"VOICES IN GAZA SCREAM OUT FOR HELP"
"Gaza is burning. Gaza is cold. Gaza is in the dark. Maybe you can sleep. I can’t!
Below are just a few samplings of what is going on….. YOU MUST NOT REMAIN SILENT!
From An Arab Woman Blues….Today, children were playing in the streets of Gaza, scores were rushed to hospital with blood pouring out of their little limbs, heads, eyes and nose…Israel bombed Gaza again.40 dead, 100 injured and out of the 100, 45 were children. 45 children not older than 10, soaked in blood. Their own.
(These figures were quoted several times on Al Jazeera Arabic TV. And not the 1 dead and 35 injured. I don’t understand why this sudden discrepancy. Is someone trying to hide the real figures?)
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From The Palestinian Information Centre GAZA, One woman was killed and 46 others were wounded Friday afternoon when F-16 fighters bombed the old building of the interior ministry near the Islamic university, according to reports from Gaza.The bombing resulted in the complete destruction of the five-story unused building and caused great damage to surrounding homes.Medical sources told PIC correspondent that a 58-year-old woman died of shrapnel wounds and 46 others, all civilians were wounded, at least five of them sustained serious wounds.
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From The Guardian Because the crossings are routinely closed on Saturdays - and Israel’s defence spokesman indicated that they would not be opened on Sunday morning if the rocket fire continued - Gaza’s 1.4 million inhabitants look likely to be without food for the weekend.The UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned the closure. “This can only lead to the deterioration of an already dire situation,” spokesman Christopher Gunness said. Guinness said the closures “can only lead to the further radicalisation of a depressed and demoralised people”.
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And From The New York Times
"Israel Closes All Gaza Border Crossings, Citing Palestinian Rocket Attacks" by STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM — Israel closed all border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Friday, cutting off at least one aid shipment, and bombed the empty Interior Ministry building of the Palestinian Authority, which was already a ruin after a previous Israeli bombing.
Israel said it was acting to halt Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, while Hamas and other Palestinian militants said they had increased their rocket fire in retaliation for intensified Israeli raids.
Shrapnel from the bombing of the empty ministry building, in the crowded Al Rimal neighborhood of western Gaza City, killed one woman, Haniah Abd-el Jawad, 52, and wounded up to 46 others, some of them children, medical officials at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza said.
Israel has declared Gaza, which is run by Hamas, a “hostile entity” and has tried to persuade its leaders to stop rocket fire by reducing supplies of gasoline, diesel fuel and electricity, a move that has brought challenges in the Israeli Supreme Court by Israeli human rights groups.
The Israeli military has operated in Gaza nearly every day this week, luring Hamas and allied gunmen into firefights; 35 Palestinians have been killed there since Monday and 80 people have been wounded, said Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, director of emergency medical services in Gaza.
Hamas resumed firing Qassam rockets toward the Israeli border town of Sderot, along with other militant groups like Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is affiliated with Fatah. On Thursday, at least 40 rockets were launched, half of them landing in Israel, hitting two houses in Sderot and lightly wounding four Israelis, with a dozen more treated for shock.
On Friday, at least 31 more rockets were fired toward Israel and 16 landed, but no one was wounded, the Israeli Army said.
One rocket landed within 40 yards of a nursery school, which was open, said David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman. Since Tuesday, the army said, 130 Qassams have been launched; about half have landed in Israel and the remainder in Gaza.
The cycle of retaliation and response was described by Yair Lapid, a well-known Israeli journalist, in the daily Yediot Aharonot.
“The objective of the operation in Gaza is to prevent the Qassam fire,” he wrote. “But the operation in Gaza is causing Qassams to be fired. The Qassam fire will, in turn, bring about the next operation in Gaza, which will lead to the next round of Qassam fire.”
Mr. Lapid continued: “Everyone is playing his role; each side pretends to be the initiator, while well aware in its heart of hearts that it is just as trapped as the other side is.”
On Friday, in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, Israeli rocket fire killed a member of the Hamas military wing and another man who Israel said were part of a rocket squad. Israel also bombed a Hamas police facility in central Gaza.
In the Balata refugee camp, in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli commandos killed Ahmed Muhamad Ibrahim Sanakra, 21, a wanted gunman who was carrying a rifle, Israel said, and arrested four of his associates.
The Israeli decision to close border crossings was another attempt to put pressure on Hamas in Gaza, and at least one United Nations aid shipment was not allowed through on Friday.
The Defense Ministry said that all imports would have to be approved by the defense minister, Ehud Barak, and that they would be limited to “humanitarian supplies” that are judged to be running low, like milk or cooking oil. Israel has already sharply restricted imports to Gaza since the Hamas takeover in June. The closures will probably be reviewed on Sunday in the weekly cabinet meeting.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, said, “This situation in Gaza is dire and the continued closures, in the context of closures since June, only makes the situation of people of Gaza more perilous.”
His agency had been getting in 15 trucks of aid a day until Wednesday, he said, and while it has two months of stocks in Gaza, aid recipients still need fresh food to supplement the aid. He said Israel should broaden its definition of “humanitarian imports” to include schoolbooks, cement for needed health projects and chlorine for water purification.
Separately, a study of the psychological impact of the rockets has found a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder in Sderot, said Dr. Rony Berger of the Natal Trauma Center.
In a survey of more than 500 adults in Sderot and an Israeli town of similar size, Ofakim, the study found that 28.4 percent of those in Sderot had the disorder, compared with 5.2 percent in Ofakim. The disorder means “functional impairment” and not just symptoms, Dr. Berger said in a telephone interview.
Some 44.9 percent of Sderot residents reported persistent symptoms of post-traumatic stress, including an inability to sleep or concentrate, depression and anxiety, but without functional impairment, compared with 16.3 percent in Ofakim. New immigrants to Sderot have twice the frequency of symptoms compared with those born in Israel, who have become “more habituated to this kind of security pressure,” he said.
In Sderot, 91.9 percent said that a rocket had fallen on their street or an adjacent one, 55.8 percent have had their homes hit by a Qassam or by shrapnel, and 48.4 percent said they knew someone killed by a Qassam. Thirteen Israelis, including eight from Sderot, have been killed by the rockets since 2001.
Dr. Berger and his colleagues treat families as a whole, he said. “It’s better to work with families, because those who learn ‘active coping’ are more resilient,” he said. “If they know what to do between alerts, whether it’s effective protection or not, they are better off than those who panic. It’s the helplessness that damages as much as the fear.”
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza City."
