January 12th, 2009 at 7:15 pm

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – In 17 days of war, Hisham Abu Ramadan has fallen into a new routine.

He gets up before dawn and goes to his mosque, not just to pray, but to charge his cellphone, since it’s the only place in the neighbourhood with a generator. After prayers, he gets in line at a nearby bakery, where as many as 150 people are already waiting to buy bread. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this life,” said Abu Ramadan, 37.

Others face a tougher time.

In Khaled al-Dali’s two-room shack in the Shati refugee camp, 21 people – half of them relatives who fled the fighting – take turns sleeping because there aren’t enough mattresses to go around. Without fuel, the family cooks on fires made from trash. He has sold most of his furniture to buy food.

Gazans have become adept at coping with conflict, including curfews, street clashes and, most recently, severe shortages created by an 18-month border blockade by Israel and Egypt.

But Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza’s Hamas rulers – with nearly 900 people killed, some 3,400 wounded and tens of thousands displaced – has strained even their survival skills.

The massive bombardment has badly disrupted the flow of electricity and water, already stop-and-go before the start of the war. Israel has cut Gaza in half, cutting north and south off from each other.

During the short daylight hours, shoppers crowd the few open stores and outdoor markets in a hunt for scarce goods, from diapers to dairy. At dusk, streets quickly become deserted as civilians retreat indoors, for fear of being mistaken for militants by Israel’s military.

“Everything is difficult now – eating, drinking, moving,” said Mohammed Saleimeh, 26. When electricity comes on in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the women in his 20-member family rush to bake bread. When water comes on, they wash the cloth diapers they now use instead of disposable ones.

In southern Israel, Hamas rocket barrages have also severely disrupted life, sending people rushing into shelters when air raid sirens go off. Many businesses have closed and classes have been suspended, but residents have adequate supplies of food, electricity and fuel.

In Gaza, the ability to cope largely depends on how much of a buffer, in food and cash, families had going into the war, and in part on their ties to Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Mohammed Awad, a senior Hamas official, told the movement’s Al Aqsa TV on Sunday that 25,000 people on the Hamas payroll, from police to civil servants, have received their December salaries.

Hamas members said the money is being paid in cash, with Hamas activists making the rounds to distribute it. A man with a trimmed beard was seen handing out money from a suitcase in the hallway of a building in one Gaza City neighbourhood, then asking employees to sign a receipt.

Abu Ramadan is a former member of the security forces ousted during Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, and still draws his salary from Hamas’ rival, the West Bank government of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He can still afford to buy drinking water and fill up the tank on the roof of his high-rise in the Sheik Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City.

His family of five eats lentils, beans and canned foods. Tomatoes are available, but have tripled in price, to about $2 per kilogram. Only 20 of 47 bakeries are operating, according to the bakers’ union, explaining the long lines for bread.

In the Shati camp, al-Dali, 33, was already broke at the start of the fighting, struggling to feed his wife and seven children, ages five through 14. A few days ago, he took in his sister, her husband and 10 children, who fled shelling outside their home close to the border with Israel.

They escaped with just the clothes on their backs. On Monday, al-Dali’s sister Salwa, 42, was stirring a pot of lentils and rice on a fire of paper, cardboard cartons and other debris. The refrigerator was empty, except for a few onions and tomatoes.

Salwa said she added extra salt to the cooking water in the belief that it would help rid it of germs. Many Gazans have taken to boiling drinking water too, since local water authorities warned of deteriorating quality last week. She said she tries to feed the kids as late in the day as possible so they don’t go to bed hungry.

Al-Dali said the food will last until Tuesday, and he doesn’t know where the next meal will come from. “I have no other business but to secure something to eat, water to drink and some wood and paper to warm them during the night,” he said. “I feel ashamed of myself. I can do nothing for them.”

In Zahra City, a complex of high-rises south of Gaza City, school teacher Jihan Sarsawi said she now washes in a bucket because running water is scarce, but only if there’s no shelling.

“I’m afraid they’ll shell the building and I’ll be undressed, which would be really embarrassing, so last night I slept in my clothes, without bathing,” she said.

Sarsawi also abstains from food and drink from sunrise to sunset every Monday and Thursday. “It lengthens out the food rations,” she said.

Israel has allowed some humanitarian aid convoys to enter, but the shipments and distribution are often disrupted by fighting. The United Nations resumed aid distribution Monday after suspending it for several days after a truck driver on UN assignment was killed by Israeli fire.

Gaza economist Omar Shaban, who lives in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, said his house gets six hours of electricity a day and running water twice a week, for about eight hours.

He has a small garden where he occasionally plays football with his sons, ages 10 and 16. Central Gaza has suffered less destruction than Gaza City, and Shaban said his family manages to get out of the house almost every day, for trips to the market or relatives in town. Most shops are closed, he said.

Supermarket owner Zaher Abdel Hadi in Gaza City said he’s selling mostly on credit now because people are broke or can’t get their money out of the bank because of a long-standing cash shortage.

“No one is leaving empty-handed,” he said of his customers. “We have to be brothers in this war.”

-

Laub reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah and Diaa Hadid in Jerusalem also contributed to this report

JERUSALEM (CNN) — The international group Human Rights Watch is accusing Israel of firing weapons containing white phosphorus into Gaza. The group demands that the alleged practice cease.

Israel is declining to say whether bursts like this over Gaza involve white phosphorus.

1 of 2 more photos » The group’s researchers in Israel “observed multiple air-bursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over what appeared to be the Gaza City/Jabaliya area” on Friday and Saturday, the organization said on its Web site.

“Israel appeared to be using white phosphorus as an ‘obscurant’ [a chemical used to hide military operations], a permissible use in principle” under the laws of war, the HRW posting said.

“However, white phosphorus has a significant, incidental, incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire,” the posting said. “The potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza’s high population density, among the highest in the world.”

HRW said the use of white phosphorus in Gaza would violate “the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.”

Last week, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN: “I can tell you with certainty that white phosphorus is absolutely not being used.”

Now, however, Israeli officials have a different response to questions about the possible use of phosphorus: “Any munitions that Israel is using are in accordance with international law. Israel does not specify the types of munitions or the types of operations it is conducting.”

Still, a doctor familiar with the material said it is not possible to tell, based on pictures of burns, whether white phosphorus was responsible.

“Dead tissue pretty much looks the same,” said Dr. Peter Grossman, president of the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, California.

The chemical “can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.

Don’t Miss
Hamas leader defiant
Aid worker: Gaza blockade lacks all humanity
Since January 3, when Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, news reports have circulated about the possible use of white phosphorus by the IDF.

HRW’s assertion was supported by munitions experts and some Palestinian doctors, including Nafiz Abu Sha’aban, who said the burns it caused were unlike anything he has seen in 27 years of practice. Watch footage of burn patients in Gaza

Though most severely burned patients have been sent to Egypt, the ongoing fighting has made it impossible to evacuate all of them, including one man with deep burns over 47 percent of his body, the doctor said.

White phosphorus is known to burn flesh down to the bone.

It’s intended to provide illumination or to create a smokescreen in battle. Under an international protocol ratified by Israel in 1995, the use of such incendiary weapons is allowed when “not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons.”

There is no prohibition per se against white phosphorus in conflict. But the timing and location of its use are restricted.

For example, it is illegal under the protocol to use white phosphorus against any personnel, civilian or military. It can be directed only against military targets. International law says incendiary weapons cannot be used where civilians are concentrated.

A house north of Gaza City was hit Sunday by something that observers contend may have been white phosphorus.

“It’s been burning since one o’clock in the morning,” Munir Hammada told CNN 11 hours later. “If you move it with your feet, it reignites. You can’t put it out with water, only sand.”

Those characteristics match the properties of white phosphorus, which ignites

He gets up before dawn and goes to his mosque, not just to pray, but to charge his cellphone, since it’s the only place in the neighbourhood with a generator. After prayers, he gets in line at a nearby bakery, where as many as 150 people are already waiting to buy bread. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this life,” said Abu Ramadan, 37.

Others face a tougher time.

In Khaled al-Dali’s two-room shack in the Shati refugee camp, 21 people – half of them relatives who fled the fighting – take turns sleeping because there aren’t enough mattresses to go around. Without fuel, the family cooks on fires made from trash. He has sold most of his furniture to buy food.

Gazans have become adept at coping with conflict, including curfews, street clashes and, most recently, severe shortages created by an 18-month border blockade by Israel and Egypt.

But Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza’s Hamas rulers – with nearly 900 people killed, some 3,400 wounded and tens of thousands displaced – has strained even their survival skills.

The massive bombardment has badly disrupted the flow of electricity and water, already stop-and-go before the start of the war. Israel has cut Gaza in half, cutting north and south off from each other.

During the short daylight hours, shoppers crowd the few open stores and outdoor markets in a hunt for scarce goods, from diapers to dairy. At dusk, streets quickly become deserted as civilians retreat indoors, for fear of being mistaken for militants by Israel’s military.

“Everything is difficult now – eating, drinking, moving,” said Mohammed Saleimeh, 26. When electricity comes on in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the women in his 20-member family rush to bake bread. When water comes on, they wash the cloth diapers they now use instead of disposable ones.

In southern Israel, Hamas rocket barrages have also severely disrupted life, sending people rushing into shelters when air raid sirens go off. Many businesses have closed and classes have been suspended, but residents have adequate supplies of food, electricity and fuel.

In Gaza, the ability to cope largely depends on how much of a buffer, in food and cash, families had going into the war, and in part on their ties to Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Mohammed Awad, a senior Hamas official, told the movement’s Al Aqsa TV on Sunday that 25,000 people on the Hamas payroll, from police to civil servants, have received their December salaries.

Hamas members said the money is being paid in cash, with Hamas activists making the rounds to distribute it. A man with a trimmed beard was seen handing out money from a suitcase in the hallway of a building in one Gaza City neighbourhood, then asking employees to sign a receipt.

Abu Ramadan is a former member of the security forces ousted during Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, and still draws his salary from Hamas’ rival, the West Bank government of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He can still afford to buy drinking water and fill up the tank on the roof of his high-rise in the Sheik Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City.

His family of five eats lentils, beans and canned foods. Tomatoes are available, but have tripled in price, to about $2 per kilogram. Only 20 of 47 bakeries are operating, according to the bakers’ union, explaining the long lines for bread.

In the Shati camp, al-Dali, 33, was already broke at the start of the fighting, struggling to feed his wife and seven children, ages five through 14. A few days ago, he took in his sister, her husband and 10 children, who fled shelling outside their home close to the border with Israel.

They escaped with just the clothes on their backs. On Monday, al-Dali’s sister Salwa, 42, was stirring a pot of lentils and rice on a fire of paper, cardboard cartons and other debris. The refrigerator was empty, except for a few onions and tomatoes.

Salwa said she added extra salt to the cooking water in the belief that it would help rid it of germs. Many Gazans have taken to boiling drinking water too, since local water authorities warned of deteriorating quality last week. She said she tries to feed the kids as late in the day as possible so they don’t go to bed hungry.

Al-Dali said the food will last until Tuesday, and he doesn’t know where the next meal will come from. “I have no other business but to secure something to eat, water to drink and some wood and paper to warm them during the night,” he said. “I feel ashamed of myself. I can do nothing for them.”

In Zahra City, a complex of high-rises south of Gaza City, school teacher Jihan Sarsawi said she now washes in a bucket because running water is scarce, but only if there’s no shelling.

“I’m afraid they’ll shell the building and I’ll be undressed, which would be really embarrassing, so last night I slept in my clothes, without bathing,” she said.

Sarsawi also abstains from food and drink from sunrise to sunset every Monday and Thursday. “It lengthens out the food rations,” she said.

Israel has allowed some humanitarian aid convoys to enter, but the shipments and distribution are often disrupted by fighting. The United Nations resumed aid distribution Monday after suspending it for several days after a truck driver on UN assignment was killed by Israeli fire.

Gaza economist Omar Shaban, who lives in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, said his house gets six hours of electricity a day and running water twice a week, for about eight hours.

He has a small garden where he occasionally plays football with his sons, ages 10 and 16. Central Gaza has suffered less destruction than Gaza City, and Shaban said his family manages to get out of the house almost every day, for trips to the market or relatives in town. Most shops are closed, he said.

Supermarket owner Zaher Abdel Hadi in Gaza City said he’s selling mostly on credit now because people are broke or can’t get their money out of the bank because of a long-standing cash shortage.

“No one is leaving empty-handed,” he said of his customers. “We have to be brothers in this war.”

-

Laub reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah and Diaa Hadid in Jerusalem also contributed to this report.

now this is the tough part… let’s grant that the palestinians are semites…. do you see a difference between the palestinians and the jews? no? do the jews look like caucasians?maybe the google image search function is anti-semitic… and don’t forget the nazi bloggers using photoshop…. god help us in the future!

Now I would rather listen to Mr Sahaf than listen to lies from the Murdoch zionist controlled FOX News.
God I miss Mohammed Al Sahaf he should be press officer for the Palestinians.
FREE PALESTINE!