"Shelling of Gaza coast injures four Palestinians
ISRAEL’S ROUTINE shelling of the Gaza coast was heavier and louder than usual yesterday. It began at precisely 7.35am and ended at 9.25am. Four Palestinians were wounded – two little girls (4 and 5), a boy of 15 who was shot in the head, and a man.
Another boy (8) was also shot in the head by a sniper when he was playing near his house close to the land border with Israel. He is in a coma, on life support and under heavy sedation....
Specialists and nursing staff are sorely needed while the store of medicines is sufficient for now. Windows blown out by Israeli bombing of a nearby mosque have not been replaced because there is no panes of glass in Gaza. Plastic sheeting is used.
Once the shelling stopped, the streets began to fill with traffic and shops opened. Petrol pumps had fuel of all types for cars but there is no butagas for cooking. “The Israelis dump bruised fruits and vegetables on our markets,” stated one woman.
Much of Gaza’s once-rich agricultural sector has been flattened or bulldozed. Tanks churned up the potato fields in the north just as the plants had begun to sprout, while the olive groves in the devastated Zeitoun area have been uprooted by bulldozers. Instead of fresh blooms, flower shops display silk and plastic substitutes in garish colours. Once upon a time, Gaza exported roses and strawberries to Europe in this season.
There are no street barrows heaped with strawberries in these days of war and hunger. Half of Gaza’s 1.5 million citizens are children under 15, and 45 per cent are undernourished. As the sun warmed this white city of half a million traumatised and fearful souls, John Holmes, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, spoke to the press in the battered compound housing a number of UN agencies.
He stepped over chunks of plaster and concrete, wooden boards and shattered glass to survey one of the offices. The compound took collateral damage from three rockets fired by an Israeli F-16 when it bombed the neighbouring mansion where the British governor lived in colonial times. Eight white UN cars were either destroyed or severely damaged.
The elegant mansion had been used by the Palestinian Authority as a guest house. Former US president Bill Clinton and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan stayed there, Mr Holmes said.... Mr Holmes said: “I had expected things to be bad, I had expected to see a lot of destruction. What I saw was actually more shocking than I expected, both in its extent and in its nature.”
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Mr Holmes also said that the UN recognises that the people of Gaza “want to see accountability for what has happened and that will be part of our discussions as well”.
And it is NOT ONLY THEM!! I'm AMERICAN and I WANT WAR CRIMES TRIALS!!!!!!!!
“Accountability” is the new UN buzzword. It has never been mentioned in connection with previous violent events that have been inflicted on Gaza....
That's because ISRAEL has never come under such pressure from the people for its ABOMINABLE ATROCITIES and WAR CRIMES in PALESTINE these last 60 years!!!
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"Israeli forces arrest seven children in West Bank
Seven children from Toura al-Gharbeiah village (near the West Bank city of Jenin) were arrested on Tuesday by the Israeli authorities; they are currently detained in Salim detention and interrogation center, in the northern West Bank. Two of the children are only 12 years old; two are 13; another two are aged 15; and the seventh is 17....
At the end of December 2008, there were 342 Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons and detention/interrogation centers, including seven girls, and five administrative detainees. The December 2008 figures reveal the highest reported numbers of child detainees in 2008. In addition, on 17 January, DCI-Palestine issued a statement expressing concern that numbers of children arrested by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank has doubled in the first two weeks of January.
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