<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Killings haunt Gaza City graveyard&nbsp;families]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<div><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblDate" class="newstext">Wednesday, April 13, 2011</span></div>
<div class="LineSpacing"></div>
<div></div>
<div><span> </span></div>
<p><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblNewsDetailMain">GAZA CITY: Blood  stains can still be seen on the graves in Shejaiya cemetery just days  after a deadly Israeli raid, showing that even the dead cannot rest in  peace in the war-torn Gaza district.</p>
<p>Israel says the raid, which killed two people at dusk on Friday, targeted Palestinians firing rockets.</p>
<p>“On  Friday night, there were members of the resistance who wanted to fire  rockets from here,” said Imad al-Ashram, 36, who tends the cemetery in  the impoverished neighbourhood, just two kilometres from the Israeli  border.</p>
<p>“They were spotted by a plane and the Israeli strike  hit Bilal al-Raeir,” he said, pointing to dark blood stains on the white  stone graves.</p>
<p>“People came running, and shortly afterwards  there was another air strike, and a child was killed,” he told AFP,  referring to 10-year-old Mahmud al-Jaru.</p>
<p>The pair was among  nine people killed on April 8, as violence flared between Israel and the  Islamist group Hamas, which controls the territory.</p>
<p>It was  the single bloodiest day in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s  genocidal 22-day offensive which began at the end of December 2008,  Palestinian medical sources said.</p>
<p>Shortly after the graveyard  was struck, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad announced that Raeir was  one of their activists who had been killed after he fired a missile at  an Israeli position. The Israeli military subsequently posted air force  footage of the graveyard showing shadows moving around the cemetery with  a tubular object — what they said was a rocket launcher.</p>
<p>But  despite the footage and Islamic Jihad’s statement, most residents here  deny that any rocket fire came from their neighbourhood.</p>
<p>“I  was there, no one fired a rocket. It’s an open area. The fighters would  have been seen immediately,” said 35-year-old Alaa Mohamed al-Jaru,  uncle of the 10-year-old who was killed.</p>
<p>“Mahmud was playing  outside with some other children when the air strike happened. They all  ran away, but Mahmud didn’t move. We called him, but he stayed put, and  he was hit by the second strike,” said Jaru.</p>
<p>In his pocket is  a scrap of the t-shirt his young nephew was wearing. The young boy was  buried in the cemetery, in his great-grandfather’s tomb, just metres  (yards) away from nearby homes.</p>
<p>“We have a housing crisis  here,” said Jaru. “When we need to build, we look at the date on the  graves, and if they are very old and all that’s inside is dust, we clear  them.”</p>
<p>Signs of life among the dead are all around, with  rubbish littering the ground around the graves, and washing lines strung  between the headstones.</p>
<p>“If people are forced to live in a  cemetery, it’s because there isn’t enough free space in Gaza except for  the old settlements,” said Hassan Taysir Abu al-Kas, 19, referring to  the Jewish settlements Israel evacuated in 2005.</p>
<p>Housing projects which were to have been built on the sites of the former settlements have yet to materialise.</p>
<p>As  a tentative truce appeared to take hold, people in Shejaiya’s farmland,  which lies close to the border, began to venture out after days of  cowering indoors as Israeli warplanes and tanks pounded the area.</p>
<p>“The  Israeli forces came very close to here with their tanks,” said Um Iyad  al-Mamluk, a woman wearing a veil who spent the days holed up at home  with her extended family.</p>
<p>“Where could we go with 30 children? If we went out we risked being killed,” she told AFP.</p>
<p>Jamil  al-Muhsin, a 62-year-old farmer gripping a hoe in his hand, railed  against the Israeli military. “The Israeli army, which calls itself the  Israel Defence Forces, is actually an Israeli force that attacks unarmed  civilians,” he charged.</p>
<p>He dismissed as “big talk” the Arab League’s announcement that it would seek a United Nations-imposed no-fly zone over Gaza.</p>
<p>“Will  the Security Council for the first time apply a decision, or will it  just be another decision&#8230; taken by the Arab League or the Security  Council that is not respected by anyone?”</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=41267&amp;Cat=1&amp;dt=4/13/2011">Source</a></p>
]]></html></oembed>