Raw sewage in the streets, which will soon seep into houses; asthmatics choking; hospitals on the verge of switching off life support.
The poor and the sick suffer as Israel cuts power to Gaza
Independent, UK -
By Donald Macintyre in Gaza City
Mansour Rahal lay unconscious in the intensive care unit of Gaza City's Shifa hospital, linked to an electrically powered ...
The Gaza time bomb
International Herald Tribune, France - 10 hours ago
By Robert Malley
The Gaza Strip suffers from skyrocketing unemployment and poverty, and lacks medicine, fuel, electricity, food and other essential ...~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Israel is committing egregious acts on an inhuman scale in Gaza.
Born a Jew, I cannot begin to assimilate what Jews are doing to others.
As human beings, Jews or otherwise, we must all rise up against this, or risk our very humanity.
The Jews are inflicting on the Palestinians exactly what was inflicted on the Jews.
This is Warsaw. This is Dachau.
Did my uncles and aunts and cousins die in ovens so that their children could perpetrate this in their name ?
And don't tell me about how Israel must survive if the Jews are to survive.
NEVER AGAIN applies to everyone.
We must all DO something about this now.
First, risk your closest relationships, and bring this up to everyone, and not back down.
Israel cannot commit these crimes without the extreme financial support of the USA, and the JEWS of the USA.
This must stop.
Or, you can do nothing.
But do not ever EVER say you did not KNOW.
You KNOW.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Death And Darkness In Gaza,
People Are dying, Help Us!
http://www.countercurrents.org/freegaza210108.htm
By Free Gaza
21 January, 2008
Free Gaza
A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip's only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel's punitive sanctions.
The Gaza Strip's power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant's two electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.
This will drastically reduce output to 25 or 30 megawatts, down from the 65 megawatts the plant produces under normal conditions. By Sunday evening the plant will shut down completely, leaving large swaths of the Gaza Strip in darkness.
Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah, confirmed that by tonight, the one remaining operating turbine will be powered down, and the Gaza power plant will no longer be generating any electricity at all.
“We have asked the Israeli government to reverse its decision and to supply fuel to operate the power plant”, Dr. Kittaneh said. “We have talked to the Israeli humanitarian coordination in their Ministry of Energy [National Infrastructure]. We say this is totally Israel’s responsibility, and that reducing the fuel supplies until the plant had to shut down will affect not only the electrical system but the water supply, and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – everything.”
After months of increasingly harsh sanctions, Israel imposed a total closure on the Strip's border crossings, even preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government says the closure is punishment for an ongoing barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip.
"Famine"
180 fuel stations have shut down after Gaza residents to buy gas for cooking.
A Palestinian economist Hasan Abu Ramadan said the current humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip will be deepened by the blockade on fuel and food supplies. He warned that Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep poverty to all out famine, disease, and malnutrition.
Abu Ramadan said that more than 80% of the Strip's 1.5 million residents have been surviving with the help of food aid from international organizations such as UNRWA for Palestinian refugees.
International condemnation
Most international actors in the region believe there already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes, who said at a press conference at UNHQ in New York on Friday that "This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks".
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed particular concern, in a statement issued later on Friday through his spokesperson, about the "decision by Israel to close the crossing points in between Gaza and Israel used for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such action cuts off the population from much-needed fuel supplies used to pump water and generate electricity to homes and hospitals".
The UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories, John Dugard, also issued a much sharper statement on Friday, saying that Israel must have foreseen the loss of life and injury to many nearby civilians when it targeted the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City.
This, and the killings of other Palestinians during the week, plus the closures, "raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its Commitment to the peace process", Dugard said. He said it violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law: that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.
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