Gaza Continues to Suffer from a Severe Human Dignity Crisis

[sister herb]

By Hiyam Noir


PalestineFreeVoice , July 25, 2010

During the last decade, the socio-economic situation for ordinary Palestinians in Gaza has been in steady decline. Decades of occupation, conflict and an almost 4 year of a still ongoing blockade have left the vast majority of the population in Gaza in need of international assistance.

However,the most vulnerable are the Palestinians whom still are living their lives in refuge camps.Gaza is home to more than one million registered refugees, of which almost 50 percent are living in one of the eight refugee camps in Gaza.

The entire Gaza community continues to experience a rising level of unemployment, food insecurity and poverty.
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The Humanitarian Monitor of OCHA ( The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) in the oPt report in the last week of May that; Palestinian casualties have decreased with an increasing trend in Israeli settler violence in the West Bank.Throughout the occupied territories access to education has been undermined for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian students by a widespread classroom shortages.And the Jerusalem municipality is planning to approve a plan that would displace some 500 Palestinian residents.

After more than three years of blockade, Gaza continues to suffer from a severe human dignity crisis characterized by high food insecurity rates, high dependency on foreign aid, a locked in civilian population, and de-development. The treatment of patients suffering from bleeding disorders, certain types of cancers, kidney failure, and some infant allergies, is expected to be severely affected by a depletion of essential drugs to the lowest levels seen since June 2007.

Livelihoods and lives of people living in the Gaza Strip have been devastated by over 1000 days of near complete blockade. However, with the investment of simple inputs and increased access to land, the Agriculture Sector has the potential to make substantial improvements to the quality of life, food security and nutrition of an estimated 1.5 million Palestinian people.

The announced decision to ease the three-year blockade of Gaza, would have allowed the unrestricted import of goods intended for civilian use, thus still the Zionist entity restrict more than 100 items.The health care sector in Gaza continue to deteriorate.15 Palestinians have been killed, and 104 injured. The livelihoods of farmers are threatened by the new pest, Tuta Absoluta, which is causing great damage to tomato crops.

John Holmes,the Coordinator of the USG for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief said in a statement regarding Israel's,i.e the Zionist Entities attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla, that the ERC strongly condemn the dreadful waste of life over a humanitarian issue. Holmes said that such an incident should never have happened.

The ERC stated that from the very beginning of 2007,the blockade of Gaza has been unacceptable, unnecessary and counterproductive.It has worsened the life conditions for the Palestinians,deepened the poverty and created food insecurity.The blockade have prevented reconstruction and increased aid dependence by destroying the livelihood and economic activity.The ERC called for lifting the collective punishment of the people of Gaza - once and for all.



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[queenislam]

~Salam to all!


:salam2:


May Allah swt help our brothers
and sisters
in gaza
~Amin!


Thanks for the news sister.



~Wassalam .

 

[Aapa]

Assalaam walaikum,

And here is something evil:

“She came in through the front door and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited, all of the family saw this — her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house.”

That is how Nihed al-Massry describes what happened to her daughter, nine-year-old Samah Eid al-Massry, after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, on 21 July. Samah is now being hospitalized in serious condition, suffering from extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and flechettes from a nail bomb that landed 100 meters away, causing internal bleeding to the chest and severe head trauma. Nails are now embedded throughout her body.

Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely-populated civilian areas. Three other children were wounded in the attack.

Two young men were killed; Muhammad al-Kafarneh, 23, suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the back and chest and Kasim al-Shinbary, 19, was wounded by nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel his back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians.

Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was asleep on a hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 meters from the impact of the bomb.

Haitham’s mother was standing off to the side, quietly crying while one of his aunts at his bedside explained what happened.

“We had asked Haitham to get shopping for [his mother] from the market, then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital.”

Meanwhile, Samah’s doctor explained that the girl’s blood loss was a major concern. Her injuries are exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffers from the blood condition thalassemia and the drug to treat the condition, Exjade, is scarce because of the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest.

Her doctor, Muhammad Abu Hassan, described her situation as “semi-critical.”

“She was in very bad condition when she arrived — it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube for small children — very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain,” he explained.

The al-Massry family has been affected by Israeli attacks before. Samah’s four-year-old brother Ryad was injured during Israel’s three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip during winter 2008-09 when more than 400 Palestinian children were killed.

“Our house was hit during the war, a neighbor was killed inside and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t cared for and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged.”

As we left Samah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital from the attack, also from the al-Massry family in Beit Hanoun: Azzam Muhammad al-Massry, 11, who suffered a severely fractured left elbow and Ibrahim Wasseem al-Massry, 4, with light injuries to his abdomen.

The previous week in Gaza, Nema Abu Said, a 33-year-old mother of five, was killed by Israeli shelling as she went outside frantically looking for her youngest son after a previous round of shelling. Three more family members were injured by the flechette shells, many of the darts remaining permanently embedded in their bodies.

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/gaza-children-shelled-by-flechette-bombs/