From Craig Corrie – 21 Years Later
Gaza Crushed With Our Tax Dollars
On March 16, 2003, our daughter Rachel Corrie was killed as she stood to protect the home of a Palestinian family in Rafah in Gaza. Rachel was crushed to death by the Israeli military under a militarized, Caterpillar, Inc. D9R bulldozer, supplied by our United States government, paid for by our tax dollars. Now, twenty-one years later, we are witnessing the entire Gaza population being crushed by the Israeli military, using planes, bombs, shells, tanks and, yes, even bulldozers supplied by the United States. Genocide. Paid for by our tax dollars.
In some ways you could see this coming: soldiers never held accountable for their war crimes, human rights violations by the army of a country feeling entitled to the land of another people. We know this story, and we have seen this genocide. Ask any native American.
Our family worked for almost two decades to secure accountability in Rachel’s case, first through diplomatic means, and when that failed, through a civil lawsuit in Israeli courts. Some of the court testimony is particularly telling. An IDF Colonel responsible for training stated that there are no civilians in war zones, and the officer responsible for the military police investigation into Rachel’s killing testified that he thought Israel was at war with everyone in Gaza, including the peace activists. And all the time, the Israeli defense team referred to the people of Gaza – Rachel’s friends, our friends – as “the terrorists.” Even the Israeli high court said that international law did not apply to the actions of Israel in Gaza. How telling.
Repeatedly, the U.S. supplies weapons to Israel that are used in ways giving probable cause of human rights violations. But when the U.S. asks for investigation, Israel replies with reports that are far from the result of the thorough, credible, and transparent investigation required of, or in Rachel’s case promised by, Israel. Citing that violations cannot be proven, the U.S. continues military aid – rather than withholding more funding until our questions are properly answered, as allowed by U.S. law and dictated by common sense. The U.S. routinely rewards IDF war crimes with increased military aid, rather than sanctions. When that aid is abetting genocide, as it has since October 7, 2023, the aid itself is a war crime.
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The time to avert the massacre of October 7 and the genocide that has followed was during all the prior years of the Israeli occupation. Repeatedly, Palestinians, often joined by Jewish Israelis, have protested nonviolently to have their rights respected. Cindy and I have joined them for Friday afternoon protests in the olive groves west of Bil’in in the West Bank and have been met by teargas and small arms fire from the IDF, even though we never left Bil’in land. I remember stumbling up the hillside while an Israeli friend helped Cindy to medical aid for gas inhalation.
We have watched a landowner weeping as her olive trees were being uprooted to make way for a great wall to divide her forever from her crops. We watched from afar the Great March of Return in Gaza, again met by gunfire – often targeted at medics, journalists, and even children. Had Israel and the U.S. been moved by any of these nonviolent protests to respect the rights of Palestinians, then the violence of October 7, 2023, and the more than five months of carnage and destruction in Gaza thereafter might have been avoided. To have peace, there must be justice, and there is nothing peaceful about the daily injustice of the occupation.
On a larger, even more depressing scale, I remember in grade school wondering how it was possible that any nation could ever let the Holocaust happen. It was personal. Linda, the girl I shared a desk with, was Jewish. Now, as I watch in horror at the atrocities perpetrated in Gaza and rationalized in Washington DC, I see how genocide happens: by nations making excuses and looking the other way.
That is where we come in – by refusing to look the other way. And an amazing number of us around the world have done so. Activists on the street corners, in city council meetings, in front of the White House, on state capitol steps, many for the first time in their lives, refusing to hear the excuses, refusing to look the other way. We are heartened by each one of you and by the visible, constructive actions you are taking. You have joined with Rachel, who wrote to her mother more than two decades ago, “This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.”
The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Donations by check can be mailed to the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice, 203 East 4th Ave, Suite 402, Olympia, WA 98501.
Free & open to all, donations to Middle East Children’s Alliance welcome
Join us to remember the life of Rachel Corrie, who was killed March 16, 2003 when she was crushed by a US made bulldozer, driven by an Israeli operator as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home.
We believe that Rachel’s wish now would be that we act to end the genocide in Palestine. The event will include readings of Rachel’s letters home, a message from her parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, and time to write and call congress and the White House to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to US funding of the Israeli military.
Music by acoustic musical trio Shamaali, featuring the oud.
Dessert and beverages will be served.
This event is a fundraiser for Middle East Children’s Alliance, for immediate emergency aid to Gaza. It is free and open to the public. Donations to Middle East Children’s Alliance will be gratefully welcomed.
Israeli forces have struck one of the largest residential towers in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, residents said, stepping up pressure on the last area of the enclave it has not yet invaded and where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
The 12-floor Burj al-Masri building, located some 500 metres (1,640 feet) from the border with Egypt, was damaged in the air raid early on Saturday morning.
Dozens of families were made homeless though no casualties were reported, according to residents. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.
One of the tower’s 300 residents told the Reuters news agency that Israel gave them a 30-minute warning to flee the building at night.
“People were startled, running down the stairs, some fell, it was chaos. People left their belongings and money,” said Mohammad al-Nabrees, adding that among those who tripped down the stairs during the panicked evacuation was a friend’s pregnant wife.
A Rafah-based official with the Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority that has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, said he feared that hitting the Rafah tower was a sign of an imminent Israeli invasion.
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Five months into Israel’s unrelenting air and ground assault on Gaza, health authorities say nearly 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 72,500 wounded and thousands more are likely under rubble.
The offensive has plunged the Palestinian territory, already reeling from a 17-year Israel-led blockade, into a humanitarian catastrophe. Much of it has been reduced to rubble and most of the 2.3 million population have been displaced, with the United Nations warning of disease and starvation.
With Israel threatening to compound its assault on Gaza with a ground invasion of Rafah in the coming weeks, we are responding to this international call and organizing an emergency Day of Action for Rafah.
Rafah Governate is a tiny, 25 square mile area smaller than the west side of Madison (see map above). With a prior population of about 175,000, it is now sheltering approximately 1.4 million Palestinians fleeing Israel’s scorched-earth war. The UN and other international humanitarian organizations are sounding the alarm about the absolutely catastrophic carnage that would result from a full-scale assault on Rafah and the surrounding area.
Just today the Netanyahu government announced that they plan to invade Rafah whether conditions that they had previously set are met or not.
The purpose of the March 1 Day of Action is to focus public attention on Rafah, educate Madison on the reality of how small Rafah is, how densely inhabited it currently is, along with a call to action to call the Biden White House paired with a suggested script.
There will be multiple actions throughout the day, including banner drops over the Beltline, sidewalk chalking and leafleting on the UW campus, a social media campaign, press outreach, and leafleting Madison.
We need volunteers for the banner drops over the Beltline during the morning (7:15-8:30am) and afternoon (4:15-5:30pm) rush hours, as well as leafleting and chalking on the UW campus during the lunch hour (12:30-2:30), and posting flyers.
CALL THE WHITE HOUSE AT 202-456-1111 AND DEMAND THAT BIDEN STOP ISRAEL’S ASSAULT (as well as halting all military aid to Israel, implementing a permanent ceasefire, and allowing entry of massive humanitarian aid into Gaza).
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of our dear colleague, Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and seven of her family members, including her two-years-old daughter, by an Israeli airstrike on her family house in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The killing of Nour along with seven of her family members, comes as the latest example of the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and a reminder that all Palestinians, including human rights defenders, are a target for the Israeli government and army. This heinous crime also constitutes further evidence of the lack of safe space for Palestinians in the Strip and an example of what the Palestinians in the Strip have been subjected to for the last 137 days of ongoing Israeli aggression. Nour and her family are among of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, unjustly, illegally and cruelly killed as result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, which members of the international community have not only failed to bring to an end, but have been complicit by providing Israel with the necessary political, diplomatic and military support.
Our dear colleague Nour worked in the Women’s Rights Unit at PCHR since 2019. She holds a master’s degree in law and worked with distinction, perseverance and dedication until the last days, documenting the violations committed by the Israeli occupation, particularly against women and children, providing legal consultations, and trying to provide self-care to the women victims in shelters despite the difficult conditions. Several weeks ago, Nour was forced to move to her family’s house after Israeli war planes targeted a neighboring house, causing significant damage to her house.
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According to information collected by PCHR, last night, 20 February 2024, at approximately 10:00 pm, Israeli war planes directly targeted without any prior warning the house of Nour’s Father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the Islamic University in Gaza, located in Al-Jeneina neighborhood in Rafah, on top of its residents. The targeting resulted in the killing of our dear colleague Nour Abu Al-Nour (30), who works as a lawyer in the Women’s Rights Unit, her child, Kenzi Jumaa (2), her father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour (60), her mother, Mjida Farid Abu Al-Noor (55), three of her sisters, Amal Nasser Abu Al Nour (35), Mona Nasser Abu Al Nour (24), and Ayat Naser Abu Al-Nour (19), and her brother, Abdulrahman Nasser Abu Al Nour (23), and the wounding of dozens others.
The crimes committed by the Israeli occupation have not spared anyone, including human rights defenders, who have become themselves, along with their families, actual victims of the aggression by being subjected to targeting, starvation, torture and forced displacement as part of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in the Strip.
PCHR extends its deepest condolences to the remaining members of Nour’s family and to the Palestinian human rights community and calls upon the international community to abide by their moral and legal obligations and act promptly to end the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people. With every day that passes, more civilians are targeted and killed. Despite this heinous crime and the challenging working environment, PCHR reiterates its commitment and dedication to documenting and exposing the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian civilians to ensure justice and dignity for the victims.
Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones. May the soul of our beloved Nour and her family rest in peace.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip/CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Israel will send negotiators on Friday to truce talks in Paris, Israeli media said, as Gazans hoped for a ceasefire that could hold off a full-blown Israeli assault on Rafah, after it endured one of its worst bombardments of the conflict.
Israel’s Channel 12 television reported on Thursday that the war cabinet approved sending negotiators, led by the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, to Paris for talks on a potential deal to free more than 100 hostages whom Palestinian militant group Hamas is believed to be holding.
The head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has been in Egypt this week in the strongest sign in weeks that negotiations remain alive.
Earlier Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement, “We will expand the authority given to our hostage negotiators” while preparing to continue intense ground operations.
In the night to Thursday, Israeli bombing flattened a mosque and destroyed homes in Rafah in a fierce surge of violence in the city where over half of the Gaza’s 2.3 million people are huddled, mostly in tents.
In Khan Younis, the territory’s principal battlefield since Israel launched an assault on the city last month, Israeli forces raided Nasser Medical Complex, shortly after withdrawing from it, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said.
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The World Health Organization had said earlier it aimed to evacuate some of the roughly 140 patients stranded there, where Palestinian officials said bodies of dead patients had begun to decompose amid power cuts and fighting.
Israel gave no immediate comment.
In Rafah, mourners wept over at least seven corpses in body bags, laid on cobbles outside a morgue.
“They took the people I love, they took a piece of my heart,” wailed Dina al-Shaer, whose brother and his family were killed in an overnight strike.
Gaza health authorities said 97 people were confirmed killed and 130 wounded in the last 24 hours of Israeli assaults, but many more victims were still under rubble.
They later said a bombardment in the central Gaza Strip killed a further 23 people.
Rafah’s al-Farouk mosque was flattened into slabs of concrete, and the facades of adjacent buildings were blasted away. Authorities said four houses had been struck in the south of the city and three in the centre.
Residents said the bombing was the heaviest since an Israeli raid on the city 10 days ago that freed two hostages and killed scores of civilians.
“We couldn’t sleep, the sounds of explosions and planes roaring overhead didn’t stop,” said Jehad Abuemad, 34, who lives with his family in a tent. “We could hear children crying in nearby tents, people here are desperate and defenceless.”
The head of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) told the United Nations Security Council in New York that children who survive the war will not only bear the visible wounds of traumatic injuries, but the invisible ones too.
“These psychological injuries have led children as young as five to tell us that they would prefer to die,” said Christopher Lockyear.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas militants who control the territory stormed through Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, nearly 30,000 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza, according to health authorities, with thousands more feared dead, unrecovered under ruins.
PEACE TALKS
Israel has threatened to launch a full-blown attack on Rafah, the last city at Gaza’s southern edge, despite international pleas – including from its main ally Washington – for restraint.
Residents who have fled to Rafah from elsewhere say there is nowhere left to go. Meanwhile, an already meagre aid flow has almost completely dried up.
Talks to reach a ceasefire failed two weeks ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a counteroffer from Hamas for a four-and-a-half month truce that would end with an Israeli withdrawal.
Hamas, still believed to be holding more than 100 hostages, says it will not free them unless Israel agrees to end fighting and withdraw. Israel says it will not pull out until Hamas is eradicated.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters that Israel was now backtracking on terms the country had accepted weeks ago in a ceasefire offer hammered out with U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
“The occupation is not interested in achieving any agreement,” he said, accusing Netanyahu of ignoring the issue of freeing captives in a prisoner swap. “All he is concerned about is continuing the execution of Palestinians in Gaza.”
There was no immediate response from Israeli officials. Netanyahu has said he would not agree to Hamas’ “delusional demands”, but that if the group were to show flexibility progress would be possible.
In one of the first indications of how Israel sees Gaza being run after the war, a senior Israeli official said Israel was looking for Palestinians with no links to either Hamas or the rival Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, to set up a civil administration in “humanitarian pockets” of Gaza.
“We’re looking for the right people to step up to the plate,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “But it is clear that this will take time, as no one will come forward if they think Hamas will put a bullet in their head.”
The plan was dismissed by Palestinians, including both Hamas and the umbrella Palestinian Liberation Organisation of its main rivals, as an unworkable formula for Israeli occupation.
(Reporting by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa in Rafah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Peter Graff, Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Cynthia Osterman)
Egypt is building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert near Gaza to prepare for an influx of Palestinian refugees as Israel is vowing to launch an assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt and is packed with about 1.5 million Palestinians.
The revelation of Egypt’s construction, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal and an Egyptian rights group, signals Cairo is caving to Israeli pressure to allow Palestinians to enter its territory.
Egyptian officials told the Journal that more than 100,000 people would be able to fit into the camps they are constructing. If a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza does happen, the Egyptian officials said they want to limit the number of refugees they allow in to between 50,000 and 60,000.
The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights first reported on the construction on Wednesday and said the project is expected to be completed within 10 days. Egyptian officials told the Journal they expect a broad Israeli offensive on Rafah could start “within weeks.” Israel must be aware of the construction and will likely try to push as many Palestinians into the camp as it can.
Israeli government officials have not been shy about their desire to cleanse the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and re-establish Jewish settlements. A document prepared by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that was leaked back in October said the best-case scenario for Israel would be to send all 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza into Egypt.
But Cairo’s opposition to the plan caused Israeli officials to look elsewhere and suggest Western countries take in Palestinian refugees. According to Israeli media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously said he was looking for countries to “absorb”Palestinians, but he’s cooled the rhetoric since the Biden administration criticized other Israeli ministers for making similar comments.
Despite its opposition to displacement of Palestinians, Cairo appears to be preparing for a scenario forced by Israel.
A satellite image shows the construction of a wall along the Egypt-Gaza border near Rafah on February 15, 2024 [Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters]
Egypt is building a fortified buffer zone near its border with the Gaza Strip as fears mount of an imminent Israeli ground invasion of the southern city of Rafah, which could displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the frontier, according to satellite images and media reports.
Footage from the site in the Sinai desert and satellite photos show that an area that could offer basic shelter to tens of thousands of Palestinians is being constructed with concrete walls being set up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, the only non-Israeli-controlled crossing to and from Gaza.
The new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Palestinians manage to cross into Egypt and could accommodate more than 100,000 people, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing Egyptian officials.
It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents have been delivered to the site, the report said.
Videos taken by the United Kingdom-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights show trucks and bulldozers clearing debris from a plot of land of about 8sq miles (21sq km), according to The Washington Post, which obtained satellite images that show 2sq miles (5sq km) was cleared between February 6 and Wednesday.
Mohamed Abdelfadil Shousha, the governor of North Sinai, the Egyptian governorate that borders Gaza and Israel, has reportedly denied that Egypt is building a refugee camp along the border in case of an exodus by Palestinians forced by the Israeli military.
The Sinai Foundation, an activist organisation that has a monitoring team in northern Sinai, said in a report this week that the gated area will be surrounded by 7-metre-high (23ft-high) cement walls.
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Egypt to create a gated high-security area in the reception of Palestinian refugees from Gaza
The Sinai Foundation obtained information through a relevant source that indicates that the construction work currently taking place in eastern Sinai, is intended to create a… pic.twitter.com/8Xe1H7t9O0
The UN’s high commissioner for refugees said on Friday that a mass movement of people from Rafah into Egypt’s Sinai would be a disaster for Palestinians and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
“It would be a disaster for the Palestinians … a disaster for Egypt and a disaster for the future of peace,” Filippo Grandi told the Reuters news agency of Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah.
When asked whether Egyptian authorities had contacted the UNHCR about possible contingency plans he said: “The Egyptians said that people should be assisted inside Gaza and we are working on that.”
Israel has said it wants to take over the Philadelphi Corridor, the fortified border area between Gaza and Egypt, to secure it. Egypt has threatened that this would jeopardise the peace treaty the two countries signed four decades ago.
Cairo has emphasised that it does not want Palestinians to be displaced from their land by Israel, comparing such a scenario to the 1948 Nakba, the forced displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in the war that led to Israel’s creation.
Tel Aviv’s insistence on going ahead with its planned attack on Rafah despite international pressure has been unshaken even though the area is where 1.4 million Palestinians are living, the vast majority of whom have been forcibly displaced – some multiple times – by Israeli bombardments and ground operations.
Palestinians displaced to Rafah are suffering from a lack of sufficient shelter, food, water and medicine, and the United Nations and human rights groups have warned that the humanitarian disaster in the besieged enclave is rapidly worsening.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the army to work on a plan of evacuation for more than half of the 2.3 million people of the Gaza Strip who are now crammed into Rafah, but has provided no detailed steps.
He has suggested Palestinians could be sent to areas north of Rafah that the Israeli military has already cleared through a ground invasion backed by bombings.
Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of agriculture and rural development, has suggested areas west of Rafah and the bombed al-Mawasi refugee camp near the Mediterranean coast, where many are already sheltering.
But UN humanitarian aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Thursday that it would be an “illusion” to believe that people in Gaza could be evacuated to a safe place. He also said it would be “a sort of Egyptian nightmare” if Palestinians were to be forced into Egypt.
A satellite image shows new construction and earth grading along the Egypt-Gaza border near Rafah on February 10, 2024 [Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters]
The United States and a number of other key allies of Israel have said they oppose a ground assault on Rafah, some warning it would be “catastrophic”.
US President Joe Biden “has been clear that we do not support the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza”, Reuters quoted a US Department of State spokesperson as saying on Friday. “The US is not funding camps in Egypt for displaced Palestinians.”
Israel on Wednesday pulled out of US- and Arab-mediated talks with Hamas because it said the Palestinian armed group has had “ludicrous demands” that have included Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet have continued to push for “total victory” with the prime minister calling Rafah the “last bastion” of Hamas.
For weeks, the fiercest fighting in the Gaza Strip has been taking place in Khan Younis, also located in southern Gaza, with the Israeli military claiming its attacks are aimed at destroying Hamas battalions in the area.
Using shelling, sniper fire and drones, the Israeli army has also for weeks been laying siege to Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility in the area, which has hundreds of patients and staff and has been a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians.
Dr Nahed Abu Taima, the hospital’s director, told Al Jazeera on Friday that Israeli forces were rounding up patients and civilians and had cut off electricity to the medical complex.
“We stand helpless, unable to provide any form of medical assistance to the patients inside the hospital or the victims flooding into the hospital every single minute,” he said.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 28,775 Palestinians and wounded 68,552 since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Several thousand more are missing, presumably buried under rubble.
Members of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project protested Dec. 23 in Madison.
A small group of Madison citizens banded together in 2003 to forge person-to-person relationships with Rafah (a city in Gaza), raise awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and influence U.S. public policy to benefit both peoples. Now it aims to help families in its Sister City survive.
The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project launches the year-long Grassroots to Gazacampaign tomorrow to raise funds “to provide urgent aid to children and families there who are suffering from hunger, cold, disease, dehydration and the constant threat of death and injury from Israeli bombing and shelling,” the charitable organization explained on its website.
Meanwhile, 1.5 million Palestinians now shelter in Rafah (six times the population before Oct. 7) as Israel airstrikes hit and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens a ground offensive. It will be a “bloodbath, and a stain on both Israel and those nations providing arms,” tweeted the Norwegian Refugee Council chief Thursday. “We need an immediate ceasefire to reach the women, children, families who are at a breaking point,” he warned.
Rather than call for a ceasefire, the U.S. Senate passed a foreign aid bill early this morning that includes $14 million in military aid to Israel. To be enacted, it would next go to the House, “where it is unclear when or whether Speaker Mike Johnson would hold a vote on it,” CNN reported.
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Cassandra Dixon of the Madison-
RafahSister City Project
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project’s new fundraising campaign grew from “desperate feelings,” MRSCP member Cassandra Dixon said in an interview Sunday with Wisconsin Muslim Journal.
“This is such a horrendously awful time. The suffering there is incomparable to anything we have seen in our lifetimes.
“In order for people to try to remain in Gaza, it’s going to take so much,” she continued. “It seems insurmountable, especially when you consider the pulling of funding to UNRWA (15 countries, including the United States, withdrew funding from the United Nations Reliefs Works Agency, which provides healthcare, education and other assistance in Gaza, after reports of individual UNRWA staff’s involvement in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The decision was decried by Amnesty International.)
“You have to start somewhere,” Dixon said.
Grassroots to Gaza fundraising campaign aims for survival and sustainability
Helping the people of Rafah survive on their land “is one of the pillars of what we do,” MRSCP co-founder Barb Olson told WMJ Sunday. “During our first year, we raised money to contribute to the rebuilding of a well that had been bombed and destroyed. It was the well Rachel Corrie was guarding before she was killed (in 2003, smashed by an Israeli bulldozer).
“From the beginning, we have provided humanitarian aid but also worked to provide people with economic livelihood support,” she said. “The most fundamental form of resistance is the ability of people to remain on their land, even knowing that right now no one’s looking at sustainability, just survival.”
MRSCP’s Grassroots to Gaza fundraising campaign launches with its Valentine’s Day to Leap Year Silent Auction. It is free and open to the public. Bidding begins tomorrow at noon and runs until 5 p.m. Feb. 29. The group has already raised more than half of its initial goal of $5,000 through direct donations, yet “it’s a drop in the bucket” compared to the tremendous need, Olson said.
All proceeds go to the Middle East Children’s Alliance, “a trustworthy partner we’ve worked with for years,” Olson said. Although Israel severely restricts the entry of aid, MECA is still working on the ground there to provide for Gazans’ critical needs, Olson said.
“One hundred percent of all proceeds will go immediately to MECA for urgently needed food, shelter, water and medical supplies,” an MRSCP press release states.
Auction items can be viewed here. A wide variety of Madison businesses, restaurants and artists donated items ranging from gift certificates for coffee and fine dining to limited edition artwork and hand-crafted items made by artisans in Madison and Palestine, says the press release. “A local educator has donated an entire year of tutoring for a struggling reader, a local Mennonite author has donated a book and a talented local baker is offering a dozen feather-light scones baked just for you.”
Future Grassroots to Gazafundraising plans include music events, a bike ride and a campaign to inspire anyone celebrating a graduation or a birthday, holding a garage sale or other appropriate events to invite their families, friends and neighbors to donate to the survival of families in Gaza.
MRSCP’s Grassroots to Gaza fundraising campaign with silent auction launches on Valentine’s Day.
Madison’s unofficial Sister City
MRSCP chose Rafah, an ancient city on the southern tip of Gaza, bordering Egypt, as its sister city. The ancient city dates back to the 8th Century B.C. and includes a number of archeological sites of past civilizations.
Before the current war, about 130,000 residents lived there, with over 70% of its people in refugee camps. More than 50% of the population is under 15 years of age. There are 43 schools in Rafah, with 26 supervised by UNRWA and 17 by the Palestinian National Authority. It had one health center and four clinics.
When MRSCP began in 2003 with a small but committed group of concerned Madison citizens, its first battle was to be officially recognized. A strong attack against their proposal ensued from the Madison Jewish Community Council, which wrote a letter to the mayor calling it “a thinly veiled mechanism to bash the State of Israel” and antisemitic.
“In a climactic vote, the majority of alders present voted in favor of the project, but by Council rule the proposal lost by one vote,” the MRSCP website states. “Mayor Dave Cieslewicz had announced in advance that he would veto the Council resolution if it approved our project, a rare occurrence in Madison government.”
Although the City of Madison denied Rahah official Sister City status in 2004, the group has continued to treat it as an unofficial sister city, Olson explained. MRSCP achieved a 501(c)(3) designation as a charitable organization from the Internal Revenue Service. Contributions to MRSCP are tax-deductible.
The tiny group (still between 8-10 members) punches well above its weight. “Everyone has a job to do,” Olson explained.
Since its founding, MRSCP raised funds for projects to directly benefit Rafah’s citizens, its website explains. In addition to contributing to the rebuilding of the well destroyed by Israeli bombing, it has collaborated with other groups to provide professional materials to the Gaza Community, build a playground, provide clean drinking water to five schools, contribute furnishings and books to a children’s library, support medical care for a child severely injured in an Israeli attack, contributed funding to a project to aid traumatized children and their parents and Gaza-made rechargeable household systems to power lights, fans and phones, and donated Back-to-School backpacks for children.
MRSCP also “protested against and raised emergency relief following repeated Israeli military assaults on Gaza,” its website states. The group has worked on the home front to increase “understanding of Palestinian daily life, society, culture and history, including how U.S. and Israeli policies and Israel’s regime of control have created a devastating situation for ordinary people throughout Palestine.”
It works with like-minded groups to engage in public advocacy “to hold Israel and the U.S. accountable for human rights violations against Palestinians” and engages in activities such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in defense of Palestinian human rights. It recently joined Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, a growing coalition of more than 60 diverse organizations that have called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Israel designated Rafah in a “safe zone” in southern Gaza.
Other Valentines for Gaza
In addition to MRSCP, other organizations are featuring February initiatives. The Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine has created a Valentine Day’s card that members will sign and deliver to their own elected representatives, detailing the devastating destruction in Gaza, said WCJP founder Janan Najeeb, also founder of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition. “We are mailing or delivering hundreds of valentines to elected officials, calling for a ceasefire and asking them to stop arming Israel.”
The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that brings together “people of all faiths and backgrounds to challenge injustice and build peace around the globe,” launched an invitation to send a collective “message of love to Gaza.” It created a web page where you can download graphics (including Facebook profile pictures and zoom backgrounds) and a copy of a valentine to download for a photo shoot for participants holding the valentine. It encourages people to continue to post it through the month of February using the #LoveToGaza hashtag.
“All of us realize from the photos we see from Palestinians in Gaza living through a genocide today, there will not be the (Valentine’s Day) celebrations of past years in 2024,” an email promoting the campaign states.
Sandra Whitehead is an educator, nationally award-winning journalist and author of Lebanese Americans, published by Marshall Cavendish. She is blessed with a loving family–her husband Abdulaziz Aleiou and three children, Ali, Aisha and Adam.
Some 1.4 million Palestinians have been sheltering in a 64sq km (25sq miles) area, hoping for safety that has not materialised.
Rights groups have warned that civilians have nowhere to go to escape Israeli bombardment. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Abdelhakim Abu Riash, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb 2024
Hundreds of Palestinians are fleeing Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah after Israeli forces attacked the area where at least 1.4 million internally displaced people have been sheltering.
Palestinian health authorities said at least 67 people were killed in overnight attacks on Monday after Israeli strikes hit 14 houses and three mosques.
Despite calls to refrain, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking about staging a land assault on Rafah. With the threat of more attacks looming, many Palestinians who initially fled south towards the city for safety and now fleeing back to the central region.
Gaza’s Rafah, about 64sq km (25sq miles) in size, is massively overcrowded since hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians fled there after the Israeli army designated it a so-called “safe zone” in its ongoing war.
More than half the population of Gaza has now crowded into the tiny area to escape Israeli bombardment, which has flattened much of the rest of the enclave.
With an influx of desperate people and a lack of clean water, food, medicine and other basic supplies, disease is also flourishing.
Rawaa Abu Dayya, who has been displaced with her family seven times since Israel’s war began on October 7, is among those who recently fled Rafah.
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“We were living in unbelievable fear,” she told Al Jazeera. The family hails from Beit Lahiya in Gaza’s north, and are now setting up a tent in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“There is no place that is safe. But at least we feel like there is relative safety in Deir el-Balah at the moment,” she said.
“My biggest fear is losing a member of my family, someone I love and who I care about deeply.”
Many displaced Palestinians in Gaza have already been forced to flee multiple times since October 7. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
A displaced family is seen setting up a tent in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Palestinians have resorted to using donkey-pulled trucks as a means of transport amid a severe lack of fuel. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Many of those fleeing loaded their vehicles with mattresses and blankets. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Children are seen playing near the sea in central Gaza. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
The United Nations says 1.9 million people have now been displaced, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Displaced women are seen waiting alongside their belongings on the side of the road. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
A displaced man, Nael Abu Dayya, said he decided to flee Rafah with his family because the school they were sheltering in came under attack. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
‘At least there is some water and a bit of electricity to charge our mobile phones here in Deir el-Balah,’ Abu Dayya said. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Palestinians are bracing for yet another escalation in southern Gaza. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
A child looks on as she rides on a truck bound for Deir el-Balah. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Cold winds and rain in Gaza have worsened the misery of displaced Palestinians. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
A family is seen escaping Rafah on a donkey-pulled cart. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Many grabbed what was left of their personal belongings amid a total siege imposed on the enclave by Israel. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
VIDEO: Makeshift camps. No electricity. A daily struggle for displaced Gazans.
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Salwa Tibi recalls how she covered several miles on foot in southern Gaza, in a desperate search for blankets and sheets that might help keep her four children and other young relatives warm at night.
The aid worker, 53, told CNN she and her husband were “full of fear” as they ventured out to buy supplies for the approaching winter season in Rafah, risking exposure to potential Israeli airstrikes.
“I felt bad for the kids, they had nothing to keep them warm and we were dying from the cold at night,” said Tibi, who works at the humanitarian agency CARE International. She is staying in a rented house with at least 20 relatives including eight children and babies – the youngest of whom is three months old.
The kids, she said, “were screaming all day from hunger.”
As winds, heavy rains and cooler temperatures descend on Gaza from November to February, aid workers and civilians trying to survive persistent bombardment told CNN they face harsh living conditions, insufficient access to warm clothing, and outbreaks of disease in overcrowded makeshift shelters. Food, fuel and water are ever scarcer, and the price of what little remains is spiraling.
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Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 18,600 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in the enclave. CNN cannot independently verify the numbers.
On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had struck more than 22,000 targets in Gaza since October 7, when it launched its military operation in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and over 240 taken hostage.
Senior US officials have warned Israel to minimize civilian casualties in the south, where it has now stepped up its military campaign targeting Hamas, after previously telling Gazans to flee there from the north of the strip.
Civilians like Tibi, who have been displaced multiple times since the fighting began, were forced to pack their belongings again and journey further south, near to the border with Egypt, as Israel on December 3 issued evacuation orders on social media ahead of the expansion of its ground offensive to the whole of the territory. CNN has previously reported on Palestinian civilians who followed evacuation orders later being killed by Israeli strikes.
Several Palestinians who spoke to CNN, some of whom are sleeping on the streets with no shelter, say they are living with the threat of imminent death – either by an airstrike, starvation or untreated disease. The rainy season will compound every survival challenge for civilians, who say they are already exhausted by a war that has torn apart their homeland.
“If the situation stays this tragic, then Gaza is going to starve,” said Tibi.
Forcibly displaced Palestinians could not flee with winter clothes
Islam Saeed Muhammad Barakat did not have time to gather the belongings his family needs for winter when they fled their home in Gaza City.
“I feel some anxiety because we do not have enough blankets and warm clothes,” said Barakat, 48, a displaced civilian in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in messages relayed to CNN by Walid Mahmoud Nazzal, an NGO worker based in Ramallah.
The average temperature in Gaza falls to between 10°C and 20°C (50F to 68F) in December, dipping a couple of degrees lower on average in January. The rainy season typically lasts from November to February, with January the wettest month. One reporting station near the border of southern Gaza and Israel indicated nearly twice the amount of average rainfall to date, while other surrounding reporting stations to the north showed less rain than normal.
Since his correspondence with CNN, Barakat and his family have been forced to flee to Rafah, where he is sheltering in a room with 10 relatives.
Palestinian children take shelter at a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in the city of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, on November 15. Displaced civilians told CNN the arrival of winter in Gaza further threatens their survival. – Mohammed Talatene/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
Almost 1.9 million people, more than 85% of the enclave’s total population, have been displaced since the beginning of the war, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
More than 1.1 million of those are sheltering in facilities in central and southern Gaza, including in Khan Younis and Rafah where strikes have been reported, UNRWA said.
Most fled their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs, civilians and aid workers told CNN. Others who did take some belongings say they abandoned them due to exhaustion during the journey on foot from northern Gaza to the south.
“I had to take off the bag I was carrying and throw it away,” said Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, the director of an orphanage in Gaza City who was among those heading south. “People did the same thing like me, they started throwing their bags.”
Al-Naizi was forced to flee to Rafah with the 40 people under his care – most of whom are children and infants living with disabilities. He recalled being too fatigued to hold the bag, crammed with baby milk, biscuits, dates, diapers, water and clothing, at the same time as carrying one of the orphans, 8-year-old Ayas.
“The road was filled with bags, which led to people falling to the ground when they were walking,” he said.
Civilians may not have expected their displacement to last into the winter months without access to their homes, said Rebecca Inglis, an intensive care doctor in Britain who regularly visits Gaza to teach medical students. Some have resorted to searching under the rubble of destroyed buildings for blankets and other essential supplies.
“They are woefully, woefully underprepared,” Inglis told CNN. “This degree of forcible displacement is new.”
Seeking shelter from the rain
Shadi Bleha has no roof to protect himself from the worsening weather. Instead, he is sheltering in the courtyard of a school.
“We are staying in a tent (made) from separate pieces of nylon,” the 20-year-old student, displaced from northern Gaza to Rafah, told CNN. Bleha said he was living inside the makeshift tent with at least 23 relatives, including five children aged 5 to 12. On some nights, he sleeps outside next to a fire because there is not enough room for them all, he said.
“We try to play some games with my family and sing together … to make them happy, at least for a small time.”
Many are sleeping in school courtyards, said Mohammed Ghalayini, 44, who was staying in Khan Younis when he spoke to CNN. He visited local schools where people are sheltering. Some had lodged sand or cement at the base of their tents to try “to stop any of the flooding,” he added.
Elsewhere, patches of land have turned into sprawling tent camps, where thousands of civilians are living in cramped conditions. Flash flooding caused by torrential rains spills rubbish and sewage into the streets, contaminating people’s limited food and water supplies.
Palestinians displaced by Israeli strikes try to seek cover from rainfall at a UN tent camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on November 19. Swathes of land in Gaza have turned into tent camps, where thousands of civilians are living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. – Fatima Shbair/AP
Some displaced children in a tent camp in Deir Al-Balah, in southern Gaza, could be seen playing in the water following intense downpours on Tuesday.
But Rana Al-Najjar, a 13-year-old girl walking around barefoot, told CNN she found no joy in the rain.
“We are nine people living in this tent. Our tent is flooded with water, my siblings are freezing, and we don’t know what to do. We want to go back to our homes and not drown,” she said.
Another civilian in Deir Al-Balah, Shadya Arafat, 51, told CNN she “used to love the rain.”
“Now we say ‘God have mercy on us,’” said the grandmother, who is staying in a tent with 14 other people, most of whom are children. “We have no beds, no blankets, the children are sleeping on the floor only lying on a sheet.
“I go around begging for a blanket (and) spend the night carrying a pot to collect the water so it doesn’t soak the children.”
‘I see people starving’
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), saysit is “facilitating various humanitarian aid initiatives” to help the civilian population in Gaza, including allowing in aid deliveries – subject to security checks – supplying water and facilitating the establishment of field hospitals. On Tuesday, four tankers of fuel and two tankers of cooking gas were allowed in, as well as 195 trucks of humanitarian aid, COGAT said.
But this is far from meeting the needs of displaced Palestinians. Essential goods have become hard to find – and are expensive when available. People walk for hours or stand in long queues to buy food and fuel, civilians told CNN.
The price of food and water has surged as supplies diminish, leading to widespread hunger and dehydration. The World Food Programme declared a “catastrophic hunger crisis” in Gaza on December 5. The relief organization said it was forced to shut down its last remaining bakery because it had no fuel or gas, adding that it ran 23 bakeries before the war.
Reduced daylight hours mean people are less able to rely on solar power for generators needed to power water pumps. Tibi, the mother of four in Rafah, saves mineral water for the children and infants. The adults drink water sent through aid trucks, she said, which is “not 100% clean.”
Adults ration their meals so that children do not go hungry. “I see people starving, literally starving,” said Bleha, who eats one meal a day.
Civilians on the ground relayed to CNN how much costs have increased in recent weeks. In some cases, the price of 1.5 liters of water has risen from two shekels (about 50 cents) to five shekels, said Ghalayini. A kilogram of cucumbers worth one shekel could go for five or six shekels, while the price of flour, normally 40 shekels per 25-kilogram bag, reached 200 shekels in recent weeks. One displaced family in Deir Al-Balah told CNN they were paying 140 shekels ($38) for 1,000 liters of non-drinkable water.
Aid workers described surviving on a diet of canned beans, bread, and hummus because they cannot cook their food without fuel. Others have set up makeshift cooking facilities in clay ovens, and over open fires, burning solid fuels like plastic, wood, garbage and cardboard instead of cooking with electricity or gas. Some use tin rocket stoves, where wood is burned in a vertical heat chamber to reduce smoke fumes, according to the UN’s children’s agency.
Those relying on solid fuels to heat indoor spaces are exposed to potential carbon monoxide poisoning, said Ghalayini. Outside, street vendors are using burnable waste for fuel, which can release toxic fumes such as black carbon. Cars powered by cooking oil or corn oil release “huge plumes of black smoke” into the atmosphere, he added.
The price of automotive transport has increased six-fold, according to Jamal Al Rozzi, executive director of the National Society for Rehabilitation, who has fled to Bani Suhelia, in the south, for his children’s safety. The cost of moving goods in carts pulled by horses or donkeys has tripled, he added.
Diseases ‘spread like wildfire’
For those already struggling to stay safe, warm and fed, illness poses an additional risk.
In crowded shelters that cannot meet basic sanitation and hygiene needs, diseases “spread like wildfire,” said Inglis, the intensive care doctor.
She anticipates an uptick in upper respiratory tract infections because coughs, colds and viruses spread more quickly when people are clustered together without proper ventilation. Civilians will be exposed to other illnesses including diarrhea and hepatitis A, as well as body lice and scabies, because they cannot wash properly, Inglis added.
Roughly 160,000 to 165,000 cases of diarrhea have been recorded among children under the age of five, a WHO official said Tuesday, describing the figure as “much more” than usual. More than 130,000 cases of respiratory tract infections and 35,000 cases of skin rashes have been recorded, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said in a report Monday, as well as thousands of cases of chickenpox, lice and scabies.
A colleague in southern Gaza, Inglis said, had told her of treating people with wounds “full of maggots” and elderly people suffering “dehydration and exhaustion” after fleeing from the north to the south.
A man carries his daughter in a wheelbarrow through the flooded streets of a UN displacement camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on November 19. Infectious diseases including diarrhea, jaundice, acute hepatitis and respiratory infections are spreading in the strip. – Fatima Shbair/AP
Vulnerable populations, including malnourished children, pregnant and menstruating women, and those with disabilities, are more likely to have symptoms that are left untreated. Israel’s complete siege and restrictions on aid entering Gaza have diminished drug supplies, leaving health workers unable to help many patients who are sick or treat those who have suffered injuries in the bombardment, increasing their risk of infection.
Barakat, in Khan Younis, said: “I and many of my children got sick with several viruses that have spread recently, namely the flu and many colds, and other unknown but painful and contagious viruses.”
Displaced Palestinians queue for food donations in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on November 30. Rampant food, fuel and water shortages have led to spiraling prices. – Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Civilians with chronic illnesses including diabetes and high blood pressure are also more vulnerable to winter illnesses because the blockade has prevented access to treatment, said Inglis.
“Hospitals are not receiving enough medication so there is huge suffering on many levels,” Al Rozzi told CNN.
In Gaza, there are more than 2,000 cancer patients, 1,000 people with kidney disease, 50,000 people with cardiovascular disease and 60,000 diabetes patients, according to WHO. Poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes can lead to complications including skin infections, heart attacks or strokes, Inglis said, adding that patients with treatable cancer are “going to die.”
About 359 patients are accessing dialysis units in the south, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza told CNN on December 11. Inglis said dialysis patients require treatment two to three times a week. The largest dialysis unit in Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, was forced to close after the Israeli military raided the hospital. It has since re-opened with severely limited capacity.
The number of functioning hospitals along the strip has plummeted from 36 to 11, WHO said.
“The entire system has been systematically destroyed in this conflict in such a way that it will take years to rebuild,” said Inglis.
Al-Rozzi said Palestinians were in a state of “fear, anxiety and pain,” adding: “They feel worthless, and they have no clear view of tomorrow, or today.”
Barakat called on the international community to protect Palestinian lives, in the hope that peace will return to Gaza.
“Enough siege, enough starvation, enough killing, enough abuse, we have the right to live,” he said. “Our children have the right to play.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman, Jomana Karadsheh, Vasco Cotovio, Ibrahim Dahman, Mostafa Salem, Kareem Khadder, Eyad Kourdi, Derek Van Dam and Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting.