Despite Olmert's claims, reports of civilian causalities and brutal firsthand accounts continue to pour in.
On CNN yesterday, Olmert informed us that:
Israel would not "allow a humanitarian crisis to be created in the Gaza Strip."
"We will help supply food and medicines like any enlightened and moral country must do," he said.
Yet this morning, we read in the Independent about another loss caused by the actions of the “enlightened and moral country” - the death of the father of the paper's Gaza correspondent Fares Akram:
The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. Nestled in a flat fertile agricultural plain north-west of Beit Lahiya, it had lemon groves, orange and apricot trees and we had recently acquired 60 dairy cows.
It was the closest farm to the northern border with Israel. Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us.
But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48. Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.
The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. "Just a pile of flesh," my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty…
Another story – this one from Oxfam:
A paramedic working for an Oxfam funded organisation was killed when an Israeli shell struck a civilian ambulance in Gaza today according to international agency Oxfam. The tragedy illustrates the deadly dangers faced by Palestinian civilians and aid worker said the agency.
Another paramedic lost his foot and a driver was injured in the same incident, which occurred when an ambulance belonging to Oxfam's partner organisation, Union of Health Work Committees, was hit while trying to evacuate an injured person in the Beit Lahiya area.
The ICRC reports this morning that:
The situation in Gaza since the Israel Defense Forces launched their ground offensive on Saturday night has become both chaotic and extremely dangerous. It is difficult for the ICRC to move around and assess the urgent humanitarian needs created by the continued shelling and bombing, and by fighting on the ground. The ground attack has forced a number of people in the north of the Gaza Strip to flee their homes.
The fighting is causing damage to hospitals, water supply systems, government buildings and mosques. A number of water supply lines have been severed during bombardments, making it very difficult for families in certain areas of the Gaza Strip to get hold of safe drinking water.
And the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports:
According to the Coastal Municipalities Water Utilities (CMWU), about 70% of the Gaza Strip population has no access to water…
Gaza City and northern Gaza are particularly affected due to electricity cuts and a lack of fuel for back-up generators….
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society estimates that thousands of homes have been damaged since the beginning of military operations, exposing their residents to cold weather…
There is an almost total blackout in the governorates of Gaza, North Gaza, Middle Area, and Khan Yunis. Most of the telephone network (both land lines and cell phones) is also not functioning, since it now depends on back-up generators with dwindling fuel stocks.
In today’s Ha’aretz, Amira Haas quotes a Palestinian friend, after recounting more stories from the Gaza Olmert does not want us to see:
It's cold and the windows are open; there's fire and smoke in open areas; at home there's no water, no electricity, no heating gas. And you [the Israelis] say there's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tell me, are you normal?"
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