The Palestine Brief (CPDS) - Gaza Under Attack

A weekly report published by the Center for Political and Development Studies (CPDS), Gaza on the latest developments in Palestine.

By Yousef M. Aljamal
June 24, 2012

• Refugees' conditions deteriorating

The Refugees' Affairs Department of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) published a report detailing the conditions of Palestinian refugees, living in the Gaza Strip. The report compares the conditions of refugees in 2012 and 2006. The report writer, Ala'a Abu-Diaa, states that refugees' conditions are deteriorating, in relation to housing and lands' price, which doubled in the last five years. The rate of exports decreased 80% compared to the pre-siege period. Gazans found refuge, the report continues, in tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt.

Refugees are still going through endless crisis, beginning with electricity and including fuel, which affect all walks of life in the besieged coastal enclave. The newly published report states that over 70% of refugees depend mainly on aid delivered by UNRWA.

The report concludes that 90% of Gaza water is unfit to drink. The reasons behind this deteriorating situation, the writer of the report believes, are the racist policies of occupation, the latest war on Gaza , the siege, and the division and its impact on society and education, which resulted in 45% of unemployed graduates.

• Report: 90% of WB water is under occupation control

The water crisis in the West Bank worsens, especially in the southern provinces, each year with the beginning of summer, because of the increased water consumption. Many officials and experts says that this water crisis is due to the occupation control over water resources and the local mismanagement in distributing water.

Palestinian Water Authority Chief Shaddad Attili holds the Israeli occupation responsible for the water crisis because of its disregard of the Oslo conventions and its refusal to provide the Palestinian territories with the quantities of water upon which the two sides agreed, and to allow the drilling of wells and setting up of projects for the water supply .

Abdul Hadi Hantash, an expert in settlement affairs, states that the occupation controls 84% of water in the West Bank after seizing its three water basins and preventing Palestinians from using them.

• New report: Gaza’s water ‘unfit to drink’
A report released by Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), on the fifth anniversary of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, describes how Gaza’s water supply is heavily polluted by fertilizer and human waste, and states that nearly all of the water in Gaza is “unfit for drinking.”

Gaza’s broken sewage system led to open cesspits and waste-caused nitrate pollution. The high levels of nitrates in the water, ten times the safe levels established by the World Health Organization (WHO), have been linked to anemia and some cancers, and are wreaking health havoc heavily upon children and pregnant women in Gaza, the report details.

• Two-year old toddler killed in Israeli airstrike

A two-year old toddler was killed and her brother was wounded in an Israeli occupation airstrike on Gaza on Thursday evening, bringing the number of Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli onslaught on Gaza to seven.

Spokesman for the Ambulance and Emergency services in Gaza, Adham Abu Selmeyya, said that Hadeel Haddad was killed and her brother was moderately wounded in an Israeli occupation airstrike on the Zaitoun suburb east of Gaza City.

Fresh Israeli raid on central Gaza
Israeli warplanes fired two missiles at Deir Al-Balah town in central Gaza Strip on Tuesday, local sources said. They said that the missile attack targeted a number of citizens in Nakheel street but no casualties were suffered.
Earlier, an Israeli raid targeted and seriously wounded a man riding a motorbike at the entrance to Deir Al-Balah.

• Israeli air raid wounds five citizens including woman and her child
Israeli warplanes raided a foundry in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday night wounding five citizens and destroying the foundry, local sources said.

The sources stressed that the raid targeted a metal workshop to the north west of Rafah in an area called Khirbat Al-Adas. They said that the warplanes fired two missiles at the workshop, wounding the citizens and completely destroying it.

• Israeli gunboats kidnap four Palestinian fishermen at sea
Israeli navy gunboats intercepted a Palestinian fishing boat off the coast of Gaza before midnight Sunday and kidnapped all four fishermen on board including two brothers. The navy gunboats chased the fishing boat and forced it to stop before taking away the four fishermen.

• The latest updates in the Gaza Strip
Israel launched several air strikes in the last 24 hours on the Gaza Strip, targeting civilian facilities, a police station and open lands. 16 Palestinians, most of them kids, were killed and some 73 were injured. One of the latest victim is a 4-year old boy named Ali-Moataz Alshawaf from Khanyounis city.

A miracle took place when a bomb didn't explode in Jabalyia car station, Alsaha, to the east of Gaza. The area is always crowded with passengers who want to travel between Gaza and Jabalyia.

Three people were injured when Israel targeted a civilian car in Al-Zaytoun.

• WATCH: IOF night raids on two Palestinian villages in the West Bank
The Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh was raided last Sunday by the IOF. Nabi Saleh, which has been conducting weekly nonviolent demonstrations since the end of 2009 against Israel’s occupation and the encroaching settlement of Halamish, has been the target of repeated night raids over the last two years.

• Jerusalem mosque attacked by settlers

Extremist settlers set fire at dawn Tuesday to the Grand Mosque of Jaba village northeast of occupied Jerusalem, causing considerable material damage. Quds Press quoted Abudulkarem Bisharat, head of the municipal council in Jaba, as saying that settlers at one o'clock in the morning carried out an arson attack on the Grand Mosque in the village.
He said the settlers who carried out the attack wrote racist slurs and their usual gang signature, "the price tag," on the Mosque's wall.

• Jerusalemites confront Israeli raid on Aisawiye

Israeli occupation forces stormed the town of Aisawiye to the north east of occupied Jerusalem on Monday and were confronted by inhabitants. Local sources said that young men threw stones at the invading troops, who fired rubber bullets and stun grenades in a bid to disperse them.

• Israeli army OK’s attack dogs as ‘non-lethal weapons’

Despite reports Thursday that the Israeli Defense Forces suspended its use of attack dogs against Palestinians, the military declared they will continue to use the live animals as "non-lethal weapons." The review was prompted after an incident last March when an army dog wrangled the arm of Ahmad Shtawi for 10-minutes, locking his jaw on the Palestinian protester and causing him to be hospitalized.

• Palestinian footballer ends his 95-day hunger strike
Mahmoud Sarsak, the Palestinian national footballer player who gathered worldwide attention with a three-month hunger strike that brought him to the brink of death, is to be freed by Israel on 10 July, the Associated Press quoted his lawyer as saying:

A lawyer for an imprisoned Palestinian soccer player who has been on a hunger strike for more than three months says his client has agreed to resume eating and will be released July 10 in a deal with Israel.

The attorney, Mohammed Jabareen, spoke Monday after the deal was struck at an Israeli prison clinic.

ENDS

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