Ramallah: The best possible way to confront and end the ongoing ruthless Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip is through massive worldwide street protests, says Dr Mads Fredrik Gilbert, a Norwegian offering medical assistance to the suffering population.
“What is needed now is that people from around the world get off Facebook and organise peaceful demonstrations against Israel and against the way [it] is using its army to kill civilian Palestinians,” Dr Gilbert said in an interview with Gulf News from Al Shifaa Hospital in Gaza.
Addressing the people of Gaza, Dr Gilbert said, “you (Palestinians) are not alone. There are thousands and millions around the world who support you and your just cause. You are not alone. There are many people who want to travel down [here] to show solidarity and work with you. The whole world of the Arab people and the whole world of good people will stand up and say enough is enough — stop the bombing, lift the siege and pressure Israel to give up its colonial policies against the Palestinians.”
Dr Gilbert termed the conditions in the besieged enclave as traumatic. “[Israel] is an attacker keeping close to 1.7 million people in a cage and has done so for the last seven years through the siege, which is an illegal collective punishment; but this same ruthless occupier is also bombing Gaza day and night with the most advanced weaponry in the world,” he said.
Studies and statistics about the dead and injured in Gaza reveal a lot, Dr Gilbert said, adding, “from the numbers, we see that the Israelis do not care about the civilians, or rather they target the civilians.” He categorically rejected the Israeli claims that their army’s missiles boast a 90 per cent accuracy rate.
He said that the casualties (up until early Tuesday morning) in Gaza stood at 568 people, among them 149 children, constituting about 27 per cent of the victims. Adding 53 women who had been killed to that figure, every third victim was a child or a woman, he said.
Among the 3,504 injured Gazans, there are 1,100 children and 608 women, which constitutes 48 to 49 per cent of the total number of the injured. “This is not by chance or... collateral damage here. They are taking out whole families. They are bombing apartment buildings,” he said.
Dr Gilbert said that the Israelis are trying their utmost to intimidate the Palestinian population so that “sumood” (steadfastness) and the willingness to resist the occupation are broken. “Gaza is a place in the world where the unusual becomes usual to the extent that the main debate is not that they are killing and maiming and targeting civilians, but it is the irrelevant discussion of what [kind of] weapons are killing the civilians,” he said.
The biggest weapon Israel is using in its siege, which is an illegal collective punishment, besides the use of disproportional force and the fact that they do not discriminate between the civilians and military targets, Dr Gilbert added. “The Palestinian people are remarkable in their steadfastness and willingness to withstand the occupation and oppression. We have a lot to learn from them,” he said. “They are fully determined and not discussing giving in at all.”
