The Humanitarian Crisis Continues in the Gaza Strip
On 10/26/2017, I reported that the Palestinian Authority(PA) cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip, forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to suffer through the summer months with three hours of power per day. Also, the Gazan people needing medical treatment were being denied the permits by the PA needed to pay for medical treatment in Israel. The PA diverted medical supplies needed for the patients in Gaza to Venezuela.
This nightmare is continuing, the Palestinian people are literally suffering at the hands of their own government and no one is acknowledging that fact. The Times of Israel reported Wednesday 12/13/2017, “the Gazans had three hours of electricity followed by 24 hours of blackout. Egyptian trucks transporting diesel fuel to the Gaza power plant have stopped deliveries due to internal problems in Egypt.” Children have died as a result of the refusal of the PA Health Ministry to issue permits to pay for medical treatment in Israel. I reported, the salaries for the Gazan government employees had been cut from thirty to fifty percent in October. The Times of Israel reported, “In addition, as of mid-December 2017, the November 2017 salaries for 45,000 Hamas employees in Gaza have yet to be paid.”
Last night the “Red Alert” siren sounded on my wife’s phone three times, a warning that rockets had been fired into Israel. The rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward the nearby city of Ashdod. Unfortunately, one of the rockets hit an UNWRA school in Gaza. The other two rockets fired into Israel were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. In the last week, reports of over a dozen rockets have been fired at Israel. Hamas has approved launching rockets into Israel, and are continuing to dig their “terror” tunnels, which are being discovered in Israel.
All of the posturing and declarations made by Abbas and the Hamas government officials over the recognition of the US acknowledgment of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, are overshadowing the fact that Palestinian people are suffering.
The Hamas and the PA are making claims of a united front against Israel, and yet in the background they are not considering the welfare of their own people. In a report in the Times of Israel, nine deaths have occurred due to the PA measures. “The behavior of Mahmoud Abbas in stopping the medical transfers (from Israel) for Gaza’s sick, which has led to the ‘martyrdom’ of a number of children, constitutes crimes against humanity,” said senior Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri in a statement on Twitter.
In an interview with Al-Monitor June 29, 2017 Dr. Ra’ad Haj Yehia, a member of the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) organization, returned June 26 from the Gaza Strip. He says he still hasn’t recovered from the scenes he saw in the hospitals there. Yehia was summoned to Gaza by medical teams in the Strip who asked the PHRI organization “to come and save lives.” Dr. Yehia says he has not been able to get back into his routine since his return from Gaza after four intensive days of treating patients. “I simply could not bear it; I’m going home sick. I saw innocent children who died for no reason, through no fault of their own. The situation is unbearable.”
Prime Minister Golda Meir said, …” We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Len Watts Jerusalem 12/15/2017 IPAnews.com
Contributing to this article: Shlomi Eldar Al-Monitor, Times of Israel, Golda Meir
