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what would you say to your children when they see their palestinian peers in gaza who face the israeli air strikes and the internationally prohibited weapons?!
how  you answer them if thy ask you about the american support to the israeli war criminals?
 what would you say if  they asked you why they don't  find food ,water or electricity?
let's read this report  of "hrw":
The United Nations Security Council, meeting on January 7, 2009 in a high-level emergency session, should establish a commission of inquiry to investigate alleged laws-of-war violations in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said the investigation should include Israel's January 6 attack just outside a UN school housing displaced persons in the Jabaliya refugee camp, as well as other alleged abuses by Israel and Hamas.
"There must be a serious and independent investigation into the shocking loss of civilian life that took place near the UN school and that has characterized this conflict," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Security Council can provide the kind of impartial inquiry that can determine what happened."
The January 6 attack, which is reported to have killed between 30 and 40 people, illustrates the need for a wide-ranging independent investigation. The United Nations in Gaza said the school was clearly marked as a UN building and that it had provided GPS coordinates for the site to Israeli forces.
The consistent failure of both Israel and Hamas to investigate past allegations of laws-of-war violations by their forces underscores the need for an international investigation into this incident as well as other alleged laws-of-war violations by both parties to this conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The UN commission of inquiry should make its findings public, and offer recommendations for holding accountable all persons found responsible for serious laws-of-war violations.
Human Rights Watch is unable to conduct full independent research on this and other incidents at this time due to ongoing hostilities, and because Israel has severely restricted access to Gaza for all international media and human rights monitors since early November, and blocked access entirely since the fighting began on December 27.
According to officials from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and eyewitnesses who spoke to the media and Human Rights Watch, at around 3:45 p.m. on January 6, at least three Israeli tank shells struck around the perimeter of the UN's al-Fakhora school, where hundreds were sheltered from the fighting in the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp. Other accounts have referred to an Israeli mortar or artillery attack.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman told Human Rights Watch that the IDF had come under mortar fire from inside the school, and the IDF returned mortar fire at the source. An IDF statement released on January 6 said an initial inquiry indicates that: "a number of mortar shells were fired at IDF forces from within the Jabaliya school. In response to the incoming enemy fire, the forces returned mortar fire to the source."
An UNRWA spokesman, Sami Mshasha, told Human Rights Watch that several hundred people had sought shelter in the school to escape fighting in the area. UNRWA has established 23 impromptu shelters in schools and other structures throughout Gaza; as of January 6, UNRWA was providing shelter for about 15,000 displaced persons. UNRWA Director of Operations in Gaza John Ging said that the people in the school were all families seeking refuge from the fighting.
A subsequent IDF statement said that two "Hamas terror operatives and a mortar battery cell" were among the dead at the school. It identified two of the killed Hamas fighters as Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar, but did not explain the basis for this information.
A witness told the New York Times that he saw a Hamas militant whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Askhar near the school right before the attack. The witness said he was there because he was responding to calls for volunteers to pile sand near the school at the time to "help protect the resistance fighters."
The Associated Press cited unnamed Palestinian witnesses as saying that several fighters ran toward the crowd, apparently to protect themselves, after the first shell missed them.
In an email to Human Rights Watch, Andrew Whitley, director of the UNRWA Representative Office at the UN, stated: "[T]here has been no recent abuse of our facilities in Gaza by Palestinian militants using them for cover or as firing positions. There were no, repeat no, mortars fired from the school in Jabaliya camp, although we cannot exclude that there was fighting nearby."
Human Rights Watch spoke by telephone with two men who said they had witnessed the attack. Neither of them said they saw Hamas militants in the area at the time. According to Mouin Gasser, a 45-year-old teacher, about four strikes hit around the school, and he could not distinguish the type of shell. He said:
"I was walking on the street where the school is located in the Jabaliya refugee camp. I was 15 meters away from the school gate and I saw the people running towards me as soon as the sound of the shelling began. While I was walking I could not distinguish what kind of shelling it was because all of them took place around the same time. There were about four strikes, about a half minute between them. The shells landed just outside the school and one hit an electricity transformer on a pole just outside the school, and the shrapnel from that strike hit the people inside the school. There were different sizes of shrapnel, very sharp pieces of metal, most of them about five centimeters long. The tanks were about two kilometers away to the west in Beit Lahiya. I was offering first aid to the people on the street and at the gate of the school. We did not know how this large number of casualties came about. At the gate of the school there were donkey carts and people were transporting their belongings to the school. I did not see any militants in the area. The shelling did not cause that much damage to the building but it was the first time to see so much shrapnel spreading everywhere."
Another man, Shadi Abu Shanar, worked as a guard at the school. In a brief phone interview, he said he was inside the gate of the school when the attack took place:
"Suddenly I heard a number of explosions at the gate. I went out onto the street and found dead bodies and wounded people lying on the ground. Most of them were cut into pieces. The street was full of people. I was about to pass out because of what I saw. The shells landed in a range of 20 to 40 meters around the school. The school was full of people."
The laws of war require all parties to a conflict to take all feasible measures to protect the civilian population. Attacks must be made against only military targets. It is unlawful to conduct attacks that do not discriminate between combatants and civilians or when the expected civilian loss from the attack is excessive to the anticipated military advantage.
In addition, warring parties should, to the extent feasible, avoid deploying within or near densely populated areas and remove civilians under their control from the vicinity of military objectives. Even if Hamas combatants were firing from in or around the school, Israeli forces remain obligated to ensure that their attacks were directed only at military objectives and that they were not indiscriminate or would cause disproportionate civilian loss.
UN officials said they had provided the IDF with the GPS coordinates of all its installations in Gaza well before the current fighting began, including the UNRWA school where the attacks took place yesterday.
"Gaza's borders are closed, so civilians can't flee the territory and the only refuge they have is in places like UN schools," Stork said. "Palestinian fighters should stay away from those schools but even if some were in the area yesterday, we question the firing of multiple shells at an area where civilians are seeking refuge."
The January 6 attack appears to be the single-most deadly incident for civilians in Gaza since Israel's current offensive began. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 640 Palestinian combatants and civilians have been killed in the fighting thus far, and 2,850 injured. According to humanitarian agencies, medical crews and ambulances are facing great difficulty accessing the wounded due to ongoing fighting, and hospitals have been overwhelmed with casualties.
In a separate attack on the night of January 5, three members of the same family were killed while taking shelter in the Asma elementary school run by UNRWA in Gaza City. An Israeli missile hit the building's toilet facilities, UNRWA said, killing: Hussein Mahmoud Abd el Malik al Sultan, 24; Abed Samir Ali al Sultan, 19; and Rawhi Jamal Ramadan al Sultan, 25. The school was sheltering about 400 people who had fled their homes in Beit Lahiya earlier in the evening.



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Comments

  • andora said on Jan 11, 2009....
    I would say that violence is not a solution

    I would sayl that "An Eye For an Eye" type of violence is dangerous and foolish

    I would say, when someone comes to our home that wants to kill us, we must fight to the death and this is what both the Hebrew people and the Palestinian people have created by living by these ineffective methods.

    I taught my children to realize that what was done to the American Indian in the name of 'manifest destiny' was vile and evil. governments rarely work on behalf of their citizenry...look at Hamas, if they wanted to take care of their children they would have spent money on a desalination plant rather than bombs when they got Gaza back!

    stop with the martyrdom, it doesn't solve anything, especially when there are children being killed on both sides of this dispute. the problem really is cultural. the hamas fanatics celebrate when children die from suicide bombs, but then turn around and want the world to be outraged when their children get caught in the cross-fire. this does not mean that i believe in the tactics of either israel or hamas - we want the violence on both sides to stop - that includes hamas
  • jerusalem said on Jan 12, 2009....
    sure "violence is not a solution  " ,
    but don't you consider killing 900  and  injuring 4100  civilians in 16 days  (half of them children and women) violence?!, don't you consider attacking un schools a violence?! , don't you think using internationally prohibited weapons against 1.5 million civilians a violence?!  "see:  http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/10/israel-stop-unlawful-use-white-phosphorus-gaza " don't you think violating security council resolution kind of violece?
    i agree with you that "  when someone comes to our home that wants to kill us, we must fight to the death " and the palestinians freedomd fighters do that exactly, they have many reasons to  resiste the israeli occupation in west bank and bolckaed on gaza, and they struggle just to liberate 22% of their historical area or half of their official and legitimate area  ,  "see : http://domino.un.org  " .
    look , if you think that the local rocket of Hamas the reason to make masacre in gaza, read the israeli official reports and you will find that the war is planned before many months ( when Hamas was respecting the truce ).
    i agree with you " we want the violence on both sides to stop " but israel doesn't give the others any chance to do that because it refuse the peace and think " right is might",for that it refused the security coulncil resolution.
     
     
  • andora said on Jan 13, 2009....
    me thinks you missed my point

    Hamas refuses to stop killing innocent citizens, refuses to acknowledge Israels right to exist. What is Israel supposed to do? lay down and die? I think that the Palestinians speak out of both sides of their mouth and have made martyrdom a way of existence. Palestinians will never recover from this if they do not align with one another. Hawaiians lost their land and are getting it back by aligning with one another. Of course they are not getting Hawaii back because the powerful elites want this for themselves. We do not kill the powerful elites, instead, we care for the land, we care for our own, and we know that continuing on with non-violence is the only way to move forward without sacrificing our loved ones to a power struggle that is world wide. Palestine is only one of many places that was Colonized by these forces. And, Palestinians have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars by those of us that care about your plight, yet squandered it on violence and teaching your children hate. I'm sorry for the suffering, and, I feel very little simpathy for martyrs!
  • andora said on Jan 13, 2009....
    correction:

    I said "of course they are not getting Hawaii back"

    what I meant is that the State of Hawaii is not being given to anyone, however, lands are being given back to Hawaiians...right now 1.2 million acres is being processed to be given back. This has taken them over 150 years of political effort on the part of these humble people. They were the victims of some pretty nasty genocide in the beginning.

    After all, I guess that the Palestinians do not know how indigenous folks were disposed of prior to modern communications systems...so, maybe they don't actually know how lucky they are that they were not delivered goods with smallpox on board. My people (the Mandan) went extinct because of efforts on the part of the 'American Trading Co.', do you see me making bombs? no, nor would I take on the 'MACHINE' unless I was ready to die or lose everything.

    overall I hate violence and wish with all of my heart that the racial and religious differences btween folks would not push them to persecute one another...and they still do. I think the only thing that will end this dispute is the earthchanges that are currently occurring in that region. Now one seems to be aware of what is happening around them in regard to our atmosphere and oceans...when the horn of Africa splits from the continent of Africa, then the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aiden would drain into the new ocean bed forming - everyone will forget all about human rights then as they attempt to survive what the earth has in store for them.
  • jerusalem said on Jan 14, 2009....
    i am sure that hamas isn't the problem because israel commited many war crimes before hamas , now it uses hams as reason to detroy gaza ,if you read the israeli newspapers you would find this fact because this war is planned before many months. if we refuse hamas policy that dosen't mean we kill about 1000 civilians and injure 5000, the israeli civilian victims who are were killed by hamas rockets are just 3. also when some people violate the law that isn't reason for us to viloate the law and commite war crimes. when egypt was in war against israel after 67 israel attacked many civilian targets but eegypt respected the law. israel refused the cease-fire,so the israeli like this situation and want more victims.
  • jerusalem said on Jan 16, 2009....
     first of all i deleted your comment because you wrote inappropriate talk against muslims. i accept any opinion but i don't accept abusing.
    about your talk on the israeli right of exist, palestinians accepted  the solution of 2 states and  ,before 5 years 22 arab states offerd "the arabic iniative " which garntee the israeli exist and protection if israel accept the palestinian state on(67 border) which is the half of their lawfull border(47 borders) see :  http://domino.un.org
     about the neighbors of israel , israel attacked most of them (in 56 and 67) ,even in 48 they started the war to defend the palestinian unarmed people who faced many massacres ( see: www.sabrashatila.org  www.palestineremembered.com www.freepali.com/massacres.aspx  ) and there are many source supporting this talk.
    about women is isalm , the most of you said is anti-islamic propaganda you can visit "  www.islamfortoday.com/women.htm "
    woman in islam  mother,sister,daughter and wife ,islam respect all of them and gives the mother great rank more the father. and islam says the paradise is under the mother's foot .
     
     about  "darfure crisis" : the victims also are muslims , this problem isn't related to islam it's because of the african local traditions and the international approaches, not only that but the muslim states and  organizations helped the victims and supported them.
     
    our issue her isn't islam.the problem is between israelis and palestinians (muslims and christians), and i talk about human rights and international law.
    whatever the reasons of the war no respectable man can accept killing 1100 civilians with cold blood, that is not related to any religon.
     
  • jerusalem said on Jan 16, 2009....

    andora,

    i welcome every comment and respect all opinions but withhout any bad words against any side.

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Those who hoped that the Israeli atrocities in Gaza would rekindled a sense of remorse... were surely disappointed when the PA withdrew its draft resolution supporting recommendations made by South African Judge Richard Goldstone....