8 nov 2018
The unshaven doctor with circles under his eyes enters the children’s ward at Al Nassar Hospital in Gaza City. It’s a Thursday evening, almost the weekend. The ward is bleak and eerily quiet, but for the occasional wail of an infant.
At each cubicle, sectioned off by curtains, it’s a similar image: A baby lies alone in a bed, hooked up to tubes, wires and a generator; a mother sits in silent witness at the bedside.
Dr. Mohamad Abu Samia, the hospital’s director of paediatric medicine, exchanges a few quiet words with one mother, then gently lifts the infant’s gown, revealing a scar from heart surgery nearly half the length of her body.
At the next cubicle, he attends to a child suffering from severe malnutrition. She lies still, her tiny body connected to a respirator. Because electricity runs only four hours a day in Gaza, the baby must stay here, where generators keep her alive.
“We are very busy,” the overwhelmed doctor says. “Babies suffering from dehydration, from vomiting, from diarrhoea, from fever.” The skyrocketing rate of diarrhoea, the world’s second largest killer of children under five, is reason enough for alarm.
But in recent months Dr. Abu Samia has seen sharp rises in gastroenteritis, kidney disease, paediatric cancer, marasmus – a disease of severe malnutrition appearing in infants – and “blue baby syndrome”, an ailment causing bluish lips, face, and skin, and blood the colour of chocolate.
Before, the doctor says, he saw “one or two cases” of blue baby syndrome in five years. Now it’s the opposite – five cases in one year.
Asked if he has studies to back up his findings, he says: “We live in Gaza, in an emergency situation … We have time only to relieve the problem, not to research it.”
Yet Palestinian Ministry of Health figures support the doctor’s findings. They show a “doubling” of diarrheal disease, rising to epidemic levels, as well as spikes last summer in salmonella and even typhoid fever.
Independent, peer-reviewed medical journals have also documented increased infant mortality, anaemia, and an “alarming magnitude” of stunting among Gaza’s children.
A Rand Corporation study has found that bad water is a leading cause of child mortality in Gaza.
Simply put, Gaza’s children are facing a deadly health epidemic of unprecedented proportions.
“So much suffering,” says Dr. Abu Samia. It is, he says, a matter of “life and death”.
Multiple factors are to blame for the uncoiling health crisis, but medical experts agree on one central culprit: Gaza’s scarce and contaminated drinking water, owing to Israel’s economic siege, its repeated bombing of water and sewage infrastructure and a collapsing aquifer of such poor quality that 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking-water wells are below minimal health standards for human consumption.
Dr. Majdi Dhair, director of preventive medicine at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reports a “huge increase” in waterborne disease, which he says a “directly related to drinking water” and to contamination from untreated sewage water flowing directly into the Mediterranean.
A visit to Gaza’s densely-packed Shati (or “Beach”) refugee camp helps explain why. There, 87,000 refugees and their families – expelled from their towns and villages during the creation of Israel in 1948 – are packed into half a square kilometre of cement-block structures along the Mediterranean.
“Water and electricity? Forget about it,” says Atef Nimnim, who lives with his mother, wife, and two younger generations – 19 Nimnims in all – in a small three-room dwelling in Shati.
The Gaza aquifer that sputters through their taps is far too salty, hardly anyone in Gaza drinks it any more. For drinking water, Atef’s 15-year-old son piles plastic jugs onto a wheelchair and rolls it to the mosque, where he fills the family’s containers, courtesy of Hamas.
Most families, even in the refugee camps, spend up to half their modest income on the desalinated water from Gaza’s unregulated wells. But even that sacrifice comes at a cost.
Faecal contamination
Palestinian Water Authority tests show that up to 70 percent of the desalinated water delivered by a small army of private trucks and stored in the camps’ rooftop tanks, is prone to faecal contamination.
Even microscopic amounts of E coli can bloom into a health crisis.
The reason for that, explains Gregor von Medeazza, UNICEF’s water and sanitation specialist for Gaza, is that the longer the E coli remain in the water, the more “they start growing” in the water and the worse it gets. This leads to chronic diarrhoea, which in turn can lead to stunting in Gaza’s children, as a British medical journal recently documented. One effect, von Medeazza says, is on “brain development,” and a “measurable effect on the IQ” of affected children.
High salinity and nitrate levels from Gaza’s collapsing aquifer – so badly overpumped that seawater is flowing in – are at the root of many of Gaza’s health problems. Elevated nitrate levels lead to hypertension and renal failure, and are linked to the rise in blue baby syndrome. Waterborne maladies like infant diarrhoea, salmonella and typhoid fever are caused by faecal contamination – both from the rooftop desalinated water and from the 110 million litres of raw and poorly-treated sewage that flows into the Mediterranean every day.
Because electricity here is shut off for 20 hours a day, Gaza’s sewage plant is essentially useless; hence, brown water spews into the sea, 24/7, from long pipes above a beach just north of Gaza City. Yet in the summertime, children continue to swim along Gaza’s beaches.
In 2016, five-year-old Mohammad Al-Sayis swallowed sewage-laced seawater, ingesting faecal bacteria that led to a fatal brain disease. Mohammad’s was the first known death by sewage in Gaza.
Making matters worse: Israeli rockets and shells damaged or destroyed Gaza water towers and pipelines, wells and sewage plants causing an estimated $34m in damages. This further crippled the delivery of safe, clean water, deepening the health catastrophe here. An even greater impact comes from Israel’s economic blockade, which Dr. Abu Samia blames directly on the area’s growing malnutrition.
The severe shortages of water and electricity, along with rising poverty, have damaged nutritional levels, Dr. Abu Samia says.
“It is affecting babies.”
Before the siege, he said, he had no patients suffering from malnutrition.
Now he frequently sees children with nutritional disease.
“We are seeing babies with marasmus” – a severe nutritional disease. “The last two years, it is increasing more and more.”
Gazans well remember the cynical words of Israeli minister Dov Weissglas in 2006, when he infamously compared the blockade to “a meeting with a dietician …We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die.”
Gaza to become uninhabitable by 2020
Now, quite apart from the hundreds of deaths by rockets, missiles and bullets in the three most recent Gaza wars, children here are getting ill and dying from bad water and the infectious diseases that result.
“Occupation and siege are the primary impediments to the successful promotion of public health in the Gaza Strip,” declared a 2018 study in the Lancet, which cited “significant and deleterious effects to health care.”
Without a major intervention by the international community, and soon, humanitarian groups warn Gaza will become uninhabitable by 2020 – barely a year from now.
Failure to urgently intervene will result in “a huge collapse”, says Adnan Abu Hasna, Gaza spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which recently had all its US funding cut by the Trump administration.
Otherwise, in less than two years, he says, “Gaza will not be a liveable place.”
And yet, liveable or not, the vast majority of Gaza’s two million people have nowhere else to go. Most are simply trying to live as normal lives as possible under extremely abnormal circumstances.
At dusk on a summer night, on a spit of rock and earth in the middle of Gaza harbour, five of those two million people try to enjoy a few minutes of quiet.
All around Ahmad and Rana Dilly and their three young children, the harbour ripples with life. Fishermen haul in their nets. Kids pose for selfies on broken concrete blocks and rebar – remnants of an old bombing raid.
Rana pours mango soda; Ahmad insists on handing out some chocolate wafers.
“You are with Palestinians,” he laughs, dismissing those who reject his offer.
Their three young children nibble on chips.
The Dillys have the same problems as many Gaza families.
Ahmad, a money changer, had to rebuild his shop in 2014 after an Israeli missile destroyed it.
Like most Gazans, the family has to contend with the salty water from the taps and the inherent risks of disease from the trucked water they rely on. But these problems mean little to them compared with their wish to feel safe and to enjoy fleeting moments of living like a normal family.
“I know the situation is horrible, but I just want to let my kids have a little change from time to time,” Ahmad says. “I want them to see something different. I want my family to feel safe.”
In the distance, an explosion echoes. Ahmad pauses for a short moment, then ignores it.
He says, “I come here to the sea, and forget about all the world.”
~ Al Jazeera/Days of Palestine
At each cubicle, sectioned off by curtains, it’s a similar image: A baby lies alone in a bed, hooked up to tubes, wires and a generator; a mother sits in silent witness at the bedside.
Dr. Mohamad Abu Samia, the hospital’s director of paediatric medicine, exchanges a few quiet words with one mother, then gently lifts the infant’s gown, revealing a scar from heart surgery nearly half the length of her body.
At the next cubicle, he attends to a child suffering from severe malnutrition. She lies still, her tiny body connected to a respirator. Because electricity runs only four hours a day in Gaza, the baby must stay here, where generators keep her alive.
“We are very busy,” the overwhelmed doctor says. “Babies suffering from dehydration, from vomiting, from diarrhoea, from fever.” The skyrocketing rate of diarrhoea, the world’s second largest killer of children under five, is reason enough for alarm.
But in recent months Dr. Abu Samia has seen sharp rises in gastroenteritis, kidney disease, paediatric cancer, marasmus – a disease of severe malnutrition appearing in infants – and “blue baby syndrome”, an ailment causing bluish lips, face, and skin, and blood the colour of chocolate.
Before, the doctor says, he saw “one or two cases” of blue baby syndrome in five years. Now it’s the opposite – five cases in one year.
Asked if he has studies to back up his findings, he says: “We live in Gaza, in an emergency situation … We have time only to relieve the problem, not to research it.”
Yet Palestinian Ministry of Health figures support the doctor’s findings. They show a “doubling” of diarrheal disease, rising to epidemic levels, as well as spikes last summer in salmonella and even typhoid fever.
Independent, peer-reviewed medical journals have also documented increased infant mortality, anaemia, and an “alarming magnitude” of stunting among Gaza’s children.
A Rand Corporation study has found that bad water is a leading cause of child mortality in Gaza.
Simply put, Gaza’s children are facing a deadly health epidemic of unprecedented proportions.
“So much suffering,” says Dr. Abu Samia. It is, he says, a matter of “life and death”.
Multiple factors are to blame for the uncoiling health crisis, but medical experts agree on one central culprit: Gaza’s scarce and contaminated drinking water, owing to Israel’s economic siege, its repeated bombing of water and sewage infrastructure and a collapsing aquifer of such poor quality that 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking-water wells are below minimal health standards for human consumption.
Dr. Majdi Dhair, director of preventive medicine at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reports a “huge increase” in waterborne disease, which he says a “directly related to drinking water” and to contamination from untreated sewage water flowing directly into the Mediterranean.
A visit to Gaza’s densely-packed Shati (or “Beach”) refugee camp helps explain why. There, 87,000 refugees and their families – expelled from their towns and villages during the creation of Israel in 1948 – are packed into half a square kilometre of cement-block structures along the Mediterranean.
“Water and electricity? Forget about it,” says Atef Nimnim, who lives with his mother, wife, and two younger generations – 19 Nimnims in all – in a small three-room dwelling in Shati.
The Gaza aquifer that sputters through their taps is far too salty, hardly anyone in Gaza drinks it any more. For drinking water, Atef’s 15-year-old son piles plastic jugs onto a wheelchair and rolls it to the mosque, where he fills the family’s containers, courtesy of Hamas.
Most families, even in the refugee camps, spend up to half their modest income on the desalinated water from Gaza’s unregulated wells. But even that sacrifice comes at a cost.
Faecal contamination
Palestinian Water Authority tests show that up to 70 percent of the desalinated water delivered by a small army of private trucks and stored in the camps’ rooftop tanks, is prone to faecal contamination.
Even microscopic amounts of E coli can bloom into a health crisis.
The reason for that, explains Gregor von Medeazza, UNICEF’s water and sanitation specialist for Gaza, is that the longer the E coli remain in the water, the more “they start growing” in the water and the worse it gets. This leads to chronic diarrhoea, which in turn can lead to stunting in Gaza’s children, as a British medical journal recently documented. One effect, von Medeazza says, is on “brain development,” and a “measurable effect on the IQ” of affected children.
High salinity and nitrate levels from Gaza’s collapsing aquifer – so badly overpumped that seawater is flowing in – are at the root of many of Gaza’s health problems. Elevated nitrate levels lead to hypertension and renal failure, and are linked to the rise in blue baby syndrome. Waterborne maladies like infant diarrhoea, salmonella and typhoid fever are caused by faecal contamination – both from the rooftop desalinated water and from the 110 million litres of raw and poorly-treated sewage that flows into the Mediterranean every day.
Because electricity here is shut off for 20 hours a day, Gaza’s sewage plant is essentially useless; hence, brown water spews into the sea, 24/7, from long pipes above a beach just north of Gaza City. Yet in the summertime, children continue to swim along Gaza’s beaches.
In 2016, five-year-old Mohammad Al-Sayis swallowed sewage-laced seawater, ingesting faecal bacteria that led to a fatal brain disease. Mohammad’s was the first known death by sewage in Gaza.
Making matters worse: Israeli rockets and shells damaged or destroyed Gaza water towers and pipelines, wells and sewage plants causing an estimated $34m in damages. This further crippled the delivery of safe, clean water, deepening the health catastrophe here. An even greater impact comes from Israel’s economic blockade, which Dr. Abu Samia blames directly on the area’s growing malnutrition.
The severe shortages of water and electricity, along with rising poverty, have damaged nutritional levels, Dr. Abu Samia says.
“It is affecting babies.”
Before the siege, he said, he had no patients suffering from malnutrition.
Now he frequently sees children with nutritional disease.
“We are seeing babies with marasmus” – a severe nutritional disease. “The last two years, it is increasing more and more.”
Gazans well remember the cynical words of Israeli minister Dov Weissglas in 2006, when he infamously compared the blockade to “a meeting with a dietician …We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die.”
Gaza to become uninhabitable by 2020
Now, quite apart from the hundreds of deaths by rockets, missiles and bullets in the three most recent Gaza wars, children here are getting ill and dying from bad water and the infectious diseases that result.
“Occupation and siege are the primary impediments to the successful promotion of public health in the Gaza Strip,” declared a 2018 study in the Lancet, which cited “significant and deleterious effects to health care.”
Without a major intervention by the international community, and soon, humanitarian groups warn Gaza will become uninhabitable by 2020 – barely a year from now.
Failure to urgently intervene will result in “a huge collapse”, says Adnan Abu Hasna, Gaza spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which recently had all its US funding cut by the Trump administration.
Otherwise, in less than two years, he says, “Gaza will not be a liveable place.”
And yet, liveable or not, the vast majority of Gaza’s two million people have nowhere else to go. Most are simply trying to live as normal lives as possible under extremely abnormal circumstances.
At dusk on a summer night, on a spit of rock and earth in the middle of Gaza harbour, five of those two million people try to enjoy a few minutes of quiet.
All around Ahmad and Rana Dilly and their three young children, the harbour ripples with life. Fishermen haul in their nets. Kids pose for selfies on broken concrete blocks and rebar – remnants of an old bombing raid.
Rana pours mango soda; Ahmad insists on handing out some chocolate wafers.
“You are with Palestinians,” he laughs, dismissing those who reject his offer.
Their three young children nibble on chips.
The Dillys have the same problems as many Gaza families.
Ahmad, a money changer, had to rebuild his shop in 2014 after an Israeli missile destroyed it.
Like most Gazans, the family has to contend with the salty water from the taps and the inherent risks of disease from the trucked water they rely on. But these problems mean little to them compared with their wish to feel safe and to enjoy fleeting moments of living like a normal family.
“I know the situation is horrible, but I just want to let my kids have a little change from time to time,” Ahmad says. “I want them to see something different. I want my family to feel safe.”
In the distance, an explosion echoes. Ahmad pauses for a short moment, then ignores it.
He says, “I come here to the sea, and forget about all the world.”
~ Al Jazeera/Days of Palestine
2 nov 2018
Palestinian farmers in Salfit villages and towns have complained that Israeli settlements, especially Ariel settlement, keep polluting their olive groves with wastewater.
Farmers told a reporter for the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that Ariel, the second largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, was pouring sewage into the valleys of Salfit city and the towns of Hares, Kifl Hares, Bruqin and Kafr ad-Dik as well as the tourist areas of Wad al-Mutawi and Wad al-Fawwar.
The sewage coming from this settlement, in particular, is polluting the soil in those areas, especially through getting mixed with either rainwater or spring water in Wad al-Mutawi.
The settlement of Ariel has been pumping its sewage directly into nearby Palestinian areas for years, creating a dangerous and unhealthy situation for local residents and contaminating groundwater and crops.
Farmers told a reporter for the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that Ariel, the second largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, was pouring sewage into the valleys of Salfit city and the towns of Hares, Kifl Hares, Bruqin and Kafr ad-Dik as well as the tourist areas of Wad al-Mutawi and Wad al-Fawwar.
The sewage coming from this settlement, in particular, is polluting the soil in those areas, especially through getting mixed with either rainwater or spring water in Wad al-Mutawi.
The settlement of Ariel has been pumping its sewage directly into nearby Palestinian areas for years, creating a dangerous and unhealthy situation for local residents and contaminating groundwater and crops.
The Israeli municipality in Occupied Jerusalem on Thursday morning imposed financial penalties on Palestinian storeowners in Shu’fat refugee camp, northeast of the holy city.
According to Quds Press, an Israeli municipal crew escorted by police forces stormed Shu’fat camp and embarked on fining owners of businesses at the pretext that the signs placed outside their stores were not licensed.
The municipal crew also fined owners of Palestinian cars parked on the streets of the camp and confiscated quantities of water bottles from outside a store.
According to Quds Press, an Israeli municipal crew escorted by police forces stormed Shu’fat camp and embarked on fining owners of businesses at the pretext that the signs placed outside their stores were not licensed.
The municipal crew also fined owners of Palestinian cars parked on the streets of the camp and confiscated quantities of water bottles from outside a store.
26 oct 2018
Today, on 26 October 2018, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) submitted a 500-page file on alleged crimes committed by Israelis, in particular high-level Israeli officials, and individuals associated with corporations that are extracting and destroying Palestinian natural resources.
The organisations provide a reasonable basis to believe that Israelis and private actors have committed the war crimes of extensive destruction and appropriation of property, pillage, and destruction and seizure of property.
The confidential communication provides factual information and legal analysis on the exploitation and destruction of Palestinian water, agricultural land, minerals, mud, stone, and oil.
Mr. Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s General Director, said that “in situations of armed conflict, the trade and business in natural resources have often been strong incentives for war and violence, and provided the finances necessary to maintain and prolong an armed conflict.
The situation in Palestine is a case of such exploitation, in which Israelis and private actors have been deliberately and openly exploiting Palestinian natural resources for at least five decades.
The exploitation of Palestinian natural resources by Israel, Israelis, as well as corporations, finances and thereby sustains and allows for the expansion of Israeli settlements, including by providing profitable employment to settlers and a secure living environment.”
Mr. Issam Younis, Al Mezan’s Director, also said that “Israel, acting as the Occupying Power has engaged in a deliberate and wide-scale exploitation and destruction of significant Palestinian resources in the OPT, as part of an overall policy to annex, exercise sovereignty, and ensure full non-consensual Israeli domination over Palestinian territory.”
Israel, along with and through Israeli and international non-state actors, including corporations, have unlawfully extracted Palestinian natural resources in the OPT, without the lawful consent of the occupied population therein, and solely for the benefit of the Israeli economy and population, including illegal Israeli settlements.
Israel has also permitted and encouraged private actors to exploit Palestinian natural resources. Such private actors include business enterprises in agricultural and industrial settlements, as well as Israeli and multinational corporations.
Israel’s unrestricted and unilateral exploitation of Palestinian natural resources will eventually lead to the depletion of Palestinian natural resources, to the detriment of the Palestinian occupied population and in violation of Israel’s customary international law obligations.
Furthermore, the appropriation, destruction, seizure, and pillaging of Palestinian natural resources have serious social, economic, and environmental impact on the affected Palestinian communities, and notably infringe on Palestinians’ fundamental right to self-determination.
Mr. Raji Sourani, PCHR Director, said that “considering crimes committed in relation to the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources and the colonisation of the occupied territory, with complete impunity, the ICC Prosecutor must urgently open an investigation into the situation in Palestine.”
This is the sixth Article 15 communication to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and it complements the file submitted to the Prosecutor in September 2017 concerning inter alia the transfer of Israeli settlers into the occupied territory, appropriation of Palestinian land, and forcible transfer of the protected Palestinian population.
The organisations provide a reasonable basis to believe that Israelis and private actors have committed the war crimes of extensive destruction and appropriation of property, pillage, and destruction and seizure of property.
The confidential communication provides factual information and legal analysis on the exploitation and destruction of Palestinian water, agricultural land, minerals, mud, stone, and oil.
Mr. Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s General Director, said that “in situations of armed conflict, the trade and business in natural resources have often been strong incentives for war and violence, and provided the finances necessary to maintain and prolong an armed conflict.
The situation in Palestine is a case of such exploitation, in which Israelis and private actors have been deliberately and openly exploiting Palestinian natural resources for at least five decades.
The exploitation of Palestinian natural resources by Israel, Israelis, as well as corporations, finances and thereby sustains and allows for the expansion of Israeli settlements, including by providing profitable employment to settlers and a secure living environment.”
Mr. Issam Younis, Al Mezan’s Director, also said that “Israel, acting as the Occupying Power has engaged in a deliberate and wide-scale exploitation and destruction of significant Palestinian resources in the OPT, as part of an overall policy to annex, exercise sovereignty, and ensure full non-consensual Israeli domination over Palestinian territory.”
Israel, along with and through Israeli and international non-state actors, including corporations, have unlawfully extracted Palestinian natural resources in the OPT, without the lawful consent of the occupied population therein, and solely for the benefit of the Israeli economy and population, including illegal Israeli settlements.
Israel has also permitted and encouraged private actors to exploit Palestinian natural resources. Such private actors include business enterprises in agricultural and industrial settlements, as well as Israeli and multinational corporations.
Israel’s unrestricted and unilateral exploitation of Palestinian natural resources will eventually lead to the depletion of Palestinian natural resources, to the detriment of the Palestinian occupied population and in violation of Israel’s customary international law obligations.
Furthermore, the appropriation, destruction, seizure, and pillaging of Palestinian natural resources have serious social, economic, and environmental impact on the affected Palestinian communities, and notably infringe on Palestinians’ fundamental right to self-determination.
Mr. Raji Sourani, PCHR Director, said that “considering crimes committed in relation to the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources and the colonisation of the occupied territory, with complete impunity, the ICC Prosecutor must urgently open an investigation into the situation in Palestine.”
This is the sixth Article 15 communication to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and it complements the file submitted to the Prosecutor in September 2017 concerning inter alia the transfer of Israeli settlers into the occupied territory, appropriation of Palestinian land, and forcible transfer of the protected Palestinian population.
22 oct 2018
The Israeli military razed on Monday 16 dunums of privately-owned Palestinian land in Tarqoumia town, in the southern occupied West Bank, and uprooted dozens of olive trees.
According to local sources, Israeli forces raided Tarqoumia, leveled Palestinian lands, and chopped 260 olive trees.
At the same time, the occupation army further destroyed three water wells owned by the Palestinian citizens Mohamed Jaafra and Awad Fatafta.
According to local sources, Israeli forces raided Tarqoumia, leveled Palestinian lands, and chopped 260 olive trees.
At the same time, the occupation army further destroyed three water wells owned by the Palestinian citizens Mohamed Jaafra and Awad Fatafta.
15 oct 2018
Israeli soldiers invaded, Monday, Masafer Yatta town, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and confiscated equipment used for digging water wells, in addition to a crane and electricity generator.
Media sources in Hebron said the soldiers invaded Susiya village, in Masafer Yatta, and confiscated the equipment, before taking them to an unknown destination.
The confiscated equipment is owned by a local resident, identified as Husam Na’im Hamamda, who was working on a project on a land owned by Farid Ahmad Jabour.
The attack took place after many soldiers surrounded the area, which is subject to frequent violations, and invaded it.
Media sources in Hebron said the soldiers invaded Susiya village, in Masafer Yatta, and confiscated the equipment, before taking them to an unknown destination.
The confiscated equipment is owned by a local resident, identified as Husam Na’im Hamamda, who was working on a project on a land owned by Farid Ahmad Jabour.
The attack took place after many soldiers surrounded the area, which is subject to frequent violations, and invaded it.
