Tag: Eva Bartlett

Attack on water brings sanitation crisis

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

18 June 2009

While diminishing water resources are a global concern, in Palestine the struggle for water is not against global warming or multinational corporations, but for access to water, and against contamination of what precious resources there are.

Mohamed Ahmed, director of the Water Control Department in the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), says “there continues to be a very rapid depletion and deterioration of ground water.”

The main source of water is the coastal aquifer and ground water, which serves Gaza’s agriculture, commercial, industrial and public sectors, says Ahmed. But through the three weeks of Israeli attacks on Gaza last December and January, much of the water network infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, rendering already scarce water all the more scarce.

The destruction caused by Israeli shelling, tanks and bulldozers throughout the Strip further damaged Gaza’s sanitation network, causing 150,000 cubic metres of untreated and partially treated sewage waste water to flow over agricultural and residential land and into the sea during the attacks. The daily average of wastewater being pumped into the sea is still a staggering 80,000 cubic metres.

The water treatment crisis has been a catastrophe in the making for decades. In 2004, a report on water alternatives published by the Islamic University of Gaza’s Department of Environment and Earth Science said groundwater had already “deteriorated to a limit that the municipal tap water became brackish and unsuitable for human consumption” throughout the Strip.

Techniques introduced for improving water quality included desalination and reverse osmosis, importing bottled water, and collecting rain water. But these initiatives have been rendered increasingly futile in the face of years of Israeli assaults on Gaza’s infrastructure, combined with its sanctions and siege regime, heightened since June 2007 when Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip.

The siege has meant an increasingly long waiting list of spare parts, pipes, and building materials. This directly affects Gaza’s ability to maintain its sanitation and water treatment facilities.

“We’ve been waiting for three years for these items to enter, along with desalination units,” says Ibrahim Alejla, media officer for Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utilities (CMWU).

In its January 2009 Damage Assessment Report, CMWU speaks of 5.97 million dollars damage to Gaza’s water and wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure. Some of the greatest damage was done in northern Gaza, where three new facilities were totally destroyed. Severe damage was caused to the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Plant, as well as to wastewater distribution networks throughout the north.

Government sources say that more than 800 of Gaza’s 2,000 water wells were destroyed or rendered not useable from the last Israeli attacks.

Central Gaza also suffered. The Sheikh Rajleen Waste Water Treatment Plant, the largest in the Gaza Strip, was shelled, causing pipelines to rupture and raw sewage to flood more than a square kilometre of agricultural and residential land.

The CMWU says it had provided coordinates for all water and wastewater facilities to Israeli authorities. Yet throughout Gaza sites were hit. Much of the damage was to pipelines, torn up by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. Pipes are among the items Israeli authorities bar from entering Gaza.

The PWA’s Mohamed Ahmed says the sandy nature of the Sheikh Rajleen region brought wastewater permeation into ground water. “Areas with clay and soil tend to slow the drainage, but in Sheikh Rajleen the sewage water very quickly drained into the ground water.”

Ahmed says “we’ve found the presence of detergents in our monitoring wells, indicating that wastewater and ground water have mixed.” Monther Shoblak, CMWU director, said this type of contamination occurred also in Beit Hanoun to the north of Gaza City where facilities were destroyed.

Central Gaza’s Wadi Gaza region is one of the most visible and noxious sites of sewage dumping. The black sludge streaming into the sea is seen and smelt by passengers on the ride south from Gaza city.

Ibrahim Alejla of CMWU says the flow of sewage into the sea is not only dangerous, but wasteful. “If the borders were open, and we could get the chemicals and equipment needed to treat the water, it could be re-used in agriculture.”

Mohamed Ahmed says nitrate levels have for the past two years been three times the World Health Organisation (WHO) limit. Nitrates are believed to be carcinogenic.

“It is too soon to see all of the negative impacts,” says Mohamed Ahmed. And with Gaza’s Islamic University chemical laboratories bombed during Israel’s attacks, “Gaza has no facilities for testing water for the presence of heavy metals and other contaminants.”

Ahmed believes numerous chemical pollutants will be found when the tests are carried out. “The war occurred during winter, during our rainy season. When it rained, the chemicals and pollutants in the air went directly into the ground water.”

The CMWU and PWA say that many of the most affected areas have had their water networks repaired. “The municipalities chlorinate water to eliminate contamination,” says Ahmed. But difficulties arise when Israeli authorities prevent the entry of chlorine into Gaza. “Then the government issues advisories not to drink the network water.”

Ahmed warns of the effect on rural residents from contaminated ground water. “Many people depend on wells for their drinking water,” he says.

The water problems extend beyond consumption of tainted water. The Gaza health ministry and WHO have issued swimming advisories, listing seven extremely polluted areas as high-risk for diarrhoeal and skin diseases.

Khaled Al-Habil, a fishermen at Gaza city port, says the waste-polluted sea is destroying marine life.

“If you open the fish up, they are black inside. Not like normal fish. The sewage is destroying the fish. People who swim in the water at the port, their skin becomes irritated, like a rash,” Al-Habil said.

“I’m a fishermen, I know fish. But there are others who don’t know it’s from the port, who buy and eat them,” he said.

Gaza’s hospitals short of surgeons and supplies

Eva Bartlett | Electronic Intifada

11 June 2009

One of the most densely populated places on earth only has two cardiac surgeons to serve its entire population. According to Dr. Nasser Tatter, head of Shifa hospital’s cardiology unit, that only explains part of the medical crisis that exists in the Gaza Strip today.

“We are in bad need for cardiac surgeons,” said Dr. Tatter, further explaining that one of the two surgeons is ill and unable to perform surgeries. The second, Tatter added, isn’t able to work independently, rendering Gaza devoid of specialists able to perform open heart surgery.

Dr. Tatter estimates that there are roughly 400 patients in Gaza in need of such surgery. Some, he said, have died from their heart maladies. “Many have tried to leave, to go outside for surgery,” Tatter said. “But they were denied exit by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities.”

Israel’s sanctions and siege regime imposed on Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens has been in place since March 2006, shortly after Hamas was democratically elected in internationally monitored elections. It was further tightened in June 2007, when Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in factional fighting with the rival Fatah political party.

The years of closed borders has severely crippled Gaza’s health sector, denying patients vital medicines, replacement parts for hospital equipment, access to outside medical care, and preventing the entrance of outside expertise. Moreover, Gaza’s civilian infrastructure was devastated during Israel’s three week assault on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), making the treatment of patients within the tiny coastal territory near impossible.

After listing the urgently needed equipment and medical supplies Dr. Tatter explains that “We have enough for maybe five operations.” He adds that in the past it took a month to get even basic supplies and solutions.

However, in spite of the difficult circumstances, what is really lacking are the actual cardiac surgeons necessary for heart procedures. “We have the hospital and the equipment need for the procedures. We do have a shortage of some instruments and solutions used in the surgery but we could do a small number of operations today if we had the doctors.”

“We would like to send doctors outside for specialist training, but because of the closed borders it’s impossible,” says Dr. Tatter. The problem, he says, is that it is not easy to simply train others. “It requires specialists to do the training.”

Roughly 10 years ago, surgeons were coming to Gaza from different countries, staying on to provide training and/or operations. Today, the Israeli siege, supported by Egypt has made it near impossible for visiting doctors to enter Gaza, no matter how badly they are needed.

From 4 May to 22 May, a group of visiting medical specialists attempted to enter Gaza via the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing. Three medical professionals, two from London’s Hammersmith Hospital, waited nearly one month for permission to enter Gaza, to establish a cardiac surgery unit at Shifa Hospital and to provide some of the vitally-needed training to doctors and medical students.

Omar Mangoush, a cardiac surgeon at Hammersmith, Christopher Burns-Cox, a retired consultant physician, and Kirsty Wong, a nurse at Hammersmith Hospital were the latest team to head to Gaza via Palestine International Medical Aid (PIMA), a UK-based charity which has successfully sent two medical delegations to Gaza already this year.

On 19 May, after two weeks of being denied entry by Egyptian authorities, the Hammersmith team, joined by six other doctors and nurses, began a hunger strike to protest the banning of medical expertise from Gaza. Even when Code Pink and Hope convoys were granted entry, Egyptians controlling Rafah refused to allow the Hammersmith team into Gaza.

Christopher Burns-Cox, who has previously visited Gaza five times in order to provide medical training, reported that he’d planned to both consult with medical students at Gaza’s al-Azhar University and with patients at the Strip’s al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital.

He added that his colleague, Dr. Mangoush, was “keen to restart what is life-saving and not necessarily very expensive surgery.” However, since both of his colleagues were using their leave time to travel to Gaza and due to the wait at Rafah crossing, it is unlikely that either will be able to return any time soon. Although not accompanying the Hammersmith team, Dr. Sonia Robbins, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon from the UK, also found herself locked out of Gaza, although she is a regular visiting doctor in Gaza.

Just a few days after the PIMA trio left, the siege claimed Gaza’s 337th victim, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Muhammad Rami Ibrahim Nofal, a one-year-old infant from Khan Younis, died on 25 May precisely because of the inability to operate on his heart.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians rebuild with mud

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

7 May 2009

Nidal Eid builds his home with mud bricks
Nidal Eid builds his home with mud bricks

Jihad el-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square metre home is a basic one-storey, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw.

“My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. “We waited over two years for cement but because of the siege there is none available. What could we do, wait forever?”

So he decided to do it with mud.

Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn’t a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.

Jihad el-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. “I travelled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey…they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw.” These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.

While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has ‘gone backwards’ with the siege – using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation – Shaar is proud of his clay home.

“In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There’s no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime,” he says. “And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around 16,000 dollars at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just 3,000 dollars.”

Prior to Israel’s crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about five dollars) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.

The 3,000 dollars Shaar spent was mostly on support metal and on the flakes of straw used in the mud bricks as a strengthening agent. The metal bits, formerly just over 1,000 shekels a tonne, are now quadrupled in price, which contribute to making an otherwise cheap building process still somewhat pricey.

Straw abounds, but due to the siege it is more often used as animal fodder, rendering it more precious and driving the price up. Clay and sand, found all over Gaza, must still be transported to the building site.

Compared to a cement home, the mud homes Shaar has designed and taught others to build are nonetheless the most practical and immediate solution.

Nidal Eid (35) has seven children and has been renting a home in the Rafah region since his house was bulldozed by the Israeli army four years ago. Larger than Shaar’s and still in its nascent form, Eid’s home will take another two weeks to complete, he estimates, and will cost roughly 4,000 dollars.

“It’s going to be fantastic,” Eid said, adding mud mortar and new bricks to the waist-high wall he has already completed. “We make about 1,000 bricks every three days.”

The work, he said, was shared between six people. “I couldn’t wait any longer for the siege to end. I have a family and we need a house, so I’m building this. Everything is difficult in Gaza, but we have to find ways to get by.”

A tour through Jihad el-Shaar’s home shows all sorts of creative touches to the simple structure. Inlaid shelves are custom-sized to hold gas lanterns, dishes, ornamental vases, books…an earth-brick bed eliminates the need for an additional bed frame. The 35cm thick walls keep the house surprisingly cool, and the wooden windows propped open by poles allow the breeze to pass through.

This sort of idea is catching on. Yousef Al-Mansi, minister for public works and housing says the ministry will build a school, a mosque, and a clinic out of recycled rubble from bombed buildings.

The Gaza crossings online database of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) records that only two trucks carrying construction material have been allowed into Gaza since Jan. 19 this year. Israel’s assault on Gaza ended Jan. 18.

While 4.5 billion dollars in aid money for reconstruction has been pledged by international donors, to date Israel has not permitted the entry of materials into Gaza.

During its three-week assault Israel destroyed some 5,000 homes and 20,000 buildings.

“Since I’ve made my house, I’ve got many calls from people, especially in Rafah, who want to rebuild their houses using this technique,” says Shaar. “There are entire families living in tents. Why not build a home like this? Because of the siege, we’ve found other ways of living.”

Lost in the Buffer Zone

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

A Palestinian farmer shows how to duck Israeli fire
A Palestinian farmer shows how to duck Israeli fire

6 April 2009

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza – “They’re always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,” says Alaa Samour (19), pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on Dec. 28 last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“We were cutting parsley like we do almost every day, and the soldiers began shooting. We started crawling away. When I got out of the line of fire I realised my shoulder was bleeding and that I had been shot.”

A month later, out of necessity, Samour was back in the fields. Like many other impoverished labourers from the Khan Younis area, Samour is employed by farmers to harvest parsley, spinach and pea crops in the fertile eastern region. He brings home 20 shekels (five dollars) per day of labour, his contribution to a family where the father cannot earn enough to cover their food needs.

Sayed Abu Nsereh works on the same land. Well accustomed to the firing from the Israeli soldiers at the border, Abu Nsereh explains how farmers on the field crawl to a ‘safe’ area – a slight depression in the field – when the shooting begins. Lying face down, they are temporarily safe, though they must still wait for the shooting to cease and the soldiers to leave before they can leave.

The field is roughly half-way into a kilometre-wide band of land running along the Gaza side of the Green Line (Gaza’s border with Israel), an area unilaterally designated by Israeli authorities as the ‘buffer zone’, or more recently, the ‘no-go zone’. At inception a decade ago, the ‘buffer zone’ encompassed a 150 metres wide stretch of land flanking the border south to north. In this region Palestinians could not walk, live or work due to what Israel described as ‘security reasons’. It became wasted land, though extremely fertile.

At the end of Israel’s three weeks of attacks on Gaza December-January which left more than 1,450 dead and over 5,000 injured, many critically so, Israeli authorities declared an expansion of the ‘buffer zone’ into what they dubbed a no-go zone expropriating yet more land from farmers and civilians in the area.

Prior to the attacks on Gaza, PARC reported that of the 175,000 dunams (42,000 acres) (1 dunam is 1,000 square metres) of cultivable land in the Gaza Strip, 50,000 dunams (12,000 acres) had been damaged by the Israeli army. These are the most fertile and productive agricultural areas, the ‘food basket’ areas, the group reports. Following the attacks on Gaza, international bodies put the amount of destroyed land much higher: 60,000-75,000 dunams of farmland they say is now damaged or unusable.

In early February, the Guardian reported on the severe hit to Gaza’s agricultural sector. The article quoted representatives of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) as saying that anywhere from 35 percent to 60 percent of the agriculture industry was destroyed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza, much of it not useable again due to the damage.

Even before the attacks, Gaza’s farming sector had been seriously devastated by the crippling siege on Gaza. Whereas Gaza had been producing half of its agricultural needs, the combination of siege and warfare on Gaza has led to the “destruction of all means of life,” including destroyed farmland along with hundreds of greenhouses, hundreds of wells and water pumps, and farming equipment.

The ability to produce food is vital to combating staggering malnutrition levels in the Gaza Strip, a region rendered impoverished by Israel’s blockade and the consequent soaring unemployment levels. According to PARC, due to the Israeli ban on fertilisers, seeds, plastic sheeting for greenhouses, and irrigation piping, among many other things, there has been a steady regression away from qualitative and productive farming practices: now farmers are planting crops requiring less care, such as wheat and barley, in place of the diversity of vegetables formerly grown. Many, such as Jaber Abu Rjila, believe that Israel’s real intention is further land annexation and control. Abu Rjila lives on a farm just under 500 metres from the border in Al-Faraheen, slightly south of Abassan. He and neighbours had jointly cultivated the 300 dunams of land between his home and the border fence, growing a variety of crops including wheat, chickpeas and various greenhouse vegetables. But now, he says, he is only working on four dunams of land.

Since November 2008, Abu Rjila, his wife and their six children have not been able to live at home. The house, pock-marked by bullet holes along its border-facing walls, was subject to regular Israeli army shooting and violence prior to the recent 22 days of Israeli attacks.

In May 2008, all but 500 of Abu Rjila’s 3,000 chickens were killed by invading Israeli soldiers, said Abu Rjila. Soldiers at the same time also destroyed what Abu Rjila said was a 12,000 dollar grain harvester and an 8,000 dollar tractor. The asbestos roofing covering the chicken barn shattered from the explosions below which tore out barn walls and killed the poultry.

According to Abu Rjila, the Israeli soldiers destroyed two water pumps for his cistern, and used bulldozers and tanks to raze costly irrigation piping, along with approximately 2,000 different fruit and olive trees and grain plantations over 150 dunams. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on the invasion noted that 225 dunams of agricultural land had been razed in the area.

PCHR notes that the destruction of civilian property, including agricultural land, and the targeting of civilians are illegal under international human rights law including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The siege is undeniably on Palestinians’ minds, but for farmers in the “buffer zone” it is the regular and ongoing shooting from Israeli soldiers that concerns them. Their worries are reasonable: at least two farmers have been shot dead and at least five more injured by Israeli soldiers’ gunfire, all since Israel declared ceasefire Jan. 18.

Maher Abu-Rajileh (24) from Huza’ah village, east of Khan Younis, was killed by soldiers that day when he returned with his parents and brother to farmland 400m from the Green Line following Israel’s announcement of a ceasefire. At 10 am, after he had spent two hours cleaning up the land from the destruction wreaked by Israeli bulldozers and tanks, Israeli soldiers opened fire, shooting Maher in the chest, killing him instantly.

On Jan. 20, Israeli soldiers fired on residents of Al-Qarara, near Khan Younis, shooting Waleed Al-Astal (42) in his right foot. Soldiers opened fire on Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis, on Jan. 23, shooting Nabeel Al-Najjar (40) in the left hand. On Jan. 25, Israeli soldiers shot Subhi Qudaih (55) in the back while he was on Khuza’a village farmland. On Jan. 27, just outside of Al-Farahin, also east of Khan Younis, soldiers killed Anwar Al-Buraim (26), shooting him in the neck while he picked vegetables on land approximately 500m from the Green Line.

On Feb.3, Ismail Abu Taima was among a handful of farmers working to harvest parsley on his land near the border.

“The plants have not been watered for six weeks,” Abu Taima said, picking up valves and pieces of irrigation piping. The piping, destroyed by an Israeli army invasion prior to the war on Gaza, has become valuable in a region whose borders are sealed and where replacement parts for most things are unattainable or grossly expensive.

Over the course of a year Abu Taima invests about 54,000 dollars in planting, watering and maintenance of crops on his land. From that investment, if all goes well and crops are harvested monthly, he can bring in about 10,000 dollars a month, enough to pay off the investment and support the 15 families dependent on the harvest. “The borders are closed. We have no feed for our animals,” said Abu Taima, pointing to a lone donkey grazing in growth close to the border fence.

Before the afternoon’s work had finished, we were subjected to around 45 minutes of intense shooting from three or four soldiers visible on a mound less than 200 metres away, bullets flying within metres of the farmers’ heads and feet.

On Feb. 17, farmers returned to harvest land approximately 500 metres from the Green Line where Anwar Al-Buraim was shot dead weeks earlier. As the farm workers were leaving the land, Israeli soldiers targeted Mohammad Al- Buraim, a deaf 20-year-old and cousin of Anwar. Mohammad was with a group of approximately ten farmers pushing their stalled pick-up truck loaded with harvested produce when Israeli soldiers began sniping, hitting Mohammed in the right ankle and continuing to shoot as the farmers, surrounded by international human rights observers, moved away from the field and took shelter behind a nearby house.

The incident was sufficient to deter farmers from returning to that area for a month. When Mazen Samour and Sayed Abu Nasereh returned Mar. 19 to the plot they had been working for roughly two years, it was not to harvest but to rip out the plastic irrigation piping they had carefully laid down months before. At roughly 70 dollars per 250m bundle, the 30 bundles of piping covering the fields was too great an investment to simply leave behind.

“We haven’t come back here since Mohammed was shot,” said Abu Nasereh. Now, too afraid of being hit by Israeli border soldiers’ bullets, the men are abandoning the land for safer ground further inland.

Samour was present when his nephew Alaa Samour was shot in December, as well as when Anwar Al-Buraim was fatally targeted. “We can rent land much further away from the border,” said Samour.

Across the border, on the Israeli side, tractors and crop-dusters can be seen working the land immediately next to the Green Line. The ‘buffer zone’ has been imposed solely on the Palestinian side.

These rural eastern border areas of the Gaza Strip are emptying, the land becoming more and more barren because farmers, many of whom have farmed here for generations, are now too frightened to live and work on their own land. The confines of the Gaza Strip, which is just 40 kilometres long and ten kilometres wide, are being shrunk even further by relentless Israeli invasions, by the imposition of an arbitrary and expanding “buffer zone” and by the targeting of civilians and farmers trying to live on and earn a living from their land.

* Eva Bartlett is an activist-journalist who came to Gaza in November on the third Free Gaza boat. Along with other international witnesses, she was present with farmers during many of the shooting incidents reported.

Warmth and support

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

4 April 2009

I met Ramadan and Sabrine Shamali at a Sheyjayee market a couple of days ago. They were going to buy new blankets, mattresses, and other essentials, including clothing, to replace what was lost when their house was attacked by the invading Israeli army during Israel’s war on Gaza. They were using money sent from those outside of Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians.

Ramadan knew the best place for blankets, a small store in the district, with blankets mostly brought in through sporadically-opened borders or, more likely, the tunnels. I was told that immediately after the war, when people were scrambling to replace burned and destroyed blankets, there were nearly none to be had, with the borders closed since November 4 and the tunnels out of order.

We eyed the different weights and got a run-down of the prices: a 7 kg blanket goes for 270 shekels (~$65), a 5 kg for170 shekels (~$40), and a children’s for 75 shekels (~$18).

The mattresses were 170 shekels, pillows 25 shekels, and a large, woven floor mat 170 shekels.

Just replacing these items ended up costing the couple 1500 shekels, or about $365.

While the days have gotten warmer, nights still merit good blankets, particularly in a missile-hole-riddled house.

Needless to say, Sabrine and Ramadan were pleased to finally replace them, 2 months after their losses.

From there we headed to a clothing market in the same region, where items like underwear for the kids and sports pants, t-shirts, and other children’s needs were added to the bill.

They’ll still be living in a house most would consider not fit, not safe, for habitation. But such is the dilemma of so many here, where cement is on the banned list, held at bay by Israeli authorities from the Palestinians here who so desperately need it.