Universal declaration against besieging nations issued in Gaza

[P F Tinmore]

GAZA, (PIC)-- A galaxy of lawmakers from Islamic, Arab and European countries issued on Tuesday evening "the universal declaration against besieging nations" during a ceremony held in the Gaza Strip.

A large multinational delegation of lawmakers, political figures and representatives of the Arab uprisings arrived yesterday in Gaza to declare their support for the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid.

The lawmakers emphasized in their declaration their rejection of besieging any nation in general and Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip in particular, and demanded the world's governments and human rights organizations to necessarily utilize all peaceful means to force Israel to end its unjust blockade on Gaza.

For his part, first deputy speaker of the Palestinian legislative council Ahmed Bahr stated in the ceremony that the international quartet on the middle east led by the USA imposed an unjust siege on the Palestinian people to punish them for their democratic choices.

Bahr highlighted that the USA still supports the Israeli occupation state's inhuman and immoral blockade that led to the death of more than 600 patients who either failed to find medicines or were denied travel for medical treatment outside Gaza.

He also appealed to the international community to bring Israel's war criminals to justice in order to prevent further Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

Universal declaration against besieging nations issued in Gaza

 

[docmauser1]

A galaxy of lawmakers from Islamic, Arab and European countries issued on Tuesday evening "the universal declaration against besieging nations" during a ceremony held in the Gaza Strip. A large multinational delegation of lawmakers, political figures and representatives of the Arab uprisings arrived yesterday in Gaza to declare their support for the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid.

Ah. "Occupy Israel" movement. Same crap, different day.

 

[JStone]

http://asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=22115

Hamas police proceeded to close a water park in Gaza due to the presence of "degrading and unethical gender mixing" according to the justification reported in the news. Subsequent information about this incident revealed that the citizens who were removed from the water park, following the Hamas decisions, had just sat down to break their fast [during the holy month of Ramadan], and those evicted from this water park included a charity organization that looked after orphans.

The media in our region only briefly reported this news, mainly because we do not understand how breaking one's fast during Ramadan could be considered "degrading and unethical." What exactly is the criteria for this?

In any case, this news did not gain a lot of media attention in the Arab world. In fact, those media outlets that covered this story included it on the inside pages of their newspapers or as part of a news round-up, and that is when it was reported at all.

Yet the Gaza Water Park closure is not an isolated incident, in fact similar events occur routinely [in the Gaza Strip]. Only a few weeks ago, gunmen burned down a summer camp for children organized by UNRWA because young boys and girls would be mixing together, and there was a possibility of them swimming together.

Indeed, the siege imposed upon Gaza, and the continuing strain that this has had on its people, has not prevented Hamas from overseeing ‘public morals’. For example, Hamas ensures that women's clothing stores respect the principle of modesty with regards to the mannequins on display at the shop's entrances, with the shop's who fail to do so being subject to punishments. The hardships suffered by the people of Gaza has not prevented Hamas from ensuring that women do not smoke shisha in public places, or that men do not work in female clothing shops.

And who could forget how the Ministry of Education in Gaza banned the book ‘Speak, Bird, Speak Again’ which was a collection of Palestinian folk tales, saying that this contained "shameless sexual expressions?"

What is happening in Gaza is certainly far from an accident, or a miscalculation on the part of Hamas, and in fact this represents the essence of the Hamas movement and its true religious viewpoint. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip through force of arms, and it is impervious to being held to account for its actions. One cannot question its daily practices, or its oppression of the people of Gaza as Hamas practices tyranny in the name of resistance, and hides behind slogans.

Hamas does not tire from changing the features of the Palestinian cause, and obscuring its humanitarian aspects by continuing to obscure and eradicate Palestine's secular history and reality. Those who are united in support for Gaza and its people do not extend their solidarity towards the subsequent injustices inflicted upon the people of Gaza by Hamas, who have seized control of their lives. The means of resisting the Israeli blockade [of Gaza] are well known, and are sometimes productive, however as for the darkness that is being imposed upon the lives of the people of Gaza by Hamas, this cannot be dealt with whilst people are saying that they are in solidarity with the people of Palestine. What was inspiring with regards the Freedom Flotilla that came to challenge the Israeli blockade was that this also challenged the blockade that is being imposed by Hamas upon the lives of the people of Gaza.

When we read the daily reports about what is happening in Gaza under the shadow of Hamas, we cannot help but recall the final verse of the last poem written about Gaza by [Palestinian poet] Mahmoud Darwish before his death:

“If we can’t find someone to defeat us again, we defeat ourselves with our own hands”

 

[P F Tinmore]

Hamas took over the Gaza Strip through force of arms,..

Hamas is the elected government in office.

 

[JStone]

Hamas took over the Gaza Strip through force of arms,..

Hamas is the elected government in office.

Hamas Bans Gaza Students Studying Abroad

Gaza's militant Hamas rulers have banned eight teenage students with scholarships to study in the U.S. from leaving the territory, a Palestinian rights group said Wednesday.

The move appeared to be part of an intensified Hamas campaign against independent groups that they view as a challenge to their rule and against activities that believe promote a Western lifestyle.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the eight students were granted AMIDEAST scholarships, a program that educates talented teenagers from the Middle East and North Africa for a year in the U.S. At the end of the year, students return to their home countries to finish their education. The students were granted scholarships based on their academic achievements.

In a statement, the rights group said Hamas' education minister rejected a travel request by the teenager's parents for "social and cultural reasons." It also accused Hamas of breaching the parents' right to educate their children as they choose.

Hamas would not confirm the order, much as it has in the past with similar orders travel bans on Gaza residents.

But the parents of 15-year-old Aboud Alshatari said their son was traveling to the border Wednesday when Hamas police turned him away, saying the Education Ministry refused to let him leave Gaza. Alshatari was slated to attend school in North Carolina.

The ban comes a day after a network of aid groups in Gaza criticized Hamas for forcing aid workers and employees of civil society groups to register with them before traveling for work outside the Gaza Strip. And last week, Hamas shut down the U.S.-financed International Medical Corps after it refused to submit to a Hamas audit.

The Iranian-backed Hamas overran Gaza from the secular Palestinian Fatah party in bloody street battles in 2007. Since then, Hamas has slowly imposed its radical interpretation of Islam on residents of the Gaza Strip — a world view that is even more stern than what traditionally religious conservative Gazan's follow.

Other Hamas crackdowns include trying to ban male barbers from cutting women's hair and forbidding women from smoking in public and outlawing scantly clad female mannequins.

Hamas Bans Gaza Students Studying Abroad - ABC News

 

[JStone]

Former Gazan Nonie Darwish, Human Rights Activist, Founder, Arabs For Israel... An Arab-Made Misery - WSJ.com

International donors pledged almost $4.5 billion in aid for Gaza earlier this month. It has been very painful for me to witness over the past few years the deteriorating humanitarian situation in that narrow strip where I lived as a child in the 1950s.

It is Hamas, an Islamist terror organization supported by Iran, which is using and abusing Palestinians... While Hamas leaders hid in the well-stocked bunkers and tunnels they prepared before they provoked Israel into attacking them, Palestinian civilians were exposed and caught in the deadly crossfire between Hamas and Israeli soldiers.

Both Israel and Egypt are fearful of terrorist infiltration from Gaza -- all the more so since Hamas took over -- and have always maintained tight controls over their borders with Gaza. The Palestinians continue to endure hardships because Gaza continues to serve as the launching pad for terror attacks against Israeli citizens. Those attacks come in the form of Hamas missiles that indiscriminately target Israeli kindergartens, homes and businesses.

And Hamas continued these attacks more than two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza in the hope that this step would begin the process of building a Palestinian state, eventually leading to a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was no "cycle of violence" then, no justification for anything other than peace and prosperity. But instead, Hamas chose Islamic jihad. Gazans' and Israelis' hopes have been met with misery for Palestinians and missiles for Israelis.

Hamas, an Iran proxy, has become a danger not only to Israel, but also to Palestinians as well as to neighboring Arab states, who fear the spread of radical Islam could destabilize their countries.

Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. If they really loved their Palestinian brethren, they'd pressure Hamas to stop firing missiles at Israel. In the longer term, the Arab world must end the Palestinians' refugee status and thereby their desire to harm Israel. It's time for the 22 Arab countries to open their borders and absorb the Palestinians of Gaza who wish to start a new life. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.

 

[P F Tinmore]

“Whatever became of the settlement lands? Such lost opportunities! The land has returned and what waste”, we hear time and again from Zionist apologists and their kind. “If only Gazans would make a life for themselves rather than blaming their problems on others!”

Leaving aside the obvious question of how a territory and its people whose every marker of sovereignty is effectively controlled by an occupying power that nevertheless refuses to recognize its responsibility as an occupier can “build a state” and “make a life”, the Gaza government has actually been doing some pretty impressive things.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to tour “mu7ararat Gaza”-the liberated lands of Gaza, i.e. the former settlements.

It was a follow-up to an interview colleague Maggie Schmitt and I did with the Minister of Agriculture, Mohammad Al-Agha. In consultation with dozens of international and local NGOs, the Gaza Ministry has drawn up an impressive “ten-year plan” aimed at reducing Gaza’s dependence on imported Israeli produce, incorporating organic farming on a wider scale, and generally “helping Gaza help itself” through a return to more sustainable agricultural practices (such as relying more on rain-fed crops rather than cash cropping for export which involves wasteful amounts of water and an abundance of pesticides, and is subject to the whim of Israeli authorities and their punitive border closure).

Gaza Mom » Gaza; settlements; Israel; Hamas; agriculture

 

[P F Tinmore]

Beyond the well-documented tunnel trade running under the Gaza-Egypt border, Hamas has taken concrete steps to mitigate the impacts of the siege and further its political administration in the coastal strip.

Hamas' agriculture minister, Muhammad al-Agha, has issued a ten-year plan designed to side-step the blockade by increasing local food production and agricultural self-sufficiency in Gaza.

Entitled The Plan for 2020, the document was vetted by 150 academics and researchers, according to the agriculture ministry, and looks to respond to the challenges imposed by Israel's blockade with local initiatives.

For example, Israel's ban on fertilisers has pushed Hamas to explore processing sewage, which has been pumped, often untreated, into the sea off Gaza since the failure of treatment facilities that are short of banned parts and supplies.

"When Israel started preventing the agricultural requirements, we moved to organic agriculture to address our needs.

"What we have done is [implement] model projects for the transformation of agricultural or domestic waste into organic fertilisers which we use then in agriculture," said al-Agha, who is also a professor of environmental science at the Islamic University in Gaza.

Thus far, some 1,000 dunams of land has been fertilised in this manner under the pilot project, according to the ministry.

"What we have tried to do is change the culture of our people gradually to organic agriculture, organic food and organic production," said al-Agha.

The plan, as The Economist recently described it, is to "turn Gaza into one big organic farm".

Going organic: The siege on Gaza - Focus - Al Jazeera English

 

[JStone]

Former Gazan Nonie Darwish, Human Rights Activist, Founder, Arabs For Israel... An Arab-Made Misery - WSJ.com

International donors pledged almost $4.5 billion in aid for Gaza earlier this month. It has been very painful for me to witness over the past few years the deteriorating humanitarian situation in that narrow strip where I lived as a child in the 1950s.

It is Hamas, an Islamist terror organization supported by Iran, which is using and abusing Palestinians... While Hamas leaders hid in the well-stocked bunkers and tunnels they prepared before they provoked Israel into attacking them, Palestinian civilians were exposed and caught in the deadly crossfire between Hamas and Israeli soldiers.

Both Israel and Egypt are fearful of terrorist infiltration from Gaza -- all the more so since Hamas took over -- and have always maintained tight controls over their borders with Gaza. The Palestinians continue to endure hardships because Gaza continues to serve as the launching pad for terror attacks against Israeli citizens. Those attacks come in the form of Hamas missiles that indiscriminately target Israeli kindergartens, homes and businesses.

And Hamas continued these attacks more than two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza in the hope that this step would begin the process of building a Palestinian state, eventually leading to a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was no "cycle of violence" then, no justification for anything other than peace and prosperity. But instead, Hamas chose Islamic jihad. Gazans' and Israelis' hopes have been met with misery for Palestinians and missiles for Israelis.

Hamas, an Iran proxy, has become a danger not only to Israel, but also to Palestinians as well as to neighboring Arab states, who fear the spread of radical Islam could destabilize their countries.

Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. If they really loved their Palestinian brethren, they'd pressure Hamas to stop firing missiles at Israel. In the longer term, the Arab world must end the Palestinians' refugee status and thereby their desire to harm Israel. It's time for the 22 Arab countries to open their borders and absorb the Palestinians of Gaza who wish to start a new life. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.

 

[P F Tinmore]

...more than two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza...

Your source is all wet.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5BDwEW6uw]Laila El-Haddad, Journalist, Author, Gaza Mom-The Autograph-09-21-2011 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[docmauser1]

Hamas is the elected government in office.

That kind of voids all those occupationally idiotic claims of "collective punishment", of course.

 

[docmauser1]

In consultation with dozens of international and local NGOs,

Meaning:
"We've money on shopping malls, but nothing on development. We've been wasting and stealing money since 1994, but, luckily, we've jews nearby to blame our asses on."

the Gaza Ministry has drawn up an impressive “ten-year plan” aimed at reducing Gaza’s dependence on imported Israeli produce, incorporating organic farming on a wider scale, and generally “helping Gaza help itself” through a return to more sustainable agricultural practices (such as relying more on rain-fed crops rather than cash cropping for export which involves wasteful amounts of water and an abundance of pesticides, and is subject to the whim of Israeli authorities and their punitive border closure).

Meaning:
"We've been mismanaging our Gaza aquifer since Arafat times through overpumping it courtecy our semi-feudal agricultural practices so much that saline water has penetrated inland ruining orange groves close to the shore. We're sad losers that's why we shop for money, sympathy and and brain aid, luckily, we've jews around to blame our asses on."

 

[P F Tinmore]

"We've money on shopping malls, but nothing on development. We've been wasting and stealing money since 1994, but, luckily, we've jews nearby to blame our asses on."

The shopping mall is private enterprise. It has nothing to do with the government.

Read posts 7 & 8 above.

The PA (Arafat, Abbas, Fayyad, etc.) was set up by Israel/US to be the oligarchs of Palestine. They get rich while their people eat dirt. That is why they lost the elections.

After losing the Elections they refused to step down and had to be run out of Gaza. They still have an illegal government in the West Bank that stays in power with US money and weapons.

 

[docmauser1]

The plan, as The Economist recently described it, is to "turn Gaza into one big organic farm".

And shitt for it they have aplenty! All else is missing, of course. Every time rains hit Gaza it swims in it own shitt, literally, because the "government" (mis)managers don't do shitt about drainage. Smells like Cologne Gaza. But we digress, of course. On Apr.27, 1997, the Guardian weekly published this jewel:
"..More shocking, really, than the contrast itself is what lies behind it. When he first came here, Arafat said he would turn Gaza into a "new Singapore". Palestinian businessmen, who made their fortunes building the Arab oil states, would help him build his. But, three years on, it is clear that none will seriously touch it. Not just the Israelis deter them, with their repeated frontier closures that bedevil businessmen as well as workers. In truth, Arafat does not want them either. For they would undermine his control, achieved through a combination of police surveillance and money power. So instead of any kind of independent, creative, wealth-producing capitalism, he and his coterie of unofficial economic "advisers" have thrown up a ramshackle, nepotistic edifice of monopoly, racketeering and naked extortion that enriches them as it further impoverishes society at large."
Nothing has changed since, because hamas is a muslim charity and operates like one, maintaining a loyal base of dependents on a dole. The very idea of independent hi-tec farming and profits thereof is anathema.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Every time rains hit Gaza it swims in it own shitt, literally, because the "government" (mis)managers don't do shitt about drainage.

The assholes in Israel will not allow the materials required to fix or upgrade sewage plants.

 

[P F Tinmore]

In truth, Arafat does not want them either. For they would undermine his control, achieved through a combination of police surveillance and money power.

Indeed, see post 13 above.

 

[JStone]

...more than two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza...

Your source is all wet.

Time Magazine: Globally Isolated and Economically Crippled: Why Hamas is Losing Gaza

Besieged by Israel and the West, which regards it as a terrorist group, and cut off from the Palestinian majority in the West Bank, Hamas has little to offer beyond its jihadist credentials — and the promise of clean government. So it's hardly surprising that the party has been rapidly losing ground in its stronghold. Recent surveys by leading pollsters conclude that if elections were held in Gaza today, Hamas, an acronym in Arabic for the Islamic Resistance Movement, would not be returned to power. A June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that Hamas would get just 28% of the vote, a steep decline from the 44% plurality it won in 2006.

Especially alarming for the Islamists is a precipitous drop in support for the party among Gaza's youth: two-thirds of the population is under 25. In a March survey taken in the afterglow of the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square that led to the ouster of Egypt's dictator, Hosni Mubarak, more than 60% of Gazans age 18 to 27 said they too would support public demonstrations demanding regime change.

Soon after that poll, 10,000 turned out at a rally to voice a more modest demand — that Hamas end the bloody rift with Fatah, the secular party it bested six years ago. Hamas sent thugs to break up the demonstration. "We came out to say the people should be united, and they attack us!" says Shadi Hassan, 22, who lives in a refugee camp and sells cigarettes. "We are suffocated, and we need regime change."


Even party stalwarts agree that they've lost the street. "The majority of people want a change, yes," says Ahmed Yusuf, a former deputy foreign minister for Hamas who now runs a think tank called House of Wisdom. "They are not happy with the way Hamas is governing Gaza. Wherever you look is miserable life." Forty percent of Gazans live in poverty. The rate of unemployment is approaching 50%, among the highest in the world, and is likely to worsen as the population of 1.6 million doubles in the next 20 years. "Because they believe in God, they don't think a lot about the future," says Gaza economist Omar Shaban, who heads the Pal-Think think tank. "You won't find someone in Hamas who is thinking about 2045. They say, 'Oh, God will provide.'"

Globally Isolated and Economically Crippled: Why Hamas is Losing Gaza - TIME

 

[P F Tinmore]

Recent surveys by leading pollsters conclude..

Is that the same pollster who predicted that Fatah was going to sweep the elections in 2006?

 

[JStone]

Recent surveys by leading pollsters conclude..

Is that the same pollster who predicted that Fatah was going to sweep the elections in 2006?:cla2::clp2::cla2:

http://asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=22115

Hamas police proceeded to close a water park in Gaza due to the presence of "degrading and unethical gender mixing" according to the justification reported in the news. Subsequent information about this incident revealed that the citizens who were removed from the water park, following the Hamas decisions, had just sat down to break their fast [during the holy month of Ramadan], and those evicted from this water park included a charity organization that looked after orphans.

The media in our region only briefly reported this news, mainly because we do not understand how breaking one's fast during Ramadan could be considered "degrading and unethical." What exactly is the criteria for this?

In any case, this news did not gain a lot of media attention in the Arab world. In fact, those media outlets that covered this story included it on the inside pages of their newspapers or as part of a news round-up, and that is when it was reported at all.

Yet the Gaza Water Park closure is not an isolated incident, in fact similar events occur routinely [in the Gaza Strip]. Only a few weeks ago, gunmen burned down a summer camp for children organized by UNRWA because young boys and girls would be mixing together, and there was a possibility of them swimming together.

Indeed, the siege imposed upon Gaza, and the continuing strain that this has had on its people, has not prevented Hamas from overseeing ‘public morals’. For example, Hamas ensures that women's clothing stores respect the principle of modesty with regards to the mannequins on display at the shop's entrances, with the shop's who fail to do so being subject to punishments. The hardships suffered by the people of Gaza has not prevented Hamas from ensuring that women do not smoke shisha in public places, or that men do not work in female clothing shops.

And who could forget how the Ministry of Education in Gaza banned the book ‘Speak, Bird, Speak Again’ which was a collection of Palestinian folk tales, saying that this contained "shameless sexual expressions?"

What is happening in Gaza is certainly far from an accident, or a miscalculation on the part of Hamas, and in fact this represents the essence of the Hamas movement and its true religious viewpoint. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip through force of arms, and it is impervious to being held to account for its actions. One cannot question its daily practices, or its oppression of the people of Gaza as Hamas practices tyranny in the name of resistance, and hides behind slogans.

Hamas does not tire from changing the features of the Palestinian cause, and obscuring its humanitarian aspects by continuing to obscure and eradicate Palestine's secular history and reality. Those who are united in support for Gaza and its people do not extend their solidarity towards the subsequent injustices inflicted upon the people of Gaza by Hamas, who have seized control of their lives. The means of resisting the Israeli blockade [of Gaza] are well known, and are sometimes productive, however as for the darkness that is being imposed upon the lives of the people of Gaza by Hamas, this cannot be dealt with whilst people are saying that they are in solidarity with the people of Palestine. What was inspiring with regards the Freedom Flotilla that came to challenge the Israeli blockade was that this also challenged the blockade that is being imposed by Hamas upon the lives of the people of Gaza.

When we read the daily reports about what is happening in Gaza under the shadow of Hamas, we cannot help but recall the final verse of the last poem written about Gaza by [Palestinian poet] Mahmoud Darwish before his death:

“If we can’t find someone to defeat us again, we defeat ourselves with our own hands”

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YVWk8qjsU8]Hamas Imposing Sharia Law In Gaza - YouTube[/ame]

 

[docmauser1]

"We've money on shopping malls, but nothing on development. We've been wasting and stealing money since 1994, but, luckily, we've jews nearby to blame our asses on."

The shopping mall is private enterprise.

Run by some hamas-approved sultan, paying for hamas "protection", of course.

It has nothing to do with the government.

But agriculture, of course, does, and gazabadians are mismanaging the Gaza aquifer since Arafat through hamas by overpumping it courtecy our semi-feudal agricultural practices so much that saline water has penetrated inland ruining orange groves close to the shore. And those sad losers shop around for money, sympathy and and brain aid, luckily, they've jews around to blame their asses on.

Read posts 7 & 8 above.

It's the Economist being idiotically overoptimistic about what's not there, shitt excepting, of course. Nothing actual.

The PA (Arafat, Abbas, Fayyad, etc.) was set up by Israel/US to be the oligarchs of Palestine. They get rich while their people eat dirt. That is why they lost the elections.

No problem, of course, they are free to decide what pile of shit to step onto, it's their right.