In this part of the world so called Gaza Strip in Dec 27, 2008 Israel staged a war on the Palestinian people living there. According to the Palestinian Center For Human Rights…

(PCHR) In 22 days of non–stop Israeli heavy fire against Gaza, Israel killed 1,285 Palestinians and seriously injured 4,336 others most of them were civilians. The armless people of Gaza except for a few groups of men armed with light guns were attacked by Israel’s F16 war planes, Apatche helicopters, Merkava tanks, and battleships. Human rights organizations and medical reports indicate that Israel, during its military operation in Gaza, experimented new internationally banned bombs against the Gaza people like white phosphorous and DIME bombs which cause severe burns and mutilation if not death when used against people. “We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” said David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who has visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans.

The Israeli troops escorted by tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers covered by warplanes invaded the 360 km coastal strip of Gaza from the south, the east and the north, committed mass murders and pounded Gaza’s police stations, mosques, schools, houses, hospitals, ministries, factories, charitable societies and wedding halls with tons of explosives from the air and the ground causing them complete or partial destruction. Some houses were booby-trapped and detonated. The smaller ones were run over by the tanks and the bulldozers to be flattened with the ground. The power lines and the water networks were grossly damaged as well and thus 80 % of the population in Gaza were deprived of water and electricity during the war. The Israeli bulldozers as well razed thousands of dunums of agricultural land worth of 170 million US dollars, said the minister of Agriculture Mohammed Al-Agha in Gaza government. The destruction the Israeli army caused is beyond belief that one would think an earthquake has hit Gaza, He added.

In a weekly report released 3 days after the Israeli offensive put its end PCHR pointed out that 895 out of 1,285 of the Palestinians killed during the war were civilians and 43 % of the civilian victims were women and children despite Israeli allegations that the Israeli army would only target the fighters. The Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza killed 3 Israeli civilians.

Suad Al-Samouni, an eight year old girl and one of the survivors of a mass murder the Israeli soldiers committed to her family in Al-Zaytoon neighborhood to the east of Gaza Strip two days after the Israeli ground offensive began. Trying to visualize her father when an Israeli soldier shot him dead before her eyes. She said, we were eating bread with tea in the morning when the Israeli soldiers broke into our house and asked where the owner of the house was. At this point Saud put her hands up and said my father walked out with his hands up and the Israeli soldier shot him two bullets in his chest. Saud’s mother who sit next to her in a tent set up next to their completely destroyed house said, then they took the rest of us out and crushed us in a nearby house along with 120 other family members where they bombed us with tanks fire and 28 of us were killed immediately as we were escaping the house. Saud was luckily removed alive yet hardly breathing from under the debris of the house four days after the attack. Saud has got 11 brothers and sisters, they have been left without a supporter after their father’s death.

With his eyes brimming over with tears over his lost son Hisham. Abu Ahmed Sinan, a 60 year old man, from Japalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza Strip sit on the ground of his unfurnished small house except for a few mattresses. He wiped away his tears with his right hand and said, we were reading some Quran downstairs when a missile hit the top of the house. We rushed inside the house, went upstairs to check if any thing was damaged to be hit by another missile. We looked around and found Hisham laying on the ground breathless. Hisham was 23 and he was the only supporter of his family. He worked in the maintenance department of Al-Shifa hospital under a 6 month temporary contract.

Not far away from Abu Ahmed’s house laid on the ground what was a 4 story house with 8 apartments where Yousef Al-Abed Mostafa’ 35 sons and grandsons lived. The house was bombed by F 16 warplane two weeks after the Israeli military operation started. Luckily non of the family members was killed or injured in the attack because they all left the house soon after a warning rocket was dropped on the house. Yousef, a 62 year old man, stood in front of his completely destroyed house with a shaky body and hands said loudly and proudly, they destroyed my house because I belong to Hamas, we are all for Hamas and we are all Hamas. The Jews will bombs us more to make us bow to them but we won’t bow. He added. A crowd of people around him cheered and applauded.

Israel’s use of excessive military power and mass killing in the invaded areas forced thousands of families to leave their homes and seek shelter in the UN schools spread in the Gaza Strip. The scene of the people fleeing in large groups to the UN schools with whatever they could hold of their belongings was a vivid reminder of the 1948 war when the Israeli armed gangs committed massacres against the Palestinians in their villages and towns to terrify them away.

With the Israeli unilateral declaration of its offensive on Gaza on 19 Jan, 2009. Thousands of people were able to go back to their homes and groves in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya to find them not more than piles of rubble spread out on the ground. Mr Ibrahim Ridwan, the secretary of the ministry of labor in Gaza Government pointed out to Al-Jazeera news channel that the Israeli occupation forces completely destroyed 20 thousand housing units turning 5 thousand families homeless. On 1 km wide of rubble made the remainder of more than 20 ground floor houses in Al-Twam area to the south of Beit Lahiya town stood Um Hassan, a 43 year old mother, pointing to a three-legged fireplace with a tea pot on it and said this is now my kitchen. Um Hassan lives now along with her 8 sons and daughters in a tent she set up on the debris of her house with no water, food, electricity or even clothes and she can’t even go back to live in the school because the UN schools have opened again for the students and the families who were living there were evacuated and given 600 sheikels (150 US dollars) each to help them rent a place to live in. With the high demand on real state, rents skyrocketed and the 600 sheikils are not even enough to rent one room or to buy food or clothes and other essentials and thus the problem of housing thousands of now homeless families remains one of the main consequent problems of the Israeli war on Gaza specially that Gaza’s crossings are still closed by Israel and there are no building materials available in Gaza to rebuild what the Israeli war machine turned into ruins.

Wandering through the different departments of Al-Shifa hospital, the largest and main Gaza Hospital that received thousands of severely wounded people during the war, in one lane of the Burns Unit at the hospital, sit Shahira a 6 year old girl on a wheelchair with her legs extended and bandaged. Shahira was crying in pain from her terribly burnt legs. Her older sister next to her said, she was playing with her cousins when a phosphorous bomb was fired at our neighborhood in The Beach Refugee Camp.

So many of the injured of the recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza were remarkable by amputated legs and arms and horrific burns which prompted human rights organizations and foreign physicians to conduct investigations into the type of weapons Israel used against the civilians in Gaza during the war. An Italian investigation found out that Israel was using a prototype weapon similar to DIME. Samples from victims in Gaza showed concentrations of unusual metals in their bodies. Dr Nafez Abu Shaban, from Al-Shifa hospital in an interview with PCHR said, that some of the injured were suffering serious lacerations, and internal bleeding. Miri Weingarten, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights, explained that the Israeli army has developed an anti personnel shell called kalanit, the shell sends out hundreds of overly heated small discs when it explodes. These small discs can’t be detected by X-Rays and they cause internal bleeding which necessitates amputations as a result.

Because of the gravity of the injuries, the Egyptian authorities thankfully opened Rafah crossing during the war for the injured to be transferred to hospitals in Egypt and other countries for immediate treatment. Trucks of medicine and humanitarian aids were also allowed through Rafah crossing into Gaza Strip which suffered huge shortages in medicine, food and fuel supplies for more than a year and a half due to the Israeli closure of its crossings with Gaza Strip.

In this war, Israel reared its ugly face again, used its full arsenal of conventional and unconventional weapons against the flesh of the Palestinian children, women and old men, destroyed their homes, schools and mosques and destroyed with that their very hope in a free and safe life. In this war, Israel made it clear that its problem isn’t with Hamas or its control over Gaza or with the toy-like rockets launched against Israel by the Palestinian factions to push Israel open the crossings. Israel’s problem is with the Palestinian people and their choices. Their choice to fight the occupation, their choice to live in freedom, their choice to say who they want to rule them and their choice to live on their land.