Livewire – Amnesty International blogging for human rights

Boy in a bomb crater in central Jabalia, north Gaza ©Amnesty International

Sunday 25 January: Today, the first day back to work for Gazans after the weekend and a full week after the beginning of the ceasefire. The streets are busy again and, on the surface, life seems almost normal – except that people are mostly busy trying to repair the damage caused during the three-week long war that began on 27 December.

People are clearing up the debris of windows and walls smashed by Israeli bombardments and running around trying to find material to make the repairs. But the acute shortage of building material resulting from the Israeli blockade of Gaza makes the task particularly difficult. Since glass is virtually impossible to find, plastic sheeting is used to repair broken windows, but even that is in short supply.
As people try to put their lives back together, the threat of renewed conflict is all too real. The ceasefire announced a week ago has now officially run out, so it is not clear what will happen next.

Today, when we were in Jabalia taking the testimony of an elderly woman who had sustained a broken leg and other injuries in an Israeli attack on her house, the children of the house returned unexpectedly. Schools had sent the children home early because flights over Gaza by Israeli F-16 war planes had sparked fears of a possible resumption of Israeli bombardments; shops also closed early and there were rumours that Egypt had withdrawn its forces from the Egypt-Gaza border for fear of Israeli attacks along the border area. By the end of the day, Gaza City’s streets were again eerily silent.

Today in Jabalia, we visited many homes that had been hit by weapons that should never be used in built-up areas. Jabalia is one of the most densely populated urban areas in one of the most densely populated places on the planet, with high apartment blocks squeezed into narrow streets.

Right it the middle of Jabalia, we visited a nine-storey building that is home to more than 100 people. During the three-week conflict, it had been hit by bullets, a white phosphorus 155mm artillery shell that had caused large blast holes in the walls and caused a fire in the room next to where a six-month-old baby was sleeping, and a missile that killed five people, including a wheelchair-bound 72-year-old man and injured nine others.

An F-16 warplane also dropped a large bomb so close to the building that it broke windows and filled the balconies with sand from the huge crater that the bomb created.

One family told us that several air strikes in the area had targeted workshops or small businesses. They said a neighbour’s key-making business was hit, as was a washing machine repair shop and even a place making wooden donkey carts.

“Everyone is afraid they live near something that’s considered a target,” one man told us.

In other attacks on a nearby house, a 28-year-old mother of five young children was killed in a missile strike as she was hanging out the washing on the roof of her home. Her seven-year-old daughter was a few steps away and witnessed the attack.

In yet another house, two brothers aged three and four were killed and their two brothers aged seven and eight were seriously injured, when two tank shells exploded through the wall of the room where they were playing.

It is impossible to comprehend how anyone could doubt that such attacks on so tightly packed a residential area as Jabalia would be likely to cause many deaths and injuries.
In a nearby village, the home of a doctor who works in an Israeli hospital was shelled on 16 January, killing three of his daughters and his brother’s daughter.

His brother, who was also injured in the attack, arrived at home when we were there, and carefully unfolded four sheets of paper – the death certificates of the four girls (aged 14 to 21). In the wrecked bedroom where the girls were struck, every piece of furniture is smashed and school books cover the floor.

We have been to dozens of homes in the last few days and the story is all too familiar – civilians living in larger towns or small villages, in different parts of Gaza were all at serious risk of being killed in such attacks. No-one anywhere could be guaranteed safety.