The Days of Penitence: Gaza sinks in
a sea of blood
By Mohammed Omer
Jabalya, Gaza, Oct. 17 – It smells unbelievably bad here.
To walk down any street — if you dare to — you skirt, or sometimes
unavoidably walk through, pools of blood. There are shreds of human
flesh — some of them unrecognizable as human remains — all
over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street. The stench
of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burnt to black
char by the rockets fired by the Israeli Army’s American-made Apache
helicopters.
The sky is full of black smoke, some from the rocket explosions, but
even more, it sometimes seems, from the endless fires of tires and other
debris that people keep stoking. The smoke confuses the heat-seeking
unmanned drone surveillance planes, so setting fires in any relatively
open area may draw fire and let a bomb explode somewhat harmlessly.
All this smoke mixed with plaster and cement dust is a blessing and
a curse.
The stench of burning flesh and rotting blood masks to some extent the
smell of raw sewage from broken sewer pipes and the tens of thousands
of bodies unwashed for over a week now. Water to drink is a rare and
precious commodity here — baths and showers have become impossible
luxuries. Your eyes inevitably tear up from all the smoke — but
then, that protects you a tiny bit from some of the more harrowing sights
— recognizable body parts — a piece of a leg, an obvious part
of a torso, and fingers — more scattered, individual, recognizable
fingers than anyone should ever have to see.
Volunteer crews are gathering these human fragments and bringing them
to Jabalya’s two hospitals but the ambulances cannot possibly keep
up with the flood of newly dead and injured. Funeral processions are
everywhere, and “houses of mourning”—the tents bereaved
families set up in which to receive their families and friends. In fact,
though, every house here, those relatively intact and those partly or
wholly destroyed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) tanks and bulldozers,
is a house of mourning.
And nothing protects you from the sounds — the tears and laments
of the mothers and fathers, husbands, wives and children of the dead,
the screams of the injured, the wail of ambulance sirens, sniper fire,
the thud of tank shells and the too-frequent explosions as another Apache
shell lands. Time is distorted here — hours feel like days, days
like weeks or months. This is Jabalya Refugee Camp in the Northern Gaza
Strip, one of the most crowded places on earth where 106,000 men, women,
and children, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed civilians, have
been under an all-out attack for over a week now.
Israel’s official position is that this carnage is a “response”
to Palestinian militants’ firing a homemade Qassam rocket into
the Israeli town of Sderot last week, a rocket which killed two children.
In fact, though, the first tanks rumbled into Jabalya some hours before
the rocket attack on Sderot, and we had all been watching with alarm
as the Israeli forces multiplied in northern Gaza over the last few
weeks — 2000 fresh troops, over a hundred more tanks and bulldozers.
It is only when I sit down to write up my notes made here in the last
few days that the cruelty of the IDF name for this attack — ”Days
of Penitence” — hits me. They are not just slaughtering unarmed
civilians, but language itself. “Penitence,” as I understand
it, is voluntary remorse for wrong-doing.
Is this massacre supposed to induce remorse in its victims? Are they
supposed to mourn the deaths of four or five Israeli soldiers, and two
Israeli children and accept the death of more than 60 Palestinian civilians
as some kind of justice? To those of us trapped in Jabalya, it seems
like Days of Revenge. It is unquestionably collective punishment, and
illegal under the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps we should not be surprised.
Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has announced this attack
will last “as long as necessary,” that is, until there is
“no further danger” from the Palestinian resistance’s
homemade rockets.
Sharon, of course, engineered the massacres of Sabra and Shatila over
twenty years ago. Now, he is doing much the same, but with vastly improved
weaponry. Of course, the militant factions exist, and have been striking
here and there during this last week but they are vastly outnumbered,
not to mention out-gunned, by the Israelis. Hamas, on its side, has
distributed leaflets in Gaza City vowing to continue the rocket attacks
on the illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and any Israeli towns and
cities their home-made ordnance can reach as long as the Israeli incursions
continue. International protests have been muted, and stymied by United
States support for Israel. The lone, feeble voice from the US State
Department urged Israel to keep its “response” “proportional”
— after, of course, the obligatory mantra, “Israel has a right
to defend itself.”
A strongly worded resolution condemning the attack brought before the
UN at the beginning of the week was defeated by the US veto. It is hard
to maintain accurate casualty figures — the most recent count seems
to be 80 Palestinians killed (20 of them militants claimed by Hamas)
and over 200 injured. Unquestionably, by the time this is printed, the
figures will be higher. There is no refuge anywhere in Jabalya. The
hospitals are chaotic, supplies are short and all medical personnel
have been working around the clock for days now. I saw Abu Nedal, the
father of Nedal Al Madhown a 14 year-old boy, struggle to maintain his
composure as he asked the exhausted doctors and ambulance drivers, “Was
my son killed? Has he been killed?” (In fact, the boy was dead
on arrival.) The majority of the dead and injured have been teens and
children, obvious non-combatants. I interviewed Dr. Mahmoud Al Asali,
the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who told me he was forced to assume
the Israeli Army has been deliberately targeting civilians. He said
most of those injured by gunfire were wounded in the upper parts of
their bodies, indicating the Israeli sharpshooters must have orders
to shoot to kill.
Palestinian doctors have removed many flechettes from the dead and injured,
indicating the IDF are using illegal fragmentation bombs. These release
razor sharp flechettes as they explode. Dr. Al Asali says these illegal
fragmentation devices greatly increase the number of deaths and the
number and severity of injuries. The IDF has refused to comment on this.
The hospital staffs and ambulance crews are so overextended that they
are using volunteers for the gruesome task of collecting, sorting, and
attempting to match scattered human remains to return as much as possible
to bereaved families. One of these medical workers, Ahmed Abu Saall,
26, from Kamal Aswan Hospital, told me, “One enormous difficulty
we face is that these powerful bombs can scatter the parts of a single
victim over a wide area. It is quite possible parts of a person could
end up in Al Awda hospital in the east of the camp, while other parts
of the same person end up with us here on the western side.” Sometimes
shreds of clothing can help with the matching. The Israeli Army has
frequently shot at the medical teams and journalists.
So far, two ambulance drivers have been injured, and a cameraman from
Ramatan News Agency has been hurt. Of course, the ambulance crews and
press all wear identifying gear. Israel has closed all borders into
Gaza and has severely restricted all movement within the Gaza Strip.
There are three major “zones” split off by sealed military
checkpoints, but recent days have seen numerous new checkpoints, and
roads closed by cement block and sand obstructions. People cannot move
between cities, not even ambulances bringing patients to hospitals.
Moreover, the main Israel-Gaza crossing is closed, even to international
NGOs, humanitarian relief groups, and foreign journalists. Intense as
the military attack has been, and continues to be, it is certainly not
the only danger to the people here. Many families now have been without
food and water for days. In Tal Al Zattar, the eastern part of Jabalya,
I interviewed Umm Ramzi, an elderly lady who spoke to me through the
gaping hole a tank shell had left in her house. “We have been appealing
to the Red Cross, to save our lives and the lives of our children, but
nobody has responded.” Most of the NGO workers and relief organizations
have — logically enough — assumed they cannot get through
the Israeli military lines that completely surround Jabalya, although
they are well aware that the civilians need help.
I managed to reach the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
spokesman Simon Schorno by phone and he told me: “I’m on my
way to Gaza now. We have been talking to the IDF to get permission to
bring food and water, but we were not able to get an OK for complete
food distribution”. Concerning the absence of the Red Cross in
the past few days when many families were in urgent need, Mr. Schorno
said, “I feel terrible. We are trying to do our best to get food
and water inside, but the damaged streets also delay us from reaching
the people.” A number of eyewitnesses among the camp residents
told me the Israeli Army has commandeered several high buildings as
sniper posts and basically shoot anything that moves. One of the most
recent victims was Islam Dweidar, 14, who took a chance during an apparent
lull in firing to buy bread for her mother.
However, she was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. In the Southern
part of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army has increased the number of
tanks and bulldozers in all parts of Khan Younis and Rafah. There has
been shelling every night, with many injured and killed. This morning,
I spoke by phone to Dr. Ali Mussa, director of Abu Yousif Al Najjar
Hospital in Rafah who announced that 13-year-old Eman al Hums had been
killed by Israeli sniper fire. He said, “the child arrived at the
hospital after being riddled by twenty bullets in different parts of
her body, five of them in her head.” Palestinian eyewitnesses reported
that Al Hums was killed while on her way to school with two other schoolgirls.
In early media reports, the IDF said she was planting a bomb; they later
were forced to admit the accusation was false.
These current attacks are now far worse than the so-called “Operation
Rainbow” of last May, which killed 40 in Rafah and prompted an
international outcry. Now, the silence from America, in particular,
seems to condone this turning the Gaza Strip into a killing field. Sharon
has picked his moment well, when America is preoccupied with its presidential
campaign and its invasion of Iraq, to decimate the children of Gaza.
How many more must die before the world speaks out?
Source: Indymedia
