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For Immediate Release

International Witnesses Speak Out from Gaza. For More Information, please visit http://www.FreeGaza.org, or see contact

details below.

(Besieged Gaza, Palestine - 27th December 2008) - Human Rights Defenders

from Lebanon, the UK, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia are

present in Gaza and are witnessing and documenting the current Israeli

attacks on Gaza.

Due to Israel's policy of denying access to international media, human

rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of

these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement's

boats. FREE GAZA boats have broken Israel's siege of Gaza five times in

the past four months.

"At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a

last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already

gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars -

anything that can move is bringing injured to

the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room

for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the

morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the

blood banks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was

the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp."

- Eva Bartlett (Canada) International Solidarity Movement

"Israeli missles tore through a children's playground and busy market in

Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly

killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with

injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat

them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating

international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and

planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the

calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments

need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate

restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza"

- Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movement

"The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so

bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital."

- Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and

Cultural Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza.

"The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking

back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5 year old

girl ran sobbing into my arms."

- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement

"This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for

the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now calls

of revenge are everywhere."

- Dr. Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre

"As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke

everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I live in

Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to

clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the bodies. As we

arrived one more was found."

- Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement

"The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound.

All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged.

Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this

damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight year little boy was

trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the

bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming

home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are

being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli

bombardment of Beirut and the Israel's message is the same in Gaza as it

was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion

outside!"

- Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement

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Human Rights Defenders in Gaza (available for interviews):

Dr. Eyad Sarraj (Arabic and English) +972 599400424

Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Co-Coordinator in Gaza (Polish, Arabic, and

English) - +972 59 8700497

Dr. Haider Eid (English and Arabic) + 972 59 9441766

Sharon Lock (English) +972 59 8826513

Vittorio Arrigoni (Italian) +972 59 8378945

Fida Qishta (English and Arabic) +972 599681669

Jenny Linnel (English) +972 59 87653777

Natalie Abu Shakra (Arabic and English) 0598336 328

For more information on the Free Gaza Movement (FREE GAZA) or the

International Solidarity Movement (ISM) contact in the West Bank:

Adam Taylor (ISM) - 972 59 8503948

Lubna Masarwa (FREE GAZA) - 972 50 5633044

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The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in

August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port

in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking

Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries to witness

the effects of Israel's draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza.

http://www.FreeGaza.org

Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning'

By Ewa Jasiewicz

As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal

in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the

internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows

nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the

house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.

UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al

Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another

was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.

Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge

the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only

perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their

lifetimes.

Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that

shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and

unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of

humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity,

fuel and freedom of movement.

Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating

theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to

transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had

12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.

There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and

blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.

Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire

hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and

lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the

spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red

Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.

Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had

over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the

operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were

sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital

in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short

space of time.’

And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this

morning, ‘This is only the beginning.’

But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective

punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It

has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread,

revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking:

If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?

11.30am

Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border

village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven

there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief

Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided

villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents

about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves,

family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for

Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks

were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on

the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us

the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would

shoot into his fields.

Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile

attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire

from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by

the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family,

caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.

I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us

off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16

bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas

authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit

Hanoon.

We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to

Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police

station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of

dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere

Bala, Diere Balak – take care.

Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had

soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable

market before impacting on its target.

Civilians Dead

There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead

donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and

splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken

English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead,

many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head

threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this!

Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they

are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are

they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader,

present during the attack.

He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking

them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a

small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his

legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain

and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.

The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of

concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree

split the road.

We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache

helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK ’s

Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares –

a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.

Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force

headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road.

‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.

We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be

target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The

apaches rumbled above.

Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work

smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the

ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around

20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a

motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.

Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under

the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it

everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a

captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3

feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks,

blocks and debris to reach the man.

We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the

men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and

speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without

interruption.

Hospitals on the brink

Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief,

horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed

by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of

shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not

even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who,

because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred,

in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.

The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against

the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds

temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically

injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in

scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel

cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area,

wards and operating theatres.

We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care

unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting

downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk

again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six

months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to

show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was

making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.

A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The

hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground,

Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic

police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying

force.

At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the

hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to

cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah,’ there is not god but Allah.

Who cares?

And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out

for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the

brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in

and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said

to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world?

Where is the action to stop these attacks?’

Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she

had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near

Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s

attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down

her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We

didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the

biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.

The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa

hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one

group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head

injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the

weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a

teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’.

He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of

human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’

It’s true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human

Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva

Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague

Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help

generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity

for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to

as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the

realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied

or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on

’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps

in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate

from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both

here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by

Israel , with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights

held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported

this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against

Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on

Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.

In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza ’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into

a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the

morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for

civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and

exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of

a lack of access to essential medicines.

A light

There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At

the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you

consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel

and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running

from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in

the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education,

see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are

reportedly big enough to drive through.

Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel,

there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to

make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring

the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take

on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end

of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of

international governmental complicity and silence?

There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity

in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of

conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn

a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring

injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and

pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and

occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and

for a genuine Just Peace.

Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light

at the end of the Gazan tunnel.

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Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer,

and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for

the Free Gaza Movement.

 http://www.FreeGaza.org

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