In Gaza, where thousands attended a funeral Saturday for 21-year-old Palestinian volunteer medic Razan al-Najjar. Witnesses say she was shot dead Friday by Israeli soldiers as she ran toward the border fence to provide medical aid to a wounded protester.
This is a description of the attack from James Heenan, head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: quote, “Reports indicate that Razan was assisting injured demonstrators and wearing her first responder clothing, clearly distinguishing her as a healthcare worker even from a distance. Reports suggest that she was shot about 100 meters from the fence. Under international human rights law, which applies in this context along with international humanitarian law, lethal force may only be used as a last resort and when there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury. It is very difficult to see how Razan posed such a threat to heavily-armed, well-protected Israeli forces in defensive positions on the other side of the fence,” Heenan said.
Najjar was taken to a hospital, where she died from her injuries. Her mother held her daughter’s blood-stained medical vest as she spoke with reporters and demanded justice.
In total, the Israeli military has killed at least 119 Palestinians, wounded more than 13,000 more, as part of the brutal crackdown against the Palestinians’ ongoing nonviolent Great March of Return protest demanding an end to the Israeli occupation. The Israeli military says its troops worked, quote, “in accordance with standard operating procedures,” unquote, but said Saturday it would investigate her death.
A volunteer ambulance worker told the Associated Press he and Najjar were planning to announce their engagement at the end of Ramadan.
Meanwhile, Friday, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel’s, quote, “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force,” unquote, against Palestinians. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said the resolution was “one-sided.”
On Sunday, Israeli air forces fired at Hamas sites in Gaza, after they said militants fired rockets at Israel. Also Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted he had reduced the tax funds shared with Palestinians in order to compensate Israelis living near the Gaza Strip who say their property was damaged by fires caused by kites rigged with incendiary devices or attached to burning rags.
Dalia al-Najjar talking:
Razan was a very strong-minded girl, since she was very young. She always had dreams. She loved life. She was a source of positivity all the time. And being a nurse was one of her dreams. She worked hard to be one. She couldn’t get a degree in nursing, unfortunately, because of the financial situations her family were living under. And then she went and got training in nursing for two years, and she worked as a volunteer for two years without being paid. And then she felt it’s her duty to be a first responder, because it’s everyone’s duty. Everyone has a role in what’s going on. And she felt that she can do what she’s best at by being a first responder. She was one of the first female first responders.
And she inspired many people. I heard stories from her colleagues saying that other first responders used to motivate each other by mentioning her and talking about her. If anyone is sitting, they would tell him, “Come on, Razan broke her wrist, and yet she completed her shift.” So, she’s a source of inspiration for everyone.
Dr. Medhat Abbas talking:
She was taken to another hospital based in Rafah City—it’s called the European Gaza Hospital—when, in fact, she was shot by an explosive bullet that penetrated her heart and came out from her back. And the only thing she did was she pointed to something on her back. And then she fell on the ground, and then she died at once.
And, I mean, she was—as it’s mentioned in this report, that she was clearly in a white coat. It was clear to everybody that she’s a paramedic, that that was a murder. I mean, that was a crime committed before cameras. And because the Israelis usually run with it, so they keep repeating that. I mean, another first rescuer was killed—he was called Moussa al-Zaaneen—the same way also: He was shot dead while trying to rescue some of the victims among the protesters. But the same thing.
They have been targeting some of the trauma-stabilizing points that we have tents in the buffer zones, in those tents we use to treat those victims of the Israeli aggression against our people, while at the same time usually they target those tents by gas, by tear gas. And, unfortunately, we gave the Israelis the GPS through the ICRC, but, again, they are still insisting to target the medics and paramedics everywhere, wherever they are. And we will never, ever forget the war of the 2014, where they targeted complete hospitals. They demolished a hospital, called al-Wafa Hospital, totally. And they attacked other three hospitals with partial destruction. I mean, so it’s not the first time where they attacked medics and paramedics and health facilities.
13,700 almost and 123 today killed. In fact, before the March of Return, we’ve been living under a blockade for 10 years, more than one decade, more than a decade. And the poverty is prevailing. The unemployment is prevailing. And we’ve been suffering a shortage of medicine and a restriction of movement of people across borders, because our borders are sealed most of the time. So it was a very miserable situation before the March of Return. When after the March of Return started, then the people start to—we have never, ever thought that the people would be targeted like that way. Well, just we thought they might use some tear gas, and that was the only thing we thought that may be used. But we were shocked by the large numbers of casualties arriving to our hospitals in serious condition. On the first day, they killed almost 30 persons, and they wounded 1,500 or 1,700. And the numbers start to mount every week, until we reach now a tragedy.
And in the health sector, on the other side, we’ve been suffering. Our staff are working without salaries most of the time. They are just taking some stipends, which are not enough to meet any of their financial needs. And because of—and we have shortage of electricity, shortage of maintenance and spare parts. Everything is quite difficult in our hospitals. And the total bed capacity that we have is 2,200 beds. Imagine that we have admitted 7,000 victims of this aggression in the last two months. So, I remember Monday of the 14th of May, where we received 3,000 injured, and we lost—almost 63 were killed that day, that the people were thrown in the ground, in their blood. I mean, it was just a very miserable situation that our capacity was full. In my hospital, where I have 14 operation rooms, all of them were operating along the hour. And the victims were thrown on the ground. We have no rooms to treat them. There was no way. Our triage tent, that was expanded, was full of them.
And usually, because they use many kind of bullets, but there’s a kind that they use which is called the explosive bullet, which will take out the bone and the blood vessels and leave nothing in the limb. They use to target the extremities, the lower limbs in particular. There is an artery called popliteal artery and another one called the femoral artery. Once they are targeted, the patient will arrive to the hospitals with hemorrhagic shock, and it will be very difficult to save their lives. And we have been existing too much effort to save the limbs of those people. But ’til now, we lost 33 limbs, were amputated during this aggression.
And still they are not denying their intention to continue targeting the civilians at the border side. Of course, as it is quite clear that it is a violation of the Geneva Convention, which will protect all the medical personnel in the fields, and it also should protect the civilians everywhere during conflict times. But, in fact, we are shocked, and we condemn, by all the words, what’s been happening today. And, believe me, we feel so sad by the United States backing them in the United Nations, where the only thing that was required is just to protect civilians. We are requiring anything.
The goal of this return march was just to break the siege. We need to be free. They are putting us in this country. We cannot travel. We have no salary. We have no hope. We have no electricity. We have nothing. And we want to be free like any other country in the world. Many, many of those people were children. Many of them were women. Two women were killed since the beginning of the Great March of Return. And the only thing the people are requiring during those demonstrations are to break the siege and to return back to their homeland, which was stated clearly by United Nations Resolution number 194.
DR. TAREK LOUBANI: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know what orders they received or what was in their heads, so I can’t tell you if we were deliberately targeted. What I can tell you is the things that I do know. In the six weeks of the march, there were no paramedic casualties. And in one day, 19 paramedics—18 wounded plus one killed—and myself were all injured, so—or were all shot with live ammunition. We were all—Musa was actually in a rescue at the time, but everybody else I’ve talked to was like me. We were away during a lull, without smoke, without any chaos at all, and we were targeted—and we were, rather, hit by live ammunition, most of us in the lower limbs. So, it’s very, very hard to believe that the Israelis who shot me and the Israelis who shot my other colleagues—just from our medical crew, four of us were shot, including Musa Abuhassanin, who passed away. It’s very hard to believe that they didn’t know who we were, they didn’t know what we were doing, and that they were aiming at anything else.
– Dr. Tarek Loubani, who’s back in Canada now. He is a Canadian emergency room doctor, shot in Gaza by an Israeli sniper. Again, the medic—the paramedic who helped him was then shot dead.
And I’m quite sure that this is goal-directed. It’s an intention. They wanted to scare everybody, so that nobody asks for his rights, for freedom and his right to return back to his homeland. This is the problem. And scaring people like that way is a miserable act. It should be condemned by everybody in the international community. And we received support messages from many NGOs all over the world, communicating with us, say that they offer their solidarity with us.
But again—but still the United States are still insisting to back Israel for what they do, killing civilians. And we hope—we hope that the propaganda that we listen in the media is not right about that the people who are demonstrating are terrorists. No, they are not terrorists. They are unarmed civilians. The only thing they want is their freedom. They are trapped in the biggest prison, air-open prison, in the world. Enough is enough. The people need their freedom. And this is our right, I think.
just the people just wanted to express their anger, their condemnation of this act. And everybody—it was like a mass grave in Gaza Strip. Everybody cried for her and for the loss of the others, 123 persons who were killed. Just they were just doing nothing. They were just demonstrating peacefully. There was not a single Israeli soldier on the other side of the border who was wounded or harmed. Just nothing has happened to them. Why to use this excessive force against civilians? That’s not explained. And everybody was condemning that. And the large number is saying that everybody is supporting the medical team, everybody is supporting the right of return, everybody is against the blockade which is imposed on us for more than a decade today. That was the meaning of this demonstration that occurred during the funeral of Razan al-Najjar.
Razan was shot on the same day that the United States vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution on protection of Palestinians.
I felt bad. Everybody—I was shocked, really, because nothing—we have just wanted nothing. The only thing that we need protection for our children, for our women, for our dignity, for our life, we need our freedom. That’s all. And we have expected the United States to support us just not to die and to be free. But I don’t know what happened. In fact, we cannot understand this. And really, we feel so bad for that.
Dalia al-Najjar talking:
Ninety-seven percent of the water in Gaza are unfit for human consumption. So the water situation in Gaza is really horrible. And I’m exploring solutions and alternatives all the time to try to help, but it’s impossible to do anything in Gaza without lifting the blockade and freeing the people and granting the freedom of movement and the people to be able to bring resources to build and to live normally, actually. I haven’t seen my family in two years. And it’s a really tough time right now, and I can’t be there with them. And so, this is what we need to do. We need to, first of all, to lift the blockade, and then we will find solutions to everything else. Without lifting the blockade, it’s really hard to navigate any solutions for all the problems that—and the crisis that Gaza is suffering from.
The whole world is watching one country of occupation bullying everyone else, and no one is doing anything. It’s such a shameful—it’s a shameful side that the United States decided to take. And it’s really disappointing. And we wish that they would rethink this and would work toward justice, because peace will never emerge if we keep acting the way people act and the way the political leadership and the world acts. We need people to seek for justice, and this is how peace will be built.
Dr. Medhat Abbas talking:
the problem, as I mentioned, the capacity that we have in our hospital is very limited, and we cannot handle those mounting numbers every Friday. It’s a disaster. And I mentioned that on the 14th of May we were not able to handle most of the cases who were thrown on the ground because our—all of the operation rooms were operating ’til next day morning and were not enough to meet the need of those bleeding victims outside. For that reason, it is still—we are still appealing. And thanks for the ICRC and WHO. They have been supporting us strongly during those events. But, in fact, we have too much needs, which are not yet met because of lack of donors and shortage of funds arriving to Gaza during this crisis. And it was mentioned, we were disappointed. We still need support. We still need our freedom. We still need medications. And we need these borders, the sealed border, to be opened, for God’s sake.
Palestinians from the West Bank have arrived. Jordan colleagues, they have arrived also, some vascular surgeons. But none of them have arrived to us, no Israeli hospitals or doctors.
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Dalia al-Najjar
Razan al-Najjar’s cousin. She is co-founder of Xyla Water, an organization dedicated to making clean water accessible around the world.
Medhat Abbas
director of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip.
— source democracynow.org