Anemia Soars among Gaza Newborns

Israeli Siege Soars Anemia among Gaza Newborns
By Mohammed Omer
25/05/2008
http://themadisontimes.com

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, (IPS/GIN) � The Israeli siege of Gaza that has
restricted access to food, water, and medicine is beginning to cause
serious problems for newborn babies and pregnant mothers. "Many babies
are born suffering from anemia that they have inherited from their
mothers," said Dr. Salah al-Rantisi, head of the women's health
department at the Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza. The mothers
are becoming anemic because they do not get enough nutrition during
pregnancy due to the Israeli blockade that has choked the supply of
food and medicines.

Dr. al-Rantisi also heads the women's health unit at Nasser hospital,
where 30 to 40 children are born every day. Many suffer from anemia,
he said.

Anwaar Abu Daqqa, 30, has lost three babies prematurely. The fetuses
were malformed as a result of lack of nutrition and medicine for the
mother, Dr. al-Rantisi said. In the last case, Daqqa got to the
hospital late because she could not find transport. "Premature babies
born dangerously underweight are a daily and increasing phenomenon in
Gaza's hospitals," he said.

The Gaza Strip is poorer and harder hit than the West Bank; but there,
too, there are well-documented instances of women having to give birth
at checkpoints because of restrictions on movement.

The ministry of health said 9,000 to 10,000 babies are born in the
Gaza Strip every month. Of every 1,000 born, 28 die from malnutrition,
anemia, and other poverty-related causes. The ministry has no figures
for surviving babies suffering from malnutrition.

"There are many cases of pregnant women who need medicines that are
not available in Gaza," al-Rantisi said. Most families could not
afford them even if they were available, he said.
The World Bank said last month that the poverty rate in Gaza is now
close to 67 percent, and that economic growth last year was zero.

One consequence of poverty is anemia. The condition, a direct
consequence of poor nutrition, is not new to Gaza. The United Nations
Relief and Works Agency reported in 2002 that 19 percent of Gazans
suffered from anemia at that point. The figure is estimated by the
agency now to be 77.5 percent. Children receive on average only 61
percent of their daily need of calories from U.N. supplies.

Many of the newly born have been hit by the political situation before
they could open their eyes to the world. Of the many deliveries that
take place at al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, no one can tell
how many of these children will be able to live happy, healthy lives.
Their first dangers are lack of food, water, and medicines; the fear
of bombing comes later.

Tahani Safi, 29, is worried about her caesarean section, scheduled for
tomorrow. She suffers from malnutrition, high blood pressure,
diabetes, and insufficient protective water around the child in the
womb. Such cases can be found at any hospital, but doctors say that
the number of cases resulting from poor food and medical care in Gaza
is rising. Health authorities have warned that the life and health of
countless babies is in serious danger all across Gaza. So far, 146
Gazans have died directly as a result of the Israeli siege and the
border closures and shortage of medication and health care has
brought, the ministry of health says.

===

To: jewish voices for peace
a message from a doctor in Gaza

Friends,

This is an email from Izzeldin Abuelaish, an ob-gyn who lives in the
Jabalya Refugee Camp. In 2005, the JVP health and human rights
project visited him and his family (9 kids), toured the area, visited
the UNRWA school where he was a student and worked with him at a local
clinic..... I emailed him after the attacks and this is his response....
Alice

Dear Alice

My home get out safely from this brutal attack, but do know what will
happen next. All of us, children, youth, men and women were
traumatized and threatened. Still I ma in Gaza looking for a job. To
be a Palestinian from the Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip and get a job
with international job or work with developmental organizations is
impossible.

This is description of our life during the attack.


"I am surrounded by firing on all sides of my house. We have no water
or electricity and no phones and my children are thirsty. I am scared
to death to take a cup of coffee for fear that my children won't have
any water to prevent dehydration. Sunday afternoon we decided to fast
the second day.

Homelessness waits me around the corner or maybe in another five
minutes, and that I was once homeless before," Even when going to bed
where the fire ceases, I start to imagine from where the bullet will
come, from this window, this door or that wall. Or a bomb will destroy
the wall and where the bullet will go to my head, chest arms or any
part of my body. Even I started to think of my children who will be
killed and what will happen if I was killed.

I am crying over Jabalya, because the Israelis have once again tried
to silence the barrage of Hamas rockets that kill and maim and
traumatize Israeli citizens. The greatest fallout is being heaped on
the innocents civilians.

Jabalya is the largest of the Palestinian refugee camps (180,000),
where I was born, raised and still living in. It was the birth place
of the first Intifiada and people are looking for their rights to live
in peace equally.

"How can the deaths of one or two innocent Israelis mean that we have
to suffer the deaths of more than 130 innocent Palestinians in Gaza?
Is that fair; can that be accepted by rational people of us. It will
bring more animosity, hat redness and bloodshed. I am against sending
rockets and I say this loudly, but in the meantime it needs from the
Israelis also to condemn the Israeli attacks and Palestinian killings
neither sending r?" (you know that I am against killing of human being
and any civilian from both sides and no difference between Israeli and
Palestinian blood, in the mean time I mentioned killing more than a
hundred Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are children and
women will not bring peace to any ockets or Israeli attacks can put a
peaceful end to this conflict

I believe as Palestinian that we had to fight poverty, unemployment,
violence and build our human capital in collaboration with our
neighbors and to live in peace equally and keep this holy land holy
and beautiful.

I want to ask the Israeli leadership if they are serious about peace
or not?

After Anapolis: Ehud Olmert announced to expand the Israeli
settlements and started attacking Nablus and Ramallah. Are there any
rockets from Nablus or Ramallah?

There is a need to work together and seriously to achieve the peace
for all, not the peace that serves the interest of one group.

I am repeating that I do not want to see any drop of blood from any
one and I know and value life of human being. This cycle of action and
reaction: we need to take positive actions to stop it and proceed forward.

Immediate actions must be taken to prevent the situation from being
irreversible and contain this violence.

In both communities there are enemies for peace. These actions start
by building the trust through removing the check points and the
closure on the Gaza Strip. At the same time Palestinians and Israelis
had to work together and side by side to secure the lives of all.

All the best

Izzeldin

===

Israeli ex-soldiers expose abuse of Palestinians
Ilene R. Prusher
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/unbelievable-expose-of-civilian-abuse-in-palestine/

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian youth during clashes which
erupted against the Israeli army operation in Gaza in the West Bank
city of Hebron. (Mamoun Wazwaz, Maan Images)

Doron Efrati was assigned to the Kfir Brigade, part of an infantry
battalion that was especially created to serve in the West Bank
following the outbreak of the second intifada.

He figured if he was going to be drafted anyway, he would agree to
serve in the Israeli-occupied territories, "to see what really
happens, and maybe to change things," he says. "But I didn't succeed."

Today, he is one of 39 recently discharged soldiers whose testimonies
are part of a grim new report on the situation in the West Bank city
of Hebron, where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) oversee a volatile
population of 700 to 800 Jewish settlers living amid nearly 170,000
Palestinians. The 118-page report, which tells of systematic
mistreatment of local Palestinians by both soldiers and settlers, was
released during this week's Passover holiday.

The timing is not coincidental. Forty years ago this week, a small
group of far-right religious Israelis, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger,
wrangled with a reluctant Israeli military establishment to hold a
Passover seder in Hebron, revered as the burial place of several
biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. Rabbi Levinger, who saw in
Israel's 1967 military victory over the Arabs a heralding of a
Messianic-era redemption, rented hotel rooms for himself and his
followers the following Passover, and refused to leave. Today, his
flock constitutes the only Jewish settlement inside a Palestinian city.

The report, put out by the nongovernmental group Breaking the Silence,
is meant to challenge what the group sees as a growing assumption by
Israelis that Israeli-Palestinian friction in the West Bank has
quieted down since the Al-Aqsa Intifada petered out around 2004.
"A lot of people come and say, `Oh, that's all in the past,' "
explains Yehuda Shaul, executive director of the group, which has
brought 3,000 people on eye-opening trips to Hebron. On the contrary,
he adds, he sees abuses as increasingly institutionalized. "The whole
point of Breaking the Silence is to understand the moral price tag of
a military occupation."

Asked to respond to the group's report, an IDF spokesman said in a
written statement, "All IDF soldiers of all ranks are instructed to
follow a strict set of moral guidelines which dictate codes of conduct
in combat settings. IDF soldiers operate according to these
guidelines, which determine the way they are expected and instructed
to behave at all times."

But in the report, 39 recently discharged soldiers who served in the
Hebron area between 2005 and 2007 describe a pattern of repeated
violations. Mr. Efrati is one of the five who have made their
identities known; most offered anonymous accounts. The IDF does not
investigate "anonymous complaints," said the spokesman, who asked not
to be named in keeping with Israeli army policy.

One of Efrati's worst experiences started when some Palestinian kids
threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at his unit when he was out on
patrol in south Hebron. About 40 minutes afterward, he says, other
soldiers in his unit identified and shot dead one of the youths who
threw a flaming bottle. He was 11 years old.

"It was reported in the Israeli media later that one terrorist with a
Molotov cocktail was killed," he recalls, sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe.
"I didn't feel so good, but most of my friends didn't care, and we had
so much to do. These things were happening all the time," he says.
The IDF spokesman said that in the event of an incident, "Officers
from every unit that comes in direct contact with the civilian
population in the West Bank take steps to ensure that similar
incidents, whether commonplace or highly unusual, are never repeated."
But Efrati describes numerous actions he witnessed on a regular basis.
One involves locking an entire family into one room, and then using
the rest of the house – the roof included – as a base. He says that in
one such mission, in the village of Tarkumiyeh near Hebron, soldiers
stayed overnight. Additional jeeps with sirens came in the morning,
trying to draw a crowd. When the stones started flying, soldiers were
able to shoot from the roof.

Michael Manekin, one of the leaders of Breaking the Silence, which has
collected testimonies from more than 500 soldiers, says that's a
"fixed procedure." Efrati says the only explanation given for the
operation is that there were "a lot of terrorists in the village." He
says that on one occasion where he witnessed clear violation of policy
– he saw an army comrade hitting someone who was already handcuffed
and calm, he complained to his commander. The answer? "Let's leave the
dirty laundry in the company."

Efrati also describes regularly being sent on late-night missions that
involved raiding homes in the wee hours of the morning, turning over
the house and searching for weapons. This often was carried out for
the purposes of "mapping" – keeping track of who lives where – but he
and most others who gave testimonies for the reports said that this
technique was not carried out to target specific militant activity,
but to instill fear. "It's done because we want the Palestinians to
feel that we can be anywhere at anytime," he says. "The first time you
enter some family's home, you feel, why am I doing it? But then after
two, three times, you get used to it."

Efrati's stories are far from the worst in the report. The testimonies
include details of beatings and detaining Palestinians for checks
without reason and making them sit or squat in uncomfortable
positions. According to one troubling testimony, a soldier who gets
annoyed at the sight of a Palestinian farmer whipping his donkey
decides to ride the man and give him a taste of the same. The soldiers
describe a constant stream of settler violence and vandalism against
Palestinians, some of which is captured on the extensive camera system
through which the IDF monitors what happens in the city. But if the
report is correct, the footage is rarely turned over to the police to
prosecute settlers.

Some of the most damning testimonies have been given on condition of
anonymity – some soldiers fear legal action, and others are afraid of
the social pressures to keep quiet. Says Mr. Shaul: "I hope that by
doing this, it will get people to break their silence earlier."