Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Palestine: The Assault On Health And Other War Crimes

Palestine: The Assault On Health And Other War Crimes
by Derek Summerfield
Does the death of an Arab weigh the same as that of a US or Israeli
citizen? The Israeli army, with utter impunity, has killed more
unarmed Palestinian civilians since September 2000 than died on
September 11, 2001. In conducting 238 extrajudicial executions the
army has also killed 186 bystanders (including 26 women and 39
children). Two thirds of the 621 children (two thirds under 15 years)
killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their
homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to
the head, neck and chest-the sniper's wound. Clearly, soldiers are
routinely authorised to shoot to kill children in situations of
minimal or no threat. These statistics attract far less publicity than
suicide bombings, atrocious though these are too. Amnesty
International has called for an investigation into the killing of Asma
al-Mughayr (16 years) and her brother Ahmad (13 years) on the roof
terrace of their home in Rafah on 18 May, each with a single bullet to
the head. Asma had been taking clothes off the drying line and Ahmad
feeding pigeons. Amnesty noted that the firing appeared to have come
from the top floor of a nearby house, which had been taken over by
Israeli soldiers shortly before. Amnesty suspects that this is not
&#8220;caught in crossfire,&#8221; this is murder.
Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza-a system of
military checkpoints splitting towns and villages into ghettos,
curfews, closures, raids, mass demolition and destruction of houses
(more than 60 000), and land expropriations-has made ordinary life
impossible for everyone, and is driving Palestinian society and its
institutions towards destitution. Moreover, Israel has been
constructing a grotesque barrier that, when completed, will total over
400 miles-four times longer than the Berlin Wall. Extending up to 15
miles into Palestinian territory, the real purpose of the wall is
permanently to lock more than 50 illegal Israeli settlements into
Israel proper. This is expansive, aggressive colonisation, in defiance
of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the United
Nations General Assembly resolution of last July.
Last year a UN rapporteur concluded that Gaza and the West Bank were
&#8220;on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.&#8221; The World
Bank estimates that 60% of the population are subsisting at poverty
level ($2; £1.12; &#8364;1.6 per day), a tripling in only three years.
Half a million people are now completely dependent upon food aid and
Amnesty International has expressed concern that the Israeli army has
been hampering distribution in Gaza. Over half of all households are
eating only one meal per day. A study by Johns Hopkins and Al Quds
universities found that 20% of under 5s were anaemic, 9.3% were
acutely malnourished, and a further 13.2% chronically malnourished.
The doctors I met on a professional visit in March pointed to a rising
prevalence of anaemia in pregnant women and low birthweight babies.
The coherence of the Palestinian health system is being destroyed. The
wall will isolate 97 primary health clinics and 11 hospitals from the
populations they serve. Qalqiliya hospital, which primarily serves
refugees, has seen a 40% fall in follow-ups because patients cannot
enter the city. There have been at least 87 documented cases
(including 30 children) in which denial of access to medical treatment
has led directly to deaths, including those of babies born while women
were held up at checkpoints. The checkpoint at the entrance to some
villages closes at 7 pm and not even ambulances can pass after this
time. As a recent example, a man in a now fenced in village near
Qalqilya approached the gate with his seriously ill daughter in his
arms, and begged the soldiers on duty to let him pass so that he could
take her to hospital. The soldiers refused, and a Palestinian doctor
summoned from the other side by mobile telephone was also refused
access to the child. The doctor was obliged to attempt a physical
examination, and to give the girl an injection, through the wire.
Here are consistent reports of ambulances containing gravely ill
people being hit by gunfire, or detained at checkpoints while drivers
and paramedics are interrogated, searched, threatened, humiliated, and
assaulted. Wounded men are abducted from ambulances at checkpoints and
sent directly to prison. Clearly marked clinics are fired on, and
doctors and other health workers shot dead on duty.
Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have lambasted the Israeli
Medical Association (IMA) for its silence in the face of these
systematic violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which
guarantees the right to health care and the protection of health
professionals as they do their duty. Remarkably, IMA president Dr Y
Blachar is currently chair of council of the World Medical Association
(WMA), the official international watchdog on medical ethics. A supine
BMA appears in collusion with this farce at the WMA. Others are
silenced by a fear of being labelled &#8220;anti-semitic,&#8221; a
term used in a morally corrupt way by the pro-Israel lobby in order to
silence. How are we to affect this shocking situation, one which to
this South African-born doctor has gone further than the excesses of
the apartheid era.
K
-- 
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations 
and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

in situations of minimal or no threat.
Puttanata.
-Stefano