The right to walk

Israel's atrocities in Gaza must not be allowed to slip from public consciousness, writes Ramzy Baroud*

Gaza's troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped, from the mainstream media's radar, and by extension from public consciousness. This conveys a false impression that things are improving and people are starting to rebuild their lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel's war last year the Palestinian Ministry of Health has declared that 344 Gaza patients must now be added to the growing number of casualties.

Khaled Abed Rabbo, once a young father of four, is a living example of the ongoing tragedy. His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his children. He buried seven-year-old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after losing any hope that his four-year-old daughter Samar's future would be any less bleak.

According to an IslamOnline report Khaled's wife, Kawthar, lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding up a white flag. But their internationally recognised gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces who began shelling their home. These miserable events unfolded over Christmas time last year. The Rabbo family was reduced by nearly half.

Since then they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds, as has the fact that the Israeli siege on Gaza is the quintessence of barbarism. Yet just as in December 2008, the Israeli blockade means almost nothing enters or exits Gaza. The injured, in need of treatment, are not allowed to leave, while medical supplies, medicine and food are routinely prevented from entering.

With entire neighbourhoods pulverised concrete is desperately needed to rebuild homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. But concrete, like everything else, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like many others, has little hope that his home, which has lain in ruins for the best part of a year, will be restored any time soon.

From 14 September to 2 October, 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session during which the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will present a report based on the fact finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Eight months after the bloodletting of Operation Cast Lead a 34-page report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released on 13 August, pressed for the Gaza blockade to be lifted. The report, which will be presented alongside Goldstone's in September, lays out in detail how Israel battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and densely populated places on earth.

Israel was found to have contravened the most basic norms of human decency: "Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country... and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict," noted the report.

"The right to health of children, set out in [international law] is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 per cent of Gazan children under five were stunted."

The report continues, expressing concern that the only exports allowed out of Gaza in almost two years have been 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, and fully recognising that the siege was a response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect a Hamas government.

From the denial of food, medical supplies and housing to clean water and education, any basic sense of what the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights calls the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" has been systematically undermined by Israel.

One cannot help but wonder, even after so many years of witnessing the ingenuity of Israel when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, how the Israeli government and public can feel not the slightest embarrassment in denying an entire people access to something as basic as food and clean water.

Certainly this is something Khaled must ponder from time to time. Life has been no cake-walk for him, though this last year must have been the most trying of all with two little ones dead, what remains of his family homeless and the third of his four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.

Four-year-old Sana was supposedly one of the lucky children on that day. She survived, one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt's sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them. Now she is paralysed, her body propped up and supported by a pink and purple back brace, like a fairy's suit of armour. Her chances of ever walking again are slim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

The right of a child to walk: it is too basic, perhaps, to be included in human rights documents, yet not too basic for Israel to deny.

* The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com.