13 July 2018
Israeli snipers killed a child
on Friday and fatally wounded a second person as Palestinians marked more than
100 days of Great March of
Return protests in Gaza.
Uthman Rami Hillis, 14, was
killed by live fire, according to
the human rights group Al Mezan.
Hillis, from the neighborhood
of Shujaiya, was shot by Israeli forces stationed across the boundary east of
Gaza City, the group stated.
On Saturday, the health
ministry in Gaza announced that
20-year-old Muhammad Nasir Shurab had died of injuries he suffered the day
before when he was shot by snipers east of Khan Younis.
More than more 100 people
across Gaza were injured, 65 with live ammunition.
Defense for Children
International Palestine shared a video said to show the moment Hilles was shot.
It shows the boy climbing on the separation fence along the Gaza-Israel
boundary, but presenting no direct or mortal threat to anyone at the moment he
was killed.
Palestinian media circulated
this photo of Hillis following news of his death.
Media also shared images of
Hillis being carried on a stretcher after he was shot:
Video showed
distressing scenes as relatives mourned over Hillis’ body at the morgue of
al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Before Hillis’ death on
Friday, the UN humanitarian monitoring agency OCHA reported that 21 children
were among the nearly
150 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since 30 March, the
vast majority of them during protests. More than 4,000 others have been wounded
by live fire.
During the same period, four
Israelis have been injured.
Standing with Khan al-Ahmar
For the 16th Friday in a
row thousands of
Palestinians headed towards Gaza’s eastern boundary.
Since 30 March, Palestinians
have been mounting protests against Israel’s 11-year siege of Gaza and to call
for the right of refugees to return to lands from which they were expelled and
are excluded by Israel because they are not Jews.
Israel has responded by deploying
snipers with orders
to shoot unarmed civilians including children – killings and maimings
the International Criminal Court prosecutor has warned could
lead to Israeli leaders being tried for war crimes.
The theme of this Friday’s
protest was solidarity with Khan al-Ahmar, a
Bedouin village near Jerusalem which faces imminent
demolition by Israel – a
war crime – to make way for more Jewish settlements in the occupied
West Bank.
Many Palestinians in Gaza
addressed messages to the people of Khan al-Ahmar through local media.
“We are here today in
solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Khan al-Ahmar,” one man said. “All
of Gaza is with you.”
This image shows a Palestinian
waving the Irish flag in honor of the Irish senate’s passage
earlier this week of a bill to ban the import of goods from Israeli
settlements.
Israel tightens siege
As Palestinians in Gaza
sustain their revolt against the siege despite the devastating cost, Israel is
responding by tightening the blockade even further.
On Monday, Israel announced
the closing of
Gaza’s only commercial goods crossing.
Israel is also reducing the
distance Gaza fishers are allowed out to sea from nine to six nautical miles.
The steps are collective
punishment against Gaza’s two million people for incendiary kites and balloons
that Palestinians have launched, setting fire to fields on the Israeli side of
the boundary.
Israel’s technologically
advanced military has proven unable to counter the kites and balloons.
So once again, occupation
authorities are inflicting more of the suffering that has spurred revolt
against a situation in which the population in Gaza – half of them children –
can only choose between dying by Israel’s bullets and bombs, or being reduced quietly
to desperation and death by
the siege.
Israel says it will allow in
“humanitarian” supplies such as food and medicine, but UN officials are warning
that the closure of the commercial crossing will make the situation in Gaza
much worse.
The closure “can be expected
to have profound and far reaching consequences for already desperate
civilians,” Chris Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine
refugees, stated on
Thursday.
Gunness pointed out that
among the imports banned by Israel were building materials for UN education,
health, water, sanitation and hygiene projects.
Gaza’s water and sanitation
systems are already
near collapse following years of Israeli blockade and military
attacks.
Inflicting suffering
Gisha, an Israeli human rights
group that monitors the blockade of Gaza, said that Israel is banning all
building materials, not just those destined for UN projects – which will
quickly bring all construction in Gaza to a halt.
Already struggling businesses
will also suffer huge losses.
Farmer Suleiman Zurub was
waiting to ship 2,000 crates of sweet potatoes out through the crossing. That
crop will now likely spoil. “Farmers are the big losers from this decision,”
Zurub said, according to Gisha.
Hasan Shehadeh, who owns a
clothing company, also faces huge losses as he is unable to ship goods to
customers in Israel, the occupied West Bank and China.
“If things stay this way, I’ll
suffer huge financial losses, because in my contracts I’ve signed a commitment
to pay for every item left in my factory,” Shehadeh said, according to Gisha.
Shehadeh is also worried about
the 200 people he employs. “Israel’s decision will affect them too, of course,”
he said.
Early warnings
UNRWA’s Gunness predicted that
the latest closure would lead to an increase in demand for UNRWA services.
This would come at a time when
the agency, which provides emergency rations, health and education to hundreds
of thousands of people in Gaza, faces an unprecedented financial crisis
following the freezing
of US contributions earlier this year.
Nearly 80 percent of Gaza’s
population is already forced to
rely on humanitarian assistance and the unemployment rate is close to
50 percent.
In June, UNRWA warned that
it may have to make deep cuts to its already stretched services.
Even before the latest Israeli
restrictions, UN officials pointed to signs of a sharply deteriorating
situation.
From January 2017 to June this
year, the percentage of essential drugs at a zero stock level in Gaza has risen
steadily from one-third to one-half, according
to OCHA – meaning there is less than a one-month supply for those
medicines.
In June, the average number of
hours of electricity per day was 4.5 hours, close to an all-time low since
January 2017.
Meanwhile, over the past year,
the number of people who have had to borrow money or food from family or
friends rose from about one in three to nearly half.
International complicity
The European Union, which
rarely criticizes Israel and has failed to condemn its massacres of civilians
in Gaza, said
on Friday that it “expects Israel to reverse” the decision to close
the commercial crossing.
The statement from Brussels
made no reference to Israel’s obligations as an occupying power to abide by
international law, including the prohibition on
collective punishment.
The EU even tacitly justified
Israel’s action by including a demand that “Hamas and other actors in Gaza must
cease and refrain from violent actions and provocations against Israel,
including the launching of incendiary kites and balloons.”
By contrast, Gisha has called Israel’s resort to
“collectively punishing nearly two million people in Gaza” by closing the goods
crossing “both illegal and morally depraved.”
The Palestinian human rights
group Al Mezan deplored “the
international community’s continued tolerance of the collective punishment of
the population of Gaza in violation of its legal obligations under
international humanitarian law.”
Al Mezan warned that Gaza is
witnessing “a social and economic collapse” and is heading towards an
“explosion.”
Air attacks
Overnight Friday to Saturday,
and again on Saturday, Israel carried out air strikes across Gaza.
Israel began the attacks
Friday night “in response to an Israeli army officer sustaining wounds after a
locally-made bomb was thrown at him at the borders of the Gaza Strip,” Ma’an
News Agency reported,
citing Israeli media.
The newspaper Haaretz reported that
an Israeli officer “was moderately wounded by a hand grenade that was launched
at him from the northern Gaza Strip” on Friday.
Israel claimed it attacked
tunnels and sites used for the preparation of incendiary kites and balloons.
Palestinian resistance
factions returned fire towards Israel by launching dozens of rockets.
On Saturday, Israel resumed
bombing Gaza and claimed to have carried out the biggest
daytime attacks on the territory since its 2014 assault.
According to Haaretz,
the Israeli “army said the attacks on Saturday were “in response not only to
the launches” of retaliatory rockets from Gaza, “but also to Hamas’ activities
along the border and the incendiary balloons and kites.”
On Saturday, Haaretz reported
that one rocket “exploded near an Israeli border community,” but that there had
been no injuries.
The health ministry in
Gaza said that
by Saturday evening one person had suffered moderate injuries due to the
ongoing Israeli air attacks.
On social media, Palestinians
in Gaza reported loud explosions from bombing that appeared calculated to
terrorize the population.
This article has been updated
since initial publication.
No comments:
Post a Comment