International activists break the siege, deliver medical aid to Gaza

International activists delivering medical aid to Gaza:

"http://www.euronews.net/

A fifth boat carrying humanitarian activists arrives to the Gaza Strip, loaded with aid and baby food."

Dignity Returns with Qatari Dignitaries
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Source:FreeGaza
Date : 12-21-2008

For More Information, please contact:
(Gaza) Ewa Jasiewicz, +970 598 700 497 / freelance@mailworks.org
(Gaza) Huwaida Arraf, +970 599 130 426 / Huwaida.Arraf@gmail.com
(Cyprus) Greta Berlin, +357 99 081 767 / Iristulip@gmail.com

(Gaza Port, Gaza, 21 December 2008) At ll:00 am on Tuesday, December 22, the DIGNITY will pull into the port of Larnaca carrying several Palestinians out of Gaza as well as the two envoys from the Qatari charity.

Alaze Al-Qahtani and Talal Al-Qutaibi of the Eid Charity from Qatar were on a two-day mission to Gaza to determine how their charity can work with their Palestinian colleagues to improve the lives of the beleaguered population.

While in Gaza, Talal Al-Qutaibi said, "We are calling on all Qatari people to join forces to break this terrible siege on Gaza. We also call for a general mass mobilization to break the siege. And we very much want to bring a ship of supplies in and will be working hard to arrange this voyage soon. "

When the Dignity entered the waters of Gaza, it was not stopped at sea and was never searched by the Israeli Navy. According to Neta Golan, one of the Israelis on board, "They contacted us by radio and asked us to turn back, OR they would board and take off the two Israelis on board. We refused and said we were going to Gaza. The Israeli Navy did nothing."

We expect that the Israeli Navy will do nothing on our return as well.

Also traveling from Gaza are four Palestinians who have been denied their right to leave, even though they have citizenship from other countries. They hope to rejoin family members they have not seen for years.

###########
The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel's draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza.


Qatari Ship Against the Israeli Siege Leaves Gaza
Source: IMEMC
Date: Monday December 22, 2008 04:32

The Free Gaza Movement reported on Sunday that the Qatari ship, the first Arab solidarity boat to break the Israeli siege, sailed out of Gaza after activists onboard spent 48 hours delivering humanitarian supplies, and observing the negative and devastating effects of the unjust Israeli siege.

The activists visited relief organizations and educational facilities in the coastal region. Fifteen Qatari nationals and international peace activists were onboard the ship.

The visiting delegates also observed the situation at the Gaza Port in order to prepare plans for rehabilitation and development. They also observed the conditions of the health sector, which collapsed due to the ongoing Israeli siege, and weighed the means to rehabilitate it.

On their way back, the activists carried a number of projects to be presented to the government of Qatar, and Qatari institutions in an attempt to collect aid to implement them.

Five Palestinians struck in Gaza managed to leave the region onboard the ship.

The Free Gaza Movement also vowed to organize further visits to support Gaza and its residents.

Jamal El Khodary, head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, said that the ship left Gaza, but the area remains isolated, the crossings remain closed, and the conditions are continuously deteriorating.

“This requires more efforts from the Arab, Islamic and international countries”, EL Khodary said, “They all need to act to end this siege”.

He also stated that more ships will sail to Gaza until the siege if fully lifted, and called on the Arab and Islamic world to practice the needed pressure on the Israeli occupation to end the siege.

El Khodary thanked Qatar and its people for their efforts against the siege and their support to the residents in the Gaza Strip. He added that more efforts are essential to break this unjust siege.
----
Popular Committee Against Siege

Popular Committee Against Siege (PCAS) is a popular committee established in Gaza Strip on the 25th October 2007, headed by independent Palestinian MP. Eng. Jamal Naji AL-Khodri. The launch of PCAS comes as a step to face the recent siege imposed by Israeli Occupation.

The establishment Chart of the committee assert on serving the Gaza Strip civilians and alleviating siege ramifications and burdens on people's lives. PCAS is a pure popular gathering of thinkers, well-educated, expert people as well as NGO's. We serve and help harmed people far from any political or factional affiliation.

ISRAEL-OPT: UNRWA suspends food distribution in Gaza
Source: IRIN
GAZA CITY, 19 December 2008 (IRIN) - The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) was forced to suspend its emergency and regular food distribution services in the Gaza Strip without warning on 18 December, due to the continued closure of all commercial and passenger border crossings.

Wheat supplies scheduled to arrive in Gaza on 9-10 December were unable to enter, and UNRWA had exhausted all stocks of flour in its warehouses due to the crisis.

“The food distribution programmes are suspended until further notice,” said UNRWA spokesperson Jamal Hamed in Gaza. “As soon as Israel allows us to import food we will resume.”

Some 750,000 refugees out of a population of 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza depend on food aid from UNRWA.

On average, the UN agency distributes food to about 20,000 refugees per day, including rice, cooking oil, flour, tinned meat and milk.

“UNRWA was able to import an average of 20 trucks of humanitarian assistance per day into Gaza last month, while a minimum of 50 are required to cover their basic assistance,” said Hamed.

Israel sealed commercial and passenger border crossings to Gaza on 4 November, when an Israeli military incursion into Gaza prompted Palestinian militants to resume daily rocket-fire into neighbouring Israeli towns. A five-month Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had been largely holding.

Israel has restricted imports into Gaza, including food, fuel, medical supplies and other basic necessities despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory.

Ceasefire set to end on 19 December

“The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel officially ends on 19 December,” said Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum, adding: “We [Hamas] bear the responsibility of defending our people if Israel attacks”.

“Thousands in Gaza depend on the UN for basic assistance in Gaza. This will increase the burden on the Hamas government to provide for people,” said Hamas political leader Ghazi Hamad - though the government has no alternatives while the crossings are closed.

At a speech at Hamas’s 21st anniversary rally in Gaza City on 14 December, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh noted the US$55 million in emergency assistance the Hamas government had provided to 10,000 families, fishermen and students in 2008. However, “there is no official budget for 2009, and it will not be enough,” said Hamad.

Tunnels

The alternatives for the civilian population living in Gaza are grim.

It has been almost a month since greengrocer Mohammed Abu Amra received fruit and vegetables from Israel. He gets fruit via the tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border but the deliveries are sporadic and “the goods from Egypt cost double,” said Abu Amra.

Apples are shipped from China to Egypt, and then make their way to Gaza via tunnel.

“Vegetables are available in Gaza, but there is not enough and they lack preservatives,” said Abu Amra. He is making less than half the profit he was two years ago, before Hamas won the legislative council elections.


*****
Israel's 'crime against humanity'
Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com, Dec 16, 2008

Israel's siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem's refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

"This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality," I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. "I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago."

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity." Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention." He has asked for "the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law."

Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that "such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people."

"It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health," Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. "This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.


Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog