Wednesday, April 30, 2008

raid against an orphanage in Hebron

Press Release: Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron

For Immediate Release: Wednesday 30, April, 2008 3:30 am

RAIDED - Hebron Girls Orphanage Sewing Workshop

HEBRON At 1:00 am this morning, April 30th, the Israeli Military raided the

Hebron Girls' Orphanage near the intersection of Salaam and Al Adel (Peace

and Justice) Streets. Acting on orders issued by Major General Shemni,

soldiers looted the workshop of all its sewing and processing machines,

office equipment, rolls of cloth, finished clothing and supplies. CPT

members documented, with still photos and video, approximately 40 Israeli

soldiers emptying the workshop contents into 2 - 40ft. trucks. The

estimated value of the physical material taken is $45,000 US. The cost in

terms of the fear and terror instilled in the hearts of the little girls

living above the workshop is much higher.

Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams and other internationals from Belgium,

Britain, Canada, Germany, Holland, Scotland and the US have been sleeping in

the orphanage. Their concern is for the children who live in fear of the

military forcing them out of the place they've come to call home. Their

hope last night was that their presence would forestall the army's raid on

the workshop. They hoped in vain. CPT's Art Arbour decried this latest

effort by the Israeli military in its campaign to close the orphanages, "How

can grown men do this to little children?" CPT members documented with still

photos 40 Israeli soldiers clearing out the workshop.

Statements of support for the orphans have come in from former President

Jimmy Carter, from EU Vice President Luisa Morgentini and from

representatives of many international organizations worried about the fate

of the orphans in Hebron. Please join with them in supporting the orphans.

Phone 972-(0)2- 222-8485 or e-mail cptheb@palnet.com to learn more.

Call President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and the Israeli Military. Contact

#'s are on http://www.hebronorphans.blogspot.com.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence

reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org Photos of our projects are at www.cpt.org/gallery.

CPT Contacts: office 011-972-(0)2 222 8485

Paul Rehm 011-972-(0) -54-432-8529;

Mary Anne Grady Flores 011-972-(0)59-802-7301,

Email:cptheb@palnet.com,

http://www.hebronorphans.blogspot.com

--

Mary Anne Grady Flores

Ithaca Catholic Workers

West Bank, Palestine

059-802-7301 Jawaal cell

054-258-1392 Orange cell

--

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

who is to blame?

Our Defense Forces, our war crimes, our terrorism
By Bradley Burston

Tags: Burston, war crimes, terror

Author's note: This is the second version of this piece. The first was written, I freely admit, in anger and in suspicion, not least because of the many cases of the unwarranted killings of Palestinian civilians which have gone unreported, underreported, glossed over, or misrepresented in the Israeli media, and because the army was initially unwilling to provide its side of the story, and has been less than completely forthcoming since.

Allow me, if you will, to preface this piece by pointing out to those of you who began your comments "If you had ever served in the IDF ..." to state that it was because I served in the IDF, as a combat medic, as an enlisted man and for 16 years in annual reserve duty, that I wrote what I wrote and felt what I felt. And if what I wrote was an over-reaction, it was for this reason as well.

Allow me to add, as well, that I believe that a tremendous effort has been made by the IDF to limit Palestinian civilian casualties, especially since late 2006, and statistics bear this out. But I still believe that more can, and must, be done in this regard.

__________________________________________________




I want to apologize for the unforgivable.

It is time for us to stop "understanding" why so many we kill so many Palestinian civilians. It is time for us to stop explaining away the deaths we excuse as the unfortunate and incidental by-product of a terrible war.

If it had been only an isolated incident, a tragic aberration, I would have kept my peace, said nothing, just moved on.

But the same crime, the same - let's call it by its real name - atrocity, has been committed time and again, under the same circumstances, for the same reasons, with the same indefensible result.

Someone in an IDF uniform, in a position of responsibility, gave an order. We will probably never know who. Nor will we know who loaded the shell into the tank gun, if that was, indeed what happened, or who armed the air-to-surface missile, if that was what happened, who sighted the target, who gave the order to fire, who carried it out.

What we do know is that a mother in Beit Hanoun, a devastated area of northern Gaza from which Qassams and mortars are fired at Israel, was seeing to the breakfast of her four small children Monday morning when their world exploded.

We know that they are all dead.

The army said it fired two missiles at Palestinian militants near the tin shack of the Abu Meatik family, detonating explosives carried by the militants, spaking a "secondary explosion" that struck the home.

Witnesses said that a tank shell sheared through the roof and killed everyone inside, among them Rudina Abu Meatik, 6, her brothers, Saleh, 4 and Mousab, 15 months, and her three-year-old sister, Hana, 3.

We console ourselves, here on the Israeli side of the border, that, unlike the suicide bomber, the box cutter terrorist, the drive-by machine gunner, the Merkaz Harav gunman, the deaths of the children and their mother in Beit Hanoun were a terrible case of bad fortune.

We salve our doubts by stressing - and this is true - that the Israeli army never intentionally targets non-combatants. We protect our fragile consciences by suppressing case after case of Palestinian civilian casualties.

We deflect our guilt by shifting the blame to Hamas, to the Jihad, even - and for this I apologize seventy-fold - to the failure of Palestinian civilians to rise up and stop the terrorists.

We are prepared to excuse it again and again. We excused it when we heard the news today, just as we excused it in November, 2006, when an IDF artillery piece killed 19 people in Beit Hanoun, some of them children still sleeping in their beds when the shell hit.

No more.

It would pay, in this regard, for us to review the reasons why Palestinian mortars and Qassam rockets fired at civilian centers are considered a war crime. "Because Qassams are not capable of accurate targeting, it is unlawful to use them in or near areas populated with civilians," Human Rights Watch said after a Qassam killed a Sderot mother of two children, days after the 19, mostly women and children, were killed in Beit Hanoun.

It would pay, in this regard, for us to recognize that despite cutting edge technology, we can aim neither tank shells nor missile with assurance.

"International humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects as well as indiscriminate attacks and attacks that cause disproportionate damage to civilians," the organization declared. "A prohibited indiscriminate attack includes using weapons that are incapable of discriminating between civilians and combatants or between civilian and military objects."

We all know why we send in the assault helicopter, and the tank, and the fighter-bomber, and use them against Palestinians. We use them for the same reason we pulled out of Gaza. To spare our own soldiers. We know that occupation takes huge numbers of troops. We use armor against humans in order to limit the exposure of our own soldiers to risk.

The way we use them, however, kills children.

There will be those on our side who on principle doubt the Palestinian witness accounts, and who prefer to believe the army version. I am willing to believe that the army version, in the narrow sense, was correct. But even the army version does not explain insufficient concern for the proximity of civilians.

I am, however, unwilling to accept the approach of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose hand can clearly be seen in current military policy in Gaza. "We see Hamas as responsible for everything that happens there, for all injuries," Barak said, responding to the Beit Hanoun deaths Monday.

"The army is acting, and will continue to act, against Hamas, including inside the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also responsible, by way of its activity within the civilian population, for part of the casualties among uninvolved civilians," Barak said.

At the same time, the army has ordered a special inquiry into the incident. That is exactly as it should be. Soldiers and, especially, their commanders, must know that there will be intensive, impartial investigations and severe consequences for the killings of Palestinian civilians.

And while we;re at it, let the Israeli who is stunned and stricken by Palestinian terror, begin to acknowledge that incidental killings of civilians are our shame, our war crime, our suicide bombs, the massacres for which we, virtuous as we believe we are, are directly to blame.

Monday, April 28, 2008

another massacre in Gaza

AAN NEWS AGENCY
---------------------------


Israeli tanks kill seven Palestinians, including mother and four young children, in Beit Hanoun

Date: 28 / 04 / 2008 Time: 09:19

Gaza – Ma'an – Seven Palestinians were killed, including a mother and her four young children, and at least seven others were injured when Israeli tanks shelled a house in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday morning, witnesses and medics said.

Palestinian medics identified the mother, Khadra Abu Mu'attaq, and her children Ahmad Abu Mu'attaq, three-year-old Hana Abu Mu'attaq, four-year-old Salih Abu Mu'attaq, and six-year-old Rudayna Abu Mu'attaq, medics reported.

The family was inside the house, eating breakfast at the time of the shelling.

A student, 17-year-old Ayyub Atallah, was killed on his way to school. His friend Mu'tasim Sweilim was injured.

The sixth Palestinian killed was a member of the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades, named Ibrahim Al-Hjuj. He was also identified by medical sources.

Muawiya Hassanain, the Gaza-based director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, confirmed that the deaths took place after Israeli forces fired on the Abu Ma'tuq family home in Beit Hanoun.

Witnesses reported that Israeli tanks and bulldozers invaded Beit Hanoun early on Monday morning and began firing on residential houses.

On Sunday night Israeli forces raided the town of Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, seized 40 Palestinians, and used bulldozers to destroy agricultural lands, witnesses said. The Israeli forces withdrew at midnight.


***Updated at 10:04 Bethlehem time

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

settlers violence: Palestinian child killed.

MAAN NEWS AGENCY
---------------------------


Palestinian boy, ten sheep killed by Israeli settler bus

Date: 08 / 04 / 2008 Time: 10:12

Nablus – Ma'an – An Israeli settler bus ran over a 15-year-old Palestinian shepherd named Sharif Shtaya on a bypass road near the West Bank city of Nablus late on Monday afternoon, witnesses said.

Witnesses said the bus "deliberately" struck the boy while he was attempting to cross the road with his flock of sheep. Ten sheep and a donkey were also killed. The bus was passing through the Palestinian village of Salim on the way to the settlement Elon Moreh.

Palestinian medics said the Israeli military handed over Shtaya's corpse to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Settler bypass roads, some reserved for Israeli use exclusively, crisscross the occupied West Bank, connecting Israeli settlements with one another and with Israel.

Friday, April 04, 2008

The security of the occupation before the security of [Palestinian] citizens.

Marching toward total ruin'
By Avi Issacharoff
Tags: Al Aqsa Brigades, Jenin

JENIN - "When you see Zakariya, maybe you'll be surprised, but he looks like just any other Palestinian man now. Without armed men, without a weapon, just an ordinary guy," related an acquaintance of Zakariya Zubeidi, until not long ago the commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Jenin.

Though Zubeidi is no longer hiding from the Israel Defense Forces, for a number of hours the people at the theater where he works tried to find him. Zubeidi didn't answer his mobile phone even when the commander of the Palestinian security forces in Jenin, Suleiman Umran, called him. In the end, a woman who works at the theater explained that he usually sleeps late and maybe that's what he was doing.

In the past, Zubeidi used to show up briefly at his house, in the Jenin refugee camp, together with his wanted colleagues, before disappearing for fear that Israelis would ambush him. The only reminder of those days are the framed pictures of the "martyrs" killed recently in the camp, and the huge poster of Saddam Hussein posted in one of the alleys leading to Zubeidi's home. The door is opened by his son Mohammed, who immediately summons his father. He comes down in sandals and a black T-shirt, and promises that in a few minutes he will come to the theater offices. Zubeidi arrives in his officer's "battle" jacket and mountaineering shoes, but without a weapon and without his erstwhile colleagues from the brigades.


What are you doing these days?

Zubeidi: "Nothing special. We've shut down the Al-Aqsa brigades and I haven't yet received a full pardon from Israel. I'm at home a bit, at the theater a bit."

Why haven't you received a pardon?

"They lied to us, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The PA promised us that after we spent three months in PA facilities and if we didn't get involved in actions, we would receive a pardon. The three months ended and nothing happened. We still need to sleep at the headquarters of the security organizations. They promised us jobs and they haven't materialized either. Some of us are getting a salary of NIS 1,050 a month. What can you do with that? Buy Bamba for your children? They lied to everyone, they made a distinction between those who were really in the Al-Aqsa Brigades, whom they screwed, and groups that called themselves by that name, but in fact were working on behalf of the PA."

So why have you stopped?

"In part because of the conflict between Fatah and Hamas. Look, it's perfectly clear to me that we won't be able to defeat Israel. My aim was for us, by means of the 'resistance' [code for terror attacks], to get a message out to the world. Back in Abu Amar's day [the nom de guerre of Yasser Arafat], we had a plan, there was a strategy, and we would carry his orders."

In effect, are you saying what Amos Gilad and intelligence always said, that Arafat planned everything?

"Right. Everything that was done in the intifada was done according to Arafat's instructions, but he didn't need to tell us the things explicitly. We understood his message."

And today there is no leadership?

"Today I can say explicitly: We failed entirely in the intifada. We haven't seen any benefit or positive result from it. We achieved nothing. It's a crushing failure. We failed at the political level - we didn't succeed in translating the military actions into political achievements. The current leadership does not want armed actions, and since the death of Abu Amar, there's no one who is capable of using our actions to bring about such achievements. When Abu Amar died, the armed intifada died with him."

What happened? Why did it die?

"Why? Because our politicians are whores. Our leadership is garbage. Look at Ruhi Fatouh, who was president of the PA for 60 days, as Yasser Arafat's replacement. He smuggled mobile phones. Do you understand? We have been defeated. The political splits and schisms have destroyed us not only politically - they have destroyed our national identity. Today there is no Palestinian identity. Go up to anyone in the street and ask him, 'Who are you?' He'll answer you, 'I'm a Fatah activist,' 'I'm a Hamas activist,' or an activist of some other organization, but he won't say to you, 'I am a Palestinian.' Every organization flies its own flag, but no one is raising the flag of Palestine."

Are you, who used to be a symbol of the intifada, saying, "We have been defeated, we have failed, the intifada is dead?"

"Even Gamal Abdel Nasser admitted his defeat, so why not me? Come on, I'll tell you something. On Saturday there was a ceremony to mark the killing of one of our martyrs. They asked me to say a few words. What could I say? I can no longer promise that we will follow in the martyr's footsteps, as is customary, because I would be lying. So then one of the heads of Fatah came over to me and said, 'We are following in the footsteps of the martyrs, we are continuing the resistance.' And I told him that he is a liar.

"I feel that they have abandoned us, the Al-Aqsa activists. They have left us behind and forgotten us. We are marching in the direction of nowhere, toward total ruin. The Palestinian people is finished. Done for. Hamas comes on the air on its television station and says 'Fatah is a traitor.' That is to say, 40 percent of the nation are traitors. And then Fatah does the same thing and you already have 80 percent traitors."

Is that why you are at home?

"I got tired. When you lose, what can you do? We, the activists, paid the heavy price. We've had family members killed, friends. They demolished our homes and we have no way of earning a living. And what is the result? Zero. Simply zero. And when that's the result, you don't want to be a part of it any more. Lots of other people, as a result of the frustration, and because Fatah doesn't have a military wing any more, have joined the Islamic Jihad. Those activists are still willing to pay the price.

"And look at what the PA does to those who are keeping at it. If a PA person is killed in a battle with the Israelis, the stipend paid to his family will amount to NIS 250 a month, even though he had been earning about NIS 2,000. Why? So that he won't even think about carrying out terror attacks. This is the only plan that the PA has these days: Israeli security. The security of the occupation before the security of [Palestinian] citizens.

"When an occupation jeep comes into a refugee camp, the PA doesn't do anything, and if someone shoots at the jeep, they'll go and arrest him immediately. Today the president of the Palestinian people is General Dayton [Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator]. They're all working for him, he is the boss. A PA no longer exists."

Forecast: war

Zubeidi relates that for him, the theater is a refuge from the bleak political reality that the Palestinians are facing. "Here there's no politics, no religion. I still feel free here." From time to time he talks with Tali Fahima [the Israeli woman who spent time in prison for her contacts with Zubeidi], and Jewish friends come to visit him at the theater. As to the future of the region, Zubeidi's forecast is very grim.

"Abu Mazen's mistake," he says, referring to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, "is that he is gambling everything on the negotiations. And what happens if the talks fail? What is his plan then? I'm telling you that if by the end of 2008 a Palestinian state isn't established, there is going to be a war here. Not against Israel, or between Hamas and Fatah, but against the PA. The citizens are going to throw the PA out of here. Today the PA is doing what Dayton and Israel are telling it to do, but at the end of the year, when Israel doesn't give the Palestinians a state, the PA is going to be thrown out. There's going to be an all-out war here, for control of the West Bank."

Zubeidi is not the only one who's feeling pessimistic about the future of the PA. Similar remarks can be heard everywhere in the West Bank these days. Senior American and Israeli officials who have spoken recently with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are saying that his despair is obvious. Some of Fayyad's bitterness derives from Israel's scornful attitude toward the PA. However, it appears that Fayyad is frustrated to the same extent by the endless conflict with Fatah people, who urge him to appoint cabinet ministers from their movement and at the same time are lying in wait for him to fail.

Some of the criticism of Fayyad's government, which has no Fatah people, is justified. The Palestinian prime minister, his many successes notwithstanding, is by no means a miracle worker, nor can he by himself change the face of the reality. The group of cabinet ministers he has appointed are considered technocrats, for better or worse, and they are not succeeding in implementing a substantial change in the government sector.

The heads of the Tanzim, the senior Fatah people who were supposed to have become the organization's leaders of the future, are also making little effort to conceal their despair. They watch as their movement marches toward annihilation: without real reforms, without substantive change, but with endless talk about elections in Fatah and a war on corruption. Even the heads of some of the security organizations are critical of the stuttering actions of the PA against Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. And while Hamas indirectly conducts indirect negotiations with Israel on a cease-fire, the PA, as Zubeidi says, has "zero achievements" to show: limping negotiations, Israeli unwillingness to help, corruption and the absence of reforms. In the view of some Tanzim people, the PA is on a sure path to disintegration. Not in a swift and sharp way, but rather in a prolonged process, at the end of which it will disappear from the West Bank and will be replaced by the Israeli occupation and Hamas. Nearly the only scenario that could change the face of things is, of course, a political agreement or a framework agreement between the PA and Israel. But who can trust the Israelis?

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Palestinian boy from Gaza needs immediate treatment

2008/04/01

Gaza boy needs specialised medical treatment abroad







Ahmad, nicknamed “Misho”, is 16 years old and lives in Block 2 of Jabalia Camp in the North of the Gaza Strip. On 1st March, during the recent Israeli military operation codenamed “Warm Winter”, he was seriously injured by shrapnel from a missile launched by Israeli tanks invading northern Gaza. For two weeks Misho was thought dead, as his identity was tragically mistaken for that of his friend Mohammad, killed in the same missile attack. He was lying in Al Shifa’ hospital, his body so wounded that everyone failed to identify him and his parents assumed he had been killed. Misho is alive, and has been reunited with his parents, but he is in need of specialised medical assistance. He has been referred to receive professional medical support abroad, as the damage to his brain and spine has hampered his ability to speak and he is paralysed on the right side. Gaza’s hospitals, affected by the Israeli imposed blockade, are not sufficiently equipped to support his rehabilitation and the Palestinian Ministry of Health cannot fully fund the treatment needed for his recovery.

For this reason, DCI/PS appeals to its partners and to all concerned to help Misho receive appropriate medical assistance. Through this article, we urge organisations willing and able to facilitate Misho’s treatment to get in touch with us.

Early morning on Saturday 1st March, Misho, Mohammad, Abed, Abdullah and Mohammad Emad, aged 15 to 16, were walking towards Al-Seka street, north of Jabalia camp, to watch Israeli military operations. DCI/PS met with Mohammad Emad, who survived the attack. According to his recollection of the events, the Israeli army had invaded the Izbet Abed Rabbo area and stationed their troops on Al-Khashef mountain. Filled with curiosity, the children approached the area where Israeli forces were engaged in violent combat with resistance fighters, but shocked by the gruesome sights they moved from the mountain back towards the camp on Salah Eddin Street. There, they asked a shopkeeper for some water then walked towards Jabalia Martyrs school. As the fighting intensified the children ran away, and hid behind a wall near the school. Suddenly, Mohammad Emad reports, there was a huge explosion:

I felt pain in my foot, fire on my face, and I felt that I was burning all over my body, my right eye was bleeding. It was around 10:15 am. I saw Abdullah (…) to my left 1 metre away and he was lying on the ground on his abdomen (…), he was trying to stand but he couldn’t. After 5 minutes, several ambulances arrived, because of the severe burn I was unable to turn my face to see what had happened to my friends.

As the ambulance reached them, the area was evacuated and Mohammad Emad fainted, only to wake up three days later in Kamal Adwan hospital. He was told that two of his friends had died, Abed Al Raouf and Abdallah, and that Mohammad was seriously injured. However there was no information about Misho.

Misho’s father, Na’im, also spoke with DCI/PS, and recalled the events of that day. After he heard about the attack, he realised that Misho had been missing from home since the morning and started to panic. He started to search for his son under heavy bombardments. He visited all the hospitals in the area, the Red Cross headquarters, and Al Shifa’ hospital in Gaza City, where many dead and injured had been transferred. On the second day of his search, Na’im returned to Kamal Adwan hospital, where he was told about the unidentified body of a child in the morgue; he asked if he could see it. It was a horrible sight. The body was so dismembered, that he was not able to identify it. He tried to recognise the features of the dead child, and identify his belongings, but he could not be certain. Filled with uncertainty and despair, Na’im returned home.

On 3rd March, as the Israeli military eventually withdrew from Izbet Abed Rabbo and Al-Kashef mountain, the search for Misho started again. In the evening of that day, a boy came to visit Na’im. He informed him that a friend of Misho’s, Mohammad Emad, had been injured in the same attack, and had been taken to Kamal Adwan hospital, where he still was. Na’im ran to meet him, and the child’s account prompted Misho’s father to look for the body of his son in the area where the attack took place. Through pictures, a shopkeeper indentified Misho as the child who had asked him for water, and someone had found Misho’s torn shoes near the school. Na’im deduced from this that the child in the morgue was his son. The following day, Na’im buried the child.

Mohammad Emad recounts to DCI/PS how, on that morning, he attended the burial ceremony of his three friends, Misho, Abed Al Raouf and Abdallah. On the same day, he learned that Mohammad had been hospitalised in the Intensive Care unit of Al Shifa’ hospital in Gaza City. About a week later, on 13th March, Mohammad Emad visited him in Al Shifa’ hospital. However, instead of Mohammad, he recognised Misho.

As I entered to visit my friend, I saw something that I couldn’t imagine. I saw Ahmad (…) sleeping in the bed, not Mohammad (…). His features were slightly changed due to the shrapnel in his face, and the bandage on his head and the pipes in his mouth. His body was totally bandaged but his features were that of Ahmad!(…) I looked towards Mohammad’s (…) father, who was standing near Ahmad (…) and told him “this is not your son”. He looked astonished and told me “this is Mohammad, but the shrapnel changed his look slightly”. I told him that that was not Mohammad, but Misho. And Abdo (…), and those who knew Ahmad and Mohammad, said the same thing. Also the other children with me said the same thing. But Mohammad’s father was insisting.

On the same day, a phone call changed the life of Misho’s family. As he left the hospital, Mohammad Emad immediately called Na’im, who could not believe what he was told. He ran to Gaza City, his nerves tense with hope. As he entered the room, Na’im recognised his son.

When I entered the room, 5 metres away from Misho bed, it was like a miracle, the boy on the bed is Misho my son, I recognised him, and I ran toward him saying: Misho… my son…. I am your father! It was unbelievable to see my son again! I looked at Misho in the eye, but he did not say anything, his mouth was full of pipes and his face was full of shrapnel. But he was my son; I could recognise him. Misho looked at me and a tear drop fell from his eye, it was one tear only.

The scene, however, turned tragic when Mohammad’s family continued to claim Misho as their son. Contacted by Na’im, Misho’s mother made her way to the hospital. She lifted her niqab, in order to identify herself to her son, and Misho started trembling, as if suffering from an electric shock; tears pouring down on his face. After establishing their son’s identity through his body marks, Misho’s parents were finally reunited with their son. Misho was alive, severely and irremediably injured, but alive.

Misho needs immediate assistance. He is hemiplegic and both his legs are severely burnt. He lost a finger on his left hand which is also burnt. There are still pieces of shrapnel embedded in his right hand and jaw. He has now been transferred to the Al Wafa’ rehabilitation centre in Gaza City but the hospital cannot continue his treatment, as it is too costly. Misho is slowly re-gaining the ability to speak and on 6th April he will be transferred to Hashomer hospital in Israel. The Palestinian Ministry of Health will partially cover his treatment which, according to the Israeli doctors, should last at least one and a half months. Misho needs to receive urgent specialised treatment. DCI/PS holds Misho’s medical reports; they can be consulted by those with the capacity to help Misho.

For further information, contact us at:
Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI/PS)
Tel: +972 (0)2 242 7530 Ext. 104