Deputy ICRC head in Strip notes Gazan supermarkets have food, slams Hamas rocket fire, but says Israel should let more materials in.
Talkbacks (14)
The Gaza Strip is not suffering from a humanitarian crisis, the deputy head of the Red Cross in Gaza said this week.
Mathilde Redmatn, who had been assigned to Congo and Colombia in the past, said that the “fabric of life” in the region was problematic.
“There are two peoples, one living under closure and one living under daily rocket fire, which violates international law,” she said. Her comments were made available on Thursday by the IDF Spokesman’s Office.
“There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If you go to the supermarket, there are products. There are restaurants and a nice beach. The problem is mainly in maintenance of infrastructure and in access to goods, concrete for example,” Redmatn said.
“Israel has the legitimate right to protect the civilian population; this right should be balanced with the rights of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip,” she said.
Redmatn condemned Gazan rocket attacks on southern Israel, while also calling on the government to allow more materials to enter the Strip.
“Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip is against international law because it is directed at civilians,” she said. “We conduct confidential or bilateral dialogue with Hamas on the matter. As time passes, the dialogue also develops.”
She said the Red Cross would continue to seek access to abducted IDF soldier Gilad Schalit – who will begin his sixth year of captivity on June 25 – but stressed that the organization lacked the capability to “force anything on Hamas.”
The Red Cross and the IDF are in close contact to “coordinate the entry of goods into Gaza and the entry and exit of people, sometimes our personnel and sometimes patients who are going to Israel to receive medical care,” she said.
The organization is now seeking to strengthen its relationship with soldiers stationed at the Erez border crossing and around the Gaza Strip, the official said.
“Our goal is not to negotiate peace, but to ensure the well-being of the civilian population,” Redmatn said. “We understand and recognize Israel’s right to security, but it needs to maintain the balance between that and the right of Palestinians living in Gaza to a living and to proper medical care. Of course this is also the responsibility of Hamas to its citizens and therefore we also have relations with them.”
Thanks Sarahko. I was well aware of the timing and should have noticed the oversite myself.
I appreciate your bringing that to light for the benefit of Hemorrhoid.
One small(?) correction to Jomit. Those Arabs that call themselves “Palestinians” started to do so after 1967, not 1947! The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem called his “people” Arabs, not Palestians. All Jews in Israel have passports by the British under the British Mandate that label them as Palestinians, so who are the “Palestinians”? Arafat, himself, did not call himself “Palestinian” until after 1967.
Hemorrhoid: Maybe you can tell us what a “palestinian” is. Does he come from palestine? Where is that? What country is it located in? Tell us something of its history. The Jews were given, resided in, and governed that entire area 38 centuries before Christendom, and 42 before islam. They have more claim to it than any group of newbies that may have talked you and the rest of the naive naysayers into believing that it belongs to some group who call themselves “palestinians”. Those people are nothing more than the decendants of roaming arabs who mainly came in droves when the Jews were changing it from a desert to a farming land 130 years ago. They came for jobs, and then after Israel finally became a state in 1947 and they had to fight for their very existence, those people decided to call themselves “palestinians” and tell the world how victimized they were. Those arabs have a better life in Israel than in any of their brethern in any of the surrounding muslim countries. You’ve got a frikken lot of nerve pointing fingers. You bloody Irishmen have been killing each other for hundreds of years. Why don’t you put that same energy into mending your own fences with your hated neighbors instead of sticking your nose where it’s not wanted and where it has no business being. That’s a real hoot….Irishmen who torture, kill, and bomb their neighbors, and one schmuck is telling Jews how to act. Sod off, loser.
If you have evidence that they do, then I suggest you help the ‘victims’ take the ‘thieves’ to court. Perhaps you were unaware that the local ethnic Arabs whom you call “Palestinians” have direct access to Israel’s Supreme Court in matters of original jurisdiction.
And when they can demonstrate that their case is sound, they get action.
Be so kind as to define “indigenous”
and then illustrate how that definition applies to the “Palestinian families” to whom you refer.
Suppose you tell ME
after you’ve established that “millions” of Palestinians have, in fact, been “displaced.”
Surely you do have documentation to support your very serious allegations?
I mean, I realize that it feels oh-so-good to be able to puff up in righteous judgment like that — but surely your sense of justice is not so subject to the buffetings of political correctness as to be satisfied with anything less than the objective facts, yes?
YES ???
Would it be too much to ask if you’ve ever bothered to read thru the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, ratified unanimously by the League Council on behalf of the entire world community, 24 July 1922 ?
If you haven’t read it, then (in the interest of answering your above question) would it be too much to ask that you DO so (for starters) — just so we’ll be on the same page? It won’t take but four minutes of your time.
Six, if you’re slow, like me.
Cite your source for RC has no”dputy director” in Gaza!!!
If you are a really Irish and really from Belfast, are you a scummy Protestant occupier of Irish lands or a Catholic who for over 700 years ate British shit?
I’d just as soon blow away an Irish scum as I would a so called Philistine known to you as Palestinian but to me an arab maggot.
“Israel doesn’t steal land from the palestinians”
So who’s been evicting the indigenous Palestinian families, bulldozing their homes and settling others on the land? Who owns the land the illegal settlements are built on? Where did the millions of displaced Palestinians previously live?
Who gave Israel the expanding territority it claims as its own? Answer – no one gave them it. It was stolen.
Answer any of these questions honestly and the nonsense of your statement is obvious – unless your own common sense has been stolen.
Israel doesn’t steal land from the palestinians. They pal’s have, however, stolen your common sense.
There is no record of this individual or this statement dismissing the crisis in Gaza on the ICRC website.
This appears to be a bogus story regurgitated on websites by clowns desperate to explain away Israel’s seige of Gaza and brutal occupation. Next they’ll be trying to tell us Israel deosn’t steal land from Palestinians…
Red Cross has never heard of a “Mathilde Redmatn”. There is no Red Cross “deputy director” in Gaza. More specific: the Red Cross doesn’t operate in Gaza at all. This is done by the Red Cresent Society. And a Red Cross employee would NEVER give an exclusive ‘interview’ for the IDF (website), or any other occupying army.
Don’t degrade your organization with this malicious propaganda.
How nice that they’ve gotten around to saying so.
Where the hell have they been all this time?
Where the hell were they when the Mavi Marmara slime were laying their lies on the media?
The Red Cross locks the stable after the horse has been stolen.
Let’s see what Ms Redmatn (or any of her ICRC associates) has to say a couple weeks from now when the next “peace flotilla” sets sail for Gaza.
I’m glad that, thanks to Israel, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza; and I’m also glad that the Red Cross in Gaza (whoever they are) recognizes this. Everything else about Gaza and the Gazans stinks to high heaven. They are vile people, certainly the worst neighbors anyone could hope for. Good neighbors don’t fire rockets at their neighbor’s schoolyard.
Everybody seems to walk around pointing fingers at muslims…especially terrorist organizations such as hamas,
doing a tip toe. They are all afraid to say it like it is. They are every day trying to kill Israeli citizens,
and their charter is to eliminate Israel and somehow get rid of all the Jews living there. Why is that never
mentioned when comparing the problems that each faces with the other? Israelis want to live in peace and
hamas is dedicated to killing them. That’s just as plain as day. So the IDF is entitled to do anything and
everything to save Israeli lives. Even if that means collateral damage.
can’t have a humanitarian crisis without humans
No humanitarian crisis in Gaza? Are you kidding! I think young girls who want to play sport, Gilad Shalit, christian book store owners and young Italian communists might disagree on that one.
The definition of insanity: Israel supplying electricity to Gaza from its power grid.