Gaza - Beach Refugee Camp

Mon., June 1, 2009, Gaza

We go to Al Rahma Benevolent Society in the Beach Refugee Camp.  The Mercy Children’s Centre for Orphans there addresses medical, psychological and physical therapy needs of all refugee children in the camp and placement needs for orphans.  They try to find qualified childless couples.  (Norm Finkelstein, to his delight, holds a contented baby girl for about ten minutes.  He says, “At last, no rejection.”)

The National Centre for Community Rehabilitation has four branches in Gaza. They treat disabled children and adults and work with the families of the disabled.  They have s spinal injuries program that is unique in the Middle East.  They have treated 3000 people since Operation Cast Lead, 2200 as a direct result of the attack, 120 of them spinal injuries. Two of their facilities were hit.  Because of the blockade they cannot use their MRI equipment for lack of parts. They need medication and prostheses. Teachers and trainers specializing in PT cannot come into Gaza to help.

Gaza City.  We drive past what’s left of the Government Ministry buildings.  They are gutted, hit by land, sea, and air shelling.

 

Tent City Near Beach 

 

Remains of a Mosque

Throughout Gaza City we see tent communities where there were once residential blocks.  We see destroyed mosques and the rubble of entire neighborhoods.  But there are enough boulevards, beaches and intact apartment buildings to remind one what a lovely seaside city this was and could be. 

Residential Block 

Apartments by the Harbor

The Islamic University of Gaza, founded in 1972, is the largest university in Gaza.  It is privately funded by tuition and contributions from individuals and NGO’, including the World Bank Development Fund. While most students are Moslem, there are no mandatory religious courses for non-Moslem students.  There is no government subsidy.  It currently has 22,000 students and 30 post graduate programs.

During Operation Cast Lead, two of its largest buildings, housing 70 laboratories of the Engineering Department and the Physical Sciences Department (including Medicine) were hit by five Israeli rockets from F-16’s and totally destroyed. The University has cleared the rubble and there is nothing left but empty basements and a drained swimming pool. The Israelis claimed, without supporting evidence, that the Palestinians were manufacturing explosives in these buildings.  This is flatly denied by the President of the University.  The Physical Science building had the only gene sequencing apparatus in the Middle East.  Other lab equipment, painstakingly accumulated over 30 years, is lost.  Construction on a second campus has halted for lack of materials.  Prior exchange programs with schools in Europe and Egypt have been suspended.

The President says the real reason for the destruction of these buildings was to show Israel’s willingness to attack any aspect of life in Gaza.  But he says if we can lift the siege, they will re-build.

We talk to some female students who are sitting around the tree shaded quadrangle of the campus.  They are giggly and shy but enjoy practicing their English.  Classes were not in session at the time of the attack but two of them were nearby in the University library.  The explosions were enormous, they say  They thought they were going to die.  Now they laugh and poke each other.

Next is the modern, well endowed Qattan Centre for Children in Gaza City.  It is a model facility, architecturally and functionally. It was built and funded by the Qattan Foundation, an NGO set up by a wealthy Palestinian from London.  It provides after school educational services to 500 – 800 children under 10 every day.  12,000 use the 100,000 piece library every year. It has computer and art classes.  It uses the latter to treat children with PTSD residual to the Israeli attacks.  We see their paintings crowded with explosions, destruction, and mayhem. 

During the Israeli Operation Cast Lead, the Municipality building next door was attacked 17 times and chunks of shrapnel from the explosions landed on the Centre’s roof.  Despite the danger, the Centre’s guards refused to leave the premises. We look at the beautiful structure and wonder whether its turn will come next time. Because there always has been a next time.

The Director, a woman named Reem Abu Jaber, takes us into a conference room.  We drink tea and soda while she speaks of the siege and her own history.  The siege affects every aspect of daily life.  It wears people down.  It wears her down.  She says, “I just want a normal summer.”  She relates how a few years ago she went on sabbatical from her work with the Qattan Foundation.  She studied the teaching of languages at Wales University but was not happy living in the consumer culture of England.  She realized her true happiness lay in helping others.  So she returned to Gaza.  

She relates the daily humiliations she and other Gazans suffered at IDF checkpoints before the Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005.  She says they need outsiders to volunteer to work for months at a time.

She shows us paintings executed by children in the Centre as part of their therapy for PTSD.  The paintings depict helicopters, bombs, tanks, dead bodies, bursting white phosphorus shells, with homes and schools in flames.

A Child’s View    

She sounds discouraged, but she pulls it together and proudly takes us on a spirited tour of the facility.

Al Shifa Hospital, 60 years old is the largest hospital in Gaza.  The most serious cases are sent here. The Director shows us around, his white shirt stained with perspiration.   There is insufficient electricity allotted by the Israelis to air condition the hospital except  in the surgical operating rooms. It is only early June but the heat in the emergency and waiting rooms is stifling.  He states that the power is arbitrarily turned off for periods of four to twenty-four hours during which time they must depend on diesel run generators, meant to operate for much shorter intervals.  Fresh fuel for the generators is banned by the blockade, forcing them to use old fuel, endangering the generators, which cannot be replaced.

During Operation Cast Lead, and for twenty days before, the current was shut off altogether.  For fifty days before, even essential medicine and food was cut off. The conclusion he draws is that the attack was planned long in advance of the alleged provocation by Hamas.

He states that patients whose cases cannot be handled at al-Shifa are taken to the border crossings in hopes of their being allowed to treat in Israel, Egypt or other countries suitably equipped.  An Israeli Human Rights group has documented that some patients, or, in the case of children, their parents, are told that to be allowed to cross for treatment they must collaborate with the IDF or Mossad and name names of militants or political activists.  Some of those who have refused have been denied transfer and have died days later.  All of those who have been granted permission to cross are suspect by their neighbors.

The Hospital Director  provides other grim facts:

• 70% of the children of Gaza are malnourished.  There are 50 to 60 children per classroom, where there are classrooms.  They go to school in two shifts because so many schools were destroyed. Nevertheless literacy is at 95% or better.
• During Operation Cast Lead, three million kilos of explosives were dropped on or fired into Gaza, two kilos for each Gazan. An estimated 75 tons of depleted uranium shrapnel has been left behind.
• Since Operation Cast Lead, 318 patients have died as a direct result of the blockade.
• The Ministry of Health was bombed, destroying death certificates, birth certificates, medical records.
• Radioactive material and necessary equipment for the oncology clinic is barred by the blockade.
• Dialysis fluids are excluded or they degrade because they are held up at the border. 9 of 34 dialysis machines don’t work. A distillation machine for dialysis liquids is at 59% capacity with no back up.
• A gamma ray scanner calibration machine is excluded.
• An MRI machine doesn’t work because of exclusion of spare parts.
• Minor wounds caused by DIME shrapnel resulted in death.in 48 hours.
• White phosphorus wounds were common.

As we go from room to sweltering room the muffled drums of this dirge grow louder. 

Finally he says that the purpose of the attack was not defense against Qassan rockets but to destroy the will of the Palestinian people. There is silence. CP leader Ann Wright thanks him and promises our support. He thanks us. We leave, appalled and angry, but grateful for the sanctuary of our air conditioned buses.

That evening we meet with the Minister of Health, a spokesman for the Government and a representative of Hamas.  The litany of suffering continues.  He speaks not just of Gaza but all of Palestine. 

• Pregnant women about to deliver are routinely delayed at the 171 Israeli checkpoints.  There have been 350 deliveries at the checkpoints, with 69 deaths in childbirth
• 20% of Palestinians are cut off from any medical services.
• In all, 21 Gazan ambulances, all prominently displaying the Red Crescent or the Red Cross, were targeted, resulting in 18 deaths of medics, doctors and drivers. There were direct attacks on marked ambulances from drones whose technology clearly identified the markings.  One ambulance was allowed to enter the dead zone and then left there ten hours. The Israelis claim that the ambulances were carrying weapons. There has beens only one photograph since 2005 showing weapons in an ambulance and that photo was taken after the Israelis had the vehicle in custody for eight hours.  There was no corroborative evidence backing up the Israeli allegation during Operation Cast Lead.
• On Jan.6, 2009, the Al Quds Hospital was attacked causing patients to have to escape into the streets.
• An entire family was executed by IDF soldiers with the exception of  one child who hid in a closet afterwards so as not to look at his parents bodies.
• 23 in one family were killed by air attack based upon an Israeli allegation that there was one militant in the building.

A Q & A follows regarding the Hamas position on one-state, two state.

 

They represent that they have always taken the two state position based on the 1967 borders. Israel and the US insist on recognition of the Jewish State of Israel as a pre-condition to negotiations. But which Israel? What borders? Even the 1967 border concedes all but 22% of historic Palestine, contra to UN resolution in 1947 which said Palestine should get 47%.    

Hamas also insists on a viable state, some form of right to return or compensation, Jerusalem as the capital, if necessary as an International city, a 10-15 year truce retaining the right to resist attacks in breach of the truce. The next generation could then consider a single state format. He says Hamas opposes attacks on civilians but, as a people in occupied territory Gazans have the right to resist the occupation. Fatah/Abbas/PLO is a corrupt collaborationist police state which has agreed to the Israeli destruction of Gaza and a Bantustan Palestinian state, in order to retain patronage and power. He states there must be some solution for the refugees pursuant to international law provisions regarding the right of return. He claims that Hamas does not believe in a religious state like the Zionists but in a democratic state for all its citizens.