On February 23, 2008, three Palestinian men picnicking in a field in the
northern Gaza Strip were killed Saturday by an Israeli tank missile. The Israeli
military confirmed the cross-border attack near the city of Beit Hanoun but
claimed it targeted Palestinian militants on their way to fire mortar shells at
Israel. Israel frequently carries out missile strikes and raids against
militants in the the Gaza Strip believing this will end the near-daily rocket
fire, which has killed 12 Israelis in the last seven years. According to
B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group Israeli missiles have killed 137
Palestinians in Gaza last year, 28 were civilians and since January, 79 were
killed by the Israeli military. [1]
John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs wrapped up
a five day trip to Israel and occupied Palestine on February 18, 2008. Holmes
told reporters in Jerusalem of his shock by the "grim and miserable" situation
in the Gaza Strip, and called for the opening of crossing points and condemned
the rocket attacks on Sderot.
"The conditions in Gaza are grim and miserable and are not in accordance with
the standards of human dignity…These victims here are innocent civilians. There
is no time to lose in putting an end to this vicious circle of violence."
He expressed concern about the quality and availability of water and food,
especially amongst children and disagreed with Israeli policy to cut back on
power and fuel supplies to Gaza, calling Israel's measures "collectively
penalize an entire population" and that the medical sector is "teetering on the
edge of viability" and "private industry has more or less collapsed." [2]
"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert strongly defended the blockade. He told
legislators from his Kadima Party he will not allow a humanitarian crisis to
develop. But he said Gaza's residents won't be able to live a "pleasant and
comfortable life" as long as southern Israel is under rocket attack. "As far as
I'm concerned, Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because
they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern
Israel live in peace," Olmert said. [3]
On February 24, 2008, I phoned Guss, a civil engineer in Gaza City who informed
me, "Lately we have been receiving two days of electricity for about 12 hours a
day, but on the third day we are without any power. Most all the gas stations
have been closed for the last three days because they are out of gas…The
children go to school but they are not cheerful. You can see it in their eyes
something is very wrong. When the boys play, they play war games and fight each
other pretending to be Hamas or Israelis. They make weapons out of sticks of
wood and are getting more aggressive. The girls spend their time helping their
mothers and doing housework. They are forbidden happiness, they are afraid of
the dark and parents are loosing patience and yelling instead of
talking…Yesterday all over Gaza City people peacefully demonstrated against the
siege but we are feeling like nobody is listening. Every action requires
reaction not words and inaction."
On February 24, 2008, I received an email from Jerusalem, sent by Reverend Bob
and Maurine Tobin who are leaders for SABEEL's [Arabic for THE WAY] Feb.
28-March 7th's reality tour through the West Bank and Israel to mark and
commemorate:
• 90 years since the Balfour Declaration
• 60 years since the Nakba and the founding of the state of Israel
• 40 years of Occupation
• 25 years since Sabra/Shatila
• 20 years since the First Intifada
• 5 years of the Apartheid Wall
The Tobin's wrote:
[We] spent Wednesday in Gaza…Please keep the people of Gaza in your prayers as
Israel is preparing to launch a wide scale ground operation there…Collective
punishment on this scale is truly beyond comprehension…
…We went to visit Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday, 20 February,
our first visit in almost a year…The first thing that struck us was the near
emptiness of the huge Israeli "terminal" that one passes through – we saw no one
else entering and passed only one emaciated man in a wheelchair seeking to exit.
He is apparently one of the very few to obtain a permit for medical care, while
more than 80 have died in the past few weeks while trying to exit for health
reasons. We made our way through the endless gates and turnstiles and then
waited in the cement enclosure until a huge metal door finally slid open and let
us enter the long tunnel that leads to "no man's land."
There are no human beings visible anywhere, so we simply have to wait until the
magic door opens! Since our previous visit, the last quarter mile of the tunnel
has been destroyed (reportedly in fighting between Hamas and Fateh), so we
picked our way through marshy mud until we finally reached the gate on the
Palestinian side.
The hospital driver collected us after we'd been besieged by taxi drivers
desperate for a fare, had drunk a cup of very sweet sage tea, and heard endless
stories of deprivation. Then on to Gaza City, where the streets were eerily
empty.
The one thing that has always characterized Gaza is the sheer mass of humanity.
Gaza is 365 square kilometers (about 28 miles long and varying in width from 3
to 8 miles), with a population of 1.5 million, roughly 4000 people per square
kilometer. The streets are usually jammed with cars, donkey carts, outdoor
vendors selling everything from underwear to fruits and vegetables to auto
parts.
We were shocked to see how wide the streets actually are as there were almost no
vendors and very few cars. Some public taxis and cars (and one of the two
hospital ambulances) that run on diesel are still moving about, along with the
lucky few that have gotten gasoline, which is delivered sporadically, although
no one is allowed to fill a tank, so apparently fights break out as people vie
for the few liters available. Most of the shops were closed, though it was
mid-morning, and only in the central market were there a number of people
walking about.
Consumer goods are almost non-existent and, according to our friends, very
shoddy and extremely expensive. Inflation has added to the misery of people with
no resources – for example, a bag of cement used to sell for 25 shekels (about
$7.00) but now sells for 120 shekels IF available. The markets that used to teem
with fruits and vegetable seemed primarily to have tomatoes and oranges and
potatoes, all grown in Gaza. The one thing that seemed abundant was cigarettes,
piles and piles of cartons for sale. When the border to Egypt was breached,
apparently black marketers brought in huge supplies, but as people have almost
no money, there weren't many buyers!
We reached the hospital and had a good visit with Director Suhaila Tarazi and
Medical Director Dr. Maher, along with Suhaila's assistant Samira, and a friend
of Suhaila's, who until 3 months ago was the only woman and only Christian to
sit as a judge on the Appeals Court. However, she has been dismissed by Hamas
because she was a Fateh appointee, even though she was adamant that she was
independent in her judgments. We asked if the courts are functioning but she
shrugged – maybe a few criminal cases are being tried, she said, but Hamas has
no one qualified to judge civil cases according to Palestinian law. We asked if
Shariya law was being used instead, but she thought not – the legal system, like
everything else in Gaza, has broken down.
The hospital story remains a small miracle. They have electricity perhaps 10 –
12 hours a day and depend on the generators the rest of the time, but fuel for
it is hard to come by. They don't run the boiler when on the generator, so
patients simply have to huddle under the covers to try to stay warm. Suhaila
used to keep a reservoir of 10,000 gallons of fuel which would last 45 days, but
now is lucky to get 4,000 gallons at a time and that disappears quickly with
daily use. And the cost of the electricity they are furnished from IsraelGaza
power plant, bombed by Israel, in 2005 operates at about 40% capacity when it
can get the needed fuel. has increased dramatically in price. The
The hospital can't get light bulbs for the surgical lamps, but were excited that
they'd finally been able to procure detergent for washing the bedsheets and
dishes, though mops and cleaning supplies are not available. Somehow, in spite
of all this they have no incidence of infection within the hospital, something
our best US hospitals cannot claim. Spare parts for equipment are not available.
Suhaila confessed that she had asked staff members who went into Egypt while the
wall was down to bring her some cement to repair the floor outside the surgical
theater and was very pleased to have gotten it! The pharmacy for the in- and
out-patients is functioning and the hospital is able to get medicines delivered
via UNRWA and the Red Cross, but they never know when deliveries will be
allowed. Anesthesia is again available but in the past months they have had to
postpone surgeries when it wasn't allowed through.
We walked about through the various departments and met post-surgical patients
in the ward – many recent surgeries are to remove kidney stones as the salty,
impure water has caused a huge upsurge of that problem. We saw 3 pre-school
children being treated in the burn unit as the number of burns has skyrocketed
while people try to cook and heat their homes over open flames. The weekly
"mobile" clinic was in session so there were lots of families with children in
for diagnosis and whatever treatment is available. Everyone gets a package of
basic foodstuffs to take home, along with sandwiches for lunch, but they've had
to quit providing milk or fruit juice for the kids.
And, of course, the staff suffers the same conditions – no one attempts to keep
food in the refrigerator since power goes off so often. Dr. Maher reported that
his home had lost electricity at 7 a.m. the day before our visit and it had not
come back on by noon the following day. This is simply routine – when the power
is on, people rush to heat water for a shower and those who have washing
machines try to do a load of clothes, but sometimes laundry sits in the tub for
hours or days.
In spite of these endless tales of loss, the hospital continues to be a beacon
of hope. It may be the only place in all of Gaza that is totally free of
violence – while it is customary for patients in the PA public hospitals (there
are 2 in Gaza City) to have armed guards to "protect" them from attacks by their
rival party, NO weapons enter Ahli. There are no armed guards at the gates -- if
anyone arrives with weapons, they are told either to send the guns away or there
will be no treatment. Thanks to the long history of Ahli's treating everyone in
need of care with absolute impartiality, this policy is honored and the Ahli
ambulance travels freely through the city.
We asked what they see as the future, but these very remarkable human beings say
they can no longer imagine what might come next. Each time they think things
have reached the worst possible situation, something worse happens. People die
almost daily in Gaza from Israeli attacks. A ten year old child was killed by a
bomb the day before we arrived. Israel has announced a policy of targeted
assassinations for all Hamas leaders, but that simply means that the "collateral
damage" costs many innocents their lives.
And what about the rockets fired at Sderot? The story we heard is that they are
fired by "ignorant, immoral" people who belong to no party and cannot be
controlled by Hamas or anyone else. In a place where people have no hope and no
future (50% of the population is below age14), where 2/3 of the population live
in squalid refugee camps, where collective punishment means that everyone who
lives in Gaza is subject every day to bombing by F16's or attacks by tank shells
and mortars, the only surprise is that violence is not even more widespread. We
saw a six story apartment house that had been bombed a couple of weeks ago
because it happens to be near the Ministry of Interior building.
Startling fact for those who hear from the US media about the rocket attacks and
the suffering they cause for Israelis: in the years 2006 and 2007, 2 Israelis
died in Sderot. In January 2008 alone, 96 Gazans were killed by Israeli military
attacks. (If you'd like more statistics, see www.btselem.org. This Israeli human
rights organization provides excellent data.)
What is ultimately striking about Gaza is the sheer disproportionality of the
situation – the collective punishment inflicted on 1.5 million people is against
every measure of international and humanitarian law, but the world thus far
seems to believe that Israel is somehow justified.
Clearly these actions about not about "security." If this collection punishment
were effective either in stopping the rockets or in undermining Hamas, that
would have happened long before now. Israel is now seeking world approval for a
full scale ground incursion, but it is clear that more military force is neither
going to turn people against Hamas nor end the violence perpetrated by desperate
people with nothing to lose.
How did our day end? After a nice lunch with the hospital staff, we returned to
wade back through the mud of "no man's land" and into the Kafkaesque Israeli
terminal. Since absolutely no one else was passing through, the bored soldiers
entertained themselves by making me (Maurine) go three times through the x-ray
machine (a weird glass booth with air current whooshing around and a large
warning that no one on a pacemaker is to step inside!). I stood on the yellow
foot prints with hands in the air, proceeded to a chamber between two
electronically locked doors, then was sent back to stand on the footprints again
with hands at my side. Back to the locked chamber, then back again to the glass
booth where I was told to take a sort of yoga position with one hand and one
foot forward and the other back. Then into the anteroom of the locked chamber
where I was told there was something in my pants – having already produced my
passport from my pockets, I finally turned and raised by shirt to show I wasn't
hiding anything. Then the magic doors unlocked and I was allowed out to join Bob
– I guess we know which of us looks like a terrorist!
Were we afraid? Not at all, but mainly because we were traveling in an Ahli
Hospital vehicle. The place we ate lunch was chosen because it was secure; our
friends never leave home after dark (of course, there are no street lights). And
they basically move only between home and work. How do they live this way? It is
a miracle of faith and commitment that is an inspiration to us. The most common
expression in Arabic is "insh'allah"/God willing.
It is clear that those who work at Ahli Hospital trust in God's love and power
to continue what they do each day. When we left late in the afternoon, we felt a
great reluctance to leave. Those who continue to serve all of God's children who
are in any kind of pain or need without question and in spite of their own
suffering are living in the Gospel in a way that challenges and inspires us.
Thanks be to God!
