Humanitarian Issues

[nodstar]

Hunger and Hope, Thirst and Frenzy Grip Haiti[/size]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 17, 2010

Filed at 1:24 a.m. ET

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/17/world/AP-CB-Haiti-Earthquake.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Precious water, food and early glimmers of hope began reaching parched and hungry earthquake survivors Saturday on the streets of this shattered city, where despair at times turned into a frenzy among the ruins.

''People are so desperate for food that they are going crazy,'' said accountant Henry Ounche, in a crowd of hundreds who fought one another as U.S. military helicopters clattered overhead carrying aid.

When other Navy choppers dropped rations and Gatorade into a soccer stadium thronged with refugees, 200 youths began brawling, throwing stones, to get at the supplies.

Across the hilly, steamy city, where people choked on the stench of death, hope faded by the hour for finding many more victims alive in the rubble, four days after Tuesday's catastrophic earthquake.

Still, here and there, the murmur of buried victims spurred rescue crews on, even as aftershocks threatened to finish off crumbling buildings.

''No one's alive in there,'' a woman sobbed outside the wrecked Montana Hotel. But hope wouldn't die. ''We can hear a survivor,'' search crew chief Alexander Luque of Namibia later reported. His men dug on and, early Sunday, rescuers pulled the 62-year-old co-owner of the hotel from the rubble. She was dehydrated but otherwise uninjured.

Elsewhere, an American team pulled a woman alive from a collapsed university building where she had been trapped for 97 hours. Another crew got water to three survivors whose shouts could be heard deep in the ruins of a multistory supermarket that pancaked on top of them.

Nobody knew how many were dead. Haiti's government alone has already recovered 20,000 bodies -- not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press.

In a fresh estimate, the Pan American Health Organization said 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. Bellerive said 100,000 would ''seem to be the minimum.'' Truckloads of corpses were being trundled to mass graves.

A U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman declared the quake the worst disaster the international organization has ever faced, since so much government and U.N. capacity in the country was demolished. In that way, Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva, it's worse than the cataclysmic Asian tsunami of 2004: ''Everything is damaged.''

Also Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Port-au-Prince to pledge more American assistance and said the U.S. would be ''as responsive as we need to be.'' President Obama met with former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and urged Americans to donate to Haiti relief efforts.

As the day wore on, search teams recovered the body of Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, the United Nations chief of mission in Haiti, and other top U.N. officials who were killed when their headquarters collapsed.

Despite many obstacles, the pace of aid delivery was picking up.

The Haitian government had established 14 distribution points for food and other supplies, and U.S. Army helicopters were reconnoitering for more. With eight city hospitals destroyed or damaged, aid groups opened five emergency health centers. Vital gear, such as water-purification units, was arriving from abroad.

Thousands lined up in the Cite Soleil slum as U.N. World Food Program workers distributed high-energy biscuits there for the first time. As the hot sun set, the crew was down to just a few dozen boxes left from six truckloads. Perhaps 10,000 people were still waiting patiently, futilely, in line.

Seven months' pregnant, and with two children, 29-year-old Florence Louis clutched her four packets. ''It is enough, because I didn't have anything at all,'' she said.

On a hillside golf course, perhaps 50,000 people were sleeping in a makeshift tent city overlooking the stricken capital. Paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division flew there Saturday to set up a base for handing out water and food.

After the initial frenzy among the waiting crowd, when helicopters could only hover and toss out their cargo, a second flight landed and soldiers passed out some 2,000 military-issue ready-to-eat meals to an orderly line of Haitians.

More American help was on the way: The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort steamed from the port of Baltimore on Saturday and was scheduled to arrive here Thursday. More than 2,000 Marines were set to sail from North Carolina to support aid delivery and provide security.

But for the estimated 300,000 newly homeless in the streets, plazas and parks of Port-au-Prince, help was far from assured.

''They're already starting to deliver food and water, but it's mayhem. People are hungry, everybody is asking for water,'' said Alain Denis, a resident of the Thomassin district.

Denis's home was intact, and he and his elderly parents have some reserves, but, he said, ''in a week, I don't know.''

Aid delivery was still bogged down by congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport, quake damage at the seaport, poor roads and the fear of looters and robbers.

The problems at the overloaded airport forced a big Red Cross aid mission to strike out overland from Santo Domingo, almost 200 miles away in the Dominican Republic. The convoy included up to 10 trucks carrying temporary shelters, a 50-bed field hospital and some 60 medical specialists.

''It's not possible to fly anything into Port-au-Prince right now. The airport is completely congested,'' Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said from the Dominican capital.

Another convoy from the Dominican Republic steered toward a U.N. base in Port-au-Prince without stopping, its leaders fearful of sparking a riot if they handed out aid themselves.

The airport congestion touched off diplomatic rows between the U.S. military and other donor nations.

France and Brazil both lodged official complaints that the U.S. military, in control of the international airport, had denied landing permission to relief flights from their countries.

Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, who has 7,000 Brazilian U.N. peacekeeping troops in Haiti, warned against viewing the rescue effort as a unilateral American mission.

The squabbling prompted Haitian President Rene Preval, speaking with the AP, to urge all to ''keep our cool and coordinate and not throw accusations.''

At a simpler level, unending logistical difficulties dogged the relief effort.

A commercial-sized jet landed with rescue and medical teams from Qatar, only to find problems offloading food aid. They asked the U.S. military for help, surgeon Dr. Mootaz Aly said, and were told: ''We're busy.''

As relief teams grappled with on-the-ground obstacles, the U.S. leadership promised to step up aid efforts. In Washington, Obama joined with his two most recent White House predecessors to appeal for Americans to donate to the cause.

''We stand united with the people of Haiti, who have shown such incredible resilience,'' he said.

Their resilience was truly being tested, however.

On a back street in Port-au-Prince, a half-dozen young men ripped water pipes off walls to suck out the few drops inside. ''This is very, very bad, but I am too thirsty,'' said Pierre Louis Delmar.

Outside a warehouse, hundreds of desperate Haitians simply dropped to their knees when workers for the agency Food for the Poor announced they would distribute rice, beans and other supplies. ''They started praying right then and there,'' said project director Clement Belizaire.

Children and the elderly were asked to step first into line, and some 1,500 people got food, soap and rubber sandals until supplies ran out, he said.

The aid official was overcome by the tragic scene. ''This was the darkest day of everybody living in Port-au-Prince,'' he said.

------

Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Michelle Faul, Tamara Lush, Jennifer Kay and Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo; Frank Jordans in Geneva, and Libby Quaid in Washington.

[Eagles Disobey]

Jan 17, 2010 6:47:48 GMT 4 @nodstar said:

Hey Dan and Team ..

"May the road rise up to meet you
and the wind be at your back"

Love

Nod

I will satphone that to them, Ms. Nodstar. Kevin (Springy, southern Cal)

[Eagles Disobey]

asas:vox rpt. to challenge branch confirms hail gold eagle clear. to branch owl hails romeo echo lima.

[Eagles Disobey]

mesg2e1e2 sent
10-1 spotty resp partial "we love you"

[Eagles Disobey]

asas:vox rpt.
to branch owl hails
'70 hotel 4 romeo echo lima hat in hand.'
10-1
branch gold eagle resp
10-1
'United States.(cut).tiddley red eagle.'
to gold eagle owl hails 'copy'





In her notes she left, Marci asked this to be posted.


The team on this side asks for people to

"PLEASE PRAY FOR THE EAGLES TEAM!"

[o-k outa here. all i have been asked to do. i'll be watching the eagles security for the website and that. spring/o]

[papat]

Jan 17, 2010 20:10:47 GMT 4 Eagles Disobey said:

asas:vox rpt.
to branch owl hails
'70 hotel 4 romeo echo lima hat in hand.'
10-1
branch gold eagle resp
10-1
'United States.(cut).tiddley red eagle.'
to gold eagle owl hails 'copy'





In her notes she left, Marci asked this to be posted.


The team on this side asks for people to

"PLEASE PRAY FOR THE EAGLES TEAM!"

[o-k outa here. all i have been asked to do. i'll be watching the eagles security for the website and that. spring/o]

Our Thoughts and Prayers are with the Haitian People and the
Eagles Team.

Love
Papa T

[iris]

DEAR DR DAN, MARCIA AND THEIR WONDERFUL TEAM!

WE PRAY FOR YOU AND FOR THE PEOPLE IN HAITI.

THE CANADIAN PEOPLE COLLECTED MORE THEN $25 MILLION AND OUR GOVERNMENT PROMISED TO MATCH THIS AMOUNT. BOTTLED WATER, FOOD ETC. WATER PRUFICATION SYSTEM ALREADY ON ITS WAY.

PLEASE TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF AND EACH OTHER!

LOTS OF LOVE ,
Iris

[ninathedog]

Jan 18, 2010 0:37:07 GMT 4 @iris said:

DEAR DR DAN, MARCIA AND THEIR WONDERFUL TEAM!

WE PRAY FOR YOU AND FOR THE PEOPLE IN HAITI.

THE CANADIAN PEOPLE COLLECTED MORE THEN $25 MILLION AND OUR GOVERNMENT PROMISED TO MATCH THIS AMOUNT. BOTTLED WATER, FOOD ETC. WATER PRUFICATION SYSTEM ALREADY ON ITS WAY.

PLEASE TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF AND EACH OTHER!

LOTS OF LOVE ,
Iris

(just because it bore repeating)


.............................

The following is a tough read and I'm posting it here even though I'm not able to read through it myself, in the hopes that maybe these people can be helped??? Thank you, Eagles, for all you do! BE SAFE. Love, Jen.


Elderly and abandoned, 85 Haitians await death

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer – 20 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The old lady crawls in the dirt, wailing for her pills. The elderly man lies motionless as rats pick at his overflowing diaper.

There is no food, water or medicine for the 85 surviving residents of the Port-au-Prince Municipal Nursing Home, barely a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) from the airport where a massive international aid effort is taking shape.

"Help us, help us," 69-year-old Mari-Ange Levee begged Sunday, lying on the ground with a broken leg and ribs. A cluster of flies swarmed the open fracture in her skull.

One man had already died, and administrator Jean Emmanuel said more would follow soon unless water and food arrive immediately.

"I appeal to anybody to bring us anything, or others won't live until tonight," he said, motioning toward five men and women who were having trouble breathing, a sign that the end was near. Hours later, an elderly woman succumbed.

The dead man was Joseph Julien, a 70-year-old diabetic who was pulled from the partially collapsed building and passed away Thursday for lack of food.

His rotting body lies on a mattress, nearly indistinguishable from the living around him, so skinny and tired they seemed to be simply waiting for death.

With six residents killed in the quake, the institution now has 25 men and 60 women camped outside their former home. Some have a mattress in the dirt to lie on. Others don't.

Madeleine Dautriche, 75, said some of the residents had pooled their money to buy three packets of pasta, which the dozens of pensioners shared on Thursday, their last meal. Since there was no drinking water, some didn't touch the noodles because they were cooked in gutter water.

Dautriche noted that many residents wore diapers that hadn't been changed since the quake.

"The problem is, rats are coming to it," she said.

Though very little food aid had reached Haitians anywhere by Sunday, Emmanuel said the problem was made worse at the nursing home because it is located near Place de la Paix, an impoverished downtown neighborhood.

The hospice, known as "Hospice Municipal," is near a rundown soccer stadium, stuck between the port and Bel-Air, traditionally one of Haiti's most violent and dangerous slums.

Thousands of homeless slum dwellers have pitched their makeshift tents on the nursing home's ground, in effect shielding the elderly patients from the outside world with a tense maze of angry people, themselves hungry and thirsty.

"I'm pleading for everyone to understand that there's a truce right now, the streets are free, so you can come through to help us," said Emmanuel, 27, one of the rare officials not to have fled the squalor and mayhem. He insisted that foreign aid workers wouldn't be in danger if they tried to cross through the crowd to reach the elderly group.

Violent scuffles erupted Saturday in the adjacent soccer stadium when U.S. helicopters dropped boxes of military rations and Gatorade. But none of this trickle of help had reached the nursing home residents, who said some refugees have robbed them of what little they had.

Dautriche, who was sitting on the ground because of her broken back, held out an empty blue plastic basin. "My underwear and my money were in there," she said, sobbing. "Children stole it right in front of me and I couldn't move."

The area was an eery corner of silence within the clamor of crying babies and toddlers running naked in the mud. Guarding the little space was Phileas Julien, 78, a blind man in a wheelchair who shouted at anybody approaching to turn back.

During moments of lucidity, Julien said he was better off than other pensioners because the medicine he was taking provided sustenance. A moment later, he threw his arms out to hug a passer-by he mistook for his grandson.

Also trying to guard the center was Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, who couldn't stand because of pain but who brandished her walking stick when children approached.

"Of all the wars and revolutions and hurricanes, this quake is the worst thing God has ever sent us," Thermiti said.

Initially, Thermiti and others believed their relatives would come to feed them, because many live in the slums nearby. "But I don't even know if my children are alive," she said.

Thermiti was surprisingly feisty for someone who hadn't eaten since Tuesday. She attributed that to experience with hunger during earlier hardships.

"But I was younger, and now there's no water either," she said.

She predicted that unlike other pensioners, she could still hold out for at least another day.

"Then if the foreigners don't come (with aid)," she said, "it will be up to baby Jesus."

One of the struggling residents had died by nightfall Sunday, when Associated Press journalists returned to the nursing home. Tsida-Edith Andre, about 90, had been too old and too weak to hold out through the afternoon heat, said Nixon Plantain, a hospice cleaner who was planning to spent the night there.

Next to him, Michel Lina, 22, was spoon-feeding boiled rice to her paralyzed grandfather in a wheelchair. Plantain said she was the first relative to have come with food. He helped Lina give out tiny mouthfuls to others.

That food, along with a carton of water bottles brought by an AP reporter, was the only aid the residents received Sunday, Plantain said.

The cleaner-turned-caretaker tried to pour a trickle of water into the mouth of Mesalia Joseph, one of a small group he said probably wouldn't make it through night.

"Don't give me any," Joseph mumbled, saying she was too hungry to drink.

Curled in a fetal position, she seemed to have already given up.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100118/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_waiting_to_die

[ninathedog]

Damaged Haiti port to open in 2-3 days: U.S. commander

Mon Jan 18, 2010 12:21pm EST
Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The U.S. military hopes to have Haiti's main port open in two or three days for shipments of emergency relief supplies to earthquake survivors, the American officer in charge of logistics said on Monday.

The Port-au-Prince dock could not receive ships because it was badly damaged by last Tuesday's quake, which submerged the quay and smashed equipment, including the only container crane.

"They have a phenomenal port, which we will get opened in two to three days, and we have a great airfield. My instructions are to move things in as fast as we can," Brigadier General Michael Dana, of the J4 Logistics Directorate, told Reuters.

With the port out of operation, the huge international relief operation has had to use Port-au-Prince's congested airport, which has delayed the arrival of urgently needed medical and food supplies.

More than 30 countries have rushed relief to Haiti since the devastating earthquake, choking the airspace and the ramp at the small airfield, which has only one runway.

The U.S. military said it was doing its best to get as many planes as possible into Port-au-Prince, after aid agencies complained that relief shipments had not been allowed to land at the U.S.-controlled airport.

Lieutenant General Ken Keen, commander of the U.S. military operation in Haiti, said American ships were moving into the seaport on Monday with sonar equipment to assess the damage and a crane to clear debris.

The U.S. military is relying on air drops to distribute relief for now, because of limited ground transportation capacity, Keen told reporters at the Port-au-Prince airport.

Dana, a Marine officer and Somalia veteran, said there were about 3,500 U.S. military personnel in Haiti, with more on the way.

The U.S. troops are posted at the airport, the seaport and nine aid distribution sites, which the Haitian government wants to consolidate into four, he said.

"We will work with the Haitian government. They are the customers, they are the boss," Dana said. "It's a bad situation, but here is the good news: it's better than Somalia. This isn't Mogadishu."

Personnel from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne division were guarding the port facilities, which were an oasis of calm compared to the looting just a few blocks over the perimeter wall in Port-au-Prince's main commercial area.

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne and Catherine Bremer; Writing by Anthony Boadle, editing by Jane Sutton and Chris Wilson)

www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60H3ZJ20100118

[ninathedog]

For doctors in Haiti, worst is yet to come

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Reuters
2 hrs 17 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An earthquake killing up to 200,000 people would have been bad enough anywhere, but in Haiti, where AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are rampant, children are malnourished and hygiene is already a challenge, it may create one of the worst medical disasters ever.

Medical teams pouring in to set up mobile hospitals say they are already overwhelmed by the casualties and fear the worst is yet to come as infection and disease take hold.

"The number one risk is always bacterial infections where they have open wounds," said Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University public health expert living and working in Rwanda.

Haitian government officials said the death toll from Tuesday's magnitude 7 quake was likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000, and no one has even begun to get a count of injuries, which include crushed or amputated limbs, compound fractures and lacerations.

Without quick treatment, these wounds will become infected. "Things are going to get much much worse before they are going to get better," Ruxin said.

Water is at a premium and diarrhea is likely. Children, the weak and elderly will die unnecessarily from diarrheal disease that would be easily treated with water and rehydration salts under more normal conditions, doctors said.

Frustrated medical teams have flown in mobile hospitals and tons of supplies, but have been largely unable to get them set up because roads are destroyed and security lacking.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a team of 267 medical experts, including surgeons, who arrived on Friday but had to wait until Sunday night for military escorts to take them through the chaos.

"Because of the amount of time that has gone by, they'll probably have a lot of diabetes that is out of control," Dr Steven Harris, CDC's senior medical director in Haiti, said in a telephone interview. "There will be kidney failure because of dehydration."

The CDC is anticipating outbreaks of infectious diseases such as measles and malaria. "They are the typical kinds of diseases we have here anyway but they certainly would be worse following a disaster like this," Harris said.

SMALLEST VICTIMS

"This could turn into a children's disaster of unprecedented proportions," said Dr Irwin Redlener of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

He said 40 percent of Haiti's population is made up of children under the age of 14, far more than in most countries.

"They are more susceptible to infections, dehydration and shock. And of course there is a tremendous emotional impact," Redlener said.

Ruxin sees one spark of hope.

"While this is a terrible tragedy, there is an opportunity to do something which decades of aid hasn't and that is build up a public health infrastructure that is stable," Ruxin said.

A Commonwealth Fund report released on Friday found that in New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, healthcare had improved.

It found that a program that set up a network of local clinics funded by federal and local government was providing care to more patients than were getting care before the disaster.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100118/hl_nm/us_quake_haiti_medical

[ninathedog]

Israel's compassion in Haiti can't hide our ugly face in Gaza

By Akiva Eldar
Last update - 09:26 18/01/2010
Haaretz.com

Who said we are shut up inside our Tel Aviv bubble? How many small nations surrounded by enemies set up field hospitals on the other side of the world? Give us an earthquake in Haiti, a tsunami in Thailand or a terror attack in Kenya, and the IDF Spokesman's Office will triumph. A cargo plane can always be found to fly in military journalists to report on our fine young men from the Home Front Command.

Everyone is truly doing a wonderful job: the rescuers, searching for survivors; the physicians, saving lives; and the reporters, too, who are rightfully patting them all on the back. After Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon became the face we show the world, the entire international community can now see Israel's good side.

But the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza. Only a little more than an hour's drive from the offices of Israel's major newspapers, 1.5 million people have been besieged on a desert island for two and a half years. Who cares that 80 percent of the men, women and children living in such proximity to us have fallen under the poverty line? How many Israelis know that half of all Gazans are dependent on charity, that Operation Cast Lead created hundreds of amputees, that raw sewage flows from the streets into the sea?

The Israeli newspaper reader knows about the baby pulled from the wreckage in Port-au-Prince. Few have heard about the infants who sleep in the ruins of their families' homes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces prohibition of reporters entering the Gaza Strip is an excellent excuse for burying our heads in the sand of Tel Aviv's beaches; on a good day, the sobering reports compiled by human rights organizations such as B'Tselem, Gisha—Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on the situation in Gaza are pushed to the newspapers' back pages. To get an idea of what life is like in the world's largest prison, one must forgo "Big Brother" and switch to one of the foreign networks.

The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza. The missiles that Israel Air Force combat aircraft fired there a year ago hit nearly 60,000 homes and factories, turning 3,500 of them into rubble. Since then, 10,000 people have been living without running water, 40,000 without electricity. Ninety-seven percent of Gaza's factories are idle due to Israeli government restrictions on the import of raw materials for industry. Soon it will be one year since the international community pledged, at the emergency conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, to donate $4.5 billion for Gaza's reconstruction. Israel's ban on bringing in building materials is causing that money to lose its value.

A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint prevented 17 people from passing through in order to get to a Ramallah hospital for urgent corneal transplant surgery. Perhaps they voted for Hamas. At the same time that Israeli psychologists are treating Haiti's orphans with devotion, Israeli inspectors are making sure no one is attempting to plant a doll, a notebook or a bar of chocolate in a container bringing essential goods into Gaza. So what if the Goldstone Commission demanded that Israel lift the blockade on the Strip and end the collective punishment of its inhabitants? Only those who hate Israel could use frontier justice against the first country to set up a field hospital in Haiti.

True, Haiti's militias are not firing rockets at Israel. But the siege on Gaza has not stopped the Qassams from coming. The prohibition of cilantro, vinegar and ginger being brought into the Strip since June 2007 was intended to expedite the release of Gilad Shalit and facilitate the fall of the Hamas regime. As everyone knows, even though neither mission has been particularly successful, and despite international criticism, Israel continues to keep the gates of Gaza locked. Even the images of our excellent doctors in Haiti cannot blur our ugly face in the Strip.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143313.html

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Israel's Gaza blockade continues to suffocate daily life

18 January 2010
AmnestyInternational.org

In focus—http://www.amnesty.org/
Gaza blockade suffocates daily life
Video: Amnesty International's Francesca Burke on how Israel's blockade leaves Palestinians in poverty

Israel must end its suffocating blockade of the Gaza Strip, which leaves more than 1.4 million Palestinians cut off from the outside world and struggling with desperate poverty, Amnesty International said one year on from the end of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

Amnesty International’s briefing paper Suffocating: The Gaza Strip under Israeli blockade gathers testimony from people still struggling to rebuild their lives following Operation “Cast Lead”, which killed around 1,400 Palestinians and injured thousands more.

“Israel claims that the ongoing blockade of Gaza, in force since June 2007, is a response to the indiscriminate rocket attacks launched from Gaza into southern Israel by Palestinian armed groups. The reality is that the blockade does not target armed groups but rather punishes Gaza’s entire population by restricting the entry of food, medical supplies, educational equipment and building materials,” said Malcolm Smart, Middle East and North Africa Director, Amnesty International.

“The blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately.”

As the occupying power, Israel has a duty under international law to ensure the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, including their rights to health, education, food and adequate housing

During Operation “Cast Lead”, from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, 13 Israelis were killed, including three civilians in southern Israel, where dozens more were injured in indiscriminate rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups.

In Gaza, Israeli attacks damaged or destroyed civilian buildings and infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, the water and electricity systems. Thousands of Palestinian homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

An estimated 280 of the 641 schools in Gaza were damaged and 18 were destroyed. More than half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 18 and the disruption to their education, due to the damage caused during Operation “Cast Lead” and as a result of the continuing Israeli boycott, is having a devastating impact.

Hospitals have also been badly affected by the military offensive and the blockade. Trucks of medical aid provided by the World Health Organization have been repeatedly refused entry to Gaza without explanation by Israeli officials.

Patients with serious medical conditions that cannot be treated in Gaza continue to be prevented or delayed from leaving Gaza by the Israeli authorities – since the closure of crossings leading into and out of Gaza, patients have been made to apply for permits, but these permits are frequently denied...(edited for length -- individual stories removed)

Unemployment in Gaza is spiralling as those businesses that remain struggle to survive under the blockade. In December 2009, the UN reported that unemployment in Gaza was over 40 per cent.

“The blockade is strangling virtually every aspect of life for Gaza’s population, more than half of whom are children. The increasing isolation and suffering of the people of Gaza cannot be allowed to continue. The Israeli government must comply with binding legal obligation, as the occupying power, to lift the blockade without further delay,” said Malcolm Smart.

................

Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories—
Suffocating: The Gaza Strip under Israeli Blockade

Download PDF:
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/002/2010/en/c8e6742a-b52a-4c70-b641-986de2db878a/mde150022010en.pdf
Index Number: MDE 15/002/2010
Date Published: 18 January 2010

More than 1.4 million Palestinian men, women and children are trapped in the Gaza Strip. Their daily lives are marked with power shortages, little or no running water and deteriorating health care. Mass unemployment, poverty and food insecurity exacerbate the impact of the Israeli blockade which was brought into force in June 2007. In this campaign digest Amnesty International calls on the Israeli government to immediately lift the blockade; return all arable land inside Gaza; agree a fair fishing zone and ensure that Israeli security forces use force only when necessary to counter genuine threats.
[url=
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/002/2010/en/c8e6742a-b52a-4c70-b641-986de2db878a/mde150022010en.pdf]Download PDF[/url]

excerpted chart:


www.amnesty.org/

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edit:
Wikipedia entry about "Operation Cast Lead" --
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War

[ninathedog]

Help steps up, but so does scale of Haiti tragedy

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and MIKE MELIA, Associated Press Writers – 5 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The staggering scope of Haiti's nightmare came into sharper focus Monday as authorities estimated 200,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless in the heart of this luckless land, where injured survivors still died in the streets, doctors pleaded for help and looters slashed at one another in the rubble.

The world pledged more money, food, medicine and police. Some 2,000 U.S. Marines steamed into nearby waters. And ex-president Bill Clinton, special U.N. envoy, flew in to offer support.

But hour by hour the unmet needs of hundreds of thousands grew.

"Have we been abandoned? Where is the food?" shouted one man, Jean Michel Jeantet, in a downtown street.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said it expected to boost operations from feeding 67,000 people on Sunday to 97,000 on Monday. But it needs 100 million prepared meals over the next 30 days, and it appealed for more government donations.

"I know that aid cannot come soon enough," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York after returning from Haiti.

"Unplug the bottlenecks," he urged.

In one step to reassure frustrated aid groups, the U.S. military agreed to give aid deliveries priority over military flights at the now-U.S.-run airport here, the WFP announced in Rome. The Americans' handling of civilian flights had angered some humanitarian officials.

Sunday's looting and violence raged into Monday, as hundreds clambered over the broken walls of shops to grab anything they could — including toothpaste, now valuable for lining nostrils against the stench of Port-au-Prince's dead. Police fired into the air as young men fought each other over rum and beer with broken bottles and machetes.

Hard-pressed medical teams sometimes had to take time away from quake victims to deal with gunshot wounds, said Loris de Filippi of Doctors Without Borders. In the Montrissant neighborhood, Red Cross doctors working in shipping containers and saying they "cannot cope" lost 50 patients over two days, said international Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno.

The latest casualty report, from the European Commission citing Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, to approximately 200,000, with some 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves. If accurate, that would make Haiti's catastrophe about as deadly as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed an estimated 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

European Commission analysts estimate 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were made homeless. Masses are living under plastic sheets in makeshift camps and in dust-covered automobiles, or had taken to the road seeking out relatives in the safer countryside.

An impoverished nation long at the bottom of the heap, Haiti will need years or decades of expanded aid to rebuild. For the moment, however, front-line relief workers want simply to get food and water to the hungry and thirsty.

The delays aren't "so much about food supplies as logistics," said Brian Feagans, a spokesman for the aid group CARE. The priorities are clearing roads, ensuring security at U.N. food distribution points, getting this city's seaport working again and bringing in more trucks and helicopters, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in Rome.

The U.N. humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said in New York not all 15 U.N. food distribution points were up and running yet. "That's a question of people, trucks, fuel, but the aid is scaling up very rapidly," he said.

Evidence of the shortfall could be found at a makeshift camp of 50,000 displaced people spread over a hillside golf course overlooking the city. Leaders there said the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division had been able to deliver food to only half of the people. American forces were to be reinforced by 2,000 Marines arriving off Haiti's shores aboard three amphibious landing ships.

Getting clean water into people's hands was still a dire concern. "People can survive a few days without food but we must try to avoid major outbreaks of waterborne disease," Feagans said.

Clinton and accompanying daughter, Chelsea, pitched in, helping unload cases of bottled water from their plane to a U.N. truck.

Some aid groups and foreign officials have blamed the U.S. military for slowing down aid deliveries, saying the American units that took charge of the small Port-au-Prince airport last week gave priority to U.S. military flights.

Doctors Without Borders said Monday its specialists were 48 hours behind on performing surgery for critically injured patients because three cargo planes loaded with supplies were denied clearance and forced to land almost 200 miles away in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. France's cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, also complained Monday, saying the U.N. must "clarify" the dominant U.S. role here, suggesting the Americans were "occupying" Haiti.

The WFP's Sheeran said things would change. She announced an agreement with the U.S. so that "we now have the coordination mechanism to prioritize the humanitarian flights coming in."

At the airport, a U.S. military spokesman said the parking ramp designed for 16 large aircraft at times was holding 40. "That's why there was gridlock," said Navy Cmdr. Chris Lounderman. He said about 100 flights a day were now landing.

There remained a "huge demand for lifesaving surgery for those who suffered terrible injuries," Doctors Without Borders reported. Right outside the U.S.-run airport, one man died as Navy helicopters scrambled to evacuate patients to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, the military reported.

Across the city, countless abandoned bodies had been picked up by government crews, but residents still dragged others to crossroads, hoping municipal garbage trucks or aid groups would deal with them.

Continuing looting and violence added to the casualties. Riot police opened fire — mostly in the air — to break up a mob of several hundred fighting over rum bottles in a burning shop. One teenage boy was hit in the thigh by a shotgun blast. "Friends! Save me! Save me!" he cried, curled up in a pool of blood, one foot almost severed. A medical aid truck happened by and picked him up.

The ranks of Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers trying to restore order in this stricken city had themselves been decimated in the quake, which destroyed the U.N. headquarters. In New York on Monday, U.N. chief Ban asked for 1,500 more U.N. police and 2,000 more peacekeepers to join the 9,000 or so U.N. security personnel in Haiti. The Security Council was expected to approve the reinforcements on Wednesday.

___

Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Tamara Lush, Jonathan M. Katz, Michelle Faul, Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Raf Casert in Brussels; Larry Margasak in Washington.


news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake

[ninathedog]

Palestinians in Gaza donate to Haiti

18/01 19:41 CET
euronews.net

VIDEO NARRATOR:

It might be one of the world’s poorest areas, besieged by its neighbour Israel, but Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been donating what little they have to help those struck by the earthquake in Haiti.

Among the donations collected by a Red Cross representative: toys, toiletries and sweets – small luxuries that Gazans know only too well can brighten spirits in the face of devastation. Some also gave money.

Dr Jamal Khudari, from the Palestinian Committee against the Siege said: “It’s a symbolic donation for the people of Haiti, for the children of Haiti, to tell them that we feel the suffering.”

There are ruins in the Gaza Strip reminiscent of the scenes in Haiti. These were not caused by a natural disaster, but by bombs and shells in Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza, which drew to a close a year ago. Israel blamed attacks by militants for sparking the offensive.

The reason for the destruction might be different, but Palestinians say they understand Haiti’s pain.

Copyright © 2010 euronews

www.euronews.net/2010/01/18/earthquake-in-haiti-palestinians-in-gaza-donate-to-haiti/

(please follow link to view video)

...........

many thanks go to Ali, Cathy and A.V.O

[ninathedog]

Jan 15, 2010 23:13:50 GMT 4 @ninathedog said:

>>edited for length:

Israel opens Gaza crossing, allows limited export

Published 11/01/2010 10:54
maannews.net

Gaza – Ma’an – Israeli authorities on Sunday opened the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza to allow the transfer of aid and limited exports, a Palestinian border official said.

Between 93 and 103 truckloads of humanitarian aid will be permitted through the Kerem Shalom crossing, said the crossings official, Raed Fattouh.

Only one truckload of flowers and three of strawberries will be allowed out via Kerem Shalom, to be exported to Israel and abroad, he added. (color added 1/19/10 for emphasis)

The Karni crossing in northern Gaza will remain closed, Fattouh added.

The Kerem Shalom crossing was suddenly closed on Thursday after mortar shells fired by the militant wing of the Popular Resistance Committees hit near the crossing site.

www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=253140

............................


The following article was written last year, but unfortunately, it is just as pertinent this year. Posted by request:

No Lovers Got These Flowers

By Mohammed Omer


Where the flowers are going / Credit:Mohammed Omer

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Feb 14, 2008 (IPS) - After generations of occupation, Valentine's Day has meant little in the Gaza Strip. But the flowers that lovers presented in Europe have.

Majed Hadaeid, 43, knows that better than most, as he watches livestock make a meal of the flowers he had hoped to export to Europe.

"I have 130 dunams (32 acres)," he says. "All carnations, in 30 different colours, and varieties yielding 16-17 million blossoms per year."

In all, about 480 dunams of plantation produce on average 60 million flowers a year in Gaza between mid-November and mid-May. The seasonal export brings five million dollars in revenue, and means 4,000 jobs.

Hadaeid's nursery is one of the largest. Farmers like him usually sell to the European floral exchange in the Netherlands for distribution. Valentine's Day on Feb. 14 brings the largest sales.

This year, it did not.

Once Israel closed the border crossings, it also ended access to markets outside of Gaza. Israel requires all of Gaza's produce to go through Israel first.

Gaza is permitted to export 75 million flowers to the EU duty free. "This year we managed to export only five million flowers to the Netherlands," says Mahmoud Khlaiel, chairman of the Flowers Producers Benevolent Association in Gaza.

Hadaeid has had to lay off all 200 of his workers. Now his millions of blossoms serve as feed for goats, donkeys, camels and sheep. He says Israel's collective punishment will cost him more than a million dollars this season.

Hadaeid, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the area, has now taken to day labour to feed his 13 children, aged six months to 20 years. The land on which he grows his flowers is on lease, and he risks losing his entire business. The profits he would normally use to pay for fertilizer, seeds, back wages and supplies are simply not there.

In Gaza, people unable to pay their debts often end up in debtor's prison, as in feudal era Europe. Hadaeid's future appears precarious. "I am not with Hamas or Fatah," he said. "I didn't vote for any party. Israel is to blame for this collective punishment for us all."

As with Hadaeid, so with others. Ayman Okal, a veteran of the industry for 14 years, stands feeding red carnations to a goat at a nearby nursery. "Every season I produce 8-9 million carnations for Christmas and Mothers Day," he says. "But Valentine's is the biggest." Except of course, this year.

Okal says the blockade has cost him around 600,000 dollars. He too has laid off his entire staff, and faces a dark future with six children to feed and a debt to pay off. Fortunately for him, he owns his land.

Producers have been asked to sign papers at the borders saying the flowers are not being exported "because Palestinian producers have decided not to continue shipping."

"This is not true," says Khlaiel. "Israel returns the flowers to Gaza after they are destroyed waiting at the crossings. It costs each grower four dollars to send each bouquet's pots, in addition to the cost of the flowers. Once destroyed through the delays, the grower still must pay the costs."

Flowers from Gaza are marketed in Europe under the brand name Coral. With Valentine's Day past, Mothers Day (May 11) is the last opportunity for growers to recoup a portion of their costs, regain their businesses - and feed their families.

Farmers are appealing to the EU and to the Netherlands to pressure Israel to open the crossings. (END/2008)

ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41198

Two crossings open;
Gaza strawberries en route to France

Published yesterday (updated) 19/01/2010 10:30


Harvesting strawberries in Gaza [MaanIamges]

Gaza – Ma’an –
Israeli authorities opened the Kerem Shalom and Karni to allow the transfer of aid, limited quantities of domestic gas and industrial diesel, as well as restricted amounts of goods for export, Palestinian border crossing official Raed Fattouh said.

Approximately 70 truckloads of humanitarian aid will be allowed through Kerem Shalom, as well as limited amounts of cooking gas, Fattouh said. At Karni, 98 truckloads of animal feed and wheat will be transferred into the Strip.

For export, two truckloads of strawberries will leave Gaza under the auspices of a program headed up by the Dutch government. The program supports strawberry and carnation farmers in the Strip, and as of 10 December secured permission from Israeli crossings officials for the regular export of both goods.

As of Sunday, more than 1.3 million carnation and more than 41 tons of strawberries left Gaza to European markets.

According to the Head of the Representative Office of Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ramallah Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford, the strawberries are transported to the French port of Marseilles, from where they enter French and German markets via three major grocery chains there.

Carnations, Twiss told Ma'an, are transported from the Tel Aviv to the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands as well as by sea, from where they travel by conveyor belt to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, the largest flower auction house in the world.

www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=254920

[ninathedog]

UN approves extra troops and police for Haiti

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer – 23 mins ago

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved 3,500 extra troops and police officers to beef up security in Haiti and ensure that desperately needed aid gets to earthquake victims as the world body defended itself against criticism that millions still don't have food or water.

A week after the magnitude 7.0 quake struck, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said the U.N. food agency distributed rations for nearly 200,000 people. It is a small percentage of the 3 million to 3.5 million the U.N. says have been affected. Ban said the U.N. goal is to increase the number of people receiving food to 1 million this week and at least 2 million in the following two weeks.

"The situation is overwhelming," Ban told reporters.

But he said "initial difficulties and bottlenecks" in delivering relief items are being overcome and U.N. relief operations "are gearing up quickly."

He cited a new system at the airport giving priority to humanitarian flights, the opening of five new land corridors to deliver aid and U.S.-led efforts to open port facilities possibly sometime next week. In addition, badly damaged hospitals are starting to function with help from international medical teams, water supplies are increasing and more tents and temporary shelters are arriving, he said.

Assistant Secretary-General Edmond Mulet, the acting U.N. envoy to Haiti, described the situation on the ground as "quite stable and normal."

"Food has been taken from destroyed supermarkets and shops, which is almost a normal situation in these kind of circumstances," Mulet told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York by videoconference. "But we have not seen at all any kind of violent actions or rampages or swarms of looters or people attacking or aggressive actions against anybody. ... I would say it's not more different than the situation we had before the earthquake."

Tens of thousands of people are still sleeping in the streets or under plastic sheets in makeshift camps, and many shout at any foreigner for food and water. Relief workers say they fear visiting some parts of the city because of looting and violence by desperate survivors.

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said starting Tuesday the U.S. military is going to use its helicopters to bring more relief supplies to secure areas to increase the flow of goods, in addition to what's arriving by air and by road from the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti. U.S. helicopters will also start taking food to outlying areas which have been difficult to reach for local distribution, he said.

"It takes time to get as many supplies into the country as we want," Holmes said. "There is an enormous mobilization. It doesn't show itself on the streets quickly enough for anybody, but it's happening."

The resolution adopted by the Security Council Tuesday will add 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country and 1,500 police to the 2,100-strong international police force.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the extra soldiers are needed because of requests to escort humanitarian convoys. He said the U.N. also needs extra troops to secure aid delivery routes, and for a reserve force in case security deteriorates further.

How quickly the troops and police get to Haiti depends on offers from the 191 other U.N. member states. Le Roy said the neighboring Dominican Republic has offered to send an 800-strong battalion to secure the road from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican border, and they could arrive this week. Mulet said 20 Chilean police have already arrived and he believes Brazil will be sending more troops and France will be providing police.

Mulet said 3,500 troops are now in Port au Prince, patrolling and escorting aid convoys. He expressed hope that most of the additional troops will be on the ground in less than two weeks.

About 2,000 Canadian soldiers, sailors and air crew, including two warships, are already deploying to the towns of Jacmel and Leogane, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince, said Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay.

While the Canadian troops work south of the capital providing aid, the Americans will be concentrated in Port au Prince, Mulet said.

He said the Canadians and their heavy machinery are needed quickly to open roads, including the main road from Port au Prince to Jacmel.

The United Nations in the coming days will be signing memorandums of understanding with the Americans and Canadians on the division of labor, he said.

"What we have agreed in principle is that the U.N. is in the lead. We are the ones coordinating everything here," Mulet said.

"We will be dealing with security issues, working with the Haitian government, with the national police of Haiti," he said.

The American and Canadian troops will try to speed up the delivery of humanitarian assistance by providing security at distribution points and escorting aid convoys, Mulet said.

As for aid, Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said the goal is to rapidly get in 4.2 million rations of high-nutrition children's food, and 10 million total rations.

"In this kind of a catastrophe, help cannot arrive within a few hours," U.N. aid spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva. "Many officials are dead and many services we usually use in case of a catastrophe are unavailable."

The U.N. headquarters in Port au Prince collapsed, and the chief of the country's mission, Hedi Annabi, and his deputy were among the dead.

____

Associated Press Writers Bradley S. Klapper and Eliane Engeler in Geneva, David Stringer in London and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_on_re_us/haiti_earthquake_aid