Seven-year-old Nisma Kalajar from Shijaiya in Gaza City has stopped talking after suffering head fractures in a fall from the third floor during an Israeli attack. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

As Israel and Hamas separately celebrate the ceasefire and their “victory” over the other following Israel’s blistering eight-day military assault on the Gaza strip, civilians continue to pay the price.

According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) more than 160 Palestinians lost their lives by Nov. 21, the last day of the bloody confrontation between the world’s third most powerful military and Palestinian fighters. The dead included at least 103 civilians, 33 of them children. More than a thousand Palestinians were wounded, including 971 civilians – 274 of them children.

Three of the Palestinian civilians killed were journalists who died after repeated Israeli attacks on media buildings where Palestinian and foreign journalists were working. Six Israelis were killed as indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza targeted Israeli cities.

But the war and its consequences have been the hardest for Gaza’s children, unable to comprehend the volatility and the political intricacies in the place they call home.

“Mamma, mamma,” cries Muhammad Abu Zour, 7, in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city. His head is bandaged and one of his eyes is purple and badly swollen. His eyes flicker upwards and backwards.

“There is a possibility that he has severe brain damage as there is internal bleeding within his skull,” nurse Sana Thabat, 23, from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital tells IPS.

Muhammad was wounded last week after Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted his family home as the occupants slept. The shelling killed two women from the Abu Zour family; Sahar Fadi Abu Zour, 20, Nisma Helmi Abu Zour, 21; and Muhammad’s little brother Eyad Abu Zour, 5.

The Israeli jets had been targeting the home of an alleged militant next door. The Zeitoun neighbourhood is densely populated by civilians and far from any Hamas military compounds.

In another case of Israeli “collateral damage” 11 members of the Dalu family, including four women and four children, were killed when an Israeli missile hit a four-storey house belonging to Jamal Mahmoud Yassin al-Dalu 52, in the north of Gaza city last Sunday.

Alia Kalajar, 23, from Shijaiya in Gaza weeps silently as she holds the hand of her seven-year-old daughter Nisma. “Nisma has stopped talking and we don’t know if she will ever talk again. She has a head fracture and is bleeding internally too,” Kalajar tell IPS.

The little girl fell from her home on the third floor of a building that was struck by an Israeli drone. Nineteen Palestinian civilians were injured in that strike.

Abdel Azis Ashour, 6, from Zeitoun has shrapnel injuries in both his legs. He was playing with his seven brothers and sisters last Tuesday when an Israeli drone targeted his neighbourhood.

His cousin was killed and five other civilians were injured. But the little boy remains cheerful despite the grim circumstances and the pain he is in. “I’m not afraid of the Israelis,” he tells IPS as he flashes the V for victory sign.

Shifa Hospital staff has been forced to work long hours with limited medical equipment and dwindling supplies of medicines.

“I’ve seen so many dead and injured children. In the end one becomes a little numb to the situation,” nurse Adnan Bughadi, 22 from Shijaiya tells IPS. “Most of us have been working double shifts to cope with all the wounded, and it is very tiring. At one stage the floors were covered in blood and there was a shortage of beds for the wounded.”

“The hospital is running low on some essential medicines and has run out of others,” nurse Thabet tells IPS. “I find it very distressing seeing the number of children and other civilians killed but what can we do? We have to keep going.”

The PCHR has called for an international fact-finding mission “to investigate war crimes committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and to take necessary measures to prosecute the perpetrators.” (END)

Ruins of the Abu Khadra complex for civil adminstration following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
JERUSALEM, Nov 25 2012 (IPS)

As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas seems to be holding, many are hoping that one of the agreement’s main points – the easing of restrictions on people and goods coming in and out of the Gaza Strip – signals a new era for the besieged Palestinian territory.

“The people of Gaza cannot go back to the situation as it was before. This cycle of violence and de-development must end,” Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories told IPS via e-mail.

“Lifting of the blockade and allowing the free movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip is the only way to address the chronic humanitarian needs amongst so many Gazans, and facilitate sustainable economic growth that benefits the population as a whole.”

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21 mediated by Egypt and the United States, to bring an end to eight days of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and Hamas rocket fire onto Israeli cities.

According to a transcript of the agreement released by Agence France-Presse, in addition to halting violence on both sides, the agreement stipulated that further discussions would be held to open the border crossings between Israel and Gaza, and ease current restrictions on “the movement of people and transfer of goods” from Gaza.

According to local reports, Palestinian fishermen have been allowed to fish at a distance of six miles from the Gaza shore, up from three miles, for the first time in three years, and farmers allowed to work their lands within 300 metres of the border fence with Israel.

Israel has gradually implemented a closure policy on the Gaza Strip since the early 1990s, with strictly enforced restrictions on travel and on transfer of goods and services from the Palestinian territory.

Israel adopted more stringent restrictions in 2006 following the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian fighters. When the Islamic movement Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections and later ousted its rival Fatah party from Gaza – effectively dividing the occupied Palestinian territories into two entities, a Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank and a Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip – even more Israeli restrictions were enforced.

“The ban on goods from Gaza being marketed to Israel and the West Bank has crippled the agricultural and manufacturing sector. Unemployment in Gaza is one-third of the workforce. Humanitarian assistance is above 70 percent,” said Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, a legal centre backing freedom of movement.

Before June 2007, more than 85 percent of the goods exported from Gaza were sold in Israel and the West Bank; today, products from Gaza cannot be sold in either. Israel now allows an average of 18 truckloads of goods to pass through its territory to be marketed abroad per month, only two percent of pre-2007 export levels.

Under the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel has a responsibility to treat the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a single, territorial unit. But Israel only allows Palestinians from Gaza to access the West Bank in “exceptional humanitarian cases”. This has largely meant medical patients and their companions, and merchants.

“Families are separated. Students cannot access their studies. Workers cannot access professional opportunities and the fragmentation of Palestinian society is exacerbated. While Israel has a right to conduct security checks on those seeking to travel through Israel, it must recognise the right of Palestinians to travel and choose their place of residence in Gaza and the West Bank,” Bashi told IPS.

The closure policy has also had a devastating impact on healthcare services.

According to Medical Aid for Palestine, hospitals in Gaza are operating with only 40 percent of essential medicines, and 65 percent of medical disposables are at zero stock. There is not enough staff, medical professionals are sometimes forced to re-use rubber gloves, and equipment is often broken, outdated, or altogether missing.

In August, the United Nations found that, should the current Israeli restrictions be maintained, Gaza would be unlivable by 2020. In particular, population growth – which would result in a density of more than 5,800 people per square kilometre – and lack of adequate access to water, electricity, health and education are exacerbating the situation.

“So far very few details have been provided about any changes to the closure policy. Negotiators will negotiate that,” said Gisha’s Sari Bashi, about the potential changes included in the ceasefire agreement.

“But right now, it’s in everybody’s interest. Right now there’s a real opportunity to protect the integrity of Palestinian society in ways that are responsive to Israel’s security needs.” (END)

A Palestinian family on the street in Beit Lahia in north Gaza. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Nov 23 2012 (IPS)

The reaction of post-revolution Egypt to Israel’s weeklong onslaught on the next-door Gaza Strip – brought to a halt temporarily at least by a Wednesday night ceasefire – has contrasted sharply with the former regime’s callous approach to the besieged coastal enclave.

“The Mubarak regime unashamedly participated in Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, never missing an opportunity to pressure Hamas,” Tarek Fahmi, Israel affairs expert at the Cairo-based National Centre for Middle East Studies told IPS. “Egypt’s new leadership, by contrast, has expressed its unconditional support for Hamas and the people of Gaza, and actively tried to lift the siege.”

President Mohamed Mursi became Egypt’s first freely elected head of state this summer, some 16 months after the ouster of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak. Mursi hails from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, of which the Palestinian resistance faction Hamas – which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 – is an ideological offshoot.

Unlike his predecessor, and most Western leaders, Egypt’s new president was quick to denounce the latest round of Israeli bloodletting. In his weekly Friday sermon on Nov. 16, Mursi vowed that Egypt would not leave the Gaza Strip “on its own” to face Israel’s “shameless aggression.”

In a clear reference to post-revolution foreign policy changes, he went on to assert: “Egypt today is very different than the Egypt of yesterday.”

The latest violence was triggered by Israel’s assassination on Nov. 14 of a top Hamas commander, to which Gaza-based resistance groups responded by firing salvoes of rockets. The subsequent week of unremitting Israeli bombardments – from air, land and sea – left more than 150 Palestinians dead, the vast majority civilians, and hundreds more seriously injured.

In the same period, five Israelis were killed by rocket fire from Gaza. Several more were reported injured.

Following announcement of the ceasefire, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal expressed gratitude to Mursi for Egypt’s role in mediating an end to the violence. He also thanked the Egyptian president for the latter’s “decisions and approach to Israel’s latest aggression on Gaza.”

Since the crisis first began, Egypt’s reaction has not been confined to strongly worded statements.

On the first day of the onslaught, Cairo announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Israel, while Mursi called on the UN Security Council and the Cairo-based Arab League to hold emergency meetings. Two days later, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil paid a brief visit to the beleaguered territory in a show of solidarity.

Egypt also opened the Rafah border crossing, the strip’s only link to the outside world (since its 2005 ‘unilateral withdrawal’ from the territory, Israel has kept its border with the strip hermetically sealed). Passengers and cargo, including desperately needed medical supplies, are now flowing from Egypt into the strip, while injured Palestinians are being brought into Egypt for medical treatment.

According to Fahmi, the reaction of Egypt’s new Islamist leadership to the latest crisis in Gaza corresponds to Mursi’s – and by extension the Muslim Brotherhood’s – stated positions on the perennial Arab-Israel conflict.

“Mursi’s reaction is in line with his campaign platform and his post-election statements on the issue,” Fahmi explained, “in which he said that Egypt under his leadership would directly support the Palestinian people against Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and work to secure Palestinian national aspirations.”

The Egyptian response to the current crisis contrasted starkly with the Mubarak regime’s reaction to Israel’s 2008/09 ‘Cast Lead’ offensive. Over the course of that three-week-long onslaught almost four years ago, in which Israel used internationally banned weapons, some 1,500 Palestinians – mostly civilians – were killed and thousands more injured.

Despite the ferocity of the Cast Lead assault, Mubarak’s Egypt had kept the Rafah border crossing tightly sealed. Not even Palestinians suffering life-threatening injuries had been allowed into Egypt for medical treatment.

“At the behest of the U.S. and Israel, Mubarak completed the Zionist blockade of the strip – even at the height of the Cast Lead massacre – in hopes of destroying Hamas,” Magdi Hussein, political analyst and former head of Egypt’s Islamist-leaning Labour Party told IPS.

“Mursi, by contrast, openly supports the resistance in Gaza and began taking steps to open the border even before the latest aggression,” added Hussein, who was jailed for two years under Mubarak for crossing into the strip without permission during Israel’s 2008/09 assault.

Notably, Mursi has also shifted Egyptian support from the Palestinian Fatah movement, which leads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, to Hamas in Gaza.

“Egypt now supports Hamas, to which the Brotherhood is affiliated ideologically and which espouses a strategy of armed resistance,” said Fahmi. “The Mubarak regime had supported Hamas’s bitter rival Fatah, which had insisted on holding fruitless ‘peace talks’ with Israel that utterly failed to improve the Palestinians’ position.”

Egyptian support for the people of Gaza – and the resistance based there – has hardly been confined to official circles.

On Sunday, a convoy including hundreds of Egyptian activists of all political stripes briefly visited the strip to express solidarity with their beleaguered Palestinian brethren. Two days earlier, pro-Gaza rallies held across Egypt drew tens of thousands, while Egyptian political groups from across the spectrum are calling for an even bigger mass protest this Friday.

But while Egypt’s Gaza policy has changed fundamentally since last year’s revolution, that of the international community has apparently not. As was the case during Israel’s Cast Lead assault four years ago, the UN Security Council failed to issue a resolution calling for an end to hostilities.

On Tuesday (Nov. 20), one day before the ceasefire announcement, the U.S. blocked a UN Security Council statement condemning the escalating violence.

“Some European capitals appear more sympathetic to Hamas and Gaza this time around,” said Fahmi. “Washington’s support for Israel, however, as during Cast Lead, appears to be total.” (END)

A building in Gaza housing media offices bombed by the Israelis. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Nov 23 2012 (IPS)

The ceasefire has brought extremities in Gaza. In the morning the coastal territory woke up bashed and bloody from one of Israel’s most intensive nights of bombardment since a week’s tit for tat violence broke out between Hamas and Israel. By late morning the coastal strip was ghostly quiet, gripped with fear as people stayed indoors awaiting the inevitable retaliation from Israel for a bus bombing carried out in Tel Aviv by Palestinian extremists. But as night fell thousands of Gazans took to the streets in joyful celebration in what they see as victory over Israel.

Earlier on Wednesday dull thuds and repetitive booms could be heard along the Rafah border between Egypt’s Sinai and Gaza. IPS witnessed a fleet of Egyptian ambulances rushing into Gaza to ferry Palestinian wounded back to Egypt.

Nervous Palestinian border guards forced a group of incoming journalists to sign an indemnity form for their own safety following a series of attacks by the Israelis on several media buildings and vehicles, which left several journalists dead and more wounded.

The sun was setting and within hours the Gaza strip would be dark, a hazardous time when most of Israel’s attacks take place. Through the half hour drive from the south of the strip to the north, approximately 27km, Israeli naval vessels stationed off Gaza were continually shelling the territory while fighter jets bombed from above.

It was too dangerous to take the coastal road as it was in clear sight of the naval frigates. The other main road to Gaza city passed a number of refugee camps. Nusseirat and Brej camps were bombed shortly before this IPS correspondent passed them by. Rising plumes of black smoke were visible.

Only a few other cars risked travelling along the road. Gaza’s 1.7 million inhabitants were nowhere to be seen, and shops and businesses were closed. Police posts were empty, and apart from small groups of young men assembling on street corners, the coastal enclave was deserted.

The atmosphere of uncertainty and fear was palpable as the taxi stopped periodically to allow journalists to take photos of bombed buildings, including police stations, government institutions and ordinary homes.

“We don’t expect to sleep tonight. We are waiting strong retaliation for the bus bombing,” Ihab Afifi, a ministry of interior employee told IPS. But the bloody revenge did not come, following a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel brokered by the Egyptians and the Americans.

As news of the Hudna or ceasefire spread, overjoyed Gazans took to the streets to celebrate. Women ululated, children waved flags and young men handed out sweets and punctured the night air with celebratory gunfire. Tooting cars weaved between thousands of marching Gazans.

There was a sense of achievement and unity, with flags from all political parties, including Fatah and Hamas lending colour to the celebrations.

“This is unlike the ending of the last war with Israel from December 2008 to January 2009. Nobody celebrated then. This time Israel called the ceasefire and they will not be able to dictate terms to us like before. We have proven that we can exact a price both militarily and politically from the Israelis. Our rockets reached all the way to Tel Aviv. The Israelis too know what is feels like to be afraid,” Muhammad Abu Qeef celebrating on the street told IPS.

For the first time in days Palestinian fighters armed and in uniform came out of hiding. They had gone underground as Israel hunted down targets associated with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The feeling of no longer being under Israel’s boot has significantly contributed to Palestinians’ new found confidence, however tentative, following what they see as victory in the latest conflict. Many Israelis are furious with their leadership and what they see as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s capitulation to Hamas.

Israelis believe the ceasefire came too soon and that the job of dealing with Hamas was left unfinished. Israelis took to the streets in Sderot, a southern Israeli town which bore the brunt of rocket attacks from Gaza, protesting against Netanyahu.

However, some analysts have urged caution, concluding that the conditions of the current ceasefire are not too different from the previous ceasefire which ended Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009. Other political commentators are of the view that it is only a matter of time before this current truce is once again broken.

However, what is undisputed is that Israel not only failed to break Hamas, but left the organisation politically stronger, still in possession of significant arms caches, and with growing regional support. (END)

As people anxiously wait to see if the newly-signed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will hold, local and international human rights groups are calling for investigations into Israeli human rights abuses committed during its eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, including flagrant attacks on journalists.

“We want an international investigation into what happened in Gaza,” Abdal Nasser Najjar, chairman of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate told IPS. “We want to put an end to this (Israeli) policy of killing and injuring journalists. There is no difference between a journalist: Israeli, Palestinian, or international. We want to do our jobs only, as journalists.”

In its most recent assault on the Gaza Strip, which Israel called ‘Operation Pillar of Defence’, 162 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,100 injured. Three Palestinian journalists were killed and more than a dozen injured in targeted Israeli air strikes.

According to MADA, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms, the Israeli army has killed 18 journalists, including two foreign journalists, in the past decade.

“They have classified journalists as enemies. They don’t want the world to know what they’re doing in Gaza, what the crimes of the Israeli soldiers are. I think they didn’t want the information to go from Gaza to outside,” Najjar, who is managing editor of the Al-Ayam daily newspaper said.

On Nov. 20, two Palestinian cameramen from Al-Aqsa TV were killed instantly when an Israeli missile hit their car, which was reportedly marked with “TV” in neon letters. The two journalists – Hussam Mohammed Salama, 30, and Mahmoud Ali al-Koumi, 29 – were on their way to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to document the admission of injured Palestinians.

The same day, a third journalist, Mohamed Abu Aisha, director of Al-Quds Educational Radio, was killed when a missile hit his car.

Reporters Without Borders called the Israeli attacks “deliberate” and, in a statement released Wednesday stated that “journalists are entitled to the same protection as civilians and should not be regarded as military targets.”

Almost a dozen reporters were also injured when Israeli air strikes hit buildings housing local and foreign media offices in Gaza City on three separate occasions. These buildings housed the offices of Al Arabiya, Agence France-Presse, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, and Russia TV among others.

“We demand the United Nations set up a committee to carry out a full investigation into these attacks and take action against the Israeli government. Moreover, the international community must respond immediately to this heinous act,” president of International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Jim Boumelha said in a statement.

On Nov. 21, the Israeli military spokesperson’s office posted the following message on its official Twitter feed: “Warning to reporters in Gaza: Stay away from Hamas operatives & facilities. Hamas, a terrorist group, will use you as human shields.”

The Israeli government also insinuated that since Al-Aqsa TV – one of the media outlets targeted by the Israeli air strikes – is affiliated with Hamas, its employees are not real journalists.

“There is the Al-Aqsa station, which is a station that is a Hamas command and control facility. Just as in other totalitarian regimes, the media is used by the regime for command and control and also for security purposes. From our point of view, that’s not a legitimate journalist,” said Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev in a heated televised interview on Al Jazeera.

“We don’t target journalists. We target Hamas,” Regev said.

According to Issam Younes, director of the Gaza-based Almezan Centre for Human Rights, Israel’s questioning of Palestinian journalistic standards is only a pretext to justify its destructive attacks on the Gaza Strip.

“Imagine if Hamas said that those commentators on (Israeli news stations) Channel 2 and Channel 10 are (Israeli intelligence agency) Shabak people; then they are legitimate targets for Hamas to attack? It’s just a pretext,” Younes told IPS.

Movement in and out of the Gaza Strip is almost entirely controlled by Israel; Egypt operates the southern Rafah border crossing. At the start of its latest military offensive, Israel allowed the entry of dozens of international journalists into Gaza.

This was a change from past Israeli policies. During its 2008-09 military operation in Gaza, known as ‘Operation Cast Lead’, Israel barred the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza, and declared the Israel-Gaza border, including a two-kilometre zone inside Israeli territory, and large areas inside Gaza as “closed military zones”.

It also used extreme violence against local journalists who were documenting the three-week Israeli assault from inside Gaza.

Al-Aqsa TV’s Gaza offices were completely destroyed during the offensive, resulting in a financial loss of approximately six million dollars, and the offices of the Al-Risala weekly newspaper were also damaged.

“There aren’t any red lines anymore,” Younes said. “Everything might be a target, as long as there is this political cover and as long as (the Israelis) believe that they are immune, above the law, and can do whatever they want without being investigated.” (END)