Gaza medical center damaged in Israeli air strike

[Tom Joad]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9346.shtml

JERUSALEM/GAZA, 28 February (IRIN) - A main office of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) was severely damaged in an Israeli air strike late on 27 February. A five-month-old baby was killed, and a mobile clinic unit and other medical supplies were destroyed in the attack.

The Israeli military said the air strike targeted a Hamas headquarters in the western part of the Gaza Strip.

In Israel a 47-year-old man was killed in the late afternoon by Palestinian rockets fired by Hamas. In total over 70 rockets were fired in the afternoon and evening.

The latest escalation in violence, which residents say is the most serious in recent weeks, began in the early morning of 27 February when Israeli air strikes killed six Palestinian militants, Gaza sources said. By afternoon, the rockets, seen as a retaliatory move by Hamas, rained down in southern Israel, mostly on Sderot but also on Ashkelon, a city north of Gaza.

One rocket fell within the grounds of the local hospital there, the Israeli military said, noting that the wounded from Sderot were being evacuated to the facility.

According to medical officials and human rights groups in Gaza, by the morning of 28 February, at least 16 people, mostly militants had been killed in the Gaza Strip in several air strikes.

Damage to PMRS equipment

PMRS, a non-governmental organization (NGO), is a large association which provides health services, including emergency ambulatory care, to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Iyad Yaghi, a senior official at the NGO, said the building was the group's main administrative center in the Gaza Strip, and it also housed their central pharmacy and a warehouse of equipment for handicapped people.
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When i was in Nablus, i toured a medical clinic that was just the night before trashed by the Occupation Forces. Also heard UN Ambulance drivers that their vehicles were deliberately hit by Israeli military vehicles.

There is much evidence that such things are targeted by the Occupation Army.

This is what occupation of Gaza and the West Bank looks like, Soon Going into its 41st year.

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. Don't conflate the two. Gaza has sealed its own fate. Even Egypt

kicked them back into the prison of their own making.

[subsuelo]

8. more blame the victim excuses

when will it end

[Tempest]

2. If it's good enough for the U.S. to bomb medical facilities

It's good enough for everyone else.

[subsuelo]

9. well, not exactly so

If Hamas bombs an Israeli medical facility, it would be roundly condemned as a vicious example of Palestinian terrorism.

But when Israel bombs Palestinian medical facilities, well that's just the Palestinians fault!

[madrchsod]

3. another victim of a war that has no reason

both sides will kill each other till the end of time

[peacetalksforall]

4. Who or where are we if we can't take sides? Who would criticize me.

if I said I can not believe in the Bible or the Koran?

If an eye for an eye does not result in anything but death, why practice it.

Are all these people just war loving, blood loving, insanity loving robots?

Israel always wants and expects us to take their side and no one has any problem (?) with the perpetual war where Israel attacks attacks with the fanciest weaponry the U.S. can buy or supply or design for them and with them and their opposition strikes back with stones, body bombs, shulder guns, roadside bombs, and rockets? And Israel goes for the humanitarian targets and structures. Just call it war. With war comes war mongers and perpetuators.

I've had it - with both sides.

The U.S. fight against Cuba - 48 years?
The Israeli-Palestine fight - 41 years?

Blessed be the peacemakers - when you can find them.

I believe in some of the Israeli people - I would not give a dime to their war efforts.
I believe in the Palestinians and Israels' neighbors - I would not give a dime to their war efforts.

But we do give more than a dime - we help pay for all of this death. We are too connected.

[Fredda Weinberg]

5. Then please distinguish between the West Bank and Gaza

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is negotiating w/Jordan for energy independence from Israel. I find that a healthy development.

Gazans can't get a border open to Egypt.

Israel isn't attacking anybody ... she needs to stop those who assemble rockets in civilian areas.

[peacetalksforall]

6. I've followed the Palestinian part of the problem for a long time. Things

have been quiet on the Egypt front, but they aren't now - I wonder why. It doesn't make that much difference to me anyway = whether on the Lebanon side, the Jerusalem center, the Egyptian side - there is always something and it is not defensive. The count of who did what to whom and who had to retaliate was lost long ago. It's ridiculous. The peace lovers within Israel hardly have a chance. All the brains on both side are not being used for human purposes. The hearts and heads are out of sync. If they could get in sync, peace could spread. It is possible.

[Fredda Weinberg]

7. I was raised in the Zionist youth movement. In '67, we had a song

about peace ... if not tomorrow, then certainly the day after. So it's late - we're a people who patiently wait centuries for our savior.

You may not see defensive action, but I know it personally on both sides. The feeling that land should not belong to one nation or another must seem foreign, almost tragic to you, but it's ancient and meaningful to millions of believers on both sides.

Secular Zionists know the Jewish state is necessary but compromise on the realization of a dream. I think we share the dream here, but honestly, we don't in the region.

Peace is not always a priority when traditions are threatened. The Pashtuns in Pakistan or Afghanistan will combat change and negotiate a truce whenever possible. Hamas is similiarly inclined.

Simple but true. So it's not a lack of enlightenment that leaves us in political opposition, but a failure to appreciate real forces at work in the region.