Rafah Today - rafahtoday.org

MIDEAST: Israel Strengthens Hamas Leadership
GAZA CITY - The one political result of Israel's attacks and sanctions on Gaza has been that the Hamas leadership, and particularly Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have emerged greatly strengthened.

Over the last three months, support for Haniyeh has overtaken that for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. Fatah rules the West Bank, and Hamas Gaza, the two main Palestinian territories.

A poll conducted in March by the independent Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research shows that Abbas has lost a 19 percent advantage over Haniyeh over the past three months. Now, the poll suggests Haniyeh would get 47 percent of the Palestinian vote, and Abbas 46 percent.

The poll was carried out among 1,270 adults, 830 in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip, at 127 randomly selected locations.

Popularity for Haniyeh increased after the breaching of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, said Dr Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey centre. The breach is believed to have been the work of Hamas, and it helped Palestinians bring in badly needed provisions denied earlier by an Israeli blockade.

The continuing Israeli attacks that brought a large number of casualties in recent weeks has also brought increased sympathy and support for Haniyeh, Shikaki told IPS.

The Hamas movement has been swiftly labelled 'terrorist' by Western governments. Israel has said it cannot deal with Haniyeh because he refuses to recognise Israel. He has been accused of failure to honour the Oslo accords of 1993. These accords were signed between Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestinians and Israel's President, Shimon Peres. The accords brought the first acknowledgement from Palestinians of Israel's right to exist, and agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state.

Haniyeh's position on these issues too has brought him increased support among Palestinians. "The Oslo agreements said that a Palestinian state would be established by 1999," Haniyeh said in an interview to IPS. "Where is this Palestinian state? Has Oslo given the right to Israel to reoccupy the West Bank, to build the wall and expand the settlements, and to Judaize Jerusalem and make it totally Jewish?

"Has Israel been given the right to disrupt work on the port and airport in Gaza? Has Oslo given it the right to besiege Gaza, and to stop all tax refunds to the Palestinians?"

Haniyeh is dismissive of the conditions imposed on Hamas. Israel and much of the international community, with backing from Abbas, have said they will deal with a Hamas government only if it recognises Israel, honours existing agreements, and renounces violence.

"We are surprised that such conditions are imposed on us," said Haniyeh. "Why don't they direct such conditions and questions to Israel? Has Israel respected its agreements? Israel has bypassed practically all agreements. We say, let Israel recognise the legitimate right of Palestinians first, and then we will have a position regarding this. Which Israel should we recognise?

Hamas won the elections held in Gaza Jan. 25, 2006, taking 76 seats in the assembly to Fatah's 43. But Fatah refused to hand over full control to Hamas, and Hamas then seized control of the Gaza administration by force in June 2007.

This has brought a strange situation. Former political prisoners from Hamas, jailed by Fatah on Western prompting, now occupy power, sometimes alongside men who were their jailors.

And among them too, Haniyeh is winning increased respect by the day. Unlike Fatah leaders, Haniyeh moves without escort, and mixes freely with people on the streets. He has turned down the offer of 4,000 dollars a month as salary, and accepts only 1,500 dollars, which is what he needs, he says, for his family that includes 13 children. And he still lives in his old house in Shati Camp, one of the poorest refugee camps in the east of Gaza City.

Ismail Haniyeh was born in 1963 to a family of refugees originally from al-Jouar village now in Israel. He graduated from the Islamic University in Gaza City in Arabic. As a student he was a member of the Islamic Bloc, the student wing of Muslim Brotherhood that would later become Hamas. Even through his student days in the 1980s, he was often at odds with Fatah members. Haniyeh later became an administrator at Islamic University.

Israeli troops jailed him four times, and sent him into exile (in Lebanon) in December 1992 along with about 400 other Hamas and Islamic Jihad members. He returned to his job as administrator in 1994, but was branded a terrorist. He worked closely with then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He took a prominent public role only after an Israeli missile killed the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin on Mar. 21, 2004.

Haniyeh has since proven himself a forceful speaker – and a patient listener. That, along with the many social activities in which he leads Hamas, such as support for orphans and hospitals, has put Hamas in good standing. He makes it a point to visit Gaza's Christians and their churches, and his supporters say he is no Taleban leader.

But he has drawn new opposition too. "He has brought no development of the area, but only more problems," said a Gaza resident who did not wish to be named. "He has made it easy for Israel and America to carry out their plans against Palestinian people. He is a preacher, not a politician; if he was a politician, conditions today would not be so unbearable."

Haniyeh narrowly escaped an Israeli attack in December 2003. And many Gazans worry what might happen now if the Israelis assassinate him and other Hamas political leaders as they move around openly. "Then who will look after the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza," said a resident. Israel has said it will keep up its policy of political assassinations.

MIDEAST: No Ambulance, Call the Radio

GAZA CITY - "I am bleeding uncontrollably, I need an ambulance." That was not a call to emergency services, it was an appeal broadcast live on radio in Gaza City.

Who knows whether there will ever be an ambulance or not. But this way the ambulance services still hear the appeal broadcast on Al-Iman FM Radio Station, one of few independent radio stations in Gaza. And if the emergency services cannot help, someone else who hears the appeal might.

The ambulance dispatcher announces he cannot get the ambulance to the man. An Israeli bulldozer is blocking the road, and an Israeli tank on a hilltop has been firing at the ambulance, he says. Nobody can say if anyone else got to help the man. But at least his SOS could have been heard.

Appeals again went on air after the Friday attacks on Bureij refugee camp, where the death toll climbed to 16 by the weekend. The deaths included six children among nine people killed Friday. Again, ambulance crews confirmed they could not reach many of the injured. But the appeals were made on radio for all to hear.

A man called from east of Jabaliya refugee camp asking for an ambulance for his wife about to deliver. The radio host asked his location, and that of Israeli tanks. "I can't look from the window to see," he said. "They will shoot me if I do."

A lady called to ask an ambulance to clear the remains of a body lying on the door. IPS confirmed later that it was the body of Abdelrazek Nofal, who was 19. He was blown to bits by an Israeli tank shell.

Someone else called from Bureij asking for ambulance, and for food and water. "My mother needs to be in hospital urgently," he called the radio station to say. Another difficult mission, with the Israeli troops patrolling the area.

The appeals are heard on radio day after day. No one can say what follows the appeals in each case. But the live broadcasts on the radio can be a lifeline – or at the least, a line of hope. Where emergency services and aid agencies are not listening in, the radio then calls them.

"It brings tears to my eyes," says radio host Khaled al-Sharqawi. "I can sometimes hear shooting, and women and children screaming, asking for ambulances, and the ambulances cannot reach them."

Emergency services keep the radio on, if only to go in when it's safe to bring out bodies. On one recent mission, said Ahmed Abu Sall, who works as a volunteer medical worker, "we were shot at by an Israeli tank. Two bullets hit the wheels."

This mission succeeded, as several do. But it can be a long haul to call and wait. Often, cell phone batteries run out as people call again and again with the appeals for help.

The Palestinian Telecommunications Company has given the radio station a toll-free number. That makes calling easier, but the radio statiion has to be on guard also against mischief. Hosts do what they can to check sources and credibility before putting an appeal live on air.

Not every call is a medical crisis. "In such cases we call human rights organisations," Sharqawi told IPS. "But they usually tell us they cannot help people on the ground."

Most people working at the radio station are young volunteers. And Al-Iman isn't the only one; several other local radio stations have begun now to hear and to broadcast live appeals for help

Ayman Eid stands as motionless as his orange Hyundai taxi. Never mind taking a passenger somewhere, Ayman has no idea how he will ever get home.

The queue at the petrol station seems endless. Drivers have run out of petrol even to queue up in their cars; they just queue up themselves, empty cans in hand. Only the lucky leave with a full can by the end of a day.

Others park near petrol stations and sleep in their cars, in hope that an oil truck will turn up some time. The roads are desolate, emptied of transportation and life.

Gaza needs 850,000 liters of fuel every week, says Mahmoud Al Khozendar, vice-president of the Petrol Station Owners Association in Gaza. Israel allows in just 70,000 liters of it. He said Gaza also needs 2.5 million liters of coal gas a week. Only 800,000 liters per week comes in.

Israel has cut fuel and electricity supply since Hamas took control of Gaza strip from the Fatah party in June last year. That was after winning a democratic election in 2006. The cuts have been made more severe after firing of home-made rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory.

For Eid, the waiting has gone on longer than the new Israeli siege. "We have been appealing to the world for 40 years, and for 40 years our daily suffering has gone on. It is endless."

But it has become much harder now. "These days, when the price of every single item is inflated due to the Israeli siege, the gas cuts hurt even more."

And it hurts in all sorts of ways. The students have disappeared from Al Talatini Street by the university. It is hard now to get to the university campus, and if you do, it can be harder getting back home. Thousands of students have not been to class for weeks, particularly those living far south and north.

And at home, there is little study possible in darkness and stink. Without fuel to power it, the sewage system has stopped functioning. Sewage continues to pile up on the streets. The stench gets more unbearable by the day, and health and environmental concerns are mounting.

"We met with the Israelis, and they said that Gaza is a hostile entity," said Al Khozendar. He said that his organization told Israeli officials that their fuel embargo policy is a violation of the Geneva Convention (in which Article 4 guarantees the rights of a people living under occupation). He said he was reminded that they are better off than are Iraqis under U.S. occupation.

Members of the Petrol Station Owners Association are planning to go on strike, Al Khozendar said. He is meanwhile appealing to the international community to put pressure on Israel to reverse its policies.

A glimmer of hope has arisen from a report in the Egyptian daily Al Ahram that Egyptian oil minister Sameh Fahmi has issued urgent directives for Egyptian gas to be provided to Gaza.

The minister was also reported as saying after a meeting with Omar Kittaneh, the Palestinian Authority official responsible for energy and natural resources, that Egypt would help develop Palestinian gas fields discovered off Gaza's shores. Few in Gaza believe that Israel will let that happen in a hurry. There has been talk of this for two years now, with little action.

Not many miss the irony of this situation. And certainly not a man who walks up to join Ayman Eid in his idleness. "Israel takes Arab oil," he says. "And then refuses to sell it to Arabs."

Children Call for Israel to Break the Siege

“We need medicine, open the border!” “Save Palestinian children” “Grant us our freedom!” Nearly 500 Palestinian children, many in wheelchairs, amassed at Gaza's Rafah border crossing, equipped with hand-made banners calling for justice and an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza. Giving voice to the suffering of children and adults throughout Gaza who continue to be denied access to Egypt and medical care, children crowded at the Rafah-Egypt gate, one which has been continuously closed since Hamas took control of the Strip in June 2007.

Following the June shift of power, Israel drastically tightened the movement of vital supplies getting into Gaza, as well as preventing exports from leaving, simultaneously destroying the economy and resulting in what humanitarian organizations recognize to be a bleaker situation than ever for the 1.5 million residents of the enclosed Gaza Strip.

In the front lines of the demonstration were a number of paralyzed children, in critical need of medical care, who have thus far been denied permission to leave Gaza. Among the supplies which Israel has refused entry are essential basic medicines, hearing aid batteries, hospital equipment, and fuel to power hospital machinery, the absence of which has contributed to the health care crisis which international bodies are denouncing.

Days before this latest non-violent Gazan demonstration, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report in which it lashed out at Israel for denying or greatly delaying travel permits for critically ill Gaza Strip residents. The report notes that specialized health care is currently unattainable in Gaza and that the Israeli permit system invariably prevents medical cases from accessing hospitals outside of Gaza. The WHO further notes that the right to health for Palestinians appeared to be optional, that the medically-related deaths were “tragedies that could and should have been avoided.”

One such tragedy was that of 9 year old Amir Al Yazji who, according to the report, died after a series of unsuccessful attempts to attain exit permits. When Israeli authorities, in his final minutes, prohibited an ambulance to take him to medical care, Amir succumbed to the meningeal encephalitis he had been battling, dying in a Gaza hospital in November.

Since Hamas’ election in January, 2006, the number of patients who were denied permits rose from 3% to nearly 36% in December 2007. The WHO states that 32 patients have died in Gaza after the permits they requested were delayed or refused, referring to the period between October 1 and March 2. The Palestinian Health Ministry puts the number of deaths due to denial of medical care and medicine shortages at 124, including 24 children, the latest of whom was an infant who died on Friday.

The Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Child’s Forum organized this latest protest. Among the banners and hundreds of children, a symbolic and all too representative map of Gaza stood out: the Strip enclosed by iron bars from all sides.

One of the children, standing near the half-iron, half cement wall, said: ”I feel so sad that I can’t do anything to help the sick and injured children, or those with special needs, travel out of Gaza Strip for medication.” Like most children, the girl was anguished to see other children’s flesh and blood, bodies torn apart by Israeli missiles.

”I don’t dream anymore,” she added. “I’m asking children around the world to help us, the children of Palestine. Don’t leave us to poverty, hunger, sickness, and thirst. We are children like all of you, and we also have the right to live and play in freedom.” Her words echoed the message of the other child protesters who came with a message to the world: end the siege on Gaza, open our borders, and give freedom to 1.5 million Palestinians living in this cage called the Gaza Strip.

The event concluded when Ala Younies delivered to the Egyptian officer in charge of the border a hand-written letter on behalf of the children of Gaza. The young girl demanded in an alarmingly wise child’s voice that the officer deliver the letter protesting the border closure to Egypt’s top officials, to end the siege and secure a better life for Gaza’s children.

While children have been instrumental in calling for human rights for Gazans, numerous other non-violent demonstrations have called for the end of the siege. Previous demonstrations including hundreds of camels, sheep, goats and cows, called for the world to open Gaza’s borders, allow the export of flowers vital to sales, and by providing essential living necessities, to secure the rights of animals.

Egyptian security sources reported that on Thursday, Egypt temporarily opened a border crossing with the Gaza, allowing approximately 200 Palestinians stranded in Egypt to return home. At the same time, Egyptians stuck in Gaza since the breach of the wall last January, were able to cross back over to Egypt. This short-lived border opening is but a fleeting and inadequate gesture in the face of the internationally-recognized human rights crisis that has resulted from the closed border which sees thousands of Palestinians trapped in Gaza without necessary medical care.

GAZA CITY - You would think the baby boy named Yousef has his life ahead of him. But who knows, with a child born to Palestinian parents from Gaza. What's more, Yousef was born in an Israeli prison.

He is the only one of Fatima al-Zeq's nine children who is with her for that reason -- she was arrested nine months ago. But these days the baby is not with her. He developed stomach pain, began to vomit, and has been transferred to a hospital inside Hasharon prison in Israel.

Fatima has written to human rights organisations in Gaza asking for their help in seeing the baby is looked after, something she cannot do herself.

Her other children do not know why mother is in prison; the Israelis haven't told them, and they haven't told Palestinian authorities. And they declined to tell IPS. If anything, the Israelis say the arrests are for "security reasons".

According to a Palestinian source, she was arrested because Israeli authorities suspected she would carry out an attack in Israel. No explosives were found on her. Another source suggests that she was arrested because she is a relative of an Islamic Jihad leader.

Fatema had gone to an Israeli hospital to seek treatment, and had a permit for it, her family members say. But at the checkpoint they arrested her and threw her in jail. She joins thousands of Palestinians inside Israeli jails. And their families are not always told why they are in prison, whether they have been charged, or convicted, and when, if ever, they will be released.

Jumana Abu Jazar, 7, knows all about this. "My mother died, and I have no brothers and sisters," she says, looping the string of a picture frame around a rusting nail in her house in Gaza. "Father is in jail in Israel. He lives there in a dark cell. I saw him once."

Jumana lives with her grandmother Umm Ala'a in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Umm Ala'a says Jumana's father "was arrested by Israeli occupation forces in 2001 on his way back through the Rafah border. He was accompanying his father, who had received medical treatment abroad. An Israeli judge sentenced him to 18 years in jail."

Again, the family say they have no idea what crime he committed. But one thing is clear; he, and so many others arrested, are not the ones being punished for firing rockets into Israel. Nor have most of them carried out what Israel considers terrorist attacks. They are guilty of being members of political groups -- or so their families believe.

"His crime is he was Palestinian," Umm Ala'a said. "This is a tax on life that we all pay."

Many Palestinians are convicted on charges never disclosed, but many are in Israeli prisons without ever being charged. Ahmad Abu Haniyah, youth coordinator for the Alternative Information Centre, a 20-year-old project set up jointly by Israeli and Palestinian journalists, was arrested by the Israelis in May 2005. He was released in May last year. The Israelis never told him why he was arrested in the first place. He was never charged or tried; the Israelis call this administrative detention.

By now every Palestinian family knows a relative or friend who has been detained like this.

Israel occasionally releases batches of prisoners as a "goodwill gesture". This plays well internationally, but these are usually people close to release date anyway. The gesture benefits few Palestinians, and fools fewer.

Atia Abu Mussa has been held in the Nafha desert prison for 14 years now; he was detained when he was 21. Every Monday friends and relatives of Atia, and others, gather outside the office of the International Red Cross in Gaza to hold a vigil for their loved ones.

"My son has been on hunger strike for a week," says Ramdan al-Baba, standing outside the Red Cross office. "He worked as a guard at (former) president Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah in 2003. His crime was that he had that job." The conditions in Israeli prison are dire, he said. "I can't even send him a letter."

Palestinians find themselves unable to invoke habeas corpus (meaning literally, 'bring forth the body'), a provision under the Geneva Convention by which a state must produce information on the whereabouts of a person -- or the body -- within its jurisdiction. Israel denies this option on the grounds that it is not necessary for persons under "administrative detention". At the moment 863 Palestinians have been in jail for more than 15 years under such detention, according to official Palestinian figures.

There are a total of 10,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. These include 90 women and 328 children below the age of 18, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees. Forty-six of the prisoners are members of parliament, mostly affiliated to Hamas.

Israeli human rights groups say that security forces called Shin Bet regularly torture Palestinians in Israeli jails. The two groups B'Tselem and HaMoked: Centre for Defence of Individuals tracked 73 prisoners between July 2005 and July 2006. They reported that Shin Bet routinely uses "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation" to torture Palestinian prisoners.