We connected with the Palestine Trauma Centre (PTC) before we had left the UK. Within a few days of contact with them they had resolved all of our complicated visa issues and have since proved to be the most wonderful hosts. In our first couple of weeks in Gaza we could often be found loitering in their building, sitting in on therapy groups, drinking some of the best tea in Gaza and getting impromptu Arabic lessons.
PTC Gaza (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
The PTC was set up in 2007 following extensive research by its founder Dr Mohamed Altawil on the effects of chronic psychological trauma on the Gazan population. The results of the research were staggering; of the 1.8million population, 700,000 were considered to require immediate psychological, social and medical assistance. The center was set up with the aim of providing free therapy, counseling, rehabilitation and preventative programmes to children, individuals and families.
Incredibly they have worked with 100 000 people so far…
The organisation is made up of paid staff together with a large number of qualified volunteers: Psychologists, psychiatrists, specialist trauma counsellors together with the necessary office staff and project managers. With the lack of employment across Gaza they are able to give newly graduated students from the universities the opportunity to gain experience and practise their new skills in the field.
They run workshops, groups and one on one session’s in their offices in Gaza City. The walls in the activity room are decorated with large posters and art the children have made. The first time we visited we both struggled to hold it together, it’s like seeing war through the eyes of children… drawings of tanks and bombs and bullet ridden bodies. There’s also large visual case studies documenting some of their success stories; the girl who was terrified of water because of the relentless sea to land attacks, and the child who with extensive one on one psychological support was finally able to grieve her mother killed in the conflict.
(Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
When needed, the PTC also takes its work directly out into the community, running groups in conjunction with other local associations or working directly with remote Gazan families. Most of these families wouldn’t otherwise have access to psychological support; due to the unaffordable cost of transport into central Gaza from the refugee camps or alternatively being fearful of the stigma attached to receiving mental health care at the centre itself.
PTC run play group in Gaza – photo PTC Gaza
During Cast Lead a PTC rapid response team was developed, to deliver psychological first aid to as many people as possible. The team reached some of the most dangerous areas, and in some events were there before emergency medical crews had gained access. The team still exists and undergoes frequent development and is ready to respond whenever necessary.
Like most local based projects in Gaza, funding is a constant issue. Grants are attained project by project mainly from large NGOs (such as USAid, InterPal, Muslim Aid and Quaker funding). While currently they have multiple projects being funded previously they have gone 20 months without funding. Instead of closing the doors the staff continued their work – all as volunteers until new funding came through.
First response team in action Cast Lead – photo PTC Gaza
Their work is nothing short of inspirational, you can find out more about them here and here.
In an extra-judicial execution attempt, Israeli forces targeted 2 members of an armed group on a motorbike wounding them and another 13 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children, in a densely-populated area in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to investigations conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately 16:45on Wednesday, 23 April 2014, an Israeli drone fired 2 missiles at a motorbike near Beit Lahia Sport Club in al-Manshiyah Street in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, which is a densely-populated area. As a result, the two persons on the motorbike were wounded by shrapnel throughout their bodies; one of them was in a critical condition. It was found out later that they are members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – Martyr Nedal al-‘Amoudi Brigade. Due to the scattering shrapnel, 13 civilian bystanders, including 5 children, sustained shrapnel wounds throughout their bodies, and they were transferred to hospitals to receive medical treatment. Their wounds were described between minor and moderate. (PCHR keeps the names of the wounded)
The attack caused minor damages to 7 stores and around 10 houses in the vicinity of the targeted area. Moreover, Palestinian civilians living in the street, especially children and women, were terrified. It should be mentioned that this street is known as one of the most densely-populated areas in Beit Lahia.
Israeli forces declared later, via the Israeli media, that the Israeli Air Force targeted, as they described, a Palestinian cell that intended to launch rockets at the Israeli towns, while PCHR’s investigations confirmed that when they were targeted, they were not in a position to fire rockets.
PCHR strongly condemns this crime, which further proves the use of excessive force by Israeli forces against Palestinian activists in disregard for their lives of civilians as the attack took place in a densely-populated area.
PCHR calls upon the international community to take immediate and effective action to stop Israeli crimes and reiterates its call for the High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations under Article 1; i.e., to respect and to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, and their obligation under Article 146 to prosecute persons alleged to commit grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. These grave breaches constitute war crimes under Article 147 of the same Convention and Protocol (I) Additional to the Geneva Conventions.
Ibrahim Jeradeh is the Gaza War Cemetery’s longtime caretaker. (Joe Catron)
On a recent, sunny afternoon, Kath Henwood, a Yorkshire paramedic volunteering in the Gaza Strip, walked through rows of headstones at the Gaza War Cemetery with a camera and notebook.
“My regular crewmate at work, in his spare time, researches World War II,” she said. “He’s really passionate about it.”
When Henwood learned of the cemetery, she said, “my first thought was to tell him about it.”
The cemetery, off Saladin street in northern Gaza City, is one of thousands maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), a consortium of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
It contains 3,691 graves, all but 474 of them for First World War troops from the Commonwealth of Nations. A further 210 are from the Second World War.
Others include Egyptian and Turkish soldiers, as well as Canadian United Nations peacekeepers.
Their memorials, from simple headstones to an imposing “cross of sacrifice” — a memorial found in numerous CWGC cemeteries — reflect their varied faiths: Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and secular.
And the careful landscaping and quiet solitude around them make the cemetery an attractive destination for everyone from picnicking families to students looking for a place to study.
After she told him about it, Henwood’s colleague sent her a list of 19 graves, and asked that she photograph them.
Ibrahim Jeradeh, the cemetery’s longtime caretaker, helped her find them quickly.
Later, sitting on a marble bench in the shade of the cross of remembrance, he spoke about the cemetery and his life taking care of it.
“Killing is no good”
“War is war, and killing is killing,” he said, passing a hot cup of sugary tea. It was a theme to which he would return again and again.
“In my mind, war is no good. Killing is no good.”
Now 77, Jeradeh started working at the cemetery, then overseen by his father, when he was 20. He officially retired as its head gardener at 65, when his son Issam replaced him.
“I don’t know about politics,” he said of the changes that have affected the cemetery over nearly a century since its founding by British forces after the Third Battle of Gaza in 1917. “I know about the trees.”
But politics have rarely left Jeradeh or his trees alone for long.
Headstones destroyed
In 2006, Israeli troops bulldozed the cemetery’s perimeter wall and six of its headstones. Months later, an Israeli military helicopter fired its cannon at one of the large memorial stones.
“Two dozen other headstones have been pockmarked by shrapnel from Israeli artillery and several have been completely destroyed,” The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported (“Fury as Israelis damage war cemetery,” 13 November 2006).
During Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009, Israeli forces bombarded the cemetery, striking it with at least five shells and singing its grass with white phosphorous (“Israel shelled UK war graves in Gaza,” The Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2009).
“We repaired it,” Jeradeh said. “All of it. Alhamdulillah [Thanks to God], it is like new.”
The Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip has also affected the cemetery. In February 2009, a year after Paul Price’s appointment as CWGC’s regional supervisor for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, he had yet to be allowed by Israel to enter Gaza (“Battle still rages where my great-uncle fell in Gaza back in 1917,” The Observer, 22 February 2009).
In May 2013, a year after a seemingly simple pump failure had left the cemetery’s grass and flowers parched, the CWGC said that finally replacing the pump “proved challenging” (“Gaza war cemetery returns to former green glory,” Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 30 May 2013).
Moshe Dayan sought to exhume the five Jewish graves in the Gaza War Cemetery. (Joe Catron)
Despite its foreign affiliations — which ultimately afforded it some protection — the cemetery has also been targeted by Israel culturally, as well as militarily.
Following Israel’s 1967 seizure of the Gaza Strip, Moshe Dayan, then Israeli defense minister, sought to exhume the cemetery’s five Jewish graves and take them to Israel.
The attempt came as Israeli forces looted thousands of historical artifacts, particularly Jewish ones, from their newly-occupied territories, an effort in which Dayan participated enthusiastically as both a military official and a private collector (“Stealing Palestine’s history,” This Week in Palestine, 1 October 2005).
“I refused,” Jeradeh said, his eyes bright. “I was young then. I told him, ‘Go to our office in London.’”
“No difference”
“They are buried here. How could he take them? The Jews here are Jews, not Israelis. There is no difference here between Jews, Muslims and Christians. They are all human.”
Surrounded by fields of grass and rows of colorful flowers and polished stones, the troubles of occupation and siege seemed as distant as Jeradeh’s clash with Dayan.
Maintaining the cemetery’s immaculate condition is hard work, Jeradeh said, even in retirement.
“This is the best, cleanest place in Gaza,” he said. “I work hard to keep it nice.”
Officially, since his mandatory retirement, Jeradeh has served as the cemetery’s night watchman. “I keep this place completely safe,” he said.
In practice, his work as a gardener has continued, if not at the same rate.
“I don’t buy plants,” he said. “I use the ones from my nursery. And I teach the people who work with me.”
“You see all that?” he asked, his arm sweeping across the cemetery. “My drawings.”
“I am always here. Where else should I go? Twenty-four hours a day.” Still, he acknowledged that his pace may have slowed. “Seventy-seven years is a long time.”
He also spends time with visiting family, including four sons and nine daughters. When asked how many grandchildren he had, he laughed.
“I don’t want to remember,” he said, gesturing at a group of small girls peering curiously from behind a row of headstones. “More than a hundred. But they live outside, in Gaza.”
“I like to study,” he added. “I read books on history, geography, horticulture, medicine, everything. I am always reading. And I like writing. Every day, I write what happened to me.”
When asked how long he has kept his journals, he laughed again. “I don’t remember. I have books like this,” he said, gesturing at the height of his shoulder.
“But I started when I was young, and continued day by day, year by year.”
“You are happy writing here,” he said, pointing to a notebook. “The head is clear for it.”
He showed his study, a detached building, behind the larger gardener’s quarters at the cemetery’s edge, equipped with a personal computer and filled with stacks of books and printed articles.
“The pencil is dangerous,” he said. “The man who succeeds in his life writes the facts.”
Returning to the lush greenery of the cemetery, he said, “I don’t feel any problems here … Any man, if he likes others, the others like him. If you do good for others, others do good for you.”
“Everybody knows that war is war, and killing is killing,” he repeated, gesturing again at the thousands of stones surrounded by his carefully-tended flowers.
“Now everything here is history. No one here hates anyone else.”
17th April 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
An Israeli gunship cruises near the Gaza seaport. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
The heavy bang is heard clearly, and I have to resist the impulse to climb over the breakwater to try to get a view of the attack in the haze. And a new round of bangs is heard. It can’t be far off the port of Gaza. Instead, I look up at the sky, squinting, and there it is, the drone that been circling around all morning. And I return to my work to completing Gaza ‘s Ark.
Shall I write about this, I wonder to myself? That thought pops up every time I hear machine-gun fire, or even heavier bombardments, from the sea. We expect some influential people to sail with us to break Israel’s naval blockade, and I do not want to scare them off. It is important that they are on board. It’s one thing to know about the abuse from a report, but another when you it happening a few nautical miles away, in the same water we will sail in a few months. I am afraid of painting too vivid a picture of what awaits us.
What is it that awaits us? Will we be boarded, have the ship ransacked by heavily armed and masked marines searching for Palestinians? Will they seize the Ark? Or will they let us pass, allow us to break the blockade only to close it behind us, and then continue shelling fishermen as if nothing happened?
And what responsibility do I have to inform our prospective passengers about the various potential scenarios and what the risks are? Stun guns. Blows with rifle butts. Gunshot wounds. I do not want to scare anyone away from participating, but I cannot lie, pretending everything will necessarily go well.
It should be fine. There is no legitimate reason to stop us. But that does not mean they will let us pass. They can claim that one of the Palestinians on board is wanted, that no Palestinian can leave without permission from them, the occupying power, accuse us of trafficking. Perhaps we will hear machine gun fire at a very close range. Perhaps the Ark will be hit. It has been shot at before. I carved through the wood for bullets earlier, and have given two of them away, as Israeli souvenirs from Gaza. Will there be more?
I do not want to scare anyone, but how will they react when they hear the heavy shelling as they get on board? They can’t say they did not know anything – then they would not come here! – but it is quite different when you hear and see what happens, rather than reading a report. And above, the annoying drone is heard.
Yesterday I visited the Civil Defence Directorate, which provides the fire and rescue service in Gaza, as well as some emergency ambulances and marine rescue. These guys have a reputation as being fearless, as well as being the most vulnerable to attack during times of war. In the 2008-9 war, 13 Civil Defence workers were killed in the line of duty, with 31 injured. This includes medics killed in their ambulances by snipers and firefighters injured by secondary drone attacks while rescuing victims of the initial strikes. These risks are additional to jobs which are considered dangerous even in peaceful countries like the UK and USA.
(Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
I found out plenty about the Civil Defence’s ambulance service, including interviewing staff and looking around the ambulances and equipment stores, but I’m going to save that for a later post and just write about the firefighters. In the UK, the ambulance service and fire service are separate so please forgive any ignorance about the equipment and vehicles I saw. I knew they were fire engines because they were big and red, and I knew it was a fire station because there were some weights in the corner and a ping pong table. Beyond that, it was all new to find out. Let’s start with a familiar theme in Gazan emergency services: shortages. After meeting with the Red Crescent and Department of Health, looking around a few dozen ambulances, an Emergency Department and interviewing a variety of health care workers, I’ve seen the same issues occurring endlessly. No equipment, limited or no drugs, no electricity, expensive fuel, training problems and unacceptable risk in times of conflict. The impact of each issue varies according to the service (for example, the electricity cuts are a huge problem for Al-Shifa hospital, whereas the fuel crisis has more of an impact on the emergency services) but the end result is the same – hamstrung services and an impossible situation for managers and workers.
Fire engine cab with gear (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
I met with Yousef Khaled Zahar, the general manager of the Civil Defence, who broke down the issues facing his service while we drank sugary coffee. Firstly, the fire service vehicles are old and outdated – ‘every day the vehicles age’ as Zahar said. They are mostly from 1988/89, meaning their safety features are wildly outdated. Half of their fleet were destroyed during Cast Lead, with little chance of replacements reaching Gaza. Since then they have done some pretty unreal mechanical work to keep vehicles on the road despite the lack of spare parts. They have also converted some old Kamaz trucks into fire service vehicles – they have welded water tanks including internal baffles from scratch then installed them on the back, plus the water pumping mechanisms and other necessary machinery. Then it’s all been painted red.
The converted Kamaz truck (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
It was astonishing to see the creativity and technical skills behind these vehicles, and the solutions that they’ve found with such limited resources. They’re far from ideal compared to a purpose-designed vehicle – the centre of gravity is dangerously high because of the position of the water tank – but they help to keep the ambulance service functioning. They were previously only used to resupply fire engines, but after some water pumps were found that could run off a spare drive shaft, they are now used as fire engines themselves. Additionally, the fire service had issues getting a steady supply of expensive foam for fighting fuel fires, so they designed their own foam that can be made locally for 10% of the cost. The workers in the fire service workshops and garages must be some of the most resourceful and creative engineers in the profession, and they seem deeply valued by their managers and the firefighters themselves. As I mentioned earlier, fuel is a huge issue for the emergency services and especially the Civil Defence. The fire engines are amongst the biggest vehicles in Gaza, so restricted fuel supplies have a magnified impact. In the past, much of their fuel came through the tunnels from Egypt along with firefighting equipment, protective clothing, vehicle parts, medicines and medical disposables. Since they were destroyed last year, none of these things can get through. Fuel costs are now the largest part of their budget – a massive issues considering that their staffing levels are at 40% of what is needed due to lack of money for wages. They’re looking into alternative fuels at present, but the current situation is dire.
eek! (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
After talking, Zahar took me around the Civil Defence centre, which is their administrative centre as well as an ambulance and fire station. We looked in on the medical clinic and dentist who provide cheap care for employees and their families. They offered me a dental check up while I was there – admitting to a load of tough firefighters that I was scared of dentists wasn’t my proudest moment. To finish my visit I interviewed a Mohammed, a firefighter pushed forward by his colleagues as the one who liked to talk the most. Happily, the rest of his watch also came and sat with us and added alot to the conversation. Their hard-won camaraderie was strong and humbling to be around. Mohammed has been a professional firefighter for four years, after previously working as a volunteer. He wanted to be a firefighter since he was a kid, a vocation fortified by growing up amid the volatility of Gaza. His favourite part of the job is when they reach a scene, enter and are able to rescue people. He described the feeling of rescuing children, and his family’s pride in his work. We talked about the relationships between firefighters, who work in a watch system similar to the UK. At this point others joined the conversation, describing each other as brothers and friends. They talk about how they enter a scene together and stay together in the risk, knowing that they can rescue each other and be rescued themselves. They have families who worry about the risks of their job but know they can’t prevent them from doing this work – but they also have a second family at work, and a second home on station.
Some of the firefighters I met yesterday (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
Nearly every one of the ten or so people I talked with had been injured while working, including the general manager Yousef Khaled Zahar. Mohammed was seriously injured when he and other firefighters entered a family home after a drone attack to rescue the family. A secondary attack hit the house and the firefighters were caught in the explosion. He was left unconscious, and while he has recovered, his chest injuries mean that he is still missing ribs. He and other injured colleagues says the decision to return to work was not a difficult one – they knew the risk when they joined, and know they can die at any time. Firefighters who are not physically able to return to work are given desk jobs in the Ministry of the Interior.
Bullet holes in the front door of the fire station (Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
The targeting of the emergency services in Gaza has been systematic and brutal. During Cast Lead, Civil Defence buildings were specifically targeted in airstrikes that caused $2.5m of damage. The station that I visited was occupied by tanks, forcing fire crews to continue responding from the street. Rows of bullet holes remain across the front of the station. Gazan infrastructure is repeatedly considered a valid target in Israeli airstrikes, including the emergency services. This is an intolerable situation, putting the lives of firefighters, rescuers and medics at risk while they work to preserve life. I asked the firefighters I met yesterday if there was anything they’d like to add to our interview. Firstly one of them said ‘If we die here in our service, we will die in peace. This does not stop us working’. They then spoke together to ask that international emergency workers try to defend and protect them in the case of another war. They know that international law should protect them, but they also know from direct experience that in reality it does not. Yet they continue to work in what must be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, motivated by the desire to rescue and protect their community. They need better vehicles, more staff, safer working conditions and better protective equipment to do their jobs. But most of all they need the protection they are entitled to as rescue workers, and they need our solidarity.
(Photo by Paramedics in Gaza)
Many thanks to the management and staff of the Civil Defence for their time and hospitality. As ever, most conversations were had via a translator, creating some margin of error. Big thanks to Fady for translation and coordination, and to this article by Joe Catron for additional statistics and information.
