“The rubble from our house is still there,” says Gaza-based writer, editor and educator Refaat Alareer, in a recent interview with The Electronic Intifada. His home was destroyed and his brother Mohammed was killed along with 25 extended family members in Israeli attacks.
“We’ve been through one of the toughest years ever as Palestinians,” he adds. “We lived through the first intifada, the curfews, the daily shootings and the horrors of the second intifada. Miraculously, some of us survived the three wars — but the year that followed, to me, to my family members, to me, to so many people I know, has been the toughest because it’s been a slow death.”
“We’re being killed slowly by the siege imposed mainly by Israel — and with the complicity of the international community,” Alareer explains.
The Electronic Intifada also spoke with contributor Charlotte Silver, who recently returned from Gaza. She says she saw “a very different place than I ever could have imagined.”
“You feel — in people’s energy, sitting at a table, walking around — the restlessness and the confinement that they’re in,” she explains. “Gaza is a tiny place. You can’t go anywhere that takes longer than 20 minutes. And there’s an entire population made up of mostly young people who can’t look into their future without seeing these small parameters, these small borders.”
The Israeli military hit the Gaza Strip with airstrikes overnight, injuring one Palestinian, reports said on Friday.
Warplanes targeted a military base in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, moderately wounding one, Al Jazeera quoted medical sources as saying.
An open field in Beit Hanoun and a military site in the Zeitoun neighbourhood east of Gaza City were also struck, the news website said.
Israeli warplanes strike Gaza following rocket fire
Director of the Jerusalem Centre for Israeli Studies Alaa Al-Rimawi slammed the Israeli Security Cabinet’s decisions against Palestinian stone throwers saying they give a licence for Israeli soldiers to execute Palestinian children.
‘Israeli laws against stone throwers are a licence to kill them’
And in other news, throwing stones will now be a death sentence, fucking cunts.
Red Crescent: Nearly 500 Palestinians injured in 3 days
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- At least 499 Palestinians have been injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers across the occupied Palestinian Territory since Saturday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Monday.
Red Crescent spokesperson Errab Foqoha told Ma'an that at least 41 Palestinians had been shot with live rounds, while 143 were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets.
Some 297 Palestinians had suffered excessive tear gas inhalation, she said, while another 18 were injured when they were physically assaulted.
Israeli forces have also killed two Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, in the fierce clashes that have swept across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since Friday.
The Palestinian Red Cross on Sunday declared a state of emergency across the occupied Palestinian territory, and said it was putting all its staff, teams and volunteers on standby.
It decried Israeli "violations" of humanitarian law, and called on the international community to take the "necessary steps" to make Israel comply with international law.
Tensions had been steadily mounting in recent weeks due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinians seeking to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.
However, it was violent Israeli reprisals that were carried out in the wake of two separate attacks that killed four Israelis last week, that prompted the latest clashes.
There have been warning in Israeli media of a "third intifada," with Israeli daily Haaretz writing: "Perhaps it will take just one more death, on either side, for all hell to break loose in a cycle of vicious retribution."
However, the newspaper also noted that "the extent of current violence doesn't come close to that which took place in 1987 and 2000, when the previous two intifadas broke out."
On Sunday, the PLO warned that attacks by both Israeli soldiers and settlers indicated "the Israeli government is deliberately creating a situation of violence and instability that threatens to spiral out of control."
Red Crescent: Nearly 500 Palestinians injured in 3 days
if the zionist entity not already unpopular it is not for their want of tryingThat has the potential to produce one photo of a dead child that will make the State of Israel very, very unpopular.
So one thing we can be sure of: more dead photographers
Very graphic video evidence of Israeli tactics...
Video: Israel plants armed "stone throwers" among Palestinian protestors
A friend of mine has just gone out there, to help with the olive harvest. Worrying timing.
@syndicalisms
Ministry of Health now says 6 Palestinians have been killed and 64 injured by Israeli forces at #Gaza border.
A friend of mine has just gone out there, to help with the olive harvest. Worrying timing.
Attempted kidnap of yet another Palestinian child.
not to mention the terrorist camps aka zionist settlementsWhat gets me the most - hardly any of the nastiness in Palestine is reported, and it's always a terrorist action when it is.
A girl was murdered at the border a week or so back, the Israeli gunmen (IDF bastards) claiming she attacked them with a knife.
They neglected to show any knife in any photos, nor did they mention she was on the other side of a fence from her 'victims', none of whom got so much as a scratch, but they felt the need to open fire several times, killing a young girl.
not to mention the terrorist camps aka zionist settlements
Yet more children executed today.
I wish I had the money to arm the Palestinians.