'Palestinians' delay soccer final, try to blame Israel
The 'Palestinian' soccer final, which was to have taken place on Sunday in Hebron, has been postponed after a number of
players from Gaza were not allowed to cross the border.
The Shejaia club from the Gaza Strip must pass through an Israeli border
crossing to reach the West Bank city of Hebron, where Sunday's game was
scheduled to be played, and to do so needs approval from Israel.
"It
became clear seven people, including four players were not on the list
and therefore, the entire mission can't leave Gaza without them," said
Ala Shammaly of the Shejaia media office.
Israel said the four
players needed to undergo special questioning, which was to have taken
place on Thursday, but the Palestinians did not show.
It offered
to let the rest of the team cross on Friday, the start of the weekend in
Israel, with the four to meet them on Sunday when it would again be
possible to conduct the questioning.
The Palestinian federation said the game was delayed until further notice.
In a series of tweets, COGAT, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, tells a far different story.
In case you need to be reminded why 'Palestinian' soccer players might need to pass 'preliminary inquiries' before being allowed to move through Israel and into the 'West Bank,'
here are some reminders.
Labels: COGAT, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Jibril Rajoub, Palestinian terrorism, soccer
American immigrant, IDF officer from Arizona talks about her experience in Gaza
Nira Lee made aliya from Arizona in 2010 and spent Operation Pillar of Defense as an officer with COGAT - the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.
She talks about her experience.
The eight days of Operation "Pillar of Defense" have been some of the hardest I have ever known physically and emotionally. The college student from Arizona would never have thought it possible to work 20 hours a day, fueled only by adrenaline and longing for just an hour of sleep on a shelter floor -- wearing the same filthy uniform because changing, much less showering, wouldn't allow me to get to a shelter in time when the next rocket barrage hit. And no, wearing the green uniform does not mean that you aren't afraid when the sirens sound.
Had you told me four years ago that there were IDF officers who stayed up all night under a hail of rockets, brainstorming ways to import medical supplies and food to the people of Gaza, I am not sure I would have believed you. But I can tell you it is true because I did it every night.
What amazed me the most was the singular sense of purpose that drove everyone from the base commander to the lowest ranking soldier. We were all focused completely on our mission: to help our forces accomplish their goals without causing unnecessary harm to civilian lives or infrastructure.
It is harder to explain the emotional roller-coaster -- how proud and relieved I felt every time a truck I coordinated entered Gaza, and how enraging it was when we had to shut down the crossing into Gaza after Hamas repeatedly targeted it. Or how invigorating it was help evacuate two injured Palestinians from the border area, only to be informed minutes later that a terrorist had detonated a bomb on a bus near my apartment in Tel Aviv.
So after all that I see and do, nothing frustrates me more than the numbers game that is played in the media. The world talks about "disproportionate" numbers of casualties as the measure of what is right and wrong -- as if not enough Israelis were killed by Hamas for the IDF to have the right to protect its own civilians from endless rocket attacks.
In my position, I see the surgical airstrikes, and spend many hours with the UN, ICRC, and NGO officers reviewing maps to help identify, and avoid, striking civilian sites. One of our pilots who saw a rocket aimed at Israel aborted his mission when he saw children nearby -- putting his own civilians at risk to save Gazans. At the end of the day, what these "disproportionate numbers" show is how we in Israel protect our children with elaborate shelters and missile defense systems, whereas the terror groups in Gaza hide behind theirs, using them as human shields in order to win a cynical media war.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: COGAT, Gaza, Israeli crossing points, Operation Pillar of Defense
IDF hits back at UNRWA claim that Gaza 'blockade' harming 'Palestinian' education
The IDF's Civil Affairs Department in the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has prepared a report responding to
charges by UNRWA that Israel's Gaza 'blockade' is harming 'Palestinian' education.
The COGAT report, obtained exclusively on Thursday by The Jerusalem Post, was prompted by a report published in mid-May by Kishore Singh, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, in which it cited a claim by UNRWA that “a minimum of 100 new schools are required in order to meet the enrollment demands of the refugee children of Gaza and to return its schools to a single-shift system.”
In addition, Singh’s report cites another UNRWA claim that it had only received approval to build eight new schools in the Gaza Strip. The UN report blames Israel’s so-called blockade, imposed in 2007 and later eased up significantly following the Turkish flotilla last summer, as the cause for the difficult education system in Gaza.
The COGAT report, which a senior Foreign Ministry officials told the Post on Thursday would be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council – refutes both claims. Firstly it says that UNRWA has never provided the IDF with a list of 100 schools that it would like to build in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Israeli report, head of COGAT Maj.- Gen. Eitan Dangot met months ago with UNRWA and a representative of the UN Secretary General at his own initiative and asked to work jointly on a broad education plan for the Gaza Strip.
The COGAT report claims that Israel heard the claim regarding the schools for the first time from the media and that an official and detailed request was never received.
“The attempt to draw a connection between UNRWA’s difficulty in building 100 new schools and the blockade is misleading and distortive, and makes connections that have nothing to do with each other,” says the report.
According to official COGAT records obtained by the Post since the change in Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Gaza blockade in June, 2010, Israel has approved a total of 41 educational projects, 32 of them for UNRWA. Twentyfour of the 32 approved UNRWA projects were for new schools and another three approvals were granted for the expansion of existing schools According to the report, UNRWA has only begun bringing in building supplies for 11 of the schools, even though it has approval to do so for another 13.
The report provides a detailed list of the schools approved, with a breakdown of which ones are under construction and which ones are not.
By the way, the report also says that unemployment among the 'refugee population' has increased while unemployment among the 'non-refugee population' has dropped. I wonder why. Maybe they need a Wisconsin plan to get them off welfare. Heh.
Labels: COGAT, Gaza plenty, UNRWA
