New Delhi: “Do you hear that? The party has started,” says Gaza-based human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, as sounds of bombing interrupt his telephone conversation with ThePrint. “It happens every 30 minutes.”
It has been over a week since Israel began its counteroffensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza in retaliation to an unprecedented aerial and ground strike by the Palestinian militant group.
Hunkered down at an undisclosed location in the 41-km Gaza Strip, often described as the world’s largest open-air prison, 69-year-old Sourani, recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, counts the casualties since the fighting began — over 2,500, including 1,050 children and 860 women.
“They [Israel] are bombing schools, hospitals, ambulances and shelters; are we animals? It is a shame [on the West] that they still support Israel. There is only one who is committing war crimes — that is Israel,” Sourani says over patchy internet connectivity.
For the human rights lawyer, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in 1995, the ongoing war is nothing short of a new Nakba (catastrophe) — the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 and the permanent displacement of a majority of Palestinian Arabs.
None of the heads of the Western countries have dwelled on the pain and suffering Palestinians have endured since Israel was established in 1948, Sourani said.
He also noted that nearly half a million civilians have moved from North Gaza to South Gaza since the assault began. But even the threat of him being bombed inside his home will not make him move.
“We are here, we are staying here (Gaza),” said the two-time Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience (POC), taking a firm stance on the Palestinian right to dignity and self-determination.
Amnesty International considers a POC to be any person imprisoned or otherwise physically restricted (like house arrest), solely because of his/her political, religious, or other conscientiously held beliefs, ethnic origin, sex, color, language, national or social origin, economic status, birth, sexual orientation or other status, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred.
A news report by the Jerusalem Post quotes a Jerusalem-based NGO as claiming that Sourani’s PCHR has had “long-time links” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — an organisation designated as a “terror group” by the US, European Union, and Israel.
But Sourani emphatically denies this, calling these reports “nothing short of propaganda” led by Israel and its allies.
“[According to them] the Palestinian is genetically a terrorist, whether it is a child, woman or human rights activist,” Sourani told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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