The Fanonite

A report in the Sunday Herald from Louisa Waugh, a volunteer with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza. (thanks Douglas)

Karim, the Palestinian who drove me to the Gaza Strip, was very quiet. As we sped out of Jerusalem in his comfortable private taxi, he said very little, except to ask if I would give his friend Rami a box of cigarettes when I arrived. “I’ve worked with Rami for eight years now,” he said, “but I’ve never seen him. He cannot come out of Gaza, and I can’t go inside.”

An hour later we reached the Erez terminal. It looks like an airport hangar; grey, immense, featureless. Erez is the main Israeli crossing to the Gaza Strip; but the journey starts long before you reach Erez. First you have to apply in writing for Israeli security clearance to enter the Strip. Since declaring the Gaza Strip “a hostile entity” on September 19 last year, Israel has tightened its siege of Gaza, and many people, including UN personnel, are refused clearance without explanation.

Inside Erez, it took me a couple of hours to clear security and start wheeling my suitcase through the grey corridors and into Gaza. Emerging from Erez, the first thing I saw was destruction; shattered buildings surrounded by mounds of rubble. Rami was waiting for me, smoking. “Welcome to Gaza,” he smiled.

It takes less than 10 minutes to drive to Gaza City, and the Remal district, where I live and work. There my Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) colleagues advised me not to walk anywhere alone, and to use one local taxi company, where they know the drivers. Almost eight months after BBC journalist Alan Johnston was freed by his Army of Islam kidnappers, there are still very few internationals in Gaza. The UN operates Security Phase Four here, the phase just before evacuation, and restricts all movements of its staff: so, bar a few journalists, you rarely see foreigners here.

During the eight months since Hamas took over the Strip, Israel’s closure of Gaza has become a siege that has paralysed public services and decimated the private sector: 900 textile workshops, employing more than 5000 people, have been forced to shut, and more than 7000 construction workers have been laid off because imports of building materials are banned by Israel.

Meanwhile, the power cuts that recently grabbed world attention when the only power plant in Gaza was temporarily forced to shut down, continue daily. Fuel deliveries have resumed, but at minimal levels. My building has a generator, but my friend Aliah, who lives in northern Gaza City, is not so lucky. “We haven’t had electricity at home for three days” she told me yesterday. “I go to my office and there is no electricity - then I come home and there is no electricity. How am I supposed to work, or live, like this?”

A few weeks ago ambulances in southern Gaza were forced out of action when they ran out of diesel. Half of households have drinking water in their homes for just four to six hours a day, as there isn’t the fuel to operate domestic water pumps; and 40 million litres of untreated sewage is dumped in the Mediterranean each day because sewage plants are short of fuel and need repairs.

Over the past couple of months, I have travelled across this small strip of land interviewing local people. In southern Gaza I met Jamal Mohammed Bassalla, head of the Rafah Fishermen’s Syndicate, which represents 450 fishermen. “We cannot fish more than 2.5km out to sea without the risk of being shot by the Israelis,” he told me. “We’ve suffered these restrictions since 2003, and recently they Israel have started using rockets and helicopters against us as well.”

Under the 1994 Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO, Gaza’s fishermen are entitled to fish up to 20 nautical miles out to sea. Ten years ago they were hauling 3000 tons of fish annually. Now they haul less than 500 tons a year and are struggling to survive.

Palestinian health organisations all have testimonies to the devastating affects of the Israeli siege, which severely limits the quantity and quality of food imported into Gaza, despite the fact that collective punishment of a civilian population is a violation of international law. The Ard El Insan Child Nutrition Centre in Gaza City treats malnourished children under the age of five. Last year they treated almost 8500 under-fives in Gaza City, and 8000 in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

“The food table in Gaza is now severely deficient because of the siege and the closure,” the centre’s medical director, Adnan Al-Wahaidi, told me. “If this siege is maintained, then current child malnutrition interventions and preventions will not be sufficient. Child morbidity and mortality will both increase. We will not be able to cope.”

Almost 80% of the Gaza Strip population is at least partially dependent on humanitarian food aid, making it one of the most aid-dependent communities in the world.

One of my PCHR colleagues estimates that only 3000-4000 Gazans are allowed by Israel to travel outside the Strip. This is around 3% of the population; the remaining 97% cannot get travel permits, so cannot go anywhere.

Despite everything, the atmosphere in Gaza is stoic. The people I’ve spoken to feel the outside world doesn’t care what happens to them. They ask me why the EU hates Palestinians so much it allows this siege to continue. Many told me they fear for their children’s future: some fear for their own sanity.

When I started writing this I was sitting in my living room, listening to music as I typed. Half an hour ago there was a power cut, and the generator hasn’t kicked in yet, so I’m peering at the keyboard by candlelight. The lights outside resemble those of a village, not a big city. Gaza is being dragged to its knees in the face of shameful silence from the international community, including the EU. I have no doubt that before I leave Gaza in a few weeks, there will be more power cuts, more pointless civilian deaths, and more deafening international silence.

Louisa Waugh has spent the last three months working at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (www.pchrgaza.org), documenting human rights violations in Gaza