Red Cross: '1.5 Million Palestinians living in despair in Gaza'
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- Written by IMEMC IMEMC
- Published: 29 June 2009 29 June 2009
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The Red Cross added that the strict Israeli siege and restrictions on the Gaza Strip are blocking the international efforts to rebuild the Gaza Strip although 4.5 million US dollars are allocated for reconstruction efforts.
It also stated that the Gaza Strip lacks basic medications, its basic infrastructure is ruined, and that the water supplies are irregular, while sanitation is collapsing.
The organization demanded Israel to allow the entry of spare parts, water pipes, construction materials and other basic supplies into the Gaza Strip to start the reconstruction process.
It added that the patients in Gaza are not receiving the needed treatment as the siege emptied the hospitals from the basic medical supplies and equipment. The repeated power outages, due to the lack of fuel to run the generators and Israel’s shelling of Gaza’ Power Station, caused further suffering and limited the functionality of hospitals and medical centers.
Hundreds of patients died in Gaza, hundreds remain in critical conditions but Israel is still baring their transfer to hospitals in Egypt or elsewhere.
The Red Cross further reported that poverty rates in Gaza have reached alarming levels, and that larger numbers of children are suffering from malnutrition.
The international organization linked the situation in Gaza to the three-week Israeli offensive earlier this year, in which more than 1417 Palestinians, including 936 civilians, were killed and thousands were wounded, and also linked the situation to the ongoing Israeli siege.
On the Israeli side, ten soldiers were killed in Gaza and three settlers were killed by Palestinian fire targeting settlements surrounding Gaza.
The Red Cross said that thousands of Palestinians have lost their homes due to Israel’s war, and that the residents are still homeless.
More than 70% of the residents in Gaza are living below poverty line, as the average monthly income of a family of nine is less than $250.
UN public hearing in Gaza broadcasts accounts of war victims
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Gaza City Rory McCarthy in Gaza City
- Published: 29 June 2009 29 June 2009
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UN public hearing in Gaza broadcasts accounts of war victims
• Inquiry held by Jewish South African judge
• Israeli witnesses to attend next round in Geneva
Gaza conflict
Up to 13 Israelis and 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the three-week war, which saw rocket strikes on a UN school. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
The UN has held an unprecedented public hearing in Gaza to broadcast live witness accounts from Palestinians who described seeing their relatives killed and injured during Israel's January war.
One after another, they detailed Israeli rocket strikes and artillery shelling near a mosque, a UN school and on several homes across Gaza during the three-week war. The two-day hearing is part of an inquiry by the UN human rights council into the war led by the respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone.
Israel has refused entry for the inquiry team, accusing the UN council of an anti-Israel bias even though Goldstone himself is Jewish. But another round of hearings will be held in Geneva next week, for which some Israeli witnesses are expected to be flown in. They may include residents of Sderot, near Gaza, which has suffered repeated Palestinian rocket attacks.
"The purpose of the public hearings in Gaza and Geneva is to show the faces and broadcast the voices of victims – all of the victims," Goldstone said last week. He had sat on South Africa's constitutional court after the fall of apartheid and was a chief prosecutor on the UN criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Yesterday's public hearing was the first in a UN fact-finding mission, though there is little chance it will lead to prosecutions. Up to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the war.
Mousa Silawi, 91, described an explosion at the entrance to a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp late on 3 January, which killed 17 people, including three of his sons and two grandchildren.
"After evening prayer a huge shell hit the mosque," he said. "It was absolutely incredible. We starting screaming and calling for God." Silawi, who is blind, was led away to safety and was then told that his sons had died. "Where is law? Where is justice? I have lived 91 years. I have seen everything, but nothing of this sort. It was such a catastrophe," he said. His son, Moteeh, the mosque's sheikh, said there had been no warning before the missile struck. "People came to the mosque for safety and we saw bloodshed," he said. "I was leading my father out when my own foot stepped on the head of a small child," he said. "I saw people carrying decapitated heads and parts of bodies. I cannot describe what I saw … What crime did the children commit?"
In another case Ziad al-Deeb, a university student, described how an Israeli shell struck in the courtyard of his family home in Jabaliya on 6 January. The blast killed 11 of his relatives and sliced off both his legs. First he heard an explosion just outside the wall of the house and then moments later a second shell landed in their yard.
"In a single instant we had all of our joys replaced with blood," he said. "There was a severe whistling in my ears and a pillar of smoke and dust and that obliterated what happened. When I looked up I found I had lost both my legs. I was sprawled over the body of my own brother. I looked for my father and others, and I found them motionless. Most of them were dead."
He lost his father, grandfather, two brothers and a sister in the blast, which was one of several mortar shells that fell in quick succession that afternoon near a UN prep school being used as a shelter for those fleeing the fighting. Between 30 and 40 Palestinians were killed near the school. An earlier UN inquiry has already found Israel responsible for the shelling.
After hearing his evidence, Goldstone said: "We extend our deep condolences to you and your family for your terrible loss and it makes your coming here all the more painful for you."
Yesterday's hearing was held at a UN office in Gaza City and then broadcast live to a hall at a nearby cultural centre, deserted save for a handful of journalists. However, the hearing was broadcast on some television stations, including one al-Jazeera channel. The UN inquiry team will issue a final report in August.
Israel approves 50 settler homes
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 29 June 2009 29 June 2009
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Israel has approved the construction of 50 new housing units in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Officials said the homes would house settlers being moved from a nearby unauthorised outpost and were only the first part of an expansion plan.
The move runs counter to a demand by Israel's major ally and backer, the US, that it stop all settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land.
It came hours before Defence Minister Ehud Barak was due to fly to the US.
Correspondents say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reluctance to comply with a freeze on building in settlements puts him on a collision course with the US.
Israel argues that settlements must be allowed "natural growth", although recent official statistics showed many new homes are purchased by newcomers from Israel or abroad.
The Palestinian Authority says settlements - which are illegal under international law - are one of the biggest barriers to peace, and has vowed to stay away from negotiations until building work is frozen.
Mr Barak will hold talks in the US with President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell. Mr Netanyahu and Mr Mitchell were due to meet in Paris last Thursday, but their talks were cancelled.
Unauthorised
Israel intends to remove about 200 people from the Migron outpost - deemed illegal by Israel as it is built on private Palestinian land - and re-house them in Adam settlement, north of Jerusalem.
The disclosure comes in an affidavit from the Defence Ministry to the Israeli Supreme Court in response to a court case brought by the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now.
The document speaks of a master plan to build 1,450 more residential units at Adam, but only 50 of these have been given the go-ahead.
Any additional units would require separate approval from the Defence Ministry, the document said.
A Peace Now spokesman said moving settlers from the small unauthorised camp on a hilltop to a 3,500-strong settlement established by the government sent the wrong message.
"(Settlers) who set up illegal outposts and threatened to use violence if evicted have benefited because the outcome will be that their original settlement will have grown 30-fold," said Yariv Oppenheimer.
Lawyer Michael Sfard, who acts for the Palestinian landowners, told the BBC: "It is outrageous that this is how the government deals with outposts: providing outlaws with a new house."
He also described the government's announcement as an "act of panic", before the final hearing on the fate of Migron is due to be held next Monday.
The Israeli authorities have repeatedly removed structures from the Migron site, but settlers have always returned to rebuild them.
Some 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8124148.stm
Published: 2009/06/29 11:37:57 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Woe to them who heap up what is not their own…
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- Written by The Book of Habakkuk The Book of Habakkuk
- Published: 24 June 2009 24 June 2009
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Woe to them who heap up what is not their own…
Woe to them who get evil gain for their house…
For the stone cries out from the wall,
And the beam from the woodwork responds.
Woe to them who build a town with blood,
And found a city on iniquity!
Netanyahu Believes Obama Has Already Backed Down On Settlements
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- Written by M.J. Rosenberg M.J. Rosenberg
- Published: 24 June 2009 24 June 2009
- Hits: 4943 4943
Netanyahu Believes Obama Has Already Backed Down On Settlements
M.J. Rosenberg
Talking Points Memo (Opinion)
June 23, 2009 - 12:00am
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu believes that President Obama has already blinked. The way he sees it, Obama made his demand to stop settlements in Cairo. He, Netanyahu, responded with a firm "no" -- but by uttering the phrase "two states" changed the subject suficiently to get Obama off his back. He also thinks the Iran crisis has diverted Obama's focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and saved him from further pressure.
There is no other way to interpret Netanyahu's dismissal of the settlement issue in his interview with RAI TV in Italy. Settlements? "I think that the more we spend time arguing about this, the more we waste time instead of moving towards peace," he said.
He added that his conditional endorsement of a Palestinian state is all that matters. "A demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish State of Israel I think is the winning formula of peace," he said. "I can not understand why anybody who wants peace should reject it."
And, of course, no one does reject it, certainly not the Palestinians who accepted the two-state formula fifteen years ago and remain committed to it. It is just that unless Israel stops settlements, there will be no place for that state to go. And just yesterday the Israeli government authorized another 500 housing units in Har Homa, a West Bank settlement -- a gigantic slap in Obama's face. The US response: silence.
Former Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Arens, from Netanyahu's Likud party told us exactly what the government is thinking in a wonderfully frank Ha'aretz column on Tuesday. "There was a time before the State of Israel was established when the Jewish people had no choice but to take orders from others...We will gladly accept advice, but not orders."
Netanyahu believes that President Obama has gone as far as he intends to go and that he need only dig in to win. Is he right? The longer we have to wait for an answer, the more likely that he is.
Israel-Palestine is the test. It is the one issue all Arabs and Muslims (and most of the world) is in substantial agreement i.e., that the occupation must end and the two state solution must be implemented.
As Obama said about Iran, the whole world is watching. If the administration flinches, it will be noticed. And our credibility in the Middle East will go back to where it was before Jan. 20. That will be despite all the progress this President has already made in repairing our tattered reputation.
President Obama cannot allow that to happen.