The Gaza Ghetto: U.S.-Backed Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted February 17, 2008.

UN Aid Chief 'Shocked' by Gaza Conditions

The top UN humanitarian affairs official, John Holmes, visited the Gaza Strip on Friday and said he was "shocked by the miserable things" he had seen.

Holmes, under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, was in Gaza on the second day of a five-day visit to the Palestinian territories and Israel.

He told reporters at a news conference that the misery he saw was the result of the current closed border crossings with Israel and the "limited food and other materials allowed in."

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world and is home to around 1.5 million Palestinians who struggle against overwhelming levels of poverty and Israeli violence.

Holmes said he was concerned about the dependence of 80 percent of the population on food aid, widespread joblessness, problems with the sewerage and water systems, limited supplies of fuel and electricity and the shortage of supplies in hospitals.

Israeli Human Rights Group Slams Israeli Military for Killing of Mentally Disabled

A human rights group called for an investigation into the death Thursday of a mentally disabled Palestinian man who had been wounded by the Israelis during a West Bank arrest operation.

According to neighbors' accounts, Israeli troops entered the town of Qabatiya before dawn on Feb. 7 to arrest an Islamic Jihad militant.

As the soldiers prepared an ambush, the mentally disabled man, 56-year-old Taysir Nazal, emerged from his home, the neighbors said. Soldiers fired three shots and hit Nazal in his legs, said relatives and a neighbor, Omar al-Sohu.

"They didn't call on him to stop, and after he was hit, they left him for a half hour," al-Sohu said. "Then two soldiers came and started to talk to him in Arabic."

The Israeli military said it was checking the circumstances of the incident and did not immediately comment.

Nazal was hit several times in the legs. Doctors operated several times and amputated part of one leg, but he died on Thursday, doctors said.

The Israeli rights group B'Tselem called for a military investigation. "From our research we see a pattern, a sort of norm … that is expressed in shooting when a door is opened or the soldiers think someone is trying to flee, when in fact the soldiers are not acting in self-defense," B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said.

Israeli Strike Kills 8 Palestinians, Including Women, Children

Eight Palestinians were killed and at least 50 wounded on Friday night when Israeli warplanes launched a raid on a building in the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.

The Israeli aircraft targeted the home of top Islamic Jihad fighter Ayman al-Fayed in the Bureij Palestinian refugee camp south of Gaza City, killing him and two of his children, a boy and a girl, they said.

A woman was among the other four dead, the medics said, adding that the fate of Fayed's wife and three other children was not known.

Around 50 people, including around 20 children, were wounded when the house was hit by a missile, they added. Most were family members.

Apart from Fayed the dead and wounded were all civilians, the medics said.

The Fayed house was completely destroyed in the attack and at least 10 other houses were damaged by the blast, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.

Israeli Strikes Kill Four Palestinians

An Israeli airstrike killed at least three Palestinians and wounded 16 others Sunday in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

Another Palestinian was killed and 10 others wounded in an earlier incident in which an Israel Defense Forces unit opened fire on "armed men approaching the forces" in eastern Rafah, the sources said.

According to an IDF statement, there was a similar impetus for the airstrike, as "forces carried out an aerial attack against a group of Palestinian gunmen after they approached the forces."

The Ramattan News Agency, a Palestinian media outlet, quoted Palestinian security sources who said Israeli drones fired two rockets near the Rafah border crossing that connects Gaza and Egypt.

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