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Statement of Concern for the Public Health Situation in Gaza

31 July 2006


A statement by over eighty Canadian health professionals, including a number of prominent medical advocates for human rights and peace, expresses deep concern over the silence of the Canadian Government and the Canadian media about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The group is calling on the Canadian government and the media to truthfully recognize and report the humanitarian situation and to respond with compassion and effective help. The statement calls on the Canadian government to immediately restore aid to the Palestinian government to ensure that water, food, medicine and the necessities of life are immediately available and accessible in Gaza. 

"We suffer together, we leave together"

Fida Qishta Rafah 31 July 2006


After two weeks of waiting with my parents and brother at the Egyptian border crossing, I returned home to Rafah, Gaza from a trip. We waited because the Israelis didn’t allow us to cross the border. We spent two days outside the border terminal in Egypt and 12 days inside the border terminal. 4,000 Palestinians waited like this, some for three weeks. Sometimes we got food and water, sometimes not. I don’t remember if I really slept or not during twelve days inside the terminal. I didn’t eat a lot because really I didn’t want to go to the bathroom. It wasn’t a bathroom actually - four walls and a piece of plastic for the door. Nine Palestinians died there. 

Katyusha rockets don't discriminate, but Israel does

Vivian Tabar 31 July 2006


In response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah has launched daily rocket strikes at Israel. On Wednesday, July 19, a Katyusha rocket struck the Arab city of Nazareth, killing two brothers, Mahmoud and Rabie Talussi, ages 4 and 7. This was not the first time a Palestinian Arab town had been hit by a Katyusha rocket. Immediately following the deaths, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz initially reported that two ‘Israeli’s’ had been killed, as opposed to two ‘Israeli Arabs’. Referring to Palestinians living within Israel as ‘Israelis’ may not seem out of the ordinary to most people; however, the mainstream has rarely ever done so. The media, state officials, and the average Israeli citizen only refer to Palestinians within Israel as ‘Israeli Arabs’. 

Children of Dheisheh refugee camp demonstrate against Israeli assault

31 July 2006


Over two hundred children from Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh refugee camp took to the streets this afternoon protesting against Israel’s barbaric attacks and the United States’ unwavering support for Israeli aggression. The children carried a child’s coffin, photos of yesterday’s massacre in Qana, and Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iraqi flags. While marching through the narrow roads of the camp for half an hour, they chanted “Beirut hura, hura. America itla barra.” (Beirut free, free. America go out.) and “Min Gaza l’Beirut, shab moqawim lan ya moot.” (From Gaza to Beirut, the resistance will not die.) 

The reason they hate us lies buried in Qana

Jonathan Cook 31 July 2006


The crowds in Beirut last year demanding a Cedar Revolution, “the first shoots of democracy” supposedly planted by the United States, are a distant memory. Yesterday we saw in their place the fury of Lebanon directed against the capital’s United Nations building — an early “birth pang” in Condoleeza Rice’s new Middle East If Israel wanted to widen its war, it could not have chosen a better way to achieve it than by sending its war planes back to the mixed Muslim and Christian village of Qana in south Lebanon to massacre civilians there, as if marking a morbid anniversary. A decade ago, Israeli shelling on the village killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering in a local UN post. 

Appeal to Israeli Attorney General's Office: "Prior Warning" Policy Doesn't Justify Destroying Homes

31 July 2006


IOF have practiced the policy of informing Palestinians by phone of their intention to destroy houses shortly before the actual destruction of houses takes place since 23 July 2006. Since that day, IOF have destroyed 10 houses using this method. In all cases, Israel has not provided any evidence that could justify the destruction of those houses. Since the beginning of the current Palestinian Intifada, IOF have destroyed thousands of Palestinian houses. 

Israel must be stopped

Jeff Handmaker and Avril McDonald 31 July 2006


In the early morning hours of 29 June 2006, the Israeli military ordered a massive bombardment of Qana, a village in southern Lebanon. A few days earlier, the military had dropped leaflets from the air, warning that the entire area was a potential military target. At the same time, the Israeli military continued its ongoing destruction of roads and other civilian infrastructure such as petrol stations and continued to target certain vehicles (for example, minivans and pick-up trucks). For those few who were in possession of transport and fuel, it was an almost impossible choice: flee and risk being killed on the road or stay behind and risk being killed in their homes. 

Delivering the bombs that kill civilians in Lebanon

Arjan El Fassed 31 July 2006


Israel has accused both Syria and Iran of providing rockets and missiles to Hezbollah. Israel’s prodigious military power is sourced primarily to the United States with the help of Britain. The US has asked the UK government to let two cargo planes with missiles and bombs on board stop at Prestwick airport in Scotland. However, protesters and some UK MPs are furious with the US for breaking the rules governing the transit of arms through British airports. Nearly 600 civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Israeli aggression that began more than two weeks ago in Lebanon and displaced about 750,000 people. 

ICRC alarmed by high number of civilian casualties and disrespect for international humanitarian law

30 July 2006


The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is alarmed by the increasing number of civilian casualties resulting from the ongoing armed conflict. In today’s military operations by the Israel Defense Forces against the village of Qana, a building sheltering civilians was directly hit. At the time of writing, the Lebanese Red Cross Society and the Lebanese Civil Defense have extracted 28 bodies from the rubble, 19 of whom are children. Issuing advance warning to the civilian population of impending attacks in no way relieves a warring party of its obligations under the rules and principles of international humanitarian law. 

Security Council deplores Israeli attack on Qana, urges all sides to grant access

30 July 2006


Just hours after United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan convened a Security Council meeting on the latest violence in Lebanon, the 15-member body deplored last night’s Israeli attack on the village of Qana, where over 50 civilians, mostly children, were reported killed. “The Security Council expresses its extreme shock and distress at the shelling by the Israeli Defense Forces of a residential building in Qana, in southern Lebanon, which has caused the killing of dozens of civilians, mostly children, and injured many others,” Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere of France, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month, said in a formal statement.