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| Egyptian Border Forces patrolling to prevent people getting back into Gaza as Israel orders to close the border for more than 50 days |
Let sick people go home many people are calling in the demonstration against closing Rafah border. |
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| palestinian families enjoying the beach in Rafah |
Palestinian families enjoyng their time on the Gaza beach |
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| Palestinian kids demonstrate against closing Rafah crossing border for more than 50 days |
Palestinian man inspecting damage caused by Israeli helicapter air strikes on Al Nasser village. |
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| Palestinian man is back into his house after Israeli air strike |
Palestinian men waiting at Rafah brorder to cross for medication |
Dying Under the Summer Sky and International Eye: Gazans Continue to Be Targeted by IOF and Border Closures
The latest Israeli air strikes have targeted 4 Palestinians in two different strikes in less than 24 hours. In the first, on Salah Al Dein road, Israeli warplanes fired at and hit a car, leaving 3 Islamic Jihad members dead including a senior leader of the movement, Omer Al Khatib. A second strike, in Rafah, targeted and killed a Hamas member, injuring many others. Hamas said the man who was killed was a member of its military wing, Al Qassam brigades, who had been involved in confronting the Israeli incursion.
According to eyewitnesses, “Al Khatib jumped out of his car when the first rocket hit the car, but other rockets flew over the car, hitting him and other two members.”
Meanwhile, also in Rafah where Israeli Occupation Forces are patrolling along the border, a number of missiles were fired on Rafah’s eastern areas, destroying trees, agricultural land, and greenhouses. No casualties have been reported in that incident.
Medical sources have reported that the body of a 21 year old woman, from Burij camp in the middle of Gaza Strip, was found face-down on the ground. The body appears to have been stabbed by a knife, the criminals unknown.
Border Crises:
The crisis at the Rafah border continues, with fatalities increased to 30 civilians dead as a result of the 6-week-long unrelenting closing, the dead mostly young and elderly. Those at the border are living in the streets, with no shelter and very limited food and medication, under the burning sun in the hottest and most unforgiving days of summer. People are appealing to Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the US and EU, to open the Rafah crossing and allow the trapped and ravaged masses back into Gaza. The situation is extremely dire right now, and people have a well-founded fear things will quickly get even worse in the coming days if the border remains closed as it has after promises to open it in the recent past.
When the media reports, if at all, on the state of life at the border, it is in dry terms, repeating empty promises of opening the border (weeks ago!) or patting the back of some politician who vaguely denounces the economic-related problems of a month and a half border closure (preceded by a year and a half of international sanctions on Gaza). The news negates the very real and painful suffering of thousands of innocent people who have committed no crime except to seek medical treatment or other and cross the border at a time when they could not have known it would be subsequently closed and sealed.
Numerous demonstrations have protested the closing of the border, closed for over 50 days now, and the torturous slide towards death people are experiencing and losing loved ones to. Umm Salman, 63, interviewed by phone, grieved: “I can’t live like this, I need to go home. Animals have much better lives than us. We have no clean water, and I don’t have money. What do you expect me to do when I have no money to buy food?” she asked.
“I sold my clothes, my watch, my ring and all my belongings, what else should I sell? Should I sell my grand-child who came with me for medication before we got marooned at the border and now can’t go home? For God’s sake, open the border, I want to go home. This is enough. I can’t keep sleeping here, among thousands, under the unbearably scorching sun and with mosquitoes, snakes, and insects moving over our heads while we try to sleep at night.”
To make matters worse, skin diseases are becoming rife among the six thousand who are trapped at the no man’s land between Egypt and Gaza. In an even further injustice, 16 babies who were born at the border, with no certificates or legal documents, now won’t be allowed back into Gaza: they were transported out of Gaza while inside their mother’s stomachs, but now, as babies, with no identification, even if the border opens, there is a great risk that they might not be let into their homes! Yet another cruel twist of fate for those, who through no accord of their own, happen to be born in an area that the world has decided should suffer indefinitely.
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Hanyeh speaking to palestinian minsiters in Gaza |
Palestinian resigned Prmine Minister hanyeh speaking to the press in a conference today |
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| Palestinian carrying the bodies of both Hamas members who were killed by Israeli air strikes yesterday in Gaza |
Palestinian men looking up their names in lists of names provided by UNRWA to give food parcels |
The Siege is still on! Our borders are closed and life (if one can call this life) is more tragic than ever. Palestinian souls are trying to find a little pleasure in life by going to the beach after having endured bloody weeks in Gaza.With the sanctions in place, nothing can solve the problems of the Palestinians. Israel continues to try to divide the Palestinians in Gaza from those in the West Bank. But we are all one!
The resigned Prime Minister Hanyieh spoke to the press today: "Why this siege? Is it because we ended chaos and anarchy?" He said that food and human rights must not be subject to political blackmail. According to Hanyieh, Palestinian resistance has always been defensive. If the Israeli Occupation were to stop its attacks, then there would be no Palestinian violent reaction.
Due to the closure of the borders, restriction on movement and security measures imposed by the Israeli the Gaza economy is essentially dead with more than 80 percent of the businesses shut down. He also stressed the importance of upholding the law and order, the sovereignty of the judiciary and justice and ending corrupt monopolies.
Many believe that Hamas brings security to Gaza Strip, but the economic over here is all but destroyed. The Rafah border to Egypt is still being closed. Egyptian build up of the military on the border has increased from 750 to 900 soldiers, according to Egyptian sources over the phone.
Today, An Israeli air strike killed four in the northern Gaza Strip, The violence was the worst in coastal
Gaza in 10 days, and came a day before Tony Blair makes his first visit to the region as envoy to the Quartet of Middle East power brokers.
According to eyewitnesses in Gaza , said an Israeli air strike helicopter opened fire in northern Gaza, killing two Palestinians. The Islamic Jihad movement said both were members and had been firing home made rockets at Israel.
Seems to be honor killing:
In a different incident in Gaza, three Palestinian sisters from Gaza, the youngest 16 years old Nahed Hija and her sisters, 19 years old Suha and 22 years old Lina, were found dead from multiple stab wounds, buried in a shallow grave in the central Gaza Strip.
Many believed that such killing might came as a result of "honor crimes," in which women are murdered by male relatives because of suspected intimate relations or in other word not necessarily sex - outside of marriage, but could be other reasons behind such killing. The reasons are not known so far, but Executive Force and Palestinian police are investigating the killing of the three sisters.
Behind Closed Borders: One Month of Slowly Dying at the Egypt-Gaza Border
An impossibly crowded area. Chaos. A slow, imprisoned death. This, briefly, is the appalling life—though it is hard to term it living—at the Rafah border.
Terrible food, sparse water, poor hygiene, and inadequate shelter. The conditions are ripe for tragedy. Seriously ill people face preventable deaths as, despite their desperate need of medical care, the Rafah border remains closed, preventing passage to medical facilities and to safety back home. For Gazans, it is the equivalent of shutting down Los Angeles airports and banning all other transportation while F-16s, helicopters, and warplanes hover over the static population of the city, ensuring no one can make it back home.
For over one month, at both the Palestinian and Egyptian sides, people have been waiting at the Rafah border –without medicine, with little to no food or water, shelter-less and blistering under the searing Gazan summer sun. All are waiting for the first of 7 consecutive gates to be opened, which will allow the stranded thousands to cross into Gaza or out to seek medical help.
The Rafah border is strictly controlled by Israel, closely monitored by video-cameras. Israel is not allowing the border to open, despite previous agreements to keep the crossing open for 24 hours. Slighting that agreement, Israel hasn’t opened it lately. So, each day ordinary citizens are paying the price, one which comes at the cost of health and life! At least 28 have died as a result of the strict denial of passage to and from Gaza at the Rafah crossing, completely closed since June 10, where nearly 6,000 Palestinians wait without adequate food, water, or shelter in the intense sweltering heat of summer. Even those with severe medical emergencies are being denied passage.
Patients have the right to medicine, children to drinking water, and people to respect—at the very least respect as humans, not to mention as Palestinians, Muslims, or Arabs. Frequently I wonder, how can anyone allow human beings to suffer like this, to be kept waiting even though many are only a tantalizing half an hour away from home.
Yet their proximity to home has no impact on their reality: they are stuck, trapped, in another country without the basic services of citizens. Where is the international outrage and action?
It is impossible to fathom that ambulances should be held back with suffering people in critical need of medical care following operations in hospitals in Egypt and other Arab countries. Additional salt in their many wounds comes with the loss of nearly 6000 people’s suitcases.
Over phone, 25 year old Mohammed Abu el Karash, with an injured backbone and who has returned from Nasser hospital in Cairo, explained how he was kept waiting inside the ambulance for 13 hours before he gave up and went back to the Cairo hospital: “I have tasted death many times. I can’t move at all, even to go to the restroom—I’m waiting for the international community to let us back to our homes, immediately, to end our undue and extended suffering at the border,” he said.
Added to the border troubles are the deaths and injuries from repeated Israeli invasions in the last weeks. A July 5 invasion of Al Boreij refugee camp in central Gaza left 11 dead, including 3 civilians, and over 30 injured, including many children. In the same incursion, a clearly unarmed Palestinian cameraman was shot repeatedly in both legs, resulting in their amputation, by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers, in the latest of many attacks on journalists.
“I feel like our lives don’t matter to the European Union observers and Israel—they never care. Aren’t we human beings like them?” he asked.
Israel is currently carrying out a new military incursion in southern Gaza, particularly the Rafah area close to the very border where many of the thousands of civilians are stranded. Heavy shelling from tanks has injured many civilians and caused severe damage to numerous homes.
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| Alan freed by the help of Palestinian
PM Ismail Hanyeh |
Medical workers carying the body of
one of the people who was injured in the incursion |
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| Palestinian ambulance is being destroyed
by the Israeli bulldozers |
palestinian man injured by the isareli
occupation forces gunfire |
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| PM Hanyeh receives Alan Johsnton in
his office after has has been released |
the body of palestinian camerman Imad
Ghanem lying down at Al Shifa hospital |
Nothing New in Gaza: More IOF Invasions, More Journalists
Targeted
The images are devastating: an Al Aqsa TV journalist holding his
camera and appealing for help, while Israeli bullets continued
to target him. The most agonizing photo shows the body of the
injured journalist, fallen with the first bullets to hit him.
The distressing photos continue: Israeli snipers continued to
shoot at his wounded, bleeding body. Hands raised over his head,
his clothing marked with the distinctive “Press” logo, he was
undeniably appealing for help. But the bullets pounded into his
body again and again, striking his legs repeatedly. After some
time, he was taken to Al Shifa hospital where his useless legs
were then amputated.
Imad Ghanem. A young man, in his late 20s, a cameraman for Al
Aqsa satellite TV. Alive but wounded, bullet-ridden and bleeding
on the ground, Israeli bullets persistently battering him. His
crime? Repeated videotaping and documenting of the daily Israeli
criminal violence against Palestinians. One of his colleagues
managed to carry out the wounded cameraman, leaving the camera
recording the event. But soon after he arrived at Al Shifa hospital,
both of Ghanem’s legs were amputated.
Journalists are Targets:
At Burij refugee camp, in a separate attack, Israeli soldiers
fired at journalists and cameramen, among whom were a Reuters
crew. Yet, an Israeli military spokeswoman stated to Al Jazeera
TV that while journalists were at risk if they entered a combat
zone, soldiers did not deliberately target them.
The reality of Israeli attack-inflicted casualties disputes this
allegation, this latest targeting of journalists being but one
among many incidences. Take James Miller, the British cameraman
killed in Rafah camp in 2003 while he was filming, not to mention
other reporters and cameramen who have also been killed and injured
in Gaza and the West Bank.
More and more Israeli attacks have targeted different parts of
the Gaza Strip, further extending the collective misery of 1.5
million Gazans. The Israeli commando-style military incursions
into the Strip hammered northern and central areas, the latest
hitting Al Bureij and Al Maghazi refugee camps in the central
Gaza Strip. IOF authorities allege the attacks come with the aim
of stopping the launching of homemade rockets into Israeli border
towns. Yet, the recent 22 hour invasion instead served to kill
11 Palestinians, injuring over 30, in addition to causing vast
infrastructure damage from the heavy tank fire and air-strikes.
Of the 11 who were killed, six belonged to the armed wing of Hamas.
According to Palestinian sources, the militants were patrolling
in the area to prevent the Israeli army from attacking more areas.
Al Shifa hospital sources report that five of the over 30 Palestinians
wounded during the incursion were left in serious condition.
Human Shields:
As attacks from the Israeli military continue, Azmi Abu Dalal,
a Palestinian ambulance driver, who's his ambulance have been
completely destroyed by the Israeli bulldozers reported being
used as human shields to allow the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)
to evacuate the area. The driver said that Israeli forces trapped
him and several medical workers when they tried to evacuate a
wounded Palestinian man. The IOF use of Palestinian civilians
and medics as human shields is not a new policy, nor is the IOF
prevention of ambulance drivers and medical workers to go into
areas under attack to retrieve the wounded.
Border Casualties:
The Rafah border remains closed, despite promises on July 3 from
the Israeli and Egyptian authorities to open it. They instead
retracted their promises. So, in an unlawful and unnecessary effective
detainment of 1000s of civilians, Palestinians remain trapped
there, immobile after 3 weeks of waiting without adequate food,
water, shelter, or washing facilities at the closed crossing.
The number of deaths has risen to 28, a direct result of their
arbitrary imprisonment in limbo.
In other news, Alan Johnston has recently been freed, unharmed,
largely due to the help of Hamas and the Palestinian government
in Gaza. The question remains, as ever, when will Gazans be freed
from the hellish open-air prison imposed upon them by Israel and
the West? When will the thousands of desperate and destitute civilians
waiting at Gaza’s border be permitted to re-join their families,
even with this on-going prison state.
You may also see al Jazeera's video coverage from that
day - and the targetting of a journalist:
At the Rafah border, in limbo and unable to make it home, Palestinians
are suffering from another aspect of the Israeli government’s policy
of imposed collective suffering through border closures, economic
sanctions, air and land attacks, and extreme military control of
Palestinian areas. These latest closures will achieve neither the
peace nor security Israel professes to desire. Nonetheless, Israel
continues the inhumane policy of denying Palestinians access to
medical care, food, and supplies outside of Gaza, and continues
to hold hostage the many Palestinians who have been waiting for
over three weeks now to return home. At the Rafah border they wait,
sleep, and live in the streets, most having allotted only money
and food for a few days’ wait, at worst. Thus, weeks later, they’ve
run out of money, and have no water for showering, nor food for
their children. Today, a Palesinian woman, Taghreed Abeaed 31 years
old died while she was waiting in very bad conditions at Rafah border.
Taghreed is the mother of fice children was in trip to Egypt and
now he body is not beling allowed into Gaza for buring!
"I haven’t been able to find water to bathe with for several
weeks now," said 49 year old Umm Rami, stuck on the Egyptian
side. She is trying to return home after having knee surgery, now
unexpectedly stuck without water or medicine. "I have no idea
where to go; I’m alone here with my young daughter, without anything—we’ve
run out of everything we need: food, water, money. We are unwashed
and stink, besides being hungry and exhausted."
Western Union and DHL have since last week been discontinued in
the Strip by Israel, making it impossible for families to send money
to those who are trapped at the crowded, service-less borders of
Gaza.
New violence comes to Gaza in the form of new Israeli attacks,
following previous recent Israeli strikes throughout the Strip.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into Gaza City, into the southern
town of Khan Younis, and into the north of Gaza in simultaneous
incursions launched overnight, leaving many dead and wounded.
Dr. Mawia Hassanen at Al Shifa Hospital reported 13 deaths, including
civilians and a 9 year old child, from the latest Israeli attacks,
many of whom were unidentifiable due to the obliterating damage
and burning from Israeli tanks’ shells. Another twenty Palestinians
were wounded, including seven in critical condition.
Compounding the border and invasion suffering of Gazans, severe
water shortages, as in Rafah refugee camp, are hitting people hard,
particularly during the extremely hot summer months, when the need
for water is greatest. Today marks the fourth day meager water supplies
for drinking and cooking have had to be brought into Bader camp
in Rafah.
Two days on, the Israeli air strikes ever-continue. Khan Younis
eyewitnesses report the latest air strikes targeted Islamic Jihad
members, with at least three rockets hitting a white Subaru, injuring
passers-by in the street and killing three inside: Mohamed Al Raie,
Raed Ghannam and his cousin Zeyad Ghannam.
As I write, yet another Israeli strike has targeted a car, killing
a further three unidentified Palestinians and injuring many more.
Saturday’s fatalities alone number 7, with uncounted civilian injuries.
With the Gaza Strip so isolated, and given the on-going attacks
and bloodshed in Gaza, Gazans wait, fatigued and in fear of the
next inevitable Israeli attacks to come.
