Gaza

NOVANEWS     http://www.paltelegraph.com Although I'm not a fervent advocate of using technology in every aspect of our lives, I have chosen to open my laptop and type this piece instead of writing it in  my notebook first, just for a change, and may be to please my ears with the clicking sound of my fingers striking the keyboard. I guess this shows that I'm in continuous pursuit for change even in the tiny aspects of life. Change; something referred to as being healthy nowadays is, by all means, a vital part of life for all those living in the tremendously stressful life of the 21st Century.  Seeking this change from the ordinary and mundane schedule of mine here in Gaza, I chose to go downtown today, a place where I seldom go and to amuse myself with just walking around a...

NOVANEWS The Samouni Family Children – Survivors of the Israeli Massacre   January 12, 2011 is a day I will never forget, visiting the Samouni family could not possibly be anything but a life-changing event.  Words simply cannot describe the devastation wrought upon this family by a marauding band of Israeli psychopaths, otherwise known as the Givati Brigade of the Israeli Defence Forces.   Little Ahmed, shot twice in the chest, died after days without medical care as the Israeli's would not allow it.   Today my team heard from mothers and fathers and children the story of the hell on Earth created by Operation Cast Lead.  Forty-eight people were killed in this family, children shot in front of parents, parents shot in front of children, a group of 97 in one home blasted to bits by rocke...

NOVANEWS and another martyr dies in Gaza I am trying to come up with something to say about the body I saw yesterday in the morgue at Kamal Adwan hospital. That body had belonged to an old man, 65 years old, who was shot through the neck by an Israeli sniper from 300 meters away while he was tying up his donkey on land he’d been farming for 40 years. An Israeli sniper murdered him for trespassing on his own land next to his own home in the buffer zone. He is the third civilian to have been killed the buffer zone in Gaza since I got here. No words will bring him back, and no coverage from mainstream news agencies will resurrect him. No eulogy will roll back time for his fatherless children. There’s no way to beg that IDF soldier not to murder Shaban Karmout, there’s no way to warp this worl...

NOVANEWS Jan 10, 2011 A Palestinian child lies in the dialysis room of a hospital in the Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip, June 8, 2010. The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip warns of a health crisis as the impoverished enclave is running out of direly needed medicine. The ministry warned that dozens of chronically-ill patients, especially those with cancer and kidney problems, could die soon, if they do not receive medicine. The officials said its storages suffered 40-percent depletion, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported on Sunday. They said the coastal sliver is facing a lack of medication for leukemia, blood problems, epilepsy, thalassemia and maternal health problems. The ministry also expressed concerns that the stock of insulin and kidney dialysis fluid in Ga...

NOVANEWS   Nature of incidents Between 26 March and 23 December 2010, DCI-Palestine documented 23 cases of children shot whilst collecting building material, and in one case, grazing goats, near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Due to a severe lack of job opportunities and a shortage of construction material entering Gaza from Israel, hundreds of men and boys scavenge for building gravel and other items amongst the destroyed buildings close to the border fence. The gravel is collected into sacks, loaded onto donkey drawn carts and sold to builders for use in concrete. Children can earn around 50 shekels (US $14) per day which is used to help support their families. Reports indicate that Israeli soldiers on duty in the observation towers which line the border between Gaza...

NOVANEWS   10 January 2011 Only the mentally insane and Israeli propagandists could really believe that the way to save Gaza’s Palestinians from the icy grip of Hamas was to blow 1,400 of them up in the attack and bombing in 2008/9. Anyone who isn’t a certifiable liar employed by Israel’s numerous propaganda organisations or the Zionist Federation, such as Jonathan Hoffman, wouldn’t give a moments thought to the idea that Israel was concerned about the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza. What they and the Americans were concerned about was extending the control of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Quisling ‘President’ to Gaza in order that Israel can reach a neo-colonial solution with Abbas, i.e. retain control of the majority of the occupied territories, with a few Palestinian Reservations i...

NOVANEWS People have been asking me what I think of the Gaza Youth Breaks Out statement. Here are my thoughts, pro­vi­sion­ally; I’m still asking around. The youth who wrote that document could face con­se­quences, and they were brave to have written it. There is a lot in the document that anyone should agree with. It expresses certain shared frustrations here. There are also unfor­tu­nate equiv­a­lences acci­den­tally implied that good people, including the manifesto’s authors, should reject, and have abjured. Fateh bureau­crats live lux­u­ri­ously in Ramallah, while Bedouin in Gaza struggle for wells to draw undrink­able water from the Strip’s dying aquifer, and Israeli soldiers gun down sleeping Pales­tin­ian men in Hebron and Israeli snipers shoot shepherds in the back in Beit Lehiya. ...

NOVANEWS   Ana Carbajosa The Observer 2,January 2011   Gazan youth issue manifesto to vent their anger with all sides in the conflict An anonymous group of students has created a document to express their frustration born of Hamas's violent crackdowns on 'western decadence', the destruction wreaked by Israel's attacks and the political games played by Fatah and the UN   Members of Hamas's security forces on escort duty. A group of young Gazans say they are fed up with Hamas and 'sick of bearded guys with guns'. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters The meeting takes place in a bare room in a block of flats in the centre ofGaza City. No photographs, no real names – those are the conditions. This is the first time that a group of young Palestinian cyber-activists has agreed to meet a journalis...

NOVANEWS On the verge of Cast Lead II, a look back Posted: January 8, 2011 by crescentandcross     By Ken O’Keefe   Today our team in Gaza met the Awaja family from Thabat.  There were nine members of this family, seven children aged 1 to 12 years old, but one son was murdered during Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), so seven children is now six.  Today we visited a few days in the life of this family, courtesy of a magnificent Palestinian mother named Wafaa. Palestinian mother through and through; Wafaa Before Cast Lead Thabat was known as Beit Lahia. Thabat means perseverance, determination, steadfastness, resolution, in a nut-shell, never give up.  When you hear this family’s story, which in terms of heartbreak is not so uncommon, you will understand why this area was renamed. As a r...

NOVANEWS January 7, 2011     Gilad Atzmon http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22647 Israel is gearing up for another major offensive into Gaza, yet the world community still remains bafflingly silent. It is dismaying that during this dark anniversary period two years after the launch of the deadly attacks on the people of Gaza - code-named Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis - that there should be warnings of a new massive attack on the beleaguered people of Gaza. The influential Israeli journalist, Ron Ren-Yishai, writes on December 29, 2010, of the likely prospect of a new major IDF attack, quoting senior Israeli military officers as saying "It's not a question of if, but rather of when," a view that that is shared, according to Ren-Yishai, by "government minister...