"Open Letter from Gaza to the Government and People of Spain"

Gaza, May 30, (The Pal Telegraph) - We write to you as Palestinians from Gaza to express our dismay at the proposal of the Spanish parliament to restrict the universal jurisdiction of Spain, particularly with regard to breaches of international humanitarian law. The proposal called for the existing legislation to be modified so that cases may only be pursued if they involve Spanish victims or if the accused is present on Spanish soil.

At approximately midnight on 22 July 2002, an Israeli Air Force fighter jet dropped a 2,000 lb bomb on the densely populated Daraj neighborhood of Gaza city. The main target of the attack was the family home of Salah Shehada, Commander of the military wing of Hamas. The bomb killed Shehada and an additional seventeen civilians, including his wife, his daughter, eight children (including a 2-month old baby), two elderly men, and two women. In addition, seventy seven people were injured, eleven houses were completely destroyed and thirty two houses damaged, leaving many families homeless.

The Government of the State of Israel confirmed that it was fully aware that Shehada's wife and daughter "were close to him during the implementation of the assassination ... and there was no way out of conducting the operation despite their presence." The practice of wanton willful killing of civilians exemplified in this extra-judicial assassination is not an isolated incident. It is one instance in an ongoing, comprehensive policy targeting us the civilian Palestinians of the Gaza strip and systematically denying us our rights to movement, work, medical care, study, livelihood and increasingly life itself.

In spite of Israel's alleged unilateral withdrawal from the Strip, it still maintains a permanent military presence in Gaza's territorial waters and controls the movement of people and goods onto the strip by land, air or water in addition to movement within the strip through targeting anyone entering the "no go" zone designated by the Israeli military. Israel also continues to control Gaza's population registry. Yet, Israel claims that it is no longer the occupying power in the Gaza strip and uses this excuse in addition to the results of 2006 democratic election to intensify it's policy of siege and lethal attacks on us, Gaza's civilians.

On the 29th of February 2008 Matan Vilnai, Deputy Defense Minister of the State of Israel, threatened us with a bigger Shoah (holocaust) and lived up to his word. During the following Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip conducted in February 2008 dubbed as "Operation Hot Winter" The Israeli Occupation Forces killed 107 Palestinians including 64 children. The European Union, including Spain, not only refrained from taking action against the State of Israel for its policy of systematic mass murder, but announced its intent to upgrade its relations with the State of Israel. This announcement was the green light Israel needed to continue and escalate its policies, resulting in January 2009 assault on besieged Gaza.

The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, 80 per cent of whom are refugees expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to 22 days of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes, in a repeat of what happened at Al-Darraj on 22.July.2002, systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. International human rights organizations are now calling for a war crimes investigation into Israel's military assault on Gaza in which the Israeli Occupation Forces killed 1,440 Palestinians of whom 431 were children, and injured 5380.

One ray of hope for us in this time was the decision of Judge Fernando Andreu of the Spanish Audencia Nacional (National Court) to continue the investigation into the events surrounding the al-Daraj bombing of July 2002. We consider this decision a manifestation of Europe's promise and commitment to the principle of "never again" to stand by in silence while ethnic cleansing is taking place. We have hope that it will serve as a deterrent to other would be war criminals.

If the Spanish parliament's resolution calling on the government to limit Spain's universal jurisdiction mechanisms is accepted, it will lead to continued impunity for war criminals and complicity with future war crimes including the ongoing collective punishment and genocide directed against us, the civilian population of the Gaza strip.

Signed by:

-The One Democratic State Group - Gaza

-University Teachers' Association in Palestine - Gaza

-Palestinian Student's Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
-Arab Cultural Forum - Gaza

-Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Information Society

-Society Friends for Rehabilitation of Visually Impaired

"The new Refugees in Gaza still homeless"

Palestine, May 27, (Pal Telegraph) - All of Amer Aliyan's hopes of rebuilding his life are placed in a carefully folded sheet in his wallet, a document that for the foreseeable future in Gaza is nothing but a worthless piece of paper.

"I'm waiting for the reconstruction, but I know it will take time," the 36-year-old says.

This is a gross understatement in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip where an Israeli blockade is preventing the rebuilding effort after the devastation caused by a brief but deadly war at the turn of the year.

Aliyan's house was one of several thousand destroyed during the massive 22-day onslaught unleashed by Israel on the Islamist Hamas-run Gaza in December in response to militant rocket and mortar fire from the enclave.

Since the end of the war, the unemployed dry cleaner has lived under canvas with his wife and five children in one of 93 tents set up on the outskirts of the Beit Lahiya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The paper secreted inside his wallet is the official attestation that his home was destroyed, and it is a document that will entitle him to funds for rebuilding once the reconstruction starts.

But that is unlikely to begin any time soon, and until it does the thousands of Gazans who like Aliyan lost their homes in the war will just have to fend for themselves.

Reconstruction is a non-event not because there is a lack of demand. Some 4,100 houses was destroyed during the war, as were 48 government buildings, 31 police stations and 20 mosques, among others.

Nor is it for lack of money -- in coffers worldwide sit a whopping 4.5 billion dollars that donors pledged to the Palestinians in March, most of it towards reconstruction in Gaza.

The rebuilding is not able to get under way because of the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in June 2007 when Hamas, a group pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, seized the enclave in a deadly takeover.

The billions of dollars in pledges remain where they are because the international community refuses to release the money directly to Hamas, branded as a terror organisation by Israel and much of the West.

The blockade, under which only essential humanitarian goods are allowed into the territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, means building materials stay on the outside, as Israel says they can also be used to make rockets.

In a bid to get around these restrictions, Gazans have dug dozens of tunnels under the border with Egypt that are used to bring in supplies, including construction materials such as cement, paint and wood.

The resulting trade is brisk, but limited and dangerous. The hastily dug tunnels often collapse, burying smugglers alive. The Israeli military still targets them in occasional bombing raids.

Because of the blockade the price of building materials has skyrocketed. A bag of cement now costs 220 shekels (56 dollars, 40 euros) compared with 20 shekels previously.

But the cement is of low quality, according to Hadj Salim who operates one of the tunnels, and it cannot be used to mix construction-grade concrete.

Other vital materials such as the steel rods used to reinforce concrete in buildings are too long to fit through the tunnels, Salim says.

With construction at a standstill, the newly homeless residents of the Gaza Strip where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid have had to make do.

By Djallal Malti

AFP

"On TV: Israeli siege kills baby aged 2"

"On TV: Israeli siege kills baby aged 2"
www.paltelegraph.com

Gaza Strip, May 14, (Pal Telegraph) - A new Palestinian child died in a very dramatic scene documented on the T.V. A baby child aged 2 suffered a svere siege that doubled by siege until he died today.

Aljazeera's reporter, Tamer Al meshal, reveals one of the miseries resulting in the Israeli siege on Gaza strip. Feras As'ad Al Mazlom, an infant aged 2, a sole child for newly married couples As'ad and Amal.

Infant Feras who was born with a heart defect, he had to spend more time in a hospital bed rather than his loving parents' arms. He never played nor enjoyed his innocent life like others.

Llike many others, Feras pays his precious life for the siege. The hospital and equipment were not able to rescue him nor could his parents move him to Egypt for treatment. However, the hospital managed to coordinate and transfer him to an Israeli hospital.

With such hope, the father suffered so much trying to get permits for both his wife and son to cross borders, which he did at the end. The father moved like crazy to make the needed documents for Feras so he travels for treatment.

Unfortunately, as they were on the way to pick their child and head to Eriz to Israel for treatment, they received an excruciating phone call saying that their own son was no longer alive and there's no need to take him anywhere.

It was minutes or rather seconds between the life and death for Feras. This baby, didn't fight Israelis, never shot at them, nor fired a rocket rather, his only fault was, "a child born in Gaza"

Thousands of Palestinian like Feras still on the waiting list of death. Israel is hindering there from getting their basic right of treatment. Those patients' rights are highly recognized and guaranteed by the 4th Geneva convention and al humanitarian law. However, Israel still don't confess all these charters regarding humanity.

See the death of Feras here: http://www.aljazeera.net/Channel/KServices/SupportPages/ShowMedia/showMedia.aspx?fileURL=/mritems/streams/2009/5/13/1_913686_1_12.wmv

Special report:
Nancy AL Buhisi
Sameh A. habeeb

"Now it’s your turn"

london-Gaza, May 7 (Pal Telegraph) -For months now I have been trying to make sense of what happened in Gaza. And yet I never know where to start or how to find the one story that says everything that needs to be said about what happened-and still is happening-to us.

I have many accounts to choose from and pictures as well. I am a photojournalist, you see, and I have been documenting in words and pictures the shortages of food and electricity that preceded the attack and continue to this day, and the many civilians who were killed, maimed, or made homeless during those terrible 22 days in late December and early January.

I have collected many accounts of bravery and despair under extremely trying circumstances. My house was exposed to shrapnel from Israeli rockets. Without power, I had to walk around four kilometers (about two and a half miles) in the middle of this cruel attack, simply to charge my laptop in order to get the truth out. Now it's your turn. I am asking you now to carry my story forward.

The US government is planning to pour more money-billions of dollars-to continue this madness. Tell them what happened in Gaza and ask them to investigate. Ask them to find out for themselves what happened with the money they sent. Our streets are littered with "made-in-the-US" ammunitions; our schools with "made-in-the-US" phosphorus.

Ask them to make sure that the story of Louay does not repeat itself. I met him in a hospital. His grandmother was beside him trying to make him feel better. When I spoke with him, he did not know that that he had lost his eyesight and that his brother was killed in an attack on his father's car. He told me what had happened to him, then he concluded, "I need you to help me recover quickly so I can go to school again and play with some of my friends. I don't know if they are alive or not." These are the words and the courage of an eight-year old.

We can do better than this.

Sameh Akram Habeeb

PS. PS. Want to read more about my work and see the world with the eyes of a Palestinian in Gaza?
Go to http://www.paltelegraph.com/. I started The Palestine Telegraph/PT as a professionally driven online newspaper envisioned by a few thoughtful Palestinian youths in Gaza. They were inspired to do something to change their world. Check it out.

"NAKBA 2009 - Melbourne remembers"

Australia, May 6 (Pal Telegraph) - For this year's Nakba commemoration, Australians for Palestine and Women for Palestine are presenting something rather different from the usualexhibitions and public lectures.

The UK's most renowned playwright Caryl Churchill was so shocked by the horrors being visited on the Palestinians inGaza during Israel's 3-week bombardment that she wrote a play to juxtaposethis human suffering with the same human suffering that happened in adifferent time, a different place and to another people.

She called theplay "Seven Jewish Children" and its packed-out performances in London and then New York, where the controversy over Rachel Corrie's play still
lingers, have countered the critics wanting to label it anti-Semitic and an evocation of the dreadful blood libels against Jews in a long distant past.

The London play premiered in London on 6 February and was performed by nine Jewish actors. It opened in New York on 16 March and Jewish film reviewers have said that the play is "sensitive", "penetrating", "beautiful". Rebecca
Vilkomerson from the Jewish Peace News said: "I've read it three times (it only takes about five minutes), and each time it has brought me to tears.

As someone living in Tel Aviv, raising two daughters, struggling with when and how and what to tell them--I found it devastating and true."

Its Australian premiere is in Melbourne on 18 May and we would like you to judge for yourself. It will be performed by the brilliant British actress Miriam Margolyes who is currently the star lead in the Melbourne show "Realism" and Australia's own iconic Max Gillies and highly acclaimed performers Tony Llewellyn-Jones, John Leary and Alison Bell.

Please mark this event in your diaries as something not to be missed. The play is only 10 mins, but it will leave you reeling.

Two Palestinian films will follow the performances. The first film is the new "This Palestinian Life" by Phillip Rizk about ordinary Palestinians' non-violent struggle against Israel's occupation and stealing of Palestinian
land.

Rizk made headline news around the world this year when he was arrested by Egyptian state security agents and held for four days after he took partin a march in support of Gaza. The second film is the moving "La Terre
parle Arabe - The Land speaks Arabic" by Maryse Gargour, a most fitting way to remember the Nakba and the catastrophic repercussions that the uprooting
of a people has had to this day.

Visit http://www.australiansforpalestine.com
which we hope will continue to bring you news and commentaries on Palestine as well as the activities being undertaken in support of Palestine here in Australia.

By Sonja Karakr