Deja Vu As Humanitarian Situaion in Gaza Unravels
One day about 23 years ago, I was in the Gaza Strip interviewing a Palestinian woman whose house had been bulldozed by the Israeli army — not because it posed a security threat, but because it was built illegally.
The woman was sitting weeping near the rubble of her home, alongside quite a few children who were also crying. I do not recall her name but I recall the date, July 26, 1983, because it was the day my son was born in a Palestinian hospital on the West Bank.
Now I find myself back in the Gaza Strip — more than two decades later — talking with a man whose house has been demolished by the Israelis, along with the greenhouses where he was growing vegetables and the land where his olive trees stood.
Nemr Jerad and his family standing by the home the Israelis destroyed on July 1.
The farmer's name is Nemr Jerad. He is 30 years old, and he and his 26-year-old wife, Ikran, have six children.
Standing by the rubble of his home, Nemr says the Israelis came looking for tunnels being used to smuggle in weapons from neighboring Egypt. Later, in Tel Aviv, an Israeli general confirmed as much. But, Nemr says, "There are no tunnels here. They never found a tunnel, but they destroyed everything."
Before the latest Palestinian uprising began six years ago, bringing severe retaliation and punishment upon Gaza, Nemr reports he was exporting his crops and making more than $10,000 a year. Later, with constant closings of the border crossings to Israel and Egypt, his market diminished drastically. Since the June 26 killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of a third by Palestinians who tunneled from Gaza into Israel, the punishment of Gaza has been fierce. Nemr has no crops to sell.
So in the 23 years since I visited the woman whose house had been demolished, conditions in Gaza have not improved; they have become dreadfully worse. Then, the population of Gaza was more than 500,000. Now, there are about 1.4 million people living in this the sixth most densely populated area of the world.
'A Ticking Time Bomb'
Gaza today is sealed off. Hardly anyone or anything can get in or out. This is the price the people of Gaza pay for attacks against Israel launched from the Gaza Strip, fiercely exacerbated by the June 26 kidnapping of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit.
In addition to sealing the Gaza Strip so that Palestinians in Gaza cannot get into Israel or into neighboring Egypt, the Israeli military has bombarded targets in Gaza from the air and from the ground. Israeli tanks have crushed buildings and homes and ruined agricultural fields. Some 240 Gazans, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli attacks.
Unable to work in Israel, as tens of thousands of Gazans had done in more peaceful times, and unable to export their goods because of the border closures, Gazans are left to depend on what little industry they have internally. This is impacted by fuel shortages, and sporadic electricity because of an Israeli attack on the only electrical power plant. Even the fishermen of Gaza cannot venture into the Mediterranean because Israeli gunboats push them back to shore.
To make matters worse, the Palestinian Authority's resources have been drastically reduced. Following the election of a majority of Hamas legislators in January, Israel, the United States and the European Union have refused to allow aid directly to the government. Hamas is labeled a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and Europe.
The result is that the government, which is one of the largest employers in Gaza and the West Bank, has no funds to pay salaries. One Palestinian official in Ramallah told me the unemployment rate in Gaza has reached a staggering 87 percent, of whom he calculated almost four-fifths were living on less than $1 a day.
Children playing on a destroyed green house in Al Shokah.
"Catholic Relief Services continues with its development programs, supp," says Tom Garofalo, CRS country representative for Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
But he adds, "U.S. government restrictions on who we can meet with or work with — related to the anti-terrorism laws — make it much harder.
"The Palestinian government is the best source of information about [Palestian's] needs and [nongovernmental organizations] cannot replace it," he adds. "From the standpoint of a relief agency, this is like watching a train wreck about to happen: ignoring the government until it collapses and thinking everything will be okay after that. It will not be okay."
"Innocent people are suffering and I know that our supporters in the United States expect better," he says, "but it's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back."
Hardest-hit of all in the Gaza Strip is said to be Rafah, the area bordering Egypt, which includes the devastated agricultural district of Al Shokah.
Zohdi al-Qidrah, the Palestinian governor of Rafah says, "We are the poorest city on all of Palestine, and we are losing everything. Why do they [the Israelis] punish us all? Hamas and Islamic Jihad only become more popular because of what Israel does."
Jan Egeland, the United Nations' humanitarian chief, has called Gaza a "ticking time bomb."
No doubt he is right. But, sadly, Gaza, was being called that 23 years ago, before the first Palestinian uprising in 1987, before Hamas even existed.
