GAZA, (PIC) — The Palestinian ministry of health has declared that a number of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip had delivered deformed babies and attributed the phenomenon to the Israeli occupation forces’ (IOF) use of internationally banned weapons during the latest war on Gaza.
Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the director of the ambulance and emergency department, said that the deformities were caused by the IOF troops’ use of those weapons against civilians such as white phosphorus, dyme and various kinds of poisonous gases.
He noted that those weapons were intensively used in a number of areas in the Strip.
The health official said that only ten months after the war on Gaza five deformed embryos were detected for babies conceived during and after the war.
There could be other hereditary tragedies and diseases especially cancer as a result of the intensified use of those weapons, Hassanein underlined.
He said that a number of international investigation committees and institutions had taken samples of those weapons during their tour of Gaza but did not disclose them before the world to protect Israeli leaders from prosecution at international courts for crimes against humanity.
The Israeli Navy attacks several fishing boats from Gaza City port. One is riddled with machine gun fire, then shelled and set on fire.
In November 2008 this boat was seized by the Israeli Navy and all the fishermen were abducted and transferred to Israel. The fishermen and boat were subsequently released without charge.
In June 2009 the Israeli Navy attacked the boat, riddling it with machine gun fire, causing extensive damage, and nearly killing the crew. The boat was then seized and the fishermen were abducted and transferred to Israel. On route to the port of Ashdod, Adham the captain of the fishing boat was beaten up by the Israeli sailors. The fishermen and the boat were subsequently released without charge.
Two days before this attack, the Israeli Navy killed a Palestinian fishermen in the same area. It’s reported that he was but four metres from shore when an Israeli gun boat fired at him. The shell decapitated him.
A year ago, 44 of us saw the coastline of Gaza in the distance, after 30 hours of traveling across the Mediterranean Sea. We were jubilant. We had made it to Gaza. We had actually made it to Gaza. We had really, really made it to Gaza.
We had MADE IT TO GAZA.
From a distance, the shore looked like stalagmites had sprouted across the landscape. Every piece of sand, every section of pier, every chunk of rock was occupied by people. Thousands of Palestinians greeted us, blowing whistles and cheering and high-fiving each other. At first, just one small boat came out to greet us. Then every kind of vessel swarmed around our two small fishing boats, boys jumped in the water retrieving the balloons we had inflated, stuffing them inside their shirts and tying them onto their small boats. The balloons said FREE PALESTINE with a dove and an olive branch on them. They were in the colors of the Palestinian flag… white, red, green and black. Once we saw the shoreline, many of us had started to blow the balloons up, dropping them onto the deck of the boats, a small pool of bouncing color ready to be set free
On the sides of both boats were banners in English and Arabic… WE ARE COMING and END THE OCCUPATION
We motored into port, the flags of 17 countries flying from the halyards, the Palestinian flag the highest of them all.Fishermen climbed onto our boats trying to shake our hands and hug us. At one point, we worried that the boats would tip and toss us all into the port, but, just as our Greek partners had said, these boats were sturdy, even if they were not pretty.
Our seasickness disappeared. Our worry that we would be stopped by the Israeli Navy was gone. Most of us had not slept, and we no longer cared. Some of us women tried to comb our hair and put on lipstick, then realized no one minded that we looked haggard and messy. We had arrived.
The Palestinians of Gaza were overjoyed to see us. They had been waiting three weeks for us. They had waited 41 years for internationals to visit. And they had waited 60 years for Palestinians to return to Gaza without going through checkpoints, immigration and humiliation by Israeli and Egyptian authorities.
Much has been written over the past year about our dedication and determination to get to this small enclave, shut off from the rest of the world by Israel’s draconian blockade. None of that was on our minds or in our hearts that day. For all of us, Palestinian and International, August 23, 2008 will be a day that none of us will ever forget. If we get discouraged, we pull out that memory. When our boats were rammed by the Israeli navy, we remember that day. When our boat was hijacked and our passengers kidnapped and thrown into prison by the Israelis, we are more determined to continue our missions.
We will return. We will come back. We will never forget.
Barack Obama, the US president, is attempting to seal an Arab-Israeli peace deal that has eluded the region for more than six decades. In the fourth of the series, Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin loo…
We spent the days after the Peace Bridge incident finishing the “required” paper work and negotiating with the Egyptian Ministry of Internal Affairs to reach an agreement on time to be spent in Gaza, what we can take with us, and to let all members of the convoy cross into Gaza. Mr. George Galloway and Councilman Charles Baron made a great effort to come up with a good pact with the Ministry and tried to get the most out of them. At the end, we were only allowed 24 hours in Gaza and they promised that all convoy members would enter as well as all the medical aid. They denied the entry of the 47 trucks that we purchased in Alexandria and they still have them at the port.
BEIRUT: A coalition of activists belonging to various Palestinian solidarity organizations are planning an international march in Gaza aimed at ending the blockade of the territory. The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.
“This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi,” said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the “Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza,” obtained by The Daily Star. “Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement,” it added.
The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. “We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade,” it said, adding that “We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign … If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed.”
Professor Norman Finkelstein, a political analyst and author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is one of the organizers of the march. “We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans,” he told The Daily Star.
Finkelstein hopes that large numbers of international activists and world leaders will attend the march, and as a result, prohibit a violent response from Israeli authorities. “If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens – Israel can’t shoot,” he said.
“The first formal organizational meeting of the coalition is set for July 13,” said Finkelstein. “We hope then to create an umbrella steering committee. Right now the working group consists of individuals who belong to organizations that have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as CodePink.”
Members of the coalition are now contacting Palestinian solidarity groups around the world in preparation for the march.
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