Israeli forces invade Azzun and use Palestinian civilians as human shields
International Solidarity Movement | July 24, 2014
Azzun, Occupied Palestine – On Monday, July 21st, Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields in the village of Azzun, a village west of the city of Nablus.
On most evenings several Israeli jeeps are stationed just outside the Azzun’s north gate. At 10 o’clock in the evening on the night in question, approximately 15 soldiers entered the main square of the village.
Witnesses report that a few young men responded to this invasion by throwing stones at the jeeps from a distance of approximately 200 meters. The soldiers spent the next few minutes stopping cars on the road and began forcing the drivers to arrange their cars in a circle. The soldiers then forced these residents of Azzun to surrender their keys. The occupants of the cars included women and children. They were very frightened and the soldiers did not allow them to leave. The Israeli forces positioned themselves inside the circle formed by the cars, began to fire tear gas at the youths, and knelt behind the civilian occupants of the cars as to protect themselves.
The use of civilian human shields is prohibited by Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel ratified this convention in 1951.
Israeli forces have a long history of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. From the years 2000 to 2005, they admitted to using human shields more than 1,200 times. This practice was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2005, but human rights groups have accused the Israeli army of continuing to use it. During the Gaza massacre of 2008-2009 Israeli occupation forces were accused by Amnesty International, as well as former Israeli soldiers, of using Palestinian children as human shields.
Medical Aid as a Weapon
By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | July 22, 2014
Q: Why is Egypt preventing medical aid to Gaza?
A: So that Israel can use it as a weapon, that’s why.
This explains why dozens of volunteer medical personnel cannot reach the desperately understaffed hospitals in Gaza. It explains why Egypt turned away a convoy of desperately needed medical supplies.
In this time of crisis, Egypt has sealed the border with Gaza, except occasionally to Palestinians who are registered with Israel as residents of Gaza. For anything else, please apply to Israel.
That’s fine for UNRWA, ANERA, UPA and other groups Israel has approved as relief agencies and who buy a lot of their supplies from Israeli sources, store it in Israeli warehouses, use Israeli transportation, have personnel that live in Israel and generally meet Israeli requirements and contribute to the Israeli economy. But what about doctors that carry Lebanese passports? Or Pakistanis, Algerians, Venezuelans, Sudanese, Iranians, Cubans or Syrians? Or who are not permitted to travel to or through Israel because they are on a long list of people who are critical of Israel, such as the organizers of the relief convoy that was turned away? Until the Sisi administration they used to be able to enter through Egypt.
That’s exactly the point. Israel wants them all to go to hell because they are not friends of Israel. Even better, let the people of Gaza go to hell – its children, mothers, grandparents – let them die or better still become infirm and a burden on this already crippled society.
Ashy grey faces – Oh NO! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding, we still have lakes of blood on the floor in the ER, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out – oh – the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away…to be prepared again, to be repeated all over. More then 100 cases came to Shifa last 24 hrs. enough for a large well trained hospital with everything, but here – almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, OR-tables, instruments, monitors – all rusted and as if taken from museums of yesterdays hospitals. But they do not complain, these heroes. They get on with it, like warriors, head on, enormous resolute.
– Dr. Mads Gilbert, al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza
This is what Israel has in mind. In effect, it has turned back the clock to when it destroyed nearly two thousand homes along the Gaza border, making homeless around 20,000 Palestinians and creating the “Philadelphi corridor”, a path of destruction the width of three football fields and eight miles long. It then controlled all of the borders of the Gaza strip, encroaching and destroying everything on the Gaza side up to an average depth of a half kilometer, and in the sea from a treaty-protected twenty kilometers to less than three unprotected, confining the ever growing population into an ever shrinking area with ever fewer resources.
Now, with Israel’s sweethearts running Egypt, it is once again fully in charge of that border, as well, and can treat the Gaza Strip like a hunting reserve, where its troops can practice their skills every couple of years. This is necessary in order to assure that the new recruits acquire the same genocidal experience as their older peers and preserve Israel’s shared cultural traditions.
These are the real aims of the Gaza invasion.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
Egypt turns back Tunisian plane loaded with medical supplies for Gaza
Palestine Information Center – 22/07/2014
TUNIS – Head of Tunisia’s al-Nahda party Rashid al-Ghannoushi revealed on Monday night that Egypt has refused to receive a Tunisian plane bound for Gaza loaded with medicines and medical supplies.
Al-Ghannoushi told Al-Jazeera TV network that the Egyptian authorities had refused to allow the plane to land at the airport nearest to the Gaza Strip, pointing out that it was carrying medical supplies badly needed in the beleaguered Strip.
The plane was supposed to fly back injured people who sustained serious wounds during the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza to receive treatment in Tunisia, he explained.
Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki had declared a week ago his country’s intention to send a plane carrying medicines and medical supplies for Gaza Strip.
Along the same line, the Egyptian authorities continued to prevent a team of European specialized surgeons from having access to Gaza despite possessing the needed papers for that.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Nada, coordinator for the Forum of Palestinian Doctors in Europe, told Quds Press on Tuesday that they have been prevented by Egyptian army from entering into Gaza for the fifth day despite having official permits allowing their access.
The FPDE delegation includes a number of general surgeons in addition to surgeons specialized in vascular surgery and pediatric surgery.
583 Palestinians were killed and 3640 injured in 15 days of Israeli ferocious pounding of the besieged enclave. Hundreds of homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools were demolished during the Israeli airstrikes, navy shelling, and artillery bombardment.
Israeli mainstream openly calling for genocide
By Jonathon Cook | The Blog from Nazareth | July 21, 2014
As we watch the horrifying slaughter unfold in Gaza, bear in mind the Israeli psychosis that fuels and justifies it. Here are comments from three rightwing Israelis – two leading politicians and a professor – who very much reflect a strain of mainstream thinking in Israel, one that the international media largely avoids noting.
Each, in their different ways, is advocating a genocide of the Palestinians.
Ayelet Shaked, of economics minister Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party, calls on her Facebook page for murdering the mothers of what she terms Palestinian “terrorists” (a very broad concept indeed in current Israeli thinking) so that they cannot give birth to more “little snakes”:
They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists. They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists. …
[The terrorists] are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer on Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, believes the sisters and mothers of Palestinian “terrorists” should be raped:
A terrorist, like those who kidnapped the boys [in the West Bank on June 12] and killed them, the only thing that will deter them, is if they know that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught. What can we do? This is the culture that we live in.
Note that his university did not reprimand him. They defended his comments:
The purpose was to define the culture of death of the terrorist organizations. Dr Kedar illustrated in his words the bitter reality of the Middle East and the inability of a modern and law-abiding country to fight the terror of suicide bombers.
And finally we have Moshe Feiglin, a deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, urging the Israeli army to kill Palestinians in Gaza indiscriminately and use every means possible to get them to leave:
[Netanyahu] announces that Israel is about to attack military targets in their area and urges those who are not involved and do not wish to be harmed to leave immediately. Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s humanitarian efforts. … All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’. …
The IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations. … The enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and separated itself from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with international law and will be allowed to leave. Israel will generously aid those who wish to leave.
This psychosis is not going to get better on its own. In fact, it’s going to get much worse. How much worse will depend entirely on the continuing inaction of western leaders.
Amnesty International and the War in Ukraine
By VLADISLAV GULEVICH | CounterPunch | July 21, 2014
Amnesty International recently released a report on “stomach-turning” violence in Eastern Ukraine (“Abduction and Tortures in Eastern Ukraine,” – see for example BBC coverage here). According to the report, the acts of violence are perpetrated chiefly by pro-Russian separatist groups.
The Amnesty International report and its conclusion about rebel responsibility for the majority of violence does’t hold water and has little in common with reality. The violence in Ukraine in general is not properly analyzed, and the report is quite biased. Rather than the rebels, it is the Ukrainian army and the pro-EuroMaidan forces that are responsible for the abductions and abuses.
Firstly, rebels in Eastern Ukraine enjoy almost 100% support of the local population. There is no need for them to commit any kind of violence targeting the locals. The Ukrainian army, on the contrary, is viewed as a cruel enemy and Ukrainian soldiers feel the animosity of the locals. Simple logic would argue that it is the army that has felt the need to repress its local adversaries through violence. Moreover, it suffices to speak with any of the thousands of refugees from Eastern Ukraine and listen to their stories about the barbaric methods used by the army to break the resistance, to be persuaded that the Ukrainian army bears the responsibility for the majority of kidnappings and tortures.
Secondly, it’s well known that EuroMaidan was supported by Ukrainian neo-Nazi organizations. After the success of EuroMaidan its leaders enrolled their neo-Nazi supporters into newly formed police and National Guard battalions (“Azov”, “Donbas” and so on). From time to time foreign media speak of the neo-Nazi background of such Ukrainian military units, but most of the time this fact is hidden. It’s hard to expect any respect for human rights or any other kind of law observance from these soldiers.
The facts show that EuroMaidan authorities started the terror campaign promptly after toppling the former government, that is to say long before the start of the war. The spiral of violence raging now in Eastern Ukraine is the sequel of the geopolitical drama called EuroMaidan.
In addition, to see the whole scale of violence in Ukraine one should gather information about abductions, tortures and other ill-treatment throughout the country and not only in Eastern Ukraine. And the time period should be enlarged: it’s necessary to take into consideration all of the violence perpetrated since the victory of EuroMaidan and not only since the beginning of the hostilities.
When the new post-EuroMaidan government was formed it unleashed unprecedented repressive measures, which became more and more stringent and violent. Policemen and their families were the first targets. They were threatened anonymously, their apartments burnt and some policemen killed.
Not only were policemen tracked down, but any conspicuous person loyal to the previous government. Unacceptable newspapers were forcibly closed, independent journalists arrested. The most radical pro-European movement, “Right Sector,” put forward the idea that “the revolution continues and we will hunt down the enemies of the revolution”. After that civic activists were subjected to brutal attacks and the most active of them were arrested. Now Kiev goes even further. Following the example of the US in Iraq, the Ukrainian authorities are producing playing cards with faces of the rebel commanders as well as faces of “wrong” journalists, for the soldiers in Eastern Ukraine. The army must either arrest or kill them.
After EuroMaidan, Ukraine is a country full of political prisoners. The number of well-known journalists and writers who have had to escape from the country is rather high: Alexander Chalenko, Rostislav Ishchenko, Vladimir Rogov, myself, and many others. Even high-ranking Congressmen of the Ukrainian parliament, such as the anti-EuroMaidan politician Oleg Tsarov, have had to leave Ukraine under the threat of arrest. Before fleeing Tsarov was attacked by a crowd of EuroMaidan activists and savagely beaten. The video of the attack as well as Tsarov with torn clothes and bruises was shown on TV. His house in Dnepropetrovsk was burnt by Molotov cocktails thrown by well-known “unknown” perpetrators.
Now Tsarov gives juridical assistance to police officers and civil activists persecuted by the new authorities. According to Tsarov, many people are being arrested throughout Ukraine and prisons are filled with political prisoners. The latest case has been the arrest of Alexander Samoylov, the vice-rector of International Slavonic University in Charkov. The picture of Samoylov beaten, with black bruises around his eyes, is circulating on the internet.
The violence against ideological rivals has turned into political advertising for the Ukrainian politicians supporting EuroMaidan, aimed toward dissuasion. Congressmen from the well-known xenophobic nationalistic party Svoboda forcibly entered the office of the Ukrainian National TV Channel director, beat him and forced him to resign. They disliked how the TV channel covered the Crimean conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
Notorious congressman and leader of the Radical party Oleg Liashko is famous for his PR actions in the zone of hostilities. He often shows up there accompanied by a large number of bodyguards and demonstrates his attitude towards the population of Eastern Ukraine. There are many videos showing Liashko humiliating his opponents and threatening to kill them — like in this video where Liashko and his bodyguards rudely force a local deputy in Slawiansk to resign and threaten to lynch him in a town square – or threatening to throw them into prison, like in this video where Liashko interrogates a 68-year old man with a sack on his head and threatens to keep him in prison until death.
It’s worth mentioning that in March 2014, a month before the beginning of hostilities between Kiev and the rebel provinces, and when dialogue was still possible, Liashko ordered one of the Eastern Ukrainian leaders, Arsen Klinchaev, to be arrested. This was carried out in a rude and humiliating manner and Liashko himself took part in the action. Klinchaev was arrested in his office and not with arms in hand, but was treated like a dangerous terrorist.
Instead of dialogue, Kiev has chosen violence.
Vladislav Gulevich is a Ukrainian journalist and political analyst who has recently fled to Russia. He can be reached at kwonltd@rambler.ru.
100 Palestinians killed in Israeli assault on Sunday alone
Ma’an – 20/07/2014
GAZA CITY – Israeli forces killed at least 100 Palestinians on Sunday including 66 in a single neighborhood of Gaza City, bringing the 13-day death toll to 437.
The assault on Gaza — which has also left 18 Israels dead — is the largest and deadliest attack on the besieged coastal enclave since 2008. More than 200 Palestinians have died since the ground invasion began on Thursday.
On Sunday, 66 bodies were recovered from the Shujaiyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, in what medical authorities called a “massacre” and a level of violence not seen before in the ongoing conflict.
At least 500 Palestinians were injured in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, with the total surpassing 3,000 as Gazan hospitals struggled to cope with the surge and facing shortages of medical supplies, doctors, and hospital beds.
Hospitals were also facing continuous power cuts, as electricity has fallen by more than 70 percent as a result of Israeli shelling and the siege itself, which even prior to the assault had reduced electricity availability to eight-hour stints.
60 thousand Gazans fled their homes on Sunday alone amid the mass killing in the Shujaiyya neighborhood, adding to a total number of displaced that has now hit 135,000.
Sources familiar with the situation argued, however, that there is not a single place safe from Israeli attack in the besieged coastal enclave, as shelling from land and sea as well as air strikes have not left any region untouched.
Palestinian analysts expressed astonishment at Israeli claims that 1.7 million Gaza residents had been warned to leave their homes, asking: “Where in the world can they go?”
Israel has kept its border with Gaza shut tight to the flight of refugees, while Egypt has also maintained the seven-year-old Israeli-led blockade of the Strip by keeping its border closed as well.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the operation would continue until quiet was restored in southern Israel.
Operation Protective Edge was launched 13 days ago in what Israel said was an attempt to stop rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which had increased after Israel launched a massive operation in the West Bank that left 10 Palestinians dead, 130 injured, and more than 600 Hamas-affiliated individuals in prison.
The operation, named “Brother’s Keeper,” was launched in order to find three Israeli teenagers who disappeared in June from the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion in the West Bank.
Israel blamed Hamas for the kidnapping without any evidence, a charge which the group denied.
Shelling and airstrikes resume Sunday afternoon
On Sunday afternoon, Israeli shelling fully resumed after a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire that it violated numerous times, and dozens more had been killed in the Gaza Strip as a result.
Rayan Taysir Abu Jami, 8, and an elderly woman named Fatima Mahmoud Abu Jami were killed and three injured in an air strike on Khan Younis on Sunday evening, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesman in Gaza Ashraf al-Qidra.
Eight Palestinians were also killed in Israeli air strike on house in al-Ramal.
The dead were named by Al-Qidra as Samar Osama al-Hallaq,29, Kinan Akram al-Hallaq, 5, Hani Mohammad al-Hallaq,29, Suad Mohammad al-Hallaq, 62, Saji al-Hallaq, Ibrahim Khalil Omar, Ahmad Yassin, and an 8th person, who was unnamed.
A man and woman, meanwhile, were killed in a strike on the Atatra house in Beit Lahiya.
Medical sources said Ahmad Abu Tayim, 27, died of injuries sustained on an airstrike on al-Zana are of Khan Yunis.
Aya Abu Sultan, 15, was killed in a strike on her house northern Gaza Strip.
Another man was killed, while four were injured in another strike on Gaza City earlier in the afternoon.
Palestinian medical sources also said that a child identified as Suleiman Abu Jami was killed in an Israeli raid on Khan Younis in the south.
Five other people were injured in Beit Hanoun in the north.
In the central Gaza Strip, Israeli airstrikes in the afternoon killed four members of Abu Zayid family in al-Bureij refugee camp after destroying their home over their heads.
Medical sources also said Suleiman Abu Jami was killed in Bani Suheila in Khan Younis. Four others were injured in the same raid including one critically injured.
Al-Qidra said earlier that an elderly woman Najah Saad Addin Darraji, 65, and a 3-year-old boy Abdullah Yousif Darraji were killed in Rafah.
Egypt halts Gaza-bound aid convoy
Press TV – July 19, 2014
A Gaza-bound Egyptian convoy carrying humanitarian aid for the war-ravaged, besieged Palestinian enclave has been halted by the country’s security forces in Sinai.
Activists travelling with the convoy on Saturday afternoon said the vehicles carrying humanitarian supplies to the people in the Israeli-blockaded territory had been stopped at a Sinai checkpoint by Egyptian forces and not allowed to pass due to alleged “security reasons,” Ahram Online reported.
The development comes as Gaza is entering the twelfth day of an Israeli military onslaught that has left more than 312 Palestinians dead, including many women and children.
The report further cites Egyptian political activist Zizo Abdo as saying that the convoy was halted at Balooza checkpoint, the first military checkpoint in North Sinai.
Abdo also stated that the convoy consists of 11 buses and a medical convoy, totaling over 550 people including students, workers, and various political figures.
According to the report, if the convoy is allowed to pass through the checkpoint, it is set to pass through Sinai’s al-Arish city, an already troubled area where Egyptian security forces are battling an anti-state militancy that has surged since the military ouster of the country’s first freely elected president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
After al-Arish, the convoy will move directly to the Rafah border crossing.
Egypt’s authorities have largely kept the critical border crossing for the besieged Palestinians living in Gaza shut over the past year, claiming security concerns over the surge of militancy in the Sinai region.
However, the crossing has been opened a few times since the start of the massive Israeli offensive as an “exceptional” measure to transport injured Palestinians to Egyptian hospitals and deliver Egyptian as well as Arab aid to Gaza.
Similar Egyptian convoys were able to cross into Gaza during the Israeli assault on the strip in 2012.
Israel targets more hospitals in Gaza assault
Ma’an – 18/07/2014
GAZA CITY – Israel shelled the Beit Hanoun hospital in northern Gaza on Friday, damaging the top floors and causing panic among patients and staff, employees said.
A nurse in the hospital told Ma’an that Israel fired a drone missile at the roof and third floor, damaging water supplies.
The area of the hospital targeted contained a ward for children, a reception area, and the offices of several doctors.
The building was evacuated immediately following the attack, with no injuries reported.
The attack comes as Israeli tanks fired shells at the al-Wafa hospital in Gaza City late Thursday, the facility’s director said.
“Israeli tanks are shelling the hospital, they have hit several of the floors, and several nurses have been injured,” director Basman Alashi told AFP.
“There is no place safe in Gaza! If a hospital is not safe, where is?” he said.
The hospital in Gaza’s Shujaiyeh district has come under Israeli fire several times before, and the Israeli military has called on Alashi and other doctors to evacuate it.
The Al-Quds hospital was also hit overnight Thursday by Israeli forces, causing a fire to break out which damaged several departments of the building.
On Saturday, thirty-year-old Ola Washahi and 47-year-old Suha Abu Saada were killed when an Israeli rocket hit a care home for Palestinians with special needs in Beit Lahiya.
The facility’s director, Jamila Alaywa, was unable to contain her fury as she described the tragedy that had befallen the center she set up in 1994.
“Both Ola and Suha had severe mental and physical handicaps, and had been living at the center since it was founded,” she told AFP.
“They didn’t understand what was happening and they were so frightened,” Alaywa said.
“They fired the rocket and it hit us without any warning. There was no warning strike with an empty rocket,” she said.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson, ISM
Israeli strike kills three children playing on Gaza roof
Al-Akhbar | July 17, 2014
Brothers Jihad and Wissam were playing on the roof of their Gaza apartment with their cousin Fulla, when an Israeli strike came from the blue skies above and killed them.
Fulla, a nickname given to 10-year-old Afnan, was the eldest. All three were from the Shaheber family, in Gaza City’s Sabra district.
After being cooped up at home for days on end, neighbors said the children were taking advantage of the relative calm that followed a brief truce between Israel and Hamas.
“They were playing on the roof,” said neighbor Raed al-Kurdi, 33, his white vest stained with blood.
“We were sitting on our roof next to our neighbor’s one and we found all of a sudden a rocket coming from above and it hit their roof,” he added.
“The people who were injured were from the Shaheber family, there were children, two girls, two boys and two grown men.
“They were in serious condition, we carried them out in our arms.”
Three of the children died en route to the Shifa hospital, where they were laid out on steel tables in the morgue as doctors in blue coats moved around them, cleaning them.
Each had coin-sized pieces of flesh gouged out from their limbs by shrapnel.
Next to them, their uncle Mohammed wept openly.
An employee at the hospital, he heard the call go out for ambulances after the strike that hit the Shaheber home.
“They were children, just playing on the roof. And now they’re dead, lying in front of us,” he said, his voice anguished but also angry.
“How can this be, how can this be?”
The morgue chief asked the distraught family members if they want to allow media waiting outside into the room.
“It is up to you, but if you want to show the world what happened here, we will let them in,” he told Mohammed and other relatives inside, who assented tearfully.
The three children were lined up beside each other, along with a fourth child brought in from an earlier strike in Gaza City.
Fulla was laid in the middle and her cousins one on either side.
Her curly hair framed her face, specked with blood.
Her T-shirt might once have been white, but now it was completely red, soaked through with her blood.
To her right was 8-year-old Jihad, his turquoise T-shirt and trousers torn through by shrapnel.
To her left was Wissam, seven years old, his eyes still open as though he was staring into the middle distance.
His trousers had been removed, revealing his blue and yellow superhero underwear.
Health crisis looms in Gaza after Israel bombs water infrastructure
By Ahmed Hadi | Al-Akhbar | July 17, 2014
To either prepare for a ground invasion or to simply to make life for Gazans harsher than it already is, Israel decided to bomb the wells that provide tens of thousands of people in Gaza with water. It has also targeted sewage plants, which means clean water is not coming in and sewage water is not going out.
Bassem Siam carried two plastic gallons as he left his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza, ignoring the intense bombardment and the continued Israeli military flights. He went to his neighbors who happen to have a small supply of drinking water to get a sip of water for himself and his family and to help his wife wash the dishes that have accumulated in the kitchen because water has been cut off for two days. The 30-something-year-old man held the two gallons tightly to his chest and returned home quickly as Israeli planes bombed farm land near his home. When he entered the building where he lives, he exhaled deeply, having survived the devastating missile shrapnel.
Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza live under the threat of water scarcity due to the fact that Israeli fighter jets bombed wells that provide water to several residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Municipalities in charge of these wells believe that the Israeli targeting of wells is motivated by a decision to destroy the infrastructure in Gaza and to undermine the people’s ability to remain steadfast.
Israeli planes targeted a well located in al-Nasr neighborhood, west of the city of Gaza, which provides water to about 20,000 people and the Ali well in al-Zaitoun area, south of the city, which provides water to about 7,000 people. In addition, three main water lines that feed al-Shujaiya and al-Sabra neighborhoods and provide about 21,000 people with water were also hit.
This targeting appears to be systematic and its obvious objective is to deprive people of water, the single most important element of daily life, especially during the month of Ramadan.
According to the head of the water facilities at the Gaza municipality, Saad al-Din Atbash, it is very difficult to repair the destroyed wells amidst the ongoing violence. Not to mention that the cost for each well to start working again at the same capacity it was working before is $120,000. “In addition, the cost of repairing the three water lines that were damaged is about $6,000 for each line,” he added.
In light of the ongoing war and siege of Gaza, it is hard for the municipality to repair these wells and water lines, Atbash confirmed. He also noted that the electric cables which operate the well pumps that feed the industrial area to the east of Gaza city (known as Karni) have been burned. These pumps provide water to about 5,000 people. He confirmed that the crews working in the field have repaired what can be repaired in order to distribute water again, even if on an intermittent basis. He warned, however, that these crews are working in unsafe conditions because the Israeli military targets emergency work crews.
Gazans are starting to complain about the water shortages that last for days at a time, forcing some of them to fill up their home water tanks with desalinated water to use for drinking, cooking, washing and cleaning. The problem, however, is that the distributors of desalinated water were directly targeted more than once during the 2008 Israeli war on Gaza. Not to mention the additional cost of buying desalinated water which doubles people’s water bills. In addition, several purification water plants announced their inability to provide services to residents, especially to those living in border areas.
Fadi Omran, one of the desalinated water distributors, tells Al-Akhbar : “We can’t risk our lives and go out in the evening. We are trying to work during the day but we don’t have enough time to meet the needs of all the people.” Omran, who drives a huge truck, explained that the Israelis do not differentiate between civilians and Resistance fighters, “they target any moving object at night.” He said that fear for their lives forces them to delay delivering their customers’ orders. In addition to the fact that his plant works only when there is electricity.
This situation prompted the director of the water department in the Gaza municipality to call on people to ration their water consumption “until the damaged water pipes and water wells are repaired.” He also called on international organizations to intervene in order to prevent Israel from bombing the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
On the evening of July 12, Israeli warplanes targeted a vehicle that belongs to the non-governmental Coastal Municipalities Water Utility near its well located to the west of Rafah in southern Gaza. The bombing killed a 42-year-old employee called Ziad al-Shawi, destroyed his car completely and seriously injured two of his colleagues.
Because of this incident, the general director of the utility, Monzer Shiblak, announced the complete suspension of work at the field water utility after the targeting of its staff, “despite the existing coordination with the Israeli side. The suspension will continue until proper field protection is provided for the employees.” At the same time, he expressed commitment to see his utility persist in its vital duties towards the public and in carrying out its water and sanitation services to the best of its ability.
During a press conference, Shiblak called on international humanitarian organizations, especially the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to assume their responsibilities and take action to protect the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility and pressure the Israeli side to stop targeting their crews and the municipalities’ crews.
According to observers, warnings have been issued regarding the consequences of subjecting Palestinians in Gaza to health and environmental catastrophes as a result of the Israeli bombing of sewage pump no. 1. This pump services the area to the west of the city of Gaza and treats about 15,000 cubic meters of waste-water per day, thus protecting about 200,000 of the city’s residents from the potential harm of untreated sewage water.
‘Shells were chasing them’: Four Palestinian children killed on beach by Israeli rockets
RT | July 16, 2014
Four Palestinian children were killed by rockets while playing football on Gaza beach, with local officials saying the attack came from an Israeli gunboat. Dozens of international journalists witnessed the tragedy.
“This is a cowardly crime,” said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry.
The children have been named as Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakaria Ahed Bakr, both aged 10, Mohamed Ramez Bakr, 11, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr, 9, and another boy remains in critical condition. All the victims were relatives.
“The kids were playing football on the beach,” Ahmed Abu Hassera, who witnessed the explosions along with dozens of foreign journalists located nearby, told Reuters. “When the first shell hit the land, they ran away but another shell hit them all. It looked as if the shells were chasing them.”
“We live by the coast. There was a headline on the news that four children were injured … so we went looking for the kids and we could not find them, so we came here to the hospital to look for them and we found them all, including my son … oh my God,” a man who introduced himself as the father of Zakaria, told NBC.
The Israeli Defense Forces have denied targeting the children, who came from the family of a fisherman whose shack on the beach was decimated by the strike.
“We do not target civilians, we target Hamas terrorists,” IDF representative Peter Lerner told RT.
“I have seen the footage of the incident, and indeed it does look tragic, and we will have to look into the circumstances.”
The strike brought the total of Palestinians killed by the Israeli counter-offensive to 214.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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