NOVANEWS

Anesthesiologists in Gaza Hospitals confirmed that a nitrous oxide canister, bought from IsraHell, contained carbon monoxide and was used mistakenly. 

Gaza minister of health, Mufeed Mukhallalati, says medics at al-Shifa Hospital had an “unprecedented case, which almost killed several patients at the Hospital’s main operation room.”

He added that anesthesiologists noticed that the patients’ reaction to the anesthetic gas was very dangerous. Four patients suffered severe cardiac arrest, but medics managed to save the patients’ lives.

“We decided to stop all surgeries as a precaution,” he said.

The minister added that a special committee was appointed to probe the case. Initial findings show that gas in the canister used for anesthetisation was carbon monoxide instead of nitrous oxide. Carbon Monoxide is toxic to humans.

“In Gaza, we are not allowed to produce nitrous dioxide or import it except via Israel, so we are investigating how the anesthetic gas was replaced with carbon monoxide,” al-Mukhallalati said.

By: Lauren Booth Publication; OnIslam.net

It’s been exactly a year since I was last in Gaza.

In that time another terrible attack has been unleashed by the Israeli military and government on the trapped Palestinian populace.

On my previous visit, months after Egyptians elected the Muslim Brotherhood to power, there was little sign to the visitor of any real easing of the punitive behavior of officials at the Rafah crossing, towards Palestinians, wishing to travel to and from their homeland.

What changes would I see this time?

The team I work with at Peace 2012 stack our boxes of stationary and children’s toys onto trolleys at the dreaded crossing. ‘Dreaded’ because it has for decades been a symbol of the Mubarak regime’s ruthless willingness to carry out the dirty job of persecuting Palestinians at the behest of the Israeli government.

I remember feeling dumbfounded on my first visit to Gaza in 2006.

On hearing Gazan’s mutter bitterly that it was ‘better’ to fall into the hands of the Israeli soldiers, than Mubarak’s boot boys. ’You expect things from your enemy but the violence of your brothers – this hurts in another way’ I heard many times.

Outside the Egyptian terminal, the same anarchy as always – a sea of clawing hands grabbing at our cases and boxes. Not to help us, certainly not! The hands here hijack your bags, walk them a hundred paces then menace you into paying as much as 60 US dollars, forcing a loud, near violent exchange, before we give up shouting and empty our wallets – of much much less! Same old, same old!

Instead of a mocking faux interrogation (as in years gone by), today, all is tea and coffee pleasantness. Assurances are given that Palestine is at the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.

I am hoarse with shouting; ‘this is NOT Islam’ to the bemused, couldn’t-care-less, muggers.

In 2008, I joined the 1.8m Gazans experiencing the realities of the siege, when I was refused exit via Egypt or Israel for a month. I visited Rafah some six times trying to gain freedom, to return to my young children in France. Each time I was mockingly refused by the Mubarak team in the offices.

Today, something strange… After our thirteen assorted packages pass through the security scanner, our Palestinian co-worker, Yasser, walks briskly over and says ‘the officials want to see us all in the office, sister.’

‘Here we go,’ I unconsciously reach towards my bag for my copy of ‘Fortress of the Muslim’ for prayers to recite asking Allah to grant calmness and patience.

Inside the office sit the same man and the woman I faced in 2008 during Mubarak’s reign.

‘La Illaha IlAllah’ I whisper under my breath.

Instead of a mocking faux interrogation (as in years gone by), today, all is tea and coffee pleasantness. Assurances are given that Palestine is at the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.

And, with no hassle at all we reach the final passport and visa ‘check.’ I feel faint, with gratitude to Allah. Not for myself and my own momentary discomforts this border, but for the thousands and thousands of Palestinians whose entry to return from the rest of the world may (may) now become near to what passes for normal in Egypt.

No more sitting on cases with sobbing, thirsty, children for 18 hours. No more hospitalizations from heat stroke in stalled buses. No more mocking loathing from the officials at Rafah – can it be?

Hard politics on the ground in Cairo is beginning to force hearts to soften in some old regime hot spots. Benefits are beginning to be felt.

Through the Dusty….

All I can focus on is the peaceful, rustic beauty of the sea and the humble villages.

Other changes are easy to see as we travel towards Gaza city through the dusty, bustle of Rafah. It is early evening and what passes for rush hour. Donkeys and carts and lads on speedy Chinese motorbikes trot along or throttle past.

We move at a leisurely speed through Khan Younis, along the blue rimmed coastline. ‘Unspoiled’ a travel agent could optimistically describe the make shift huts of retrieved wood and giant palm leaves on the empty beaches. ‘Undeveloped’ a real estate agent would shudder, more accurately.

Gone are last year’s fuel queues which stretched for miles from every available pump as the supply of gas from Egypt simply dried up. But gone too are many of the family cars. Automobiles are expensive to run here and costly to mend properly. Parts come through the few remaining tunnels and although available are marked up with the ‘bak shish’ (tips) demanded by professional smugglers the world over.

Tonight all I can focus on is the peaceful, rustic beauty of the sea and the humble villages.

Gaza casts her gentle charms around me.

The next morning, I wake up in brother Yasser’s house to find that he, his wife and baby asleep on sofa cushions on the floor, having given their bed up for visitors.

In the children’s room his five girls aged from 15 to five years old are asleep with the light on. It is a bright energy saver bulb and in the dawn light blinds me. How do the girls sleep with that on, I wonder? They are also still in their clothes from the night before. I put this down to the hard-days travel we had just endured and a very late night packing gift boxes for poor children.

Before breakfast I shower and grimly note the array of Israeli hair products I will have to use. In the UK we can boycott such things but here…

Over breakfast Amal, the children’s mother, sighed as she opened the milk.

“Israeli’ she said pointing to the lettering on the front. The Israeli Occupation government has since its creation, assured itself of a captive consumer base – literally.

With strategic trade borders under occupation control, importing goods in a regular, structured way has proved difficult to impossible for the Palestinians in Gaza.

The famous painter Layla Shawa, once told me, how she remembered the ruthless and deliberate way the Occupation forces had time and again targeted Gazan orange groves – razing them to the ground – during her youth in the fifties and sixties.

Today, the luscious crop is enough for locals only with export having long ago failed. Meanwhile Jaffa oranges, from the famous Palestinian village occupied by Jewish terrorists in 1948, is now an internationally recognized brand worth billions.

Milk

Milk from Al Khalil, Hebron, is for six Shekels. That’s a 50 per cent mark up on every carton for the Occupation economy.

Milk is the staple that mothers here give their numerous children every morning in a traditional attempt to nourish bones and help them grow. Also, as far as I see it is the only drink during the day, that children, rich or poor, receive, which is not sugar laden (more of that later.)

Amal brought me another identical carton of milk ‘Falistini’; she smiled proudly. Same packaging, same product – different producers… Yet milk from Israel is far more prevalent in Gaza due to the siege which stops ease of inter Palestinian trade. And what about the costs, the same surely? No. Israeli milk costs nine Shekels here per carton.

Milk from Al Khalil, Hebron, is for six Shekels. That’s a 50 per cent mark up on every carton for the Occupation economy. Sweet, easy, business…

Coca Or Pepsi

We move, move, move, back and forth across Gaza, trying to see as much as possible whilst we are here. Stopping to visit families benefitting from our projects in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahial; every impoverished, blast-pounded family has certain similarities.

One of the most instantly visible problems is health and diet. Particularly worrying is the prevalence of fizzy drinks and sodas that have crept, like a silent cancer, into the households of the already minerally malnourished.

Every cement bare room we enter, Coca Cola or Pepsi, is glued to the hands of the barefoot children. There is no lower age limit for these liquid time bombs… Babies, barely 18 months old, sip cola to the ‘Aww! Isn’t that cute’ sad-smiles of the mothers.

These tins of sugar death are seen as the children’s only ‘treat.’

This is not a problem (as in the West) of lackadaisical parenting, however. It’s another major symptom of the rapid decimation of the traditional, diet, of Gazans.

In 1948, tens of thousands of refugees from Palestinian lands were forced into the tiny Gaza strip as a result of Jewish terrorism.

Almost overnight the natural abundance of fruit and vegetables produced by this majority farming community became a shortage. The population leapt as a result of internally displaced refugees from around 60,000 in early 1948, to some 200,000 a matter of months later.

To add to this demographic Nakba (catastrophe), in 1970 the Israeli government gave the go-ahead for the renewal of a defunct Jewish colony right at the heart of Gaza, called Kafr Darom. This was the forerunner to the infamous Gush Katif settlement- the first of many ‘Israeli’ agricultural vulture projects in the Gaza area.

This major colonization controlled prime Gazan land, the area’s main aquifers, and approximately one-third of the total Gaza coastline. Thus vegetable produce, herb growth, farming and fishing were badly reduced for the Palestinian populace. The best production was stolen for the Jewish-only community and exported.

In 2004, just months before the infamous colony was removed, the agricultural production of Gush Katif represented some 10% of all agricultural production raised in ‘Israel’, plus 65% of its organic export industry; 45% of tomato exports and 95% of Israel’s cherry tomato exports.

Total annual revenues for the occupation of this colony alone, were around $60-70 million, revenue that belonged to the people of Palestine but, like a healthy diet was denied them.

Citrus fruits, olives, almonds, vegetables, strawberries, flowers and field crops were traditionally the most successful here.

However, nowadays, the agricultural sector encounters a plethora of destructive factors. During my visit, Palestinian farmers in Gaza, regretfully, set fire to three tons of herbs, set aside for export to Europe. Due to yet another prolonged closure of the crossing into Israel, (over which they have no say whatsoever), the produce is burned.

Source: http://www.onislam.net/english/family/muslims-4-humanity/462693-from-egypt-to-gaza-the-gate-and-the-key.html

The Ministry of Interior’s media office in Gaza issued an official apology on its Facebook page for the “rough” police behavior on the demonstrators and journalists, pledging to open an investigation into the incident and punish those involved in the crackdown.

The Ministry of Interior’s spokesman Islam Shahwan, local news agencies reported, visited the site of the dispersed rally and to the police station where the journalists were detained and verbally apologized for what happened, saying the ministry is stepping up its investigation to ensure justice for the victims and freedom of journalism.

In addition, Ihab al-Ghussein, director of the Hamas-run government press office, condemned the police suppression of the rally and the attack against journalists covering the PFLP-organized rally. Ghussein stressed that the government in Gaza flatly rejects such behavior including the arrest of journalists while doing their work.

Meanwhile, Maan News Agency reported that human rights groups in Gaza — such as the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations and the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms — denounced the use of force by police and the attack on the basic freedoms of the demonstrators and their right to freedom of assembly and expression. They also called for opening a serious investigation and inflicting proper punishment on those who committed the violations against the demonstrators.

While the reaction of human rights groups to the police crackdown was notably strong, the response by journalists to the incident and the government’s apology was even stronger.

Samir Zakout from Al Mezan Center for Human Rights explained that the journalists’ response to the police violence was “different” and “unprecedented,” which is a positive indicator that the government will not have free hands attacking personal freedoms and exercising oppression as it wishes. In fact, victims of human rights violations, he added, are starting to speak up and take action against the government and police repression.

“While we have become used to these kinds of violations taking place and an apology to be issued by the government in the wake of such incidents, the journalists’ response was clearly stronger than before,” Zakout told Al-Monitor.

“The journalists for the first time have rejected the government’s apology. They called for more concrete steps to be taken. They asked for an immediate and serious investigation to be opened and for its results to be published. They asked for real punishment for the police members who were involved in the crackdown. Moreover, they organized two rallies in protest of the police oppression, one on the same day and the other coinciding with [Yusuf al-]Qaradawi’s visit to the Gaza Strip, which they boycotted.”

In order to get their reaction to the government’s apology, Al-Monitor reached and interviewed some of the journalists who were attacked and detained in the incident.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Sharif al-Neirab, member of the Palestinian journalists’ syndicate, dismissed the government’s apology and its “overused” claim that this incident is an “individual incident” that does not represent the overall police behavior in Gaza.

“We’ve become used to the government coming out with such unconvincing claims that this was done outside the system. This will no longer be accepted since such police behavior has been repeated several times over the course of the past years,” Neirab said.

He explained that the journalists are becoming “bold in challenging and speaking up against government oppression and its intimidation policies.” The government, he pointed out, has never made good on its promises to open investigations in the wake of similar incidents as they do not publish the results of the investigation and present them to the public. “This leaves no doubt,” he concluded, “that the police oppression is rather a policy, not an individual behavior or mistake.”

Similarly, Mamhoud Abu Taha, one of the five journalists arrested in the incident, reiterated the same view.

According to Abu Taha, who is a cameraman at the Palestine Today satellite TV channel, the government in Gaza is directly responsible for all forms of police repression.

“The policemen surely have certain instructions on how to deal with journalists, and it has become characteristic of them to use brute force and repression against citizens. Never have the investigation results been published which demonstrates that this is a government policy, and the decision [to use force and disperse the rally] was made by the government,” Abu Taha argued.

Ahmad Ghanem, correspondent of the Al-Mayadeen satellite TV channel, contended that the Hamas government only provides excuses for more police repression and attacks against journalists by “blaming similar incidents on individual behavior while at the same time never bringing those responsible to justice.”

“We’ve been beaten for carrying our cameras,” Ghanem said. “The government continues with its farcical apology policy and gives lame excuses to this horrible attack on journalists. We’ve condemned this, spoken up and took action against it, but this is not going to stop them [the police] from doing it again,” the Al-Mayadeen correspondent told Al-Monitor.

According to Ghanem, although the journalists’ response was clearly different and stronger this time, it is not sufficient and, on its own, will not put an end to the ongoing attacks on journalists and freedom of the press in Gaza. The government’s policy of dealing with journalists, he contends, will not change, and, in fact, the “Hamas [government] will escalate its attacks because it gives impunity to itself, its police and its members.”

The War Crimes court prosecutor is obliged to open probe after complaint from the tiny African state of Comoros, to which the Mavi Marmara vessel Israel raided in 2010 was registered. Few preliminary examinations lead to full investigation, let alone trial.

Haaretz

The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said on Tuesday she would open a preliminary examination into the events surrounding the 2010 Israel Navy raid on a Turkish-flagged aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip.

Nine Turkish citizens died during the raid on the Mavi Marmara vessel, part of a flotilla which set out from Turkey to the Gaza. The International Criminal Court is the permanent war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement she was obliged to open a preliminary examination following a referral from the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros, to which the Mavi Marmara was registered. Few preliminary examinations ever lead to a full investigation, let alone a trial.

The tiny African state of Comoros, a member of the court, though Israel is not. The Mavi Marmari was registered in Comoros, an archipelago off the African coast near Madagascar with a population of around 800,000.

As required by the court’s rules when a member state complains , “My office will be conducting a preliminary examination in order to establish whether the criteria for opening an investigation are met,” she said in response to the referral, which was transmitted by a Turkish law firm. Bensouda said she met Tuesday with lawyers from a Turkish law firm that is representing Comoros.

“After careful analysis of all available information, I shall make a determination that will be made public in due course.”

Previous attempts to engage prosecutors in an investigation of Israel have stalled due to lack of jurisdiction. The ICC has jurisdiction over its members, over cases that are referred to it by the UN Security Council and over events that take place on the territory of member states.

In a filing, lawyers from the Istanbul-based law firm Elmadag argued that events that took place on the Mavi Marmari should be considered as having occurred on the territory of Comoros.

The court, which is not part of the United Nations, relies on assistance from member states and other governments to enforce its rulings. The United States, Russia and China are not members, but 122 other countries are.

Sudan, despite being a member, has refused to arrest its president, Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court’s arrest warrant against al-Bashir has been opposed by the African Union and League of Arab States, among others.

Relations between Turkey and Israel were badly strained by the Gaza flotilla incident. The two have since taken some steps toward a rapprochement. Israel offered an apology and compensation, and the Turkish and Israeli leaders agreed to try to normalize their relationship.

Earlier this month, a second round of reconciliation talks between Israel and Turkey took place in Jerusalem, after which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau announced that a draft agreement had been formulated “but a number of clarifications are needed on a few issues.”

These issues include payment of compensation to the families of the victims of the flotilla raid.

The negotiations for reconciliation between the two former allies began in April, exactly a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and apologized for the fatal raid.

A number of Israeli tanks and bulldozers infiltrated into Palestinian-owned lands in the town of Beit Hanoun on Monday.

The Israeli forces also entered Beit Hanoun last week, razing Palestinian farmlands and forcing the farmers to leave the area.

Israel has carried out a number of incursions into Gaza in the past weeks, including three airstrikes on the southern town of Khan Younis and near the town of Rafah in southern Gaza in late April.

The attacks are in violation of a ceasefire which brought an end to Israel’s eight-day war against Palestinians last November.

According to Israeli Walla website, the Israeli army is preparing to launch Operation Pillar of Defense II against the Gaza Strip in a bid to eliminate Hamas resistance movement.

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine has also warned against an imminent Israeli attack against the besieged coastal enclave.

The group’s military wing, Al-Quds Brigades, has been holding military exercises in order to prepare its members for a possible Israeli aggression, the movement said.

Israel launched the so-called Operation Pillar of Defense I against Gaza in November 2012. Over 160 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed and about 1,200 others were injured and more than 1,500 targets were hit across the Palestinian enclave during the eight-day war.

In retaliation, Palestinian resistance fighters fired rockets and missiles into Israeli cities, killing at least five Israelis. The offensive ended after Egypt brokered a truce between Hamas and Israel.

According to a Hamas spokesman, Israel’s eight-day aggression against the Gaza Strip caused more than USD 1.2 billion in direct and indirect damages.