"The situation in Gaza is bleak,
and getting worse."
UN aid chief 'shocked'
by Gaza conditions
John Holmes says Israel blockade responsible
for great misery of Palestinians in Gaza.
GAZA CITY - The top UN humanitarian affairs official,
John Holmes, visited the Gaza Strip on Friday and said
he was "shocked by the miserable things" he had seen.
Holmes, under-secretary general for humanitarian
affairs and emergency relief coordinator, was in Gaza
on the second day of a five-day visit to the Palestinian
territories and Israel.
He told reporters at a news conference that the
misery he saw was the result of the current
closed border crossings with Israel and the
"limited food and other materials allowed in."
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the
world and is home to around 1.5 million Palestinians who
struggle against overwhelming levels of poverty and
Israeli violence.
Holmes said he was concerned about the dependence
of 80 percent of the population on food aid, widespread
joblessness, problems with the sewerage and water
systems, limited supplies of fuel and electricity and
the shortage of supplies in hospitals.
He had said before arriving in the region on Thursday that
he was coming "in solidarity with the people of this region,
who have suffered great misery and insecurity."
mentally disabled
Rights group slams practiceA human rights group called for an investigation into the death
of Israeli soldiers who fire at
Palestinian civilians thought
to be trying to flee.
Thursday of a mentally disabled Palestinian man who had been
wounded by the Israelis during a West Bank arrest operation.
According to neighbors' accounts, Israeli troops entered
the town of Qabatiya before dawn on Feb. 7 to arrest an
Islamic Jihad militant.
As the soldiers prepared an ambush, the mentally disabled man,
56-year-old Taysir Nazal, emerged from his home, the neighbors
said. Soldiers fired three shots and hit Nazal in his legs,
said relatives and a neighbor, Omar al-Sohu.
"They didn't call on him to stop, and after he was hit, they left him
for a half hour," al-Sohu said. "Then two soldiers came and
started to talk to him in Arabic."
The Israeli military said it was checking the circumstances of the
incident and did not immediately comment.
Nazal was hit several times in the legs. Doctors operated
several times and amputated part of one leg, but he died
on Thursday, doctors said.
The Israeli rights group B'Tselem called for a military investigation.
"From our research we see a pattern, a sort of norm ...
that is expressed in shooting when a door is opened or
the soldiers think someone is trying to flee, when in fact
the soldiers are not acting in self-defense,"
B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said.
Israel has killed several mentally disabled Palestinians
in recent years.
Israel conducts arrest operations against Palestinians
in West Bank towns almost nightly.
The West Bank, like Gaza and Arab east Jerusalem,
is a Palestinian territory illegally occupied by the
Israeli military since 1967.
*********************************
The remains of an Israeli missile
Israel assassinates Palestinian
fighter, killing members of his
family, wounding 50 in
neighbourhood.
Eight Palestinians were killed and at least 50 wounded on
Friday night when Israeli warplanes launched a raid on a
building in the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.
The Israeli aircraft targeted the home of top Islamic
Jihad fighter Ayman al-Fayed in the Bureij Palestinian
refugee camp south of Gaza City, killing him and two
of his children, a boy and a girl, they said.
A woman was among the other four dead, the medics
said, adding that the fate of Fayed's wife and three
other children was not known.
Around 50 people, including around 20 children,
were wounded when the house was hit by a missile,
they added. Most were family members.
Apart from Fayed the dead and wounded were
all civilians, the medics said.
The Fayed house was completely destroyed in the attack
and at least 10 other houses were damaged by the blast,
witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.
Emergency services were searching through the
rubble to see if any people had been buried under the debris.
Medical sources identified Fayed, 42, as a top commander
from the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.
The group's spokesman Abu Ahmad confirmed his death.
A neighbour, who declined to be identified, said that
Fayed's family was inside the house when it was hit
and many were killed or wounded.
With all that Israel gets away with it is no wonder
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered outside the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital south of Gaza City after
the attack and chanted calls for revenge,
a media correspondent reported.
Its corridors and those of the territory's main hospital,
Al-Shifa in Gaza City, were filled with the wounded.
The impoverished Gaza Strip is home to eight refugee
camps, and Bureij is both the smallest and the most populated.
"We condemn the Israeli crime perpetrated against the
Bureij refugee camp," Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for Hamas.
"Israel bears full responsibility and will also
suffer the consequences,"
At least 180 people, mostly Palestinians,
have been killed since Israel and the Palestinians
relaunched formal peace talks in November.
The latest deaths brought to 6,140 the total number of
people killed since the eruption of the Palestinian
uprising in 2000, most of them Palestinians.
An Israeli
airstrike killed at
least three
Palestinians and wounded
16 others
Sunday in the southern
Gaza city of
Rafah, Palestinian and
Israeli sources said.
Another Palestinian was killed and 10 others wounded
in an earlier incident in which an Israel Defense Forces
unit opened fire on " men approaching the forces"
in eastern Rafah, the sources said.
According to an IDF statement, there was
a similar impetus for the airstrike, as "forces carried
out an aerial attack against a group of Palestinian
gunmen after they approached the forces."
The Ramattan News Agency, a Palestinian media outlet,
quoted Palestinian security sources who said Israeli
drones fired two rockets near the Rafah border
crossing that connects Gaza and Egypt.
Three Palestinian militants were killed in the airstrike, said
an Israeli military spokeswoman.
Palestinian security sources said 16 people were
wounded.
Watch Palestinians after a separate
airstrike Saturday in central Gaza »
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that
IDF troops backed by tanks and air support
clashed with militants. Palestinian Health Ministry
official Moaiya Hassanain told Haaretz that three
gunmen were killed in clashes as well as a 45-year-old
civilian who was shot in the head.
The three gunmen were from Hamas and another
militant faction, the Popular Resistance Committees,
Hassanain told the newspaper.
by Israeli gunfire was a "Palestinian activist."
Israeli forces took over several homes near the airport
in southern Gaza, and bulldozers began clearing
farmland so militants would have no cover
from which to launch rockets.
In a show of resistance Five Qassam rockets were fired Sunday
into Sderot, just miles from the northeast border of Gaza,
Israeli ambulance services told CNN.
Five people were treated for shock, as always - no
serious injuries were reported and gives Israel excuses to
continue with it's collective punishment towards
Gaza and the rest of Palestine as the world powers continue
to do nothing but meet their own agendas while the people
of Palestine suffer.
Earlier this month, Sderot residents demanding
military action began protesting in Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv. More protests were widely reported
outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office Sunday.
Makes one wonder how they would react
if they had to live like the Palestinians do.
He vowed not to "slacken" in his resolve to combat the
resistance of Gaza and other parts of Palestine.
On the defensive side, he announced that
Israel is spending $14 million to build 13 schools,
reinforced to withstand rocket attacks,
in and around Sderot.
The Knesset approved the construction in January.
In June, Hamas seized control of Gaza from forces
loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas' Fatah Party, forcing Fatah to consolidate its
leadership in the West Bank. Hamas is considered a
terror organization by the United States and Canada ;
Abbas is considered an ally.
Gaza, which is home to over 1.4 million Palestinians,
has been subject to sanctions since Israel enhanced
their collective punishment campaign.
The campaign has seen the people of Gaza
with reduced or cut off fuel, food and medical supplies
not allowed in. (and that's just part of it).
Olmert said Sunday that Israel will continue its collective
punishment and its blockade of "materials
that including energy."
He also responded to human rights groups who claim
the blockade unfairly punishes Palestinian civilians,
rather than the Hamas leadership.
"This may not always be loved but it is an important
part of counter-terrorist activity," Olmert said.
I wonder how Olmert Deals with himself?
With a statement like that!
last month, streaming into Egypt to obtain supplies
and medical attention that have not been available
since Israel clamped down on the border.
Olmert Says Electricity,
Fuel Cuts to Gaza Will Continue
as they enhance
their collective punishment
towards
Gaza
Israel says it plans to continue crippling
sanctions on the Gaza Strip, despite international
opposition. The announcement was made as
three Palestinian gunmen and a civilian were
killed in Israeli raids in Gaza. Robert Berger
reports from the VOA bureau in Jerusalem.
Ehud Olmert says the reduction of electricity
and fuel supplies to Gaza will continue.
Mr. Olmert told the Cabinet a war is going
on in southern Israel. He said Israel would not
ease up until the resistance stops and the
People of Palestine does what Israel says.
Palestinian officials and the European Union
have demanded that Israel end the sanctions
and the collective punishment.
The Cabinet met as a delegation from the United
Nations and United States visited the Israeli
border town of Sderot that has been hard hit
by Palestinian rockets that does not even
compare to the killing and other atrosities
committed by Israel just in the last 3 months
never mind the last 60 years.
U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs John Holmes condemned the rocket
attacks, but said people on both sides of the
Gaza border are suffering.
"The situations are different, completely different.
The physical conditions, obviously, in many ways
are much worse in Gaza," said Holmes. "
Fighting also continued inside Gaza, where Israeli
troops backed by tanks and helicopters clashed
with Palestinians.
The tense situation on the Gaza border will be
on the agenda when Mr. Olmert meets
Tuesday with Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas who still does
not want to deal
with Hamas who was freely
elected in Free Elections that the west
does not want to recognize.
Kouchner: ‘there must be free movement
of both people and goods’
French FM urges Israel to
lift Gaza blockade
Kouchner tells Tel Aviv to freeze its policy
of building settlements in West Bank,
east Jerusalem.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urged
Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip and to freeze its
policy of building settlements in the West Bank, at the start
of a visit to the region on Saturday.
"The economic and humanitarian situation in Gaza is
especially bad. The blockade directly affects the entire
economy and living conditions as well," he said in
an interview with Al-Quds newspaper.
"We call for the Gaza blockade to be lifted --
there must be free movement of both people
and goods," Kouchner told the main Arabic
daily in the Palestinian territories.
Israel has kept Gaza under effective lockdown
since last June following the territory's takeover
by the democratically elected movement Hamas,
and on January 17 it tightened the blockade
before easing it again slightly.
The Israelis say the measure is in response to
rockets being fired at it by Palestinian militants
inside the impoverished coastal territory.
The militants argue that armed resistance is the
only way that would force Israel to end its long
and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
(Gaza, the West Bank, and Arab east Jerusalem).
In the interview Kouchner also called on Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian
president Mahmud Abbas to respect their
commitments agreed at the relaunch of Middle
East peace talks in the United States last November.
He is due to meet both Abbas and Olmert during his visit.
Kouchner's arrival overnight on Friday came just hours
after eight Palestinians, including a leading Islamic
Jihad militant and members of his family, were killed
in what medics and witnesses in the Gaza Strip
said was an Israeli air strike.
Both Israel and the Palestinians relaunched the
US-sponsored peace process after a near
seven-year hiatus with the aim of reaching
an agreement by the end of 2008.
"Israel must completely freeze settlements in the
West Bank and east Jerusalem, dismantle all
those deemed illegal, and reopen Palestinian
institutions in east Jerusalem, namely the
chamber of commerce," Kouchner said in the interview.
"It cannot be said enough that the settlements are
an obstacle to peace," he added.
On Thursday five firms won bids from the Israeli
authorities to expand the Har Homa settlement in
east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians consider to
be the capital of their future independent state,
and the international community deems as
illegally annexed by the Israelis.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
has said the move "doesn't help to build
confidence," while Abbas adviser Adnan
Husseini said that if construction continues
the Palestinians may suspend peace talks.
Kouchner also called on the Palestinians to take
steps to improve conditions for a peace agreement.
The Palestinian Authority must "make very
important efforts to fight against terrorist
movements and reform the security services
in order to make them more efficient," he said.
"Encouraging progress has been achieved"
but more must be done, he added.
Kouchner also said that improving living conditions
in the West Bank could have a positive knock-on
effect on the Gaza Strip.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday
announced plans to visit Israel in May for the
celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of
the country's creation and the start of the
total destruction of Palestine.
Thank God for Resistance.
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