masri returned to Gaza in June, armed only with his convictions, to reestablish OneVoice’s presence in the besieged coastal enclave.
The reopening of the office marks a new stage in OneVoice’s history in Gaza, which began in November 2006 with the launch of its first office in the territory. Soon after, Ezzeldin began spreading OneVoice’s message, long known to Palestinians in the West Bank, to the residents of Gaza. Endeavoring to prepare the ground for a comprehensive peace, based on the notion of two states for two peoples, he began hosting town hall meetings across the major cities and in all the refugee camps to promote the two-state solution and discuss the final status issues. Is tension building before a 'Gaza Spring'? Cairo, Egypt - While the Arab uprisings were inspired at least in part by the silence - or perhaps even complicity - of Arab governments in the suffering of the Palestinian people, events of the past several weeks in the Gaza Strip have shown that little has changed.
Gazans are accustomed to living in dire conditions, especially since the 2006 international blockade on the territory following Hamas' victory in parliamentary elections. Israel's Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009, known in the Arab world as the Gaza Massacre, devastated the Strip, leaving at least 1,400 dead and marking the territory and its residents - both physically and physiologically - in a way that remains tangible to those who live in or visit Gaza. Those military operations and the failure of Arab governments to act in response enraged the Arab public. The Egyptian government at the time was a particularly strong target of this outrage.
Survival Palestine's Arab Spring? Those killed in Gaza have a name, and each has a family that grieves for them. Mourners under the martyr poster of Adel Alessy photo: Barber I have read several accounts over the last few days of how life in Southern Israel has become unbearable for the people living there. In retaliation for the latest provocation by Israel over 200 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. 11 people were injured, one seriously. Most were suffering from “shock”. Two were injured when they tripped on the way to secure areas. Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon on Thursday said, “Anyone threatening us is risking his life.
We will retaliate until they beg us to stop.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Israel makes its “best effort to target terrorists and not the civilian population,” but added: “We will not accept the constant disruption of life in the south of Israel, and I advise all heads of terror to think well about their actions.” U.S. U.S. Why is it that the Palestinians have no right to respond to Israeli aggression?
A breeze rustles through the lemon trees. Why I met the man who tried to kill me | World news. On 26 May 2009, I had finished an interview at the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) headquarters in Gaza City and was taking photographs outside for a book I was writing about Palestinian identity. Visitors to the Strip were few and far between then, especially after the kidnap of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston by Palestinian militants in 2007. I'd worked with Alan at the BBC World Service, and after his abduction I put off going to Gaza for as long as I could.
But after his release, and then Israel's bombing campaign and invasion the following winter, I needed to return. Mental health groups were reporting an epidemic of post-traumatic stress sweeping the Strip that no book about Palestinian identity could ignore. That day as I crouched, snapping away, a finger tapped my back. Palestinians are famously welcoming to foreign visitors, sometimes embarrassingly so.
Despite my lack of physical injury, I didn't sleep well after the attack. "I was born in Libya in 1982," he says. Palestine's human insecurity: a Gaza report. To enter Gaza from Israel you have to cross at Erez where the Israelis have erected a huge new terminal made of glass, steel and Jerusalem stone (it is actually 1.7 km inside Palestinian territory - even at the moment of withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, the Israelis couldn't resist taking a little bit extra). To get inside the terminal compound, you show your passport at a barrier, then cross a big empty space and enter the terminal.
In a glass booth, a pretty Israeli soldier sits high above you, asks severely what you plan to do, and checks your name in the computer. This is a digest of a report written by Mary Kaldor & Mient Jan Faber for the human-security study group at the Centre for Global Governance, London School of Economics, based on a visit to both parts of the Palestinian territories (Gaza and the West Bank) in 2007 Once through passport control, you follow arrows through several gates that close behind you before the one in front opens. There is a not a soul to be seen. Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe | World news. The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context.
Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. Blair: Gaza's great betrayer | World news. The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead.
In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. While the war failed in its primary aim of regime change in Gaza, it left behind a trail of death, devastation, destruction and indescribable human suffering.
War crimes were committed and possibly even crimes against humanity, documented in horrific detail in Judge Richard Goldstone's report for the UN human rights council. Fishing in Gaza – No Day at the Beach « Notes from Behind the Blockade. I saw an Israeli naval warship for the first time yesterday, a concrete monster the color of ash, guzzling up the Mediterranean and spurting it out in its wake. I rose early to go out with the Oliva, a small white boat used by Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza to monitor the Israeli navy’s conduct vis-à-vis Palestinian fisherman.
My colleague Joe and I walked across Gaza’s sandy shore, past a dozen wooden boats painted in bright shades of pink, blue, green and yellow and then jumped onto the Oliva. CPS’s white and blue flag billowed as Captain Salah started the boat’s engine and we pulled out of the harbor. Burgundy carpets with geometric designs lay across the boat’s floor. Three orange life jackets sat within an arm’s reach. “Oliva to base, we are now leaving the port,” Joe radioed. Because of weather conditions, we didn’t get started until about 8:20 a.m. “So this may sound obvious, but if the Israelis water cannon you, don’t just stand there,” Joe informed me. “How are you feeling?” The Betrayal Of Gaza by Noam Chomsky. Extracted from "Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians" by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé (Hamish Hamilton) That the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world's conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.
In this case, not only is it possible, but there is near-universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders – with "minor and mutual modifications", to adopt official US terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s. The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (which call for the full normalization of relations), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (including Iran) and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). But there was one important and revealing break in US-Israeli rejectionism. The Punishment of Gaza: Amazon.co.uk: Gideon Levy. Israel finally confirms the obvious – The collective punishment of the Gaza siege is based on politics, not security.
After one and a half years in which Israel at first denied their existence and then claimed that revealing them would harm “state security”, the State of Israel today released three documents that outline its policy for permitting transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip prior to the May 31 flotilla incident. The documents were released due to a Freedom of Information Act petition submitted by Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement in the Tel Aviv District Court, in which Gisha demanded transparency regarding the Gaza closure policy.
Israel still refuses to release the current documents governing the closure policy as amended after the flotilla incident. “Policy of Deliberate Reduction” The documents reveal that the state approved “a policy of deliberate reduction” for basic goods in the Gaza Strip. Thus, for example, Israel restricted the supply of fuel needed for the power plant, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. “Luxuries” denied for Gaza Strip residents. Planning the Next Gaza Massacre -- and Celebrating the Last One. Three years ago, the Israel Defense Forces launched a massive attack on the Gaza Strip that reportedly left over 1400 hundred dead, thousands more wounded, and devastation of an unprecedented scale -- with very little damage to the attacking army, and a handful of deaths on the Israeli side.
One cannot say that the world was silent. But one can say that the large noise effected virtually nothing. All major human rights organizations, and the United Nations Human Rights Council, condemned both sides, but singled out the Israeli side because it had committed the greater war crimes. Israel's response was to control the damage by attempting to control the narrative. The IDF presented itself as the most moral army in the world, admitted mistakes after it was forced to by incontrovertible evidence that it could not spin -- but was largely unrepentant. At the time, Israelis said, "Baal-habayit hishtage'a" -- "The Boss Went Mad. " One by one they came out with their damning reports. No justice for the victims of Gaza. Gaza City - On Tuesday May 1, our office in Gaza received an official communication from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) notifying us of the decision to close the investigation into the case of the Samouni family, one of the gravest "incidents" of the so-called operation Cast Lead.
Since then, I have been asking myself how the Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG), a professional military lawyer, can live with himself. How does one look in the mirror knowing that you systematically legitimise the commission of war crimes and you ensure that unlawful practices become part of the IDF's standard operating procedure? How do you write off so much human suffering? I have no answers to these questions. But, in truth, it doesn't matter how he feels. His responsibility is not only moral, it is also legal: the covering up of crimes is a crime, in and of itself. What matters are the facts, and their legal repercussions. Then we received the abovementioned communication from the IDF: No justice.
WikiLeaks: Israel aimed to keep Gaza economy on brink of collapse. And there lie the bodies.
Neocons Freak Out Over U.S. Boat to Gaza. July 18, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. My co-passengers and I of the U.S. Boat to Gaza have now gone from “ High-Seas Hippies,” according to the right-wing Washington Times, to participants in a flotilla full of “fools, knaves, hypocrites, bigots, and supporters of terrorism,” says Alan Dershowitz in his usual measured prose.
Poor Alan, he seems upset at our audacity not only to hope for humane treatment of the 1.6 million Gazans, who currently live under a cruel blockade, but to force the issue. To stop our boat before it could leave Greek waters, Israel’s Likud government gave itself a self-inflicted black eye and again brought the oppression of Gazans to worldwide attention. This time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government did not even have to kill people to add to Israel’s growing “delegitimization” before the civilized world. Anyone know what a knave is? But caution. U.S. Review: Norwegian doctors' "Eyes in Gaza" Eyes in Gaza is a detailed and harrowing account by the Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse of their experiences in al-Shifa Hospital during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.
For a time, they were not just the only western doctors in Gaza, but among the handful of western witnesses to what they repeatedly call Israel’s “massacre” of some 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children. Hence the book’s title, bearing witness to their status as witnesses. At noon on New Year’s Eve 2008, four days after the start of Israel’s onslaught, Gilbert and Fosse entered Gaza from Egypt.
On the morning of 10 January 2010, with Israel’s campaign still having a week to run, they returned to Egypt and were replaced by another Norwegian medical team. These doctors make no claim to neutrality; they are political activists, committed to advocating Palestinian rights and to condemning western complicity with Israel’s crimes. Fosse ponders: “What could she be thinking? Mads Gilbert, eyewitness to 'Cast Lead', says Gaza remains besieged and 'shattered'
Drones in the Shower, F-16s on the Street: On Leaving Gaza | Notes from Behind the Blockade. Left-wingers rally for Gaza and Sderot. Index on Censorship » Blog Archive » Gaza: first casualty.
Le blocus de Gaza remis en question par l'UE. Israel's Mistake: German Minister Denied Entry to Gaza Strip - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. From Gaza, with Love. Notes from Behind the Blockade | Life, politics and nonviolent resistance inside the Gaza Strip. John Pilger: From journalistic triumph to torture for a young Palestinian. The catastrophe that never ends - Sandy Tolan.