Norwegian Doctor – Gaza is a complete manmade human disaster
Aid is NOT getting through, contrary to Israeli propaganda. However, according to the doctor, the most important thing is to guarantee the safety of the Palestinian population and stop the bombing. From the injuries he is seeing, the doctor suspects that the Israelis are using DIME bombs.
Olmert continues to reject a cease fire – after all, the Israelis only killed 700 Palestinians in the last major conflagration in 2004, the hundreds more killed between then and now don’t count apparently.
The declaration came after Mr Olmert met with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Jerusalem.
“The results of the operation must be … that Hamas must not only stop firing but must no longer be able to fire,” Mr Olmert told Mr Sarkozy.
“We cannot accept a compromise that will allow Hamas to fire in two months against Israeli towns,” he was quoted as saying.
Hamas said its fighters had fired missiles at seven tanks in the same district and that 10 Israeli soldiers were killed.
Al-Jazeera television said three Israeli soldiers were killed and 30 wounded and Al-Arabiya, another Arab news channel, said there were four Israeli dead.
The Israeli military confirmed there was heavy fighting and released a statement saying three soldiers from the elite Golani Brigade were killed and 24 wounded when their position was accidentally hit by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza.
Meanwhile, finally the Israelis deigned to let in a team of 4 International Red Cross medics – perhaps this may presage that the Israel will cease its most visible, spectacular human rights violations as the ICRC is responsible for monitoring the Geneva Conventions. The less visible yet just as lethal violations are omnipresent.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says people injured in fighting in the Gaza Strip are dying because ambulances cannot reach them.
“The situation is extremely dangerous and the coordination of ambulance services is very complex because of the incessant attacks and military operations,” ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas said in Geneva.
“Wounded people have died while waiting for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances.
“In some other cases, ambulances cannot reach the wounded at all because of the ongoing fighting and shelling.”
Some 555 Palestinians have now been killed and 2,700 injured since the start of the Israeli offensive to halt Hamas rocket fire on December 27, the head of Gaza’s emergency services said.
The area’s health services are under stress, with many health workers unable to reach their hospitals, and emergency rooms and intensive care units overwhelmed, according to the Red Cross.
At least two hospitals were out of fuel for their generators, the only source of power available.
The organisation was also concerned about water supplies in the densely populated coastal strip.
Ms Krimitsas said two out of the 45 wells in the Gaza Strip were out of action after having been hit during Israeli air raids, while the pumps on eight others were no longer working because of power cuts.
“Half a million people, that’s about one third of the population of the territory, are threatened with being completely deprived of water,” she said.
Ms Krimitsas said technicians needed to gain access to the electrical installations damaged during the fighting.
A team of four ICRC medical staff, including a surgeon, were allowed into the Gaza Strip from Israel on Monday after three days’ delay, the relief agency said.
They are due to help staff at the territory’s Shifa hospital carry out complex operations on the wounded.
Ms Krimitsas said the medical team also brought in tetanus vaccines for children and blood supplies.
“Hospitals had completely run out of these vaccines, which are potentially lifesaving for patients with dirty wounds or needing an operation,” she said.
Gaza Holocaust continues, World does nothing
Hamstrung by the cheerleading, braindead US with its bizarre unilateral support for Israel, the world can only watch as Israel slaughters Palestinians as if for sport, whilst nauseatingly dissembling that it isn’t targeting civilians and that it is acting in self-defence. Even if the UN could pass a resolution, militant Israel is not known for abiding by international conventions and laws.
Al Jazeera is still managing to get some news out of Gaza, and the news is beyond shocking.
“Yesterday the bread in our house ran out and me and my brother went to the bakery and waited three hours just to buy bread. There is not a lot of food in Gaza.
We have water, but we need electricity to power the pump so the water may run out in a few days. This has already happened for some of our neighbours.
Of course I worry about this situation and that maybe there will be no food left and we will have to go searching for it. But I don’t know what will happen. I don’t have any thoughts. I am living in the moment and waiting to see what will happen.”
All of the citizens of the so-called free world are watching us on their high definition monitors, while we’re being slaughtered.
People know what is going on, the international community knows. When are they going to take action? We’re in the 21st century – is this what civilisation is all about?
As a Palestinian, I don’t rely on the international community; they abandoned us.
Isn’t this what the Security Council and Geneva Conventions are about – fighting to prevent war?
When the fuel runs out it’s going to be pitch black – we’ll lose all communications and no one will know what’s going on. We’re facing a dark destiny.
The situation is going to become really bad – way beyond catastrophic.”
The ground offensive has begun and they’re shooting at anyone they can.
I don’t know what’s going on on the front lines, but here at the hospital we’re seeing more and more people who have been shot.
The international community is just standing by and watching – people have gone deaf and forgotten how to speak. All we hear are bombs and rockets, no words.
There have been demonstrations – the people stand behind us. But the governments can’t hear them.
International governments can stop this but they’re not doing anything.
I see convoys of medicine and supplies coming our way on the TV, but I haven’t seen any of it with my own eyes yet.
We’re still working with what we have, but it’s all running out.”
And the kids – I have no words to describe how they felt. They were screaming and crying and we can’t help them because each time they hear more attacks their fear increases.
It’s getting worse and worse. I am worried because I don’t see an end.
I am very depressed and everyone in my family is the same: depressed, afraid and sick because the Israelis are becoming more and more crazy.
I hope the resistance in Gaza will help us – yesterday I was praying for the resistance movement, for God to give them support and strength.
I believe the resistance is strong and brave – facing the Israeli army is not an easy thing. They are sacrificing everything for the sake of their home country and their land.
Why doesn’t the international community demand that Israel halt its attacks immediately? They are only on the side of Israel, not with us. They want more Palestinian victims in Gaza – people who did nothing and do not deserve to be killed in such an ugly way.”
The bombing is hurting lots of civilians because it is a densely populated area. This is the reality on the ground. You cannot avoid that even if you want to.
The humanitarian situation is deteriorating. There is no electricity in Gaza now – last week we used to get it for two hours a day, now we get nothing.
Before we had running water for three hours out of every 48. Now there is no water because it depends on electricity.
Also, the sewage system does not work because there is no electricity or spare parts.
There is a lack of qualified doctors for the very complicated surgeries and a lack of medicines.
There is no wheat or sugar in stores – many essential items are missing.
Now they’re cutting all electrical lines and destroying the infrastructure. Today the telecom company issued a statement saying that the telecommunications will be cut off because the infrastructure has been changed – we will not have telephones or mobile phones.
This operation is re-emphasising that every Palestinian is a suspect; the war being fought against us proves that there are no moral standards whatsoever, this mentality that is practicing all those brutalities against civilians will only lead to more extremism.
I was one of the people who believed in political solutions and that peace is possible, yet what we see negates all that. It is evident now more than at any time that Israel has no interest in peace.
Gaza is a big prison and Israel wants to turn us into a model of its hegemony maybe to show the world its deterrent force.
What is taking place is not a war; because there is no proportionality between Palestinian resistance and Israeli acts, it’s an aggression.
I feel like we are living in a type of madness that enhances the radicalism on both sides. I wonder whether we are the Native Americans of the 21st century.
What can I say. I’m beyond disgusted – for me, Israel has forfeited its habitually trumpeted ‘right to exist’ through its frenzy of militant, joyous sadism. Its actions aren’t about self-defence, they are sheer aggression and spite against a defenceless population, without bomb shelters or bunkers. For me, the Gazan Shoah is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
@AJGaza Sixty per cent of today’s casualties are women and children, according to AJA’s correspondent, reporting from inside Shifa Hospital
Kabobfest analyses the terrible leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft to Gaza residents:
A New York Times article highlights their essential absurdity:
Leaflets dropped from airplanes said, “Hamas is getting a taste of the power of the Israeli military after more than a week and we have other methods that are still harsher to deal with Hamas. They will prove very painful. For your safety, please evacuate your neighborhood.”
Palestinians said they had no place to go because so many neighborhoods received the same message.
In effect, they’re telling Gazans to find a safe place to go to while keeping them from having any such places. The only safe locations now are outside what many call the world’s largest prison.
As an aside for all those who can only discuss this conflict in terms of rockets, I would bet that every single Gazan seeking a safe place would prefer to sit it out in Sderot or Ashdod. The only Israelis from those places willing to go to Gaza would do so as IDF soldiers, on the other hand.
Why Aren’t More Americans Dancing To Israel’s Tune? Max Blumenthal discusses Israeli hasbara and why it isn’t working so well in America, providing some useful links chronicling the Israeli attack on Gaza which Israel claims is merely an attack on Hamas, which Israel aided and abetted in the past.
Blitz by Israel on Gaza Ghetto
The situation for the residents of Gaza and the aid workers who are trying to help them is dire.
Fears of a humanitarian crisis have also grown in recent days, as the strip, home to 1.5 million people, is already suffering shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies due to a two-year economic blockade imposed by Israel.
The International Committee for the Red Cross said on Sunday its medical emergency team had been prevented for a third day from entering the territory.
Egypt has also completely closed the Rafah crossing, cutting off aid supplies to the territory.
The UN has warned that there were “critical gaps” in aid reaching Gaza, despite claims from Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, that there was no crisis and that aid was getting through.
Christopher Gunness, the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) spokesman, said the idea that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, was absurd.
“The organisation for which I work – Unrwa – has approximately 9,000 to 10,000 workers on the ground. They are speaking with the ordinary civilians in Gaza… People are suffering. A quarter of all those being killed now are civilians. So when I hear people say we’re doing our best to avoid civilian casualties that rings very hollow indeed.”
About 250,000 people in the northern part of Gaza are also reported to be without electricity. The main power plant has been shut down for lack of fuel due to Israel’s blockade.
According to the Palestinian Information Centre:
Israeli troops stepped up its campaign of terror and murder against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip and killed 70 civilians on Sunday, raising the number of Palestinians killed to 520.
After a number of its tanks and soldiers were ambushed by the Palestinian resistance, the Israeli occupation took its revenge on civilians by targeting houses.
Medical sources said on Sunday that since the start of ground offensive, on Saturday night the number of Palestinians killed reached seventy, 23 of them children in addition to a number of women and old people. A hundred others were wounded.
The same sources said that the vast majority of the casualties were civilians, and that ambulance teams could not reach some areas that came under attack because of the continued shelling from air, sea and land.
In the northern Gaza Strip the IOF troops shelled a number of homes killing 12 people, including two children.
According to locals, nine people were killed in an airstrike that targeted a group of people outside the Abu Obeida school in Beit Lahya, in the northern Gaza Strip, the same area was targeted again, killing 3 paramedics attending the wounded.
This is not the first time ambulance crews have been targeted; six Palestinian paramedics were killed previously bring to 9 the number of paramedics killed in the past nine days.
In fact there are fears that hospitals might be targeted, this is indicated by claims of the Israeli occupation FM, Tzipi Livni, that Palestinian resistance uses hospitals as hideouts.
Celebrated journalist and writer Amira Hass describes the ordeal of a Palestinian families during the commencement of the invasion – Israel has definitely lost whatever marbles it ever had.
Three hours after the Israel Defense Forces began their ground operation in the Gaza Strip, at about 10:30 P.M. Saturday night, a shell or missile hit the house owned by Hussein al A’aiedy and his brothers. Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area east of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Five of them were wounded in the strike: Two women in their eighties (his mother and aunt), his 14-year-old son, his 13-year-old niece and his 10-year-old nephew.
Twenty hours later, the wounded were still bleeding in a shed in the courtyard of the house. There was no electricity, no heat, no water. Their relatives were with them, but every time they tried to leave the courtyard to fetch water, the army shot at them.
What sort of army shoots at people seeking water?
Here’s a summary of a statement from Al Aqsa TV which is broadcasting from an unknown location on and off on the Frequency 10872/Vertical:
Al-Aqsa TV/ Abu Ubaida Spokesperson for Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades (EQB) Translated and Summarized from Arabic :
Started out by stating that all of this is a political stunt by the ‘Heads in Israel’ that will roll come next February (referring to Israeli elections) for failing to achieve proposed goals of Military Operation in Gaza.
Then stated some of the achievements of the EQB* Forcing a helicopter down after targeting it with continuous gun power.
* Destroying one tank using B-29 (used for the first time) RPG near Hiy Al-Tuffah in #Gaza
* One soldier carrier destroyed using Stardock missiles for the first time
* Bombing multiple Military bases in occupied territory one of which was Hatsoor Military Air Base.
* Brigades take POW named Jilaad ShareefEQB will continue to launch missiles into Occupied Territories (Israel) military bases and if occupation forces continue to destroy homes and kill civilians threatening to expand the areas targeted by their missiles in Israel.
Israel is using airburst bombs in Gaza
CNN video now unavailable.
Airburst bombs shower target areas with many bomblets. In built up areas they kill indiscriminately.
The reporter quotes a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza saying there’s been an increase in casualties coming into his hospital since the beginning of Israel’s abominable incursion. 30% of the casualties are women and children.