Homes taken over and used as military positions by Israeli soldiers ©Amnesty International
This morning, Thursday, as each morning, Israeli gunboats began firing towards Gaza’s coastline at around 7am. Although there is supposed to be a ceasefire in force, we’ve heard an assortment of weapons being fired on each of the five days since it began. Yesterday, we were informed that nine people had been injured by shelling from an Israeli gunboat.
Today, we visited several families whose homes were taken over and used as military positions by Israeli soldiers during the three-week military campaign. In most cases, the families had fled or were expelled by the soldiers. In some cases, however, the soldiers prevented the families from leaving, using them as “human shields.”
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Homes destroyed by Israeli bombardments. ©Amnesty International
Today, Wednesday, we visited several families whose homes were destroyed by Israeli bombardments in the conflict that began on 27 December. At each house, the story was one of lives lost, lives destroyed.
At the northern end of the al-Shati’ (Beach) refugee camp in Gaza City, we visited the Abu ‘Eisha family. Five members of the family were killed on the night of 4-5 January, when an Israeli aircraft dropped a bomb which struck the house.
At the time, all but one of the 30 members of the family who lived there were present, including four brothers with their wives and children and their father. On the night of the bombing, the family were worried by the loud explosions they could hear over the city but they thought they would be safe in their home. They were not.
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The wreckage of a classroom in Gaza. ©Amnesty International
Each day, wherever we go we are struck by the extent of the destruction. We take photos and film everywhere we go, but the scale of the devastation is impossible to capture on camera. Previously busy neighbourhoods have been flattened into moonscapes.
Other large areas look like they’ve been hit by earthquakes. There is no lens wide enough to embrace the sheer dimensions of the devastation.
Orchards and road have been churned up by Israeli army tanks and armoured D9 bulldozers; the latter sometimes dragging plough-like hooks which ripped the roads behind them – just one example of wanton destruction. Buildings with no apparent military value have been destroyed in vast numbers.
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Amnesty International fact-finding team in Gaza City ©Amnesty International
An Amnesty International fact-finding team arrived in Gaza City on Saturday, 17 January, hours before the Israeli government announced a ceasefire. The team travelled to Gaza by way of Egypt, entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, and then travelled by road north to Gaza City.
As we were crossing the Egypt-Gaza border at Rafah on Saturday (17 January), an Israeli F16 fighter jet dropped a bomb nearby shattering windows and causing parts of the ceiling in the customs hall to fall. We knew we had arrived in Gaza!
Bar few exceptions international journalists and human rights workers have been shut out of Gaza since early November. We were among the very first to get in.
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Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, reports from the south of Israel
Doctors hold an injured child, Gaza, 27 December 2008. ©Sharif Sarhan
At the moment, it’s very frustrating, because I’m in the south of Israel and we’ve been on standby pretty much since the beginning of the crisis on 27 December. We want to go into Gaza to investigate the human rights situation there, but that is not possible. The Israeli authorities are not allowing human rights organisations, as well as the media, into the Gaza Strip.
I’ve been here for a few days in the south of Israel investigating the human rights violations committed by Palestinian armed groups who are firing rockets into civilian towns and villages in the south of Israel. I’ve been talking to victims, people who have been injured, visited houses that have been hit by Palestinian rockets.
Listen to Donatella Rovera report from the border (mp3)
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