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Palestine/Israel

Rest In Peace

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Category: Palestine/Israel

Gaza War Cemetery 

The Palestinian gardeners trim the immaculate lawns. Blood red Bourgainvilleas climb the limestone walls. The British are good at death. My eye through the camera focuses on many of about three and a half thousand gravestones caught by the name, the unit or the inscription chosen by the family. 3,217 of these fell in WW1 and were joined by 210 brothers and sisters from round the pink world in WW11. The family of Private Alfred Crittle, Royal West Kent Regt 19th April 1917 said ‘to see his face, to hear his voice, what would we give’.

Alongside lies Rifleman Norman Victor Crouch 8th Battn. Hampshire Regt and his folk chose ‘faithful until death’. They later receive this as do all the next of kin:- ‘He whom this scroll commemorates was numbered among those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, by giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom.

Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten’

He took his last breath during the Third Battle of Gaza on the 2nd of November 1917 as did at least another two hundred men and women on that same day.

Summer Rains and Saad

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Category: Palestine/Israel

Gaza - Autumn 2006 --- The thin and limpid crescent lies on its back in a clear sky. If it does not reappear tomorrow then Ramadan will end. A 'drone' can be heard above the amplified recitations of the Quran, but it cannot be seen.

 

On the third floor of the battered and very busy Shifa hospital here in Gaza city lies a 9 yr old boy in his fourth month of recovery. Saad is a sad and frightened boy. He has lost all the muscle from the front of his left thigh. The shape of his femur can be seen in its entirety beneath the skilful skin grafting. There is just a twitch of motion in the foot. Most parts of his young body are scarred. There are many of punctate type, including on his face. There is a colostomy which will probably be permanent because his bowels were badly damaged. The tracheostomy has healed, and the pleural fistula is well on that way.

Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza And Lebanon?

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Category: Palestine/Israel
Gulf News reported a claim by Dr Al Saqqa, Head of the Emergency Unit of El Shifa Hospital, Gaza on 7-07-06 that the Israeli Occupation Force was using a new 'chemical' weapon.

He has worked at El Shifa for ten years. He had noted that two hundred and more casualties of Summer Rain (sic) had unusual wounds. These numbers included about fifty children. Later evidence from Dr Al Saqqa described surface wounds as having the general appearance of those due to 'shrapnel' – fragments from shell, missile or bomb casings – but no fragments were to be seen on Xray. There were usually entry and exit wounds. When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. It is vital, especially with deep wounds, to excise all dead tissue. A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality.

How present conflict started - explains Nobel Prize winner

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Category: Palestine/Israel
This letter is written and signed by Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, Jose Saramago, Noam Chomsky and John Berger, it has been forwarded to major newspapers.

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails .

The Palestinian Catastrophe, Then and Now

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Category: Palestine/Israel
On the story we almost never hear about—the Palestinian one—and an anniversary few of us have ever considered

By Sandy Tolan

07/11/06 "Mother Jones" -- -- Under the pretext of forcing the release of a single soldier "kidnapped by terrorists" (or, if you prefer, "captured by the resistance"), Israel has done the following: seized members of a democratically elected government; bombed its interior ministry, the prime minister's offices, and a school; threatened another sovereign state (Syria) with a menacing overflight; dropped leaflets from the air, warning of harm to the civilian population if it does not "follow all orders of the IDF" (Israel Defense Forces); loosed nocturnal "sound bombs" under orders from the Israeli prime minister to "make sure no one sleeps at night in Gaza"; fired missiles into residential areas, killing children; and demolished a power station that was the sole generator of electricity and running water for hundreds of thousands of Gazans.