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.There arememorial services happening all over the country.He s written a poem for Rachel today; here are some words from it:& So many remember you, but forget the thousands of PalestiniansThey remember you but have never heard of Tom, or James, orNabila or Ali&As I ve traveled this land speaking of your last standStill clutching to your hand, extending out of the sandI accept that I cannot pull you outBut weMight keep the rest of usFrom being pulled under& 8MARCH 19We were back at Faraheen this morning accompanying farmers again,eyeing the jeeps driving along the border while our farmers removedthe irrigation pipes from one of the fields we have visited regularly.Since Mohammed was shot in the leg, the farmer here has decided togive up on this field, its convenient well, and its half-grown parsleycrop 200,000 shekels worth in case of further injury or death.Itwas a quiet morning, thank goodness.Tristan is conscious and was breathing on his own until he caughtpneumonia.He has a long way to go and it s not known what will beahead for sure, more surgery, including on his damaged right eye. 186 GAZA FEBRUARY 3 MARCH 19, 2009I met a great Manchester guy this week, Dr Sohail of MIST (MobileInternational Surgical Team) who has come here to work with peoplesbones, for example working with amputees who have had limbsremoved high up, to enable the otherwise impossible attachmentof prosthetic limbs (if Israel lets the prosthetics through the border,another problem of the siege).Thinking about bones, I immediately thought of Wafa.After wincingat the picture of her in hospital the day after soldiers shot out herkneecap, Dr Sohail said: I m a kneecap man! and told me a series ofincomprehensible surgical things he might be able to do to give herback some movement.We rang her family today while standing inthe Faraheen field (it s a good time to get your phone-calling done) tosay that Dr Sohail will see her in June if I take a photo of her medicalrecords for him beforehand.Dr Sohail spoke of the several limitations medical people are underhere: mostly no access to the latest equipment if any gets in, no accessto training on how to use it and of course very little of the ongoingtraining amongst their international peers that surgeons need to have.In the last days there have been renewed calls for an InternationalCriminal Court investigation into war crimes in Gaza, including whiteflag killings by Israeli soldiers.One of the big problems is that duringthe attacks, there were no forensic pathologists in Gaza trained to asufficient level (they are trying to send some people outside for trainingnow, ready for the next time& ).A second big problem is that whenthe International Criminal Court representatives tried to get in throughRafah to investigate, Egypt refused to let them through, so they missedthe February 8 deadline for submitting evidence.And it was never going to be easy.Here is an example.One of the AlQuds Red Crescent medics talked about reaching some of the survivingSamouni kids trapped with dead adults, on the fi rst Red Cross/RedCrescent evacuation permitted by Israel.He said the kids (who theyfound in circumstances that left some of the medics traumatised FARMING UNDER FIRE 187White flag killingsIn August 2009, Human Rights Watch reported allegations of white flag killingsby Israeli forces.The human rights NGO s final publication detailed sevenincidents where Israeli soldiers fired on civilians with small arms during Israel smajor military operations in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.Theseattacks killed eleven civilians including five women and four children andwounded at least another eight. These casualties comprise a small fraction of the Palestinian civilianskilled and wounded during what Israel called Operation Cast Lead, HumanRights Watch continued, but they stand out because of the circumstancesof the attacks.In each case, the victims were standing, walking, or in a slowlymoving vehicle with other unarmed civilians who were trying to convey theirnoncombatant status by waving a white flag.All available evidence indicatesthat Israeli forces had control of the areas in question, no fighting was takingplace there at the time, and Palestinian fighters were not hiding among thecivilians who were shot.Human Rights Watch interviewed multiple witnesses to each event, visitedthe attack sites, examined ballistic evidence and collected medical records.Italso directed repeated questions to the IDF, which declined to answer them.The cases documented by Human Rights Watch include that of Khalid AbedRabbu, described on page 129, whose two young daughters were killed and theirgrandmother and a third daughter wounded while they were carrying whiteflags.Other cases include Nada al-Marrdi, age 5, Mattar Sa ad Abu Halima, 17,Muhammad Hikmat Abu Halima, 16 and Ibrahim Mu in Juha, 14.Human RightsWatch also criticised comments such as those of IDF Colonel Liron Liebman,who called demands for investigations into the actions of Israeli soldiers inGaza legal terrorism.Reference: Human Rights Watch, White flag deaths: killings of Palestinian civilians duringOperation Cast Lead , August 2009.themselves) said the adults had been shot, and they had covered overthe bodies themselves.The medics knew it was important to try to take the adults bodiesout, but the children were starving, dehydrated, and in a state of 188 GAZA FEBRUARY 3 MARCH 19, 2009collapse.Since Israel had not permitted the medics to take ambulances,and several miles had to be covered, the medics found a donkey cartfor the children.The Red Cross asked Israel to be allowed to take adonkey to pull the cart, but Israel said no.My medic friend says: We put the children on the donkey cart andpulled it ourselves, hurrying to get out before 4pm which was thedeadline for the evacuation.And there was no room for the bodies.Soa lot of time passed before those bodies could be retrieved, and whilewe have the verbal testimony of the children, we don t have an earlymedical assessment of the adults bodies
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