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New
Years Eve in Gaza: ‘We are human…’
– published January 1st.
By Rich Wiles.
I
am not in Gaza, this article
has been put together
with two young women I know in Gaza who spent several hours
describing the events of the last few days to me on New Years Eve.
They
want the world to know what is happening…
Amahl
and Rana are two sisters, in their early 20’s. Both live in the
Gaza Strip - Rana lives in Gaza City where she is married to a
surgeon who works at Shifa Hospital, and her sister Amahl is a
recently qualified GP who lives with their parents in Deir
Alballah. For days now both Rana and Amahl have lived with the
constant sound of the Israeli bombing and shelling which has
already killed more than 400 people and injured over 2000.
Rana lives in one of the most heavily bombarded areas of Gaza
City:
“The
situation here is the worst ever. I'm from Gaza city, the ‘Al
Nasser’ area. Right now I can hear shelling by
war boats and tanks. I
live in a big house near ‘Al Mashtal’ which was the first
target for the Israeli army. The distance between this place and
my home is about 400 meters.
The
Israeli army shelled it with 6 rockets from F-16 fighter planes
and you can imagine what happened… All the windows in my house
have been blown-out by the recurrent shelling. The
house didn’t just shake; every window has been blown-out by the
ongoing and repeated shelling!”
Rana
is living through this constant bombardment whilst she is
pregnant. There are two schools in her immediate neighbourhood;
her coming child should one day attend one of these schools:
“At
11 o’clock on Saturday the bombing started. There are two
schools in this area and the students were running everywhere to
escape from the shelling, they were screaming and crying. I
don’t know if any were killed, but all
buildings round here are affected by the bombing.
It seems that every single moment there is a shelling… and Gaza
is so small that every shelling can be felt by everyone. This area
has been hit many times from F-16’s but now they use tanks. Last
night I slept underneath the stairs… but I didn’t feel any
safer. I got to sleep at 6am for just two hours; my husband came
back from the hospital at that time. He is a surgeon at Shifa
Hospital. He was injured during the first attacks but ‘Thank
Allah’ he is ok. I have hardly seen him since Saturday; he is
home for just two hours a day usually. When he went back to Shifa
this morning he told me I wouldn’t see him again today, he
has to work. We communicate when we can by phone. The
situation is so serious, this
is all out War against us and the hospitals are full of injured.
There is a desperate lack of medicine and as far as I know the
hospitals are struggling to accept new cases as it’s so
overcrowded.”
Amahl
is herself also a qualified Dr, she understands clearly the depths
of the current medical and humanitarian crisis Gaza is facing:
“One
thing to understand here is that we have many doctors but most of
them are General Practitioners. There’s
a lack of real surgeons and specialists because
there’s no money to complete a speciality,
and it’s so hard to get a scholarship. I am a GP and I wanted to
go down there to the hospital, it’s so dangerous to get there
but I rang them to see if I could go and they said they
had enough GP’s, they need
specialists. This is why we need to transfer the injured out of
here, when they are
really hurt we cannot treat them now. They say there are more
than 1700 (New Years Eve figure) injured now but very few are
getting out for the treatment they need.”
Both
Amahl and Rana know how desperate the medical situation is and say
borders must be opened to get the injured out. They are clearly
both frustrated and angry at the actions of Egypt and their
refusal to let more people cross the border. A few people have
been transferred, but nowhere near the numbers who need further
treatment. Rana says she heard that 50 had been transferred on New
Years Eve, her sister is clearly and rightly angry:
“Really?
Oh thanks to the great Egypt!!!”
At
this stage our conversation was broken very disturbingly, Rana
couldn’t talk more:
“Must
get down now, helicopters…”
The
internet connection went dead.
Amahl
was able to continue the conversation from her computer in her
house in Deir Alballah, yet Rana’s abrupt disappearance left an
uncertain void:
“…That
is happening all the time (losing contact due to bombings), we are
getting used to it. We asked her on the second day to come and
stay here, but that was so risky. It’s
safer to stay where she is than to risk moving by car…”
This
horrible uncertainty about ever hearing from or seeing loved ones
again must be filling the lives of every Palestinian in Gaza. Also
like every other Gazan, Amahl has become a prisoner in her own
home since the attacks began:
“I
haven’t left my house since Saturday. I live in Deir Alballah,
its a ‘quiet’ (compared to central Gaza City) area about 20kms
from Gaza City that was bombed on the first day. Two areas here
were hit by F-16’s but after that we can hear the planes and
bombs but its not like it is in Gaza City. When the bombing
started my father was in the police building collecting his
driving licence, he said they heard the bombings but they thought
it was only the ‘voice’ (engine noise) of the aircrafts. Then
they saw the windows blow out of a nearby building and ran
outside. At the moment
he ran into the street the bombs hit the police building…
Thank God he got out! My father, and all of my family, has not
left our house since he survived that bombing. He has been very
quiet and doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He has just faced
death…”
Amahl
and Rana’s father finally left the house on Wednesday in search
of food. Amahl explained that when he finally got out there was only
one mini-market in the whole area that had any sugar or rice left,
and supplies of anything are very hard to come by:
“There
is no bread in the shops although
one or two bakeries have some, and flour is available in some
places but so expensive that no one can afford it, people are
calling flour ‘White Gold’ now… A 30kg sack should cost
around 60 shekels but now its 230 shekels or even more, and many
people were already relying on the UNRWA for flour and now there
is none. We have had no gas at all for over two weeks, and
electricity only for around 6 hours a day usually. We do have a
generator but that’s running out of benzine and there is no more
benzine available. We are relying on candles, but there are no
more candles left in the shops…”
At
this point, Amahl also disappeared from the conversation as yet
another power cut hit Deir Alballah. A few hours later I managed
to contact Rana again briefly, she had survived the latest
bombardments. She was keen to pass on a message to the outside
world before the bombing and shelling resumed and she would have
to run for cover again:
“Support
us… say NO to your dying Governments!”
I
asked what she meant by ‘dying’.
“Cheating,
lying, shameful…”
Just
before Rana again disappeared into another dark and silent
void she continued with three simple words, these were the last
words I heard from Rana on New Years Eve 2008:
“We
are human…”
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