My views are clear... and whatever may think some of my readers am not misleaded nor misinformed. The matter of fact is that my opinions on the situation are not biased, but base on facts, study, and analysis, as well as testimonies... They are not based, as some of my readers opinions could be, on religious beleifs, birth or ethnic background, governement and media brain washing... I understand that, being Americans, they were mostly raised with the idea that the Arab world is dangerous (except when it is a matter of Saoudi money a/o oil...), that the muslims are "bad" and the jews are "good", and that everything has to be done to support, protect and safe Israel and the jewish population no matter what.
I am not a die hard supporter of the muslim religion nore the Arabic population overall and I am not an antisemit or anti- jewish either... I grew up in Africa, and I have pretty good knowledge of the muslim "culture", I saw misery and sufferance during a large part of my life and with my parents we tried to alleviete it from the people, I have had and still have many friends from islamic confession, and the large majority of my American Friends are jewish, as well are some of my French friends. My views and judgements are oriented by justice, injustices and peace aspirations...
Some people tend also to forget very easily that the State of Israel is a young recently "men made State", a colonialistic (colonizer) and an occupant (occupier) states, created by the international community to serve the purpose of the jewish people after the Hollocaust of the second world war, and that the Palestinian people are the first to suffer from this international community decision of creating a Jewish State on their land, victims of this colonisation and occupation, since their land, farms, houses were taken away, since they were chassed away and deported, became refugies parked in some small over crowded territories, trying to survive humiliation, siege and human abuses.
I wonder to know how the American people would react and "behave" if part of their land were taken away or occupied by... the Arabs?... would they just "bend over" and say "amen" (or in that matter "Inch Allah"...) or would they organise themselves in resistance and fighting groups trying to free their people and their land from the Arabic occupation?
So lets start refreshing the memory with this long list of events and escalations:
1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.
1914 With the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.
1916 Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, Jordan and Iraq to Britain and Palestine was to be internationalized.
1917 The British government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour prmissing him the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
1917-1918 Aided by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them, in correspondence with Shareef Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews a Jewish "national home" in Palestine .
1918 After WW I ended, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set a side as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922. Large-scale Jewish settlement and extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948.
1919 The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.
1920 The San Remo Conference granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. and two years later Palestine was effectively under British administration. Sir Herbert Samuel, a declared Zionist, was sent as Britain's first High Commissioner to Palestine.
1922 The Council of the League of Nations issued a Mandate for Palestine.
1929 Large-scale attacks on Jews by Arabs rocked Jerusalem. Palestinians killed 133 Jews and suffered 116 deaths. Sparked by a dispute over use of the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque ( this site is sacred to Muslims, but Jews claimed it is the remaining of jews temple all studies shows clearly that the wall is from the Islamic ages and it is part of al-Aqsa Mosque). But the roots of the conflict lay deeper in Arab fears of the Zionist movement which aimed to make at least part of British-administered Palestine a Jewish state.
1936 The Palestinians held a six-month General Strike to protest against the confiscation of land and Jewish immigration.
1937 Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, issued a report. Basically, the commission concluded, the mandate in Palestine was unworkable There was no hope of any cooperative national entity there that included both Arabs and Jews. The commission went on to recommend the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral sacred-site state to be administered by Britain.
1939 The British government published a White Paper restricting Jewish immigration and offering independence for Palestine within ten years. This was rejected by the Zionists, who then organized terrorist groups and launched a bloody campaign against the British and the Palestinians.
1947 Great Britain decided to leave Palestine and called on the United Nations (UN) to make recommendations. In response, the UN convened its first special session and on November 29, 1947, it adopted a plan calling for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone under UN jurisdiction.
1947 Arab protests against partition erupted in violence, with attacks on Jewish settlements in retalation to the attacks of Jews terrorist groups to Arab Towns and villages and massacres in hundred against unarmed Palestinian in there homes.
15 May 1948 British decided to leave on this day, leaders of the Yishuv decided (as they claim) to implement that part of the partition plan calling for establishment of a Jewish state. The same day, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas in a full-scale war (first Arab-Israeli War). The Arabs failed to prevent establishment of a Jewish state, and the war ended with four UN-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The small Gaza Strip was left under Egyptian control, and the West Bank was controled by Jordan. Of the more than 800,000 Arabs who lived in Israeli-held territory before 1948, only about 170,000 remained. The rest became refugees in the surrounding Arab countries, ending the Arab majority in the Jewish state.
The rest is history, but here are "few" more related dates:
1967 Nasser's insistance in 1967 that the UNEF leave Egypt, led Israel to attack Egypt, Jordan, and Syria simultaneously on 5th of June.The war ended six days later with an Israeli victory. Israel occuiped Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, Arab East Jerusalem, West Bank, Golan Heights.After 1967 war, several guerrilla organizations within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) carried out guerrillas attacks on Israeli miletary targets, with the stated objective of "redeeming Palestine."
1973 Egypt joined Syria in a war on Israel to regain the territories lost in 1967. The two Arab states struck unexpectedly on October 6. After crossing the suez channel the Arab forces gain a lot of advanced positions in Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights and manage to defeat the Israeli forces for more then three weeks. Israeli forces with a massive U.S. economic and military assistance managed to stop the arab forces after a three-week struggle. The Arab oil-producing states cut off petroleum exports to the United States and other Western nations in retaliation for their aid to Israel.
1974 The Arab Summit in Rabat recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people
1982 Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon aimed at wiping out the PLO presence there. By mid-August, after intensive fighting in and around Bayrut, the PLO agreed to withdraw its guerrillas from the city. Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon.
1987 Relations between Israel and the Palestinians entered a new phase with the intifada, a series of uprisings in the occupied territories that included demonstrations, strikes, and rock-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers.
1988 The PNC meeting in Algiers declared the State of Palestine as outlined in the UN Partition Plan 181.
1990 Yasser Arafat addressed the UN Security Council In Geneva demanding UN emergency force to provide international protection for the Palestinian people to safeguard their lives, properties and holy places.
Feb 1994 An American-born Jewish settler in Hebron, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire in al-Haran al-ebrahime crowded mosque, killing 29 Muslims and wounding 150 more.
Sept. 1995 Israeli and PLO officials meeting in Taba, Egypt, finalized agreement on the second stage of eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Special arrangements were agreed upon for Hebron, where Israeli soldiers will remain to protect the 450 Jewish settlers living there.
Nov. 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in Tel Aviv by a right-wing extremist.
June 1996 Right-wing Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu become the new Prime Minister of Israel.
June 1996 Arab summit discuss the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's peace plans.
Dec. 1996 Israeli authorities release plans to expand the Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem, which causes outrage among Palestinians.
Oct. 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed at peace-for-land agreement at the conclusion of negotiations in the U.S. the agreement calls for Israel to relinquish control of portions of the West Bank in return for active measures to be taken by Palestinians against terrorism.
Nov.1998 Palestinian President Yasser Arafat inaugurated Gaza International Airport.
Dec. 1998 President Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel. Clinton urged "legitimate rights for Palestinians, real security for Israel."
May 1999 Winning a crushing victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak promised to forge a secure peace with the Palestinians, pull troops out of Lebanon in a year and heal the deep divisions among Israelis.
Oct.1999 Israel and the Palestinians agreed to establish the first open land link between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so-called "safe passage".
Mar.2000 Kissing Palestinian earth and warmly welcomed byYasser Arafat, Pope John Paul II made a prayerful pilgrimage to the town of Jesus' birth.
28.09.2000 - Al-Aqsa Intifada
On September 28, 2000 the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, with a Likud party delegation, and surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the mosque compound of the Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem. The mosque compound is the first Qibla of Muslims and the third holiest site in Islam. It also contains the area for the most holy site in Judaism. The pretext for Sharon's visit of the mosque compound was to check complaints by Israeli archeologists that Muslim religious authorities had vandalized archeological remains beneath the surface of the mount during the conversion of the presumed Solomon's Stables area into a mosque.
On February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected as the new prime minister of Israel, and he refused to meet in person with the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
27.08.2001 - Abu Ali Mustafa, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is assassinated by an Israeli missile shot by an Apache helicopter through his office window in Ramallah. Abu Ali Mustafa was born in 1938, in the northern West Bank town of Arraba, the son of a farmer. In September 1999 he returned to the West Bank under a deal struck between Yasser Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. In July 2000 he was elected as the new general secretary of the PFLP after Habash retired. He was killed in a targeted assassination by two rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he sat at his desk in Ramallah. At the time, he was the most senior Palestinian political leader to have been killed by Israel. The PFLP subsequently renamed their armed wing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. They turned into resistance called "terrorism".
March 2002 - Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed a Saudi peace initiative in March 2002 that formally changed the Arab world’s position on Israel. The proposal, endorsed by the Arab League, asked Israel to withdraw to the 1949 borders and establish an independent and sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. It stipulated that displaced refugees should either be allowed to return to their homes or be compensated for their loss of property. In return, the Arab states would consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign comprehensive peace treaties with Israel, and normalize relations. The proposal was received with skepticism by Israel and had little practical effect.
13.03.2002 - U.N. Resolution 1397
The U.S. pushes through the passage of U.N. Resolution 1397 by the Security Council, demanding an "immediate cessation of all acts of violence" and "affirming a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders". Fully ignored by Israel with the US support.
14.03.2002 - Ramallah under attack
Israeli forces continue the raid on Ramallah and other West Bank towns. A helicopter attack near Tulkarm kills Mutasen Hammad and two bystanders. A bomb in Gaza City destroys an Israeli tank which was escorting settlers, killing 3 soldiers and wounding 2. A taxi in Tulkarm explodes, killing 4 Palestinians. Palestinians execute two accused collaborators in Bethlehem, planning to hang one of the corpses near the Church of the Nativity until Palestinian police stop them.
29.03.2002 - Palestinian cities under attack (Deja vu, and of today's actuality...)
Israeli forces begin Operation Defensive Shield, Israel's largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Within twenty-four hours, the Israel Defense Forces had issued emergency call-up notices for 30,000 reserve soldiers, the largest such call-up since the 1982 Lebanon War. The stated goals of the operation as claimed by Israel government (as conveyed to the Israeli Knesset by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 8, 2002) were to "enter cities and villages which have become havens for "terrorists"; to catch and arrest "terrorists" and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy "terrorist" facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations. The orders are clear: target and paralyze anyone who takes up weapons and tries to oppose our troops, resists them or endanger them - and to avoid harming the civilian population." By April 3, the IDF was conducting major military operations in all Palestinian cities with the exception of Hebron and Jericho. The major points of conflict were, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah. During the operation, strict curfews were placed on at least six major Palestinian cities, resulting in complaints by human rights groups that essential medical attention was being denied to sick and elderly Palestinians, as well as complaints that Israel was practicing collective punishment, which is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In some cities, there were scheduled breaks in the curfews. In others, curfews continued uninterrupted for a week or more. Throughout the two weeks of fighting in Jenin and for a few days afterward, the city and its refugee camp were under curfew. The city of Bethlehem and its environs remained under curfew for five weeks, though there were periodic breaks, until an impasse involving Palestinian gunmen who had held hostage the clergy in the Church of the Nativity was resolved. Most of the armed Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity agreed to go to the Gaza Strip. The rest were exiled to Cyprus. Notable events were the battle of Jenin and the siege of Yasser Arafat's compound.
June 2002 - Israeli apartheid separation wall
Israel begins construction of the West Bank Wall. The Israeli West Bank barrier is a physical barrier being constructed by Israel consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 meters wide exclusion area (90%) and up to 8 meters high concrete walls (10%). It is located within the West Bank. The barrier is a very controversial project. Opponents claim the barrier (i) is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security (ii) violates international law (iii) has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations and (iv) severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel, thereby undermining their economy.
21 August 2003 - The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab
Five Israeli missiles incinerated Ismail Abu Shanab in Gaza City on 21 August 2003, killing one of the most powerful voices for peace in Hamas and destroying the ceasefire. Israeli helicopters struck the car carrying the third most senior Hamas leader. The missiles also buried a seven-week ceasefire already strained by Israeli killings of Islamic militants and retaliatory bombings, and threw the US-led road map to peace deeper into crisis. Hamas declared an immediate end to the truce and vowed a bloody revenge for the death of Abu Shanab, who was married with 11 children.
21.03.2004 - The assassination of Shaik Ahmed Yassin
Ahmad Yassin was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter missile strike on 21 March 2004. Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Hamas' spiritual leader, Shaikh Ahmed Yassin, as he left a mosque after performing the Monday dawn prayers, killing the Hamas leader and six other worshippers. A reporter who rushed to the scene after hearing three loud explosions found the blown-up remains of Yassin's blood-soaked wheel-chair. Witnesses at the mosque said Yassin's body had been evacuated to Al-Shifa Hospital.
17.04.2004 - The assassination of Abdul Azziz al-Rantisi
Rantisi was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter missile strike, as he returned from a visit to his family on 17 April 2004. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, including prominent political figures, participated in the funeral procession of Hamas leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Al Rantisi, and two of his bodyguards.
06.06.2004 - Marwan Al-Barghouthi jailed for life
On 06 Jun 2004, An Israeli court Sunday jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Al-Barghouthi for life for resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine but he said his people's statehood quest would not be broken.
16.10.2004 - North Gaza Strip under attack
Israel officially ended a 17-day military operation, named Operation Days of Penitence, in the northern Gaza Strip. Operation Days of Penitence conducted between September 30, 2004 and October 15, 2004. The operation, focused on the town of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia and Jabalia refugee camp, which were used as launching sites of Qassam rockets on the Israeli town of Sderot and Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. This israeli operation resulted in the deaths of between 104 and 133 Palestinians, and 5 people on the Israeli side, demolished 77 houses and damaged hundreds more; damaged public facilities, including schools, kindergartens and mosques, and destroyed farmland.
The attack resulted in a proposed resolution of the U.N. Security Council condemning the Israeli action, calling for Israeli withdrawal and respect for human rights of Palestinians. The resolution was vetoed by the United States on October 5 who criticized it from ignoring terrorism against Israelis
RESULTS :
25.01.2006 - Hamas won the Legislative election
Hamas wins by landslide the majority of seats after the Palestinian legislative election, 2006. Israel, the United States, European Union, and several European and Western countries cut off their aid to the Palestinians; as they view the Islamist political party who rejects Israel's right to exist as a terrorist organization.
09.06.2006 - The killing of 7 family members on Gaza beach
Following the Gaza beach blast, in which seven members of one family and one other Palestinian were killed on a Gaza beach, the armed wing of Hamas calls off its 16-month-old truce. Israel claims it was shelling 250m away from the family's location; Palestinians claimed that the explosion was Israeli responsibility.
01.11.2006 The town of Beit Hanoun has been under the very tight control of a large force of tanks and troops who have ordered the tens of thousands of local people to stay off the streets for all but very brief periods. The Israelis destroyed Beit Hanoun, they destroyed the infrastructure, cut the water pipes and the telephone lines. Hundreds of men have been rounded up and questioned, and some have been taken away to Israel. The entire town of Beit Hanoun remains under Israeli control and troops have ordered residents to stay indoors.
07.11.2006 Israel's army says it has pulled out of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, after a six-day operation targeting rocket-firing militants. Witnesses confirmed Israeli troops had left. The army says it has taken up positions in surrounding areas. Some 60 Palestinians, majority of civilians, were killed.
08.11.2006 At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead. Palestinian hospital officials said 13 of the dead belonged to the same family, and two of them were women and six were children. TV footage from Beit Hanoun showed the victims being taken to hospital in their sleeping clothes, some with terrible injuries. Sources counted about eight impacts. They confirmed that the shells appear to have landed roughly in a straight line, starting in the fields at the end of the street and hitting houses on either side of it.
11.11.2006 The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 18 Palestinian civilians and urging a quick withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area.
Overall to resume... here bellow, what it was supposed to be:
and here bellow, what it is:
and it goes on and on....So now the testimonies I would like my critics to read, so they could wear at least one Palestinian shoe on their feet:
The first article was written yesterday by a reporter of the British news paper "The Independant". It's a very personal testimony but it deserve to be known, here is the link bellow:
For the next testimony, no link, just copy and paste, it is written by a social and health worker in Gaza, which happened to be also a mother:
Last June, I decided to send my 16-year-old daughter for a vacation in the UK. We had to go through a very complicated procedure for her to leave Gaza. The borders opened twice but she, like many students and patients, was not able to leave. My daughter holds a British passport so the British Consulate put a lot of efforts towards getting a permit from Israel for my daughter to leave Gaza with some other British citizens via the Jordan River.
Six weeks after the start of the summer holidays, my daughter was issued the permit to leave Gaza. She traveled north through the Erez crossing then to the West Bank and over the bridge to Jordan. From there she flew from Amman to Manchester.
After a short visit she flew back to Amman. She was on her way back to the Jordan River crossing when we were informed that there are new regulations and we would need a new permit for my daughter to enter Gaza again!!!!!!!!!!!!!I applied for this permit from the Israeli army via the Palestinian coordination office in Gaza several times but received no reply.
For six long weeks my child stayed in Amman with relatives, unsure what will happen next. We waited and waited but meanwhile her school in Gaza opened and she was very much concerned, as were we all, about her education.I tried contacting human rights organizations in Israel to ask for assistance but everybody said it might take months to get her a permit to return home!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just one small piece of paper was preventing my child from coming home!!!!!!!!!!!!! Though she is privileged to hold a British passport this still did not secure her return home. In the eyes of the Israeli occupation she is treated as any Palestinian, because she holds a Palestinian ID card as well.
Our family decided that Sondos should return to the UK and enroll in one of the colleges there. But it was not easy for a 16-year-old girl to adapt to different educational and social systems, new surroundings, and late school entry. All these pressures besides being 16!!!!!!Back in Gaza I decided to travel to the UK to help my daughter settle in to her new environment.
For three continuous months I tried to find a way out of Gaza. The Rafah border was only opened once for 3 days in all that time.
I waited among a throng of people at the border but I, like so many others, was turned back when they closed the border again on the third day. After this experience I took a decision to leave Gaza on one of the Free Gaza Movement boats to Larnaka.
From there I flew to UK where I am now staying with my daughter. She still finds it very difficult to cope with the educational system, but it is even more difficult for her to adjust to the new social framework or structure.
As for me, I was invited by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Liverpool Friends of Palestine, and others to give talks about my life in Gaza. So I tell audiences about the Gazans who died because they weren’t allowed to travel abroad for treatment and we didn’t have the necessary medicines or equipment to treat them in Gaza.
I explain what it’s like to live in the dark because the power supply is cut off most of the days and nights. I give voice to the hundreds of newborn andpremature babies in our hospitals who are dying slowly , because we cannot accurately measure the gas system in their tiny bodies due to the interrupted power supply.The numbers are staggering. Eighteen percent of children under the age of 15 in Gaza have stunted growth and forty-five percent have iron deficiency anemia due to lack of proper nutrition. Eighty percent of the population is now living in poverty and two thirds are refugees that were ethnically cleansed from their villages 60 years ago. More than 650,000 children under the age of 16 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.But the stories are worse. I explain what it PTSD means for these children, how they suffer from all sorts of nightmares, anxiety, and inability to focus at school, phobias, bedwetting, stress, and depression.But the worst feeling of all is our feeling of abandonment. Enduring the hardships of daily life in Gaza under the siege and occupation is less harmful than having to live day after day without hope. We are losing of faith in the outside world for not taking serious actions against Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza.
I'm determined to go back to Gaza, to continue my responsibilities, in the Red Crescent Society ,as well as my responsibilities as MECA Projects director, where I coordinate cultural and health projects , for children community centers and the relief work I coordinate for hundreds of families , .
My life will be torn between the two things I love most: my children and my work for my people in Gaza."
Two days ago she wrote:
Unnecessary deaths:
I am distraught thinking about the fate of these injured people. I know the situation of hospitals in Gaza well through my health and humanitarian work. The siege of Gaza has left our hospitals without one hundred basic medications and many important diagnostic and laboratory equipment is not working because spare parts aren’t available and the fluctuation of current from our irregular power supply has left some equipment beyond repair. In this period of crisis, Gaza hospitals are also lacking crucial medications and supplies for their operation rooms.I’ve watched the chaotic scenes inside Gaza hospitals as staff struggle to find space for all of the injured and dead. The unprecedented numbers of casualties come in from ambulances and cars in a near-constant stream. But emergency situations are nothing new in Gaza; it is the impact of the siege that has changed the odds. I know that we would be facing a different situation if the 18 months of siege hadn’t drained our supplies of medicines and food, making it difficult to treat and feed patients.I’ve spoken to several of my fellow doctors in Gaza and each one of them is overwhelmed and demoralized. Even with all of their training, the material conditions in Gaza are preventing them from doing what they are capable of. They could have saved many more lives.I remember how ambulance drivers were not allowed to reach the injured in previous military attacks on Gaza. Many lives could have been saved then too if the ambulances reached the injured at the right time. A few minutes can be the difference between life and death. I wonder whether we will hear reports like this again once the emergency situation is over and there is time for truth and reflection.
No place is safe in Gaza:
The first military air strikes struck at the exact time that school children make their way home. W here I live in Gaza City, several primary schools are very close to the police headquarters which were among the first targets. These horrifying facts explain the high number of women and children amongst the dead. Thirty children and nine women have been reported dead and another 130 children and 38 women injured.I’ve spoken with friends and family in Gaza and my heart sunk further with their first-hand accounts of the death and destruction. On a personal level I am mourning the loss of one of my cousins, Ibrahim Mahmoud El-Farra, age 22. He was killed in the first attack on the presidential palace. F16 fighter planes fired three big missiles at the building. Neighbors tell me the ground shook and that the blast broke all the windows of my nearby apartment building.My cousin, and an unknown number of other victims, is still under the rubble. The scale of destruction is too large for Gaza’s small number of rescue workers. They are slowly pulling body parts out of the rubble as Israeli air strikes make more and more piles of rubble and people.The number of reported deaths will increase in the next few days as more bodies are recovered and more of the seriously injured cases die because their serious but treatable wounds cannot be treated in Gaza.
No justification:
As a mother, I believe that all children are precious and deserve love and protection. If Israeli children are terrified and confined to the shelters because of the Palestinian rockets, this is wrong. But it is no justification to kill Gaza’s children and innocent civilians, who make up the majority of victims. Israel’s actions are creating more and more hatred. While families in Gaza cower in their homes, ready for death to strike, how can Israel talk of peace? Neither building the wall in the West Bank nor attacking Gaza so savagely will bring peace to Israel. Only peace that is based on justice and respects the rights of us all will work in the end. We are humans too.
With an aching heart I continue to watch Gaza from a distance. I cannot turn the TV off, cannot detach myself from what is going on there. Not while my medical colleagues work hard under such extraordinarily circumstances. Not while my friends, my family, and the whole population of Gaza face such horrible atrocities and constant fear. The nightmare isn’t over."
This following testimony is coming from a Gaza resident, film maker and social worker:
from mohammed magdalawi, he live sin Jablia In Gaza.
There are holocaust and killing Four hundred martyrs and about two thousand injured by Israeli air raids.I want to write about suffering of my people and my family in these days.
In my house we can't get basic needs such as, No foods, No bread ,and Natural gas.
Yesterday , my father went to bakery from 5 AM he waited 5 hours even get one bundle of bread. This bread was not enough for my family because it consist of 11 members . But today I go to all bakeries. I can't find any loaf of bread due to be closed. We and my family cannot communicate with our relatives and friends because of the lack of the connecting network also every hour we have a martyr or even more because of the raining missiles on our homes , mosques and even hospitals . There is no safeplace we can go to.
In the day our life concentrated in burial of the martyrs who were thousands in hospitals after a short farewell or even without a final look because of the time shortage those martyrs are graved in groups imagine that a group of martyrs graved in one grave.
At night our camp like ghosts city no sound but the sound of the various military aircrafts in every attack our heats and the children hearts is shaking.
There is a horror in every minute and it is clear especially on the children, for example, there was four sisters in one family killed from the Israeli occupation, when stay in their home, and there is children in the south of Rafah.
Also, A woman was going to the bakery to buy bread for her family when she was walking in the street killed the Israeli occupation.
I have two message to the world: My message to the lovers of peace and freedom in the world.
The First message: Imagine your life, your everyday life is no electricity , destroyed homes , voice missiles of the day and night , and no food, no water!!!!.
Imagine your children and your family tell you we are afraid of the missiles cannot sleep from the Voice of the aircraft.
Imagine you and keep the commentary.
The second message: Make to end the siege and stop the killings and demolition of houses for our children and to provide assistance to the people through rallies, sit-ins.
Finally, I invite you to come to Gaza and see the Holocaust! What the Israelies did to our land since years....
With Best Regards :Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi Film Maker and Social WorkerGaza strip _ Palestine
I hope my readers (and critics...) managed to read up to here, and I hope they opened their eyes to the "other side" of the story, instead to only follow what they are being told...
May peace comes out of this horror, and when I mean peace, I really belive that once this conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelies will be resolved the rest of the world will be also at peace, because it is what is undermining it...
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