AMJAD SHAWA
Shawa is Palestinian NGO Network coordinator for Gaza. The group just released an urgent statement on the health care situation: “In the last few days, the Gaza Strip has witnessed dramatic serious incidents which resulted in tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries. This has dramatic consequences for the political, economic and social aspects as well. What complicates the situation more is the Israeli Occupation Authority’s declaration of imposing complete closure on the Gaza Strip and the international community’s decisions to suspend all the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza population, who already suffer from increasing poverty and unemployment rates. The latter terrible situation has resulted from the long unfair sanctions imposed by the international community and the constant Israeli hostilities targeting the Gaza Strip.”
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TALAL ABU-SHAWISH
Abu-Shawish is head of New Horizons, a non-governmental association that administers programs for children and women in a refugee camp in the middle of Gaza. He said today: “I saw the body of a Fatah member shot up by Hamas with over a hundred bullets. I couldn’t eat for three days. Hamas controls the streets and little else. The hospitals have no medicine and Hamas seems to have no program for making things better.”

MONA EL-FARRA, M.D.
El-Farra is a physician and human rights activist from Gaza. She is on her first U.S. speaking tour. She writes the blog “From Gaza, with Love.”

An oped of hers, “When Gaza Brothers Turn Against Each Other,” was published in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.
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For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan at (541) 484-9167.