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One Year on, Gazans’ Suffering to Continue
Baheth Net, 28 Dec 2009
The Gaza War or better known as Gaza Massacre-known as Operation Cast Lead by the Israel Defense Forces, was a three-week brutal intensive air assault on the Gaza Strip by IOF. On 27 December Israel began a wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. It attacked military targets, police stations, government buildings, civilian buildings, international and local institution, mosques and hospitals.
In fact, Israeli air forces (IAF) bombed indiscriminately everything moves in Gaza, using international prohibited weapons .The Israeli F16 aircraft dropped thousands of tons of bombs on the armless Gazans .On the ground, thousands of Gazans were among the wounded, the dead and the missing. The number of the Palestinian civilians' deaths continues to rise amidst massive destruction of buildings and property.
An Israeli ground invasion began on January 3, 2009 added fuel to fire, as the life of more causalities were claimed by these forces. Since the beginning of their ground operations in the Gaza Strip, IOF have seized a number of houses detaining their residents under inhuman conditions. Palestinian civilians in these houses have been denied access to food and water, and they have been even used by IOF as human shields during armed clashes with Palestinian resistance groups.
An Israeli ground invasion began on January 3, 2009. The war ended on January 18, when Israel first declared a unilateral ceasefire, followed by Hamas' announcing a one-week ceasefire twelve hours later.
1.455 were killed, 5000 injured; 85% of those numbers were civilians. The majority of those were children, women and old aged people.. More than 400,000 Gazans were left without running water, while 4,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless; 80 government buildings were hit and tens of mosques leveled to earth.
"For a moment, I thought that the 3rdWorld War has been erupted as 6 F16 bombs hit 20 meters near my home. A tsunami of mud and sand covered my home which sank in darkness .I ran upstairs to see my parents and siblings whom I thought were dead, but fortunately they were still alive. My 24-years-old sister wounded by the fragments of window glasses ".I still remember the neighbors' roar when they came. They were shocked as they thought that the IAF targeted our house. Twenty minute later and after cleaning our home from mud and glasses, Israeli airstrike return to bomb the same area, I do not know why, till yet. Later on, after the Israeli attack ended, I came to realize that were the luckiest among the Gazans because we were among those who were survived from the Israeli indiscriminate shell.
Today, One year after the waron Gaza, and I am still alive to be a witness on the Israeli carnage, as Palestinian always used to be .At the same time, the rest of the survived Gazans who are doomed to live are now commemorating this painful reminiscence.
A siren sounded throughout the Gaza Strip to memorialize the Palestinian victims of Israel's Operation Cast Lead.The siren sounded on Sunday at the exact time which Israeli's military operation began in Gaza one year ago, according to reports. Some Gaza residents stood during the sounding of the siren.
Memorial activities are scheduled to last 22 days, the same amount of time as the war in Gaza, according to reports.
Then, it was the turn of authors, poets, writers, musicians to write innumerable stories, novels, and poems and compose songs about the Palestinians' suffering during the war and after it, as thy still live in limbo till yet.
After War, the bereaved Gaza is still jammed with aching stories which hover around every place in it, to inspire those writers so that the Palestinian accumulative catastrophes and agonies could be their title. Among these stories , the store of a man who lost two daughters and his home and he can't visit his survived 4-year-old girl in a Belgian hospital because Gaza's borders remain sealed; the story of a 15-year-old struggles to walk on her artificial limbs, while dozens of other war amputees still await prostheses; the story ofentire neighborhoods still lie in rubble, and traumatized residents can't rebuild their lives; the story of couples postpone marriage because not enough apartments survived three weeks of bombing and shelling; the story of a father "Anwar Balusha" who lost his six daughters ; the story of entire family killed except a little boy; the story of Al-Sammoni family that lost 22 members, including nine children and seven women in Zaytoun, east of Gaza city on 4 and 5 January after their house had bombarded by the IOF, and the stories seem to be continue ......!!
- Ahmad Daher / PLT
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