Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
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The Next
Generation of Palestinians
If what has happened in Gaza in recent
years would have
happened in the USA (adjusted for population size) more than 100,000 Americans would have been killed and more than a quarter million homes destroyed by a foreign occupying army using battle tanks and attack helicopters against small resistance groups in cities and towns. Israeli atrocity reaches a new zenith as the body of Wafi Assaliyah is brought to his house in the Jebaliya refugee camp in sight of his children (pictured left) on Tuesday. Assaliyah, who was killed by a tank shell, is but one of more than 70 casualties, including 20 children, of the latest Israeli assault on Palestinian rights -- a six-day, fully-fledged military operation that targeted not only the camp but the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and other parts of the northern Gaza Strip. Such use of excessive force typifies Israeli responses to acts of violence perpetrated by Palestinian militants -- in this case the firing of a Palestinian rocket that killed two Israeli toddlers last week -- with tank shelling and helicopter gunships deployed in densely populated areas. Other human rights abuses by the Israeli military include unlawful destruction of infrastructure, prevention of access to medical services and closures restricting the movement of Palestinians within Palestinian-controlled territories. Amnesty International has since issued a press release calling on the Israeli authority to "put an immediate end" to the use of such abuses and on Palestinian armed groups "not to initiate attacks and armed confrontation with Israeli troops from amongst residential areas". (caption: Al Ahram Weekly, Cairo - photo: AP)
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Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2004/10/1147.htm |