IMFA [Hat tip WHT] – At the end of February, a Palestinian woman from Beit Lahiya gave birth to twins at the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon. The twins, born prematurely, weighed less than 1.5 kgs each. They were admitted to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they were treated by the medical team. The first Hamas missiles began raining down on Ashkelon on Saturday (1 March) shortly after 5 a.m. When the Hamas shelling of Ashkelon started, the twins, a boy and girl, were still in the NICU. One of the Grad rockets fell a mere 50 meters from the hospital entrance.

All the premature babies in the NICU unit, including the two Palestinian babies, were transferred to the hospital’s bomb shelter for fear that the hospital itself would receive a direct missile hit. Iman Shefi, a resident of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, was beside herself as she watched the trail of smoke left by three Grad rockets launched near her home towards Ashkelon. “I was petrified,” she said. “I was scared that the rockets would hit the Ashkelon hospital where my two babies are.” After delivering the babies, the parents had to return home to Gaza, where they found themselves in the line of fire. “The Islamic Jihad takes the malfunctioning Hamas rockets, repairs them, and launches them at Israel. They do not always reach Israel, and they fall on us,” Shefi said.

“Last Tuesday three Kassam rockets fell close to my house. They hit small children and old people.” Only on Monday (10 March), two weeks after giving birth in the midst of the rocket attacks on the south, was Shefi able to return to Ashkelon to visit her babies. Overcome with emotion, she thanked the doctors and nurses for their devoted care to her infant twins. She said, “I dream that my children will not have to go through what I have had to, that they will grow up in an era of peace. I pray that the residents of Sderot will not be angry with us. I sympathize with their suffering and don’t want them to be harmed, but we are victims as well. We have no control over the Hamas. They do as they please, in contradiction of the Quran. I do not want the Hamas in power, but I am not sure that Abu Mazen can stop the shooting.”

But who will let Israel go in and do what must be done? It’s too much for the rest of the world to just do nothing, as soon as Israel doesn’t do anything apart from just lie down and take it, there starts the chorus of ‘proportion’ and the bloody ‘peace process’ and how they [Israel] are putting it all in jeopardy.