[spectre] FW to Palestine

[Louise Desrenards]

> Subject: HELP for campaign for Gaza in Independent today]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Independent is trying to launch a campaign to bring the world's
> attention to what is happening in Gaza - they need STRONG letters of
> support and encouragement for this. Otherwise the momentum will not
> build and grow as it must in the coming days. This is front cover of
> today's paper:
> 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/
> 
> (front cover: A People Betrayed By The World)
> 
> The leader article:
> 
> http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article1371992.ece
> 
> 
> 
> The main story of today's paper:
> 
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1372026.ece
> 
> 
> 
> Please if you can take a second to write to :
> 
> 
> 
> Letters at independent.co.uk and cc to D.Orr at independent.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
> today.
> 
> 
> 
> Both leader and main article in full here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Leading article: A brutal siege the world must ignore no longer *
> 
> 
> *Published: 08 September 2006 *
> 
> Gaza is being slowly strangled. This small strip of land on the eastern
> shores of the Mediterranean has been under siege by the Israeli military
> for three months. Its 1.5 million inhabitants have been subject to more
> than 270 air strikes, numerous ground raids, and a severe artillery
> bombardment. Since Gaza's sole power plant was bombed in June, its
> people have been forced to survive by candlelight after dark. Hospitals
> use electric generators to keep essential services running. The strip's
> water mains have been destroyed, causing serious supply problems and
> increasing the risk of disease. Bridges have been bombed and checkpoints
> closed. No Palestinians are allowed in or out of what has in effect
> become a prison.
> 
> This has brought the Palestinian economy to its knees. The majority of
> Gazan families have been forced to rely on United Nations food aid. Yet
> even support from the outside world for these people has been severely
> cut back. When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January, the
> United States and the European Union decided to stop their funding of
> the governing institutions of the Palestinian Authority until the
> militant organisation renounced violence and accepted Israel's right to
> exist. An adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister referred to this
> jokingly as "putting the Palestinians on a diet". But the result has
> been the complete breakdown of Palestinian society. The civil service,
> which supports one-quarter of the population, has been paid no wages in
> six months.
> 
> According to the United Nations, $30m-worth of damage has been inflicted
> on Gaza since this operation began. But the far graver cost has been in
> human life. In July and August, some 251 Palestinians were killed by
> Israeli military action, half of them civilians. The dead have included
> women, children and the elderly. Hundreds more have been wounded.
> 
> 
> 
> And yet while all of this has been going on - the bloodshed, the hunger,
> the social collapse - the world has turned away. The international
> community has been preoccupied with the worsening situation in Iraq,
> Afghanistan or Israel's war with Lebanon. Yet while the people of
> Lebanon were able to flee Israel's bombardment, Gazans have had no such
> freedom.
> 
> 
> 
> The Israeli government claims the purpose of its blockade is to secure
> the return of Corporal Gilad Shalit, a soldier kidnapped in June after a
> raid by a faction of Hamas. Another objective is, we are told, to
> prevent militants firing Qassam rockets across the border into Israeli
> towns and villages by militants. Even if we accept this intention, the
> methods have been grossly disproportionate. Five Israelis have been
> killed by Qassams in the past six years. Does this justify such a lethal
> response in Gaza? The operation is also deeply questionable from a
> practical perspective. Does the Israeli government truly expect
> degrading all Gazans in this fashion to secure the release of Corporal
> Shalit?
> 
> 
> 
> Ultimately we must accept that the return of the Israeli military to
> Gaza is less about stopping rocket attacks, winning the release of
> Corporal Shalit, or even removing Hamas, than it is about imposing a
> collective punishment on the Palestinian people, in the belief that it
> is in the interests of the state of Israel to do so. It is not. The
> long-term interest of Israel lies, as it always has, in progress towards
> a two-state solution. The great prize is the normalisation of relations
> between Palestinians and Israelis. Every day that the people of Gaza are
> denied their dignity - every time more innocent Palestinians are killed
> by stray Israeli rockets - such a settlement is pushed further away.
> 
> 
> *'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now' *
> 
> 
> *By Patrick Cockburn in Gaza *
> 
> 
> *Published: 08 September 2006 *
> 
> Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight
> that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the
> Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored
> because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and
> Iraq.
> 
> A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians
> imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has
> stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the
> shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with
> hand-thrown nets.
> 
> Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day
> by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200
> wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr
> Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which
> is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26
> women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction
> of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.
> 
> It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken
> captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who
> used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this,
> writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been
> rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing
> and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". Gaza has
> essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go
> at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several
> houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22
> Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of
> olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.
> 
> Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They
> even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep." He pointed
> sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of
> bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting
> leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in
> the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.
> 
> His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers
> confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they
> survived by drinking water from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions
> in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said. "They killed
> one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and
> just went out to get water."
> 
> Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed.
> The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell
> phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit
> by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.
> 
> But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and
> its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published
> last month, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented
> economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in
> 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population."
> Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.
> 
> There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People
> do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza
> industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian
> police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police
> but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts
> removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once
> employed thousands.
> 
> "It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first
> poured into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist
> who is mayor of Gaza City. "Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are
> allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on
> bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."
> 
> The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr
> Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange
> groves in order to create security zones." Carnations and strawberries,
> two of Gaza's main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli
> air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power
> was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as
> in Baghdad.
> 
> The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already
> hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the
> Palestinian government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on
> goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not
> transfer funds to the government.
> 
> Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly
> work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest
> region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared
> with $20,000 in Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where
> Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If
> Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes
> and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men. These were
> organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud
> Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in
> January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their
> Kalashnikovs in the air. "Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save
> us from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile
> during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it
> out in the streets.
> 
> The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment
> of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed
> in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds
> to his neck, legs, chest and stomach. "I was laying an anti-tank mine
> last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he
> said. "I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I
> worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."
> 
> His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that
> three of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas
> government: "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government
> because it is the government of the resistance."
> 
> As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza
> willing to take Ala Hejairi's place. Untrained and ill-armed most will
> be killed. But the destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that
> no peace is possible in the Middle East for generations to come.
> 
> *The deadly toll*
> 
> * After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June,
> Israel launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the
> operation name Summer Rains.
> 
> * The Gaza Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in
> refugee camps, have been under attack for 74 days.
> 
> * More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have
> been killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier
> has been killed and 26 have been wounded.
> 
> * 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations.
> A third of victims brought to hospital are children.
> 
> * Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting
> the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.
> 
> * At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and
> greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.
> 
> * The UN has criticised Israel's bombing, which has caused an estimated
> $1.8bn in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million
> people without regular access to drinking water.
> 
> * The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says 76 Palestinians,
> including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone.
> Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.
> 
> * In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed
> yesterday when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a
> wanted militant. Two of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.
> 
> Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight
> that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the
> Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored
> because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and
> Iraq.
> 
> A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians
> imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has
> stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the
> shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with
> hand-thrown nets.
> 
> Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day
> by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200
> wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr
> Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which
> is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26
> women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction
> of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.
> 
> It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken
> captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who
> used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this,
> writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been
> rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing
> and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". Gaza has
> essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go
> at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several
> houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22
> Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of
> olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.
> 
> Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They
> even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep." He pointed
> sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of
> bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting
> leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in
> the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.
> 
> His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers
> confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they
> survived by drinking water from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions
> in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said. "They killed
> one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and
> just went out to get water."
> 
> Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed.
> The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell
> phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit
> by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.
> 
> But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and
> its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published
> last month, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented
> economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in
> 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population."
> Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.
> 
> There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People
> do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza
> industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian
> police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police
> but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts
> removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once
> employed thousands.
> 
> "It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first
> poured into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist
> who is mayor of Gaza City. "Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are
> allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on
> bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."
> 
> The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr
> Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange
> groves in order to create security zones." Carnations and strawberries,
> two of Gaza's main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli
> air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power
> was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as
> in Baghdad.
> 
> The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already
> hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the
> Palestinian government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on
> goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not
> transfer funds to the government.
> 
> Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly
> work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest
> region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared
> with $20,000 in Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where
> Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If
> Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes
> and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men. These were
> organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud
> Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in
> January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their
> Kalashnikovs in the air. "Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save
> us from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile
> during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it
> out in the streets.
> 
> The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment
> of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed
> in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds
> to his neck, legs, chest and stomach. "I was laying an anti-tank mine
> last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he
> said. "I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I
> worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."
> 
> His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that
> three of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas
> government: "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government
> because it is the government of the resistance."
> 
> As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza
> willing to take Ala Hejairi's place. Untrained and ill-armed most will
> be killed. But the destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that
> no peace is possible in the Middle East for generations to come.
> 
> *The deadly toll*
> 
> * After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June,
> Israel launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the
> operation name Summer Rains.
> 
> * The Gaza Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in
> refugee camps, have been under attack for 74 days.
> 
> * More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have
> been killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier
> has been killed and 26 have been wounded.
> 
> * 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations.
> A third of victims brought to hospital are children.
> 
> * Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting
> the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.
> 
> * At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and
> greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.
> 
> * The UN has criticised Israel's bombing, which has caused an estimated
> $1.8bn in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million
> people without regular access to drinking water.
> 
> * The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says 76 Palestinians,
> including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone.
> Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.
> 
> * In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed
> yesterday when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a
> wanted militant. Two of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.
> 
> 
>