Gaza's hospitals taxed by wounded from Israeli fire

By FARES AKRAM, Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

Gaza City, Gaza Strip — Raed Jadallah belonged to an exclusive club — a small band of surfers who escaped the claustrophobia of blockaded Gaza by riding the waves of the Mediterranean. Now he's immobile, a metal fixation device clamped to his left leg after an Israeli bullet fractured his femur in two places.

The 25-year-old plasterer from a seaside refugee camp said he doesn't know when he'll be able to walk again, let alone surf. “Sea and surfing are everything to me,” he said on Wednesday, a day after being discharged from the hospital, his lower body covered by a blanket as he rested on a sofa at his home.

Jadallah is among 1,297 Palestinians shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers, including snipers, during the past two weeks of mass protests on the Gaza-Israel border, according to a computerized count by the Gaza Health Ministry. An additional 1,554 Gaza residents have been treated for tear gas inhalation or injuries by rubber-coated steel pellets.

An AP look at Gaza's health system found crowded hospital rooms lacking basic supplies, detailed electronic records of gunshot victims and dozens of people still suffering from serious wounds. Some acknowledged approaching Israel's border fence during the protests and throwing stones, though they say they were otherwise unarmed.

The surge of patients has severely taxed Gaza's clinics and hospitals. In addition, 33 Palestinians have been killed during this period, including 26 in border demonstrations. The latest casualties came on Thursday, when Israel said it bombed Hamas militant targets in the Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and wounding another.

The Israeli military has disputed the Gaza count of wounded, saying that at most dozens were struck by Israeli fire, but it has not offered supporting evidence. In a response Thursday, the military did not refer to its previous challenge of the figures of wounded Palestinians.

It said that it “contends with terrorist organizations that are trying to turn the area between Israel and the Gaza Strip into a combat zone, above and below ground,” near Israeli communities.

The casualty figures are at the heart of an intensifying debate over the military's open-fire orders, branded as unlawful by rights groups because soldiers are permitted to use potentially lethal force against unarmed Palestinians approaching the border fence.

Cite this item

"Gaza's hospitals taxed by wounded from Israeli fire," The Day, 13 April 2018. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-012