<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<h1 class="article-title">UN: Amount of Destruction in Gaza
‘Unprecedented’</h1>
<div class="article-subtitledetails">
<span class="article-details">
<span class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part1.00090000.02010502@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> Tuesday August 19, 2014 10:37</span><span
class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part2.08070106.02040109@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> by Celine Hagbard </span></span><br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.imemc.org/article/68884">http://www.imemc.org/article/68884</a></small></small></b><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="article-intro">The United Nations Mideast Envoy
Robert Serry told the UN Security Council on Monday that the Gaza
Strip has suffered an ‘unprecedented amount of destruction’ as a
result of the month-long Israeli bombardment and invasion of the
coastal strip.<br>
</blockquote>
Serry reported that the number of homes and apartment buildings
destroyed or severely damaged in the Israeli assault is 16,800. In
contrast, no Israeli homes were damaged severely by Palestinian
rocket fire during the month long Israeli invasion of Gaza.<br>
<br>
Serry noted in his report that the number of homes destroyed is
three times greater than in ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008-9. That
Operation was, at the time, the worst damage suffered by the
residents of the Gaza Strip since the creation of the state of
Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, when over 450 Palestinian
villages and towns were destroyed and their residents turned to
refugees – many of whom ended up in Gaza.<br>
<br>
He said that once a durable truce is agreed upon, the reconstruction
of the Gaza Strip must be the top priority. He noted, “Construction
material must be allowed into Gaza to this effect -- aggregate, bar
and cement. And their access to Gaza must be facilitated.”<br>
<br>
According to journalist Saree Makdisi, with Mondoweiss.net, who
toured the Gaza Strip to see the scale of the damage, “In a month of
indiscriminate bombardment, Israel has killed or injured almost
twelve thousand people, including thousands of children. It has
severely damaged or destroyed the homes of some 17,000 families
(over 100,000 people). It has terrorized half a million people into
flight from one corner of the tiny coastal enclave in which they are
trapped to another, leaving them in urgent need of food assistance
merely to survive. Schools, clinics, refugee shelters, hospitals,
ambulances, a university campus and Gaza’s only power plant have all
come under Israeli fire, sometimes repeatedly. UN schools designed
to accommodate 500 people as emergency shelters have been packed
with up to 3,000. The social infrastructure—already strained to its
limits by years of siege—is close to breakdown. Hospitals have run
low on urgent supplies including water and fuel for emergency
generators. Morgues were filled; the broken bodies of Palestinian
children ended up in ice-cream freezers that—in a just world—would
be those same children’s sources of delight.”<br>
<br>
Makdisi also wrote, “Israel’s repeated claim that it targets only
rocket launchers or tunnels is belied by the scale and nature of the
weapons it unloaded on Gaza. Its 2000-pound aerial bombs take down
entire buildings along with everyone in them (almost a thousand
buildings have been severely damaged or destroyed in such air
strikes). Its 155mm howitzer shells have a margin of error of 300
yards and a lethal radius of up to 150 yards from the point of
impact. Each of the 120mm flechette shells its tank crews fire burst
into a 100 by 300 yard shower of 5,000 metal darts carefully
designed to shred human flesh.”<br>
<br>
The most seriously damaged areas are in Khuzaa, in eastern Khan
Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Sheja’eyya, in eastern Gaza, east
of Gaza City near the border with Israel and parts of Beit Lahiya in
the north. But every part of Gaza suffered damage in the Israeli
attack, and virtually every neighborhood has some buildings that are
completely destroyed.<br>
<br>
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called upon the UN Human
Rights Council to accelerate the formation of the fact-finding
mission as decided by the Council in the resolution taken in its
special session that was held on 23 July 2014 to investigate
violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in
the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza, without any delay from
bureaucratic restrictions and procedures.<br>
<br>
The Security Council took no action following the statement of envoy
Robert Serry.
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>