Virtually every kind of human rights violation occurs, or has occurred in Gaza Strip, in one form or another, directly or consequentially, in the long struggle of Palestinians.
These violations are well documented and comprise a list limited only by the different ways a violation or parts of a syndrome of violations is described.
There are usually many violations within violations:
An Apache helicopter fires a missile into a car, the ground tank assaults the apartment building, the father is deprived of his right to live; the mother of her right to feel safe in her home; a 13 year old girl blinded for life has had which of her human rights violated? How many 'human rights' violations shall we count within that series of violent events?
Other 'human rights violations' include, of course, brutal checkpoints and closures; power blackouts; unpredictable access to clean water; major interferences with education, or health care; targeted assassinations; massive home demolitions, 'genocidal' destruction of the means to live of an identified group of people by destroying their food sources, and water; blatant land confiscations in the form of settlements; routine brutalities of occupying soldiers; sniper killings; Apache helicopter and F-16 attacks; torture; routine imprisonment; routine humiliations – the voice of a young soldier emanating from a loud speaker instantly intimidates a hundred grown men and women; epidemic levels of malnutrition among children; the slow suicides of dispirited people who more and more, and less and less, take care of their personal health, overwhelmed by waves of discouragement and helplessness.
Anyone can make their own entirely valid list.
These, and a raft of more ugly events inflicted upon Palestinians are defined as 'human rights' violations from many different formal or informal perspectives – international law, military rules of occupation, United Nations Declarations, public health standards, religious tenets, medical and mental health perspectives, declarations of human rights, and others.
Yes, it is important to record these daily events and to place them in certain contexts. Yet, after accumulating such evidence for over fifty years, the acquiring of more data, with or without justified comment in any tone, or cries of pain or protest at whatever pitch, is to miss a major point of reality.
It is a certainty that 'human rights' violations will continue in kind, degree, or frequency because they occur in the larger historical and contemporary setting of the 'human rights' violation of the occupation.
Recording human rights violations in Gaza is similar to documenting signs and symptoms of persons dying from a plague of small pox. Yes, as medical treatment personnel it is necessary to record and document signs and symptoms, make interventions and treat individuals and families as effectively as possible, yet until the plague itself is addressed, death by plague will continue, that is certain.
The plague of the occupation must create violations of 'human rights.' It cannot do other. The plague of violent occupation has a host, agent, and environment.
Living in a land where plague rages requires going beyond recording signs and symptoms, recounting agonies, and counting the dead.
Intervention must take place at the highest levels of organization, and involves the hard work of mobilization and an over-arching vision and understanding of the elements of the plague.
Winston Churchill said, "War is too important to be left to generals."
Living in a plague of violence is too important to be left to politicians.
Trying to live in a plague of violence – military occupation – the prison of Gaza-may be too important to be left to politicians.