Mother of sick 3-year-old stranded in Gaza

Ma’an - HEBRON – The father of a 3-year-old girl suffering from cerebral atrophy is appealing for his wife and sons to be allowed to leave Gaza and return to the family home in the West Bank.

Osama Rasras, from Beit Ummar near Hebron, said his three children travelled with their mother to Gaza to visit his wife’s sick father. Israeli authorities would not allow them to leave for 18 months, during which time Dalal could not access medical treatment.

Eventually Israel allowed Dalal to return to the West Bank but refused to permit her mother or two brothers to return.

Rasras, who works in a factory and looks after Dalal, explained, “I began to play the role of a mother and father together. I cook, wash clothes, and arrange the house.”

The girl, who was born with a lack of oxygen to her brain, suffers frequent convulsions and comas, which threaten her healthy organs, her father said. The physiotherapy and surgery Dalal needs is unavailable in the West Bank, and currently she is receiving no medical treatment at all.

Rasras was unable to get the necessary references from the health ministry in order for her to receive treatment in the West Bank, he said, adding the medical costs of 150 shekels (around $40) would be beyond his means.

“I cannot find suitable treatment for my child, all of the efforts by human rights and political organizations to allow my wife in to the West Bank have failed. My family was torn apart,” he added.

Rasras appealed to President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and international organizations for help to bring his wife and sons, Ahmed and Omar, back to their home in the West Bank, and to facilitate access to medical care for Dalal.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls on Israel to release anti-wall leader

Desmond Tutu at the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag in Cologne 2007. [Wikipedia]

Ma'an - BETHLEHEM – Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa expressed concern Saturday over the conviction of a Palestinian anti-wall campaign leader by an Israeli military court for his involvement in non-violent protests.

"I am deeply concerned about the conviction earlier this week of Abdallah Abu Rahmah by an Israeli military court. When I met him with my fellow Elders last year, we were very impressed by his commitment to non-violence and the wise leadership he showed," Tutu said in a statement.

"He and his fellow activists have had some success in challenging the wall that divides the people of Bil’in from their land. Israel’s attempt to crack down on this effective resistance movement by criminalizing peaceful protest is unacceptable and unjust," he added.

Tutu called on Israeli authorities to release Abu Rahmah "immediately and unconditionally."

Abu Rahmah, well regarded for organizing the weekly rallies against the wall in his native village Bil'in, near Ramallah, was convicted by an Israeli military court on 24 August. According to his supporters, Abu Rahmah's conviction was based solely on the testimony of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and denied legal counsel despite significant ills in their questioning.

The General Delegation of the PLO to the US condemned the conviction "in the strongest possible terms."

"We call on the Israeli government to release Abdallah Abu Rahmah and all other Palestinian political prisoners from its jails immediately in accordance with international law and as a gesture of goodwill towards the peace talks that are about to begin in Washington," the PLO office said in a statement.

On Tuesday, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton expressed her concern over the conviction.

2 Workers Injured by Israeli Gunshots

Ma'an - GAZA CITY – Two Palestinians were injured by Israeli fire near the border fence separating Gaza from Israel, medics said.

  
Director of ambulance and emergency services in Gaza Muawiya Hassanein said Sharif Sa'id Ghubn, 25, and Rami Ibrahim Ghubn, 18, were transferred to hospital with bullet wounds, which he described as moderate.

The men were collecting rubble north of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza to make cement, Hassanein said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said forces saw a number of people close to the border, and asked them to identify themselves. When the men failed to do so, Israeli soldiers opened fire, she said, adding that she was only aware of one injury. The spokeswoman noted that Israel considers the area a combat zone.

Under Israel's siege policy, the entry of construction materials into the Strip is heavily restricted. A report by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in May said restrictions on the import of cement have made it "impossible" to reconstruct the 12,000 homes in Gaza damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military, or to build a further 20,000 homes needed to accommodate natural population growth in the Strip.

Several incidents of Israeli fire at the border have resulted in injuries over the last month. On 16 August, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian man during clashes along the southern border.

Two weeks previously, Bilal Ibrahim Obeid, 22, was injured by live fire at the border and in a separate incident three men sustained gunshot wounds close to the fence. Reports suggested the men were collecting cement aggregates from the area.

Children's group concerned about home demolitions

Palestinian children on the ruins of their homes demolished by Israeli occupation forces. (Al Jazeera)

Ma'an - BETHLEHEM – Since the beginning of 2010, there has been a sharp increase in house demolitions in Area C, Defense for Children - Palestine said in a report expressing concern about the effects such actions have on children.

Displacement has an acute negative psychological impact on children, the group said in a statement issued Saturday. It called on Israel to "cease these demolitions and to respect the rights of Palestinian children to an adequate standard of living."

Palestinians, Israeli forces clash in Jerusalem (w/ Video)

Scuffle with settlers sparks clashes in Silwan (Ma'an News Agency)

Ma'an - JERUSALEM – Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood said settlers attempted to enter the Al-Ein Mosque early Thursday morning, sparking skirmishes that lasted until after sunrise.

Israeli forces arrived as locals said they were attempting to drive the settlers out of the mosque area. Two settler cars were torched, and several windshields smashed in the violence.

The incoming border police force was described as "massive," and said to have been firing tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets toward Palestinians.

Firefighters called to put out the car blazes were reportedly confronted by angered residents in the area, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported. According to the newspaper, four cars and two motorcycles were set alight.

A 22-year-old settler was said to have been injured, and the paper quoted a settler leader from the area, denying claims that an attempt to gain access to the mosque had caused the clash.

Israeli police said they were looking into the incident.

In the West Bank, three recent incidents of settlers vandalizing mosques have put residents on edge. In December, a Yasuf village mosque was torched and 12 settlers from the Yizhar settlement were detained for their role in the incident. Also in the Nablus region, settlers torched a second mosque in May, Al-Lubban Ash-Sharqiya villagers said settlers drove up to the mosque, gathered flammables, and set them alight.

In June, officials from the Islamic Waqf said a recent wave of settlers moving into Jaffa, a Palestinian city now south of Tel Aviv, attempted to set ablaze the Jaffa Mosque as it was undergoing repairs.

WATCH:

Amnesty Int'l Finland: Israel Scum State

An infant shot dead by an Israeli soldier.

JPost - BERLIN – The head of Amnesty International’s Finnish branch, Frank Johansson, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he stands by his statement that Israel is a “scum state.”

Writing in his blog, which appears on the Web site of Finland’s third largest newspaper Iltalehti, Johansson wrote on Monday that “A friend of mine who works in Israel was visiting [and] while piling wood in the shed, we got to [talking about] his favourite topic. [After] several years of residence in the Holy Land, he has come to the conclusion that ‘Israel is a scum state.’ Based on my own visit[s], which occurred during the 1970s and for the last time in the 1990s, I agree.”

An English translation of Johansson’s blog first appeared Tuesday on the Web site Tundra Tabloids, a pro-Israel blog that monitors anti-Israeli sentiments in the Finnish media and blogosphere.

A Palestinian child shot dead by an Israeli soldier.

Speaking from Finland, Kenneth Sikorski, who runs the Web site and picked up Johansson’s remarks, told The Jerusalem Post that Johansson’s comments are “absolutely atrocious and indicative of a problem of systematic anti-Semitism.”

Asked why he termed Israel a “scum state,” Johansson told the Post in a telephone interview that it was because Israel has “repeatedly flouted international law,” and due to his “personal experiences inside and outside of Israel with meeting Israelis.”

Johansson said that his remarks were not anti-Semitic. “I actually praise Breaking the Silence,” he said, referring to an Israeli organization claiming to collect and share testimonies of former IDF soldiers over human rights violations they allegedly witnessed, while rarely providing names of troops, dates and locations of these incidents.

Asked whether there are other countries aside from Israel that, according to him, meet the definition of a “scum state,” Johansson did not specify any, but noted that there are “Russian officials” who meet the criteria.