Tag: Operation Protective Edge

29th August 2014 | Sarah Algherbawi | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Sarah Algherbawi is a Palestinian citizen who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1991 and now lives in the Gaza Strip. She finished her BBA degree in Business Administration at the Islamic University of Gaza, and now works as a media project coordinator.

The killing and bombing is finally done. Yet I don’t think we in Gaza will feel like the war is truly over for a long period of time, if we ever can.

The killing is over but the pain of the missing dead is not.

The killing is over but the injures are not healed.

The killing is over but the houses are no longer standing.

The killing is over but our souls are not yet cured.

This is the third war I have witnessed in the last five years of my life. I wish I had never had to experience this, but it just happened, and all I can do now is to deal with the pain…once again.

My first experience with war was in my last year of high school, the year that is critical to anyone’s future. It wasn’t easy to go back to school and study again, it wasn’t easy to throw all the pains and bad memories behind my back and continue life normally. It took so long…but I did it, and I passed that year with satisfactory results.

The second war, I was a university student; I faced the same dilemma of not being able to get back to university and study. It needs an awakened brain to do so, and mine was not! It was full of dark thoughts and the constant question, ‘how could I survive again?’

This third war has been the most difficult. Now, I’m an employee. I have to deal with things faster to best do my job. I grew up, and realized that every time it only gets more and more difficult to accept and deal with such situations. This time, I think it will take too long for me to get back to life.

It takes too long to get used to the city’s new face, to not feel guilt every time we laugh, to not fear the sound of a door slamming…to dream of things other than death!

I write this, and I didn’t experience the loss of any loved ones, thanks to god, and I’m in a good health…but I can’t stop thinking of those who lost. Some lost everything and everyone, others lost their beauty, their vision, the ability to hear, and parts of themselves that can never be returned. They lost a life that they will never have again.

The war is over but to the survivors it has merely begun. I was jailed in my house for 50 days, it feels strange to deal with people again, to carry out the routine work we used to do…the simplest aspects of life are the most difficult now.

I didn’t experience death. But now, I have the belief that many things can be more painful than death.

For someone who is homeless, who lost the ability to walk, to hold a pen, to see the light, to hear the voices, to live with their love…for those and others, death would be mercy.

All we can do, all we have to do, is to try to continue, to heal our injuries, to heal our souls, our brains, and hearts…to heal the broken…and try to live, once again!

26th August 2014 | Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

This article was published before the recently agreed ceasefire.

High-rise buildings have now been declared as legitimate targets for F-16 aircraft attacks. Yesterday evening a 16 story house called Little Italy, home to 100 families, was destroyed.

No one was killed, but around 20 people was injured, and in the few minutes between the order to leave by a recorded voice on the phone and the attack with at least six rockets, people had time to save themselves but hardly time to save any belongings. Important documents, furniture, valuables, clothing, memories – all crushed and destroyed. Likewise, the streets were filled with shattered glass caused by the shock waves several blocks away from the building.

Little Italy was not the first high-rise building in Gaza City demolished by the Israeli military, and already UN schools, hospitals and universities have been military targets. Maan News quoted the Israeli prime minister, in an article on 24/8, “I call on residents of Gaza to immediately leave any structure from witch Hamas carries out terrorist activity against us. All such sites are a target for us.”

That was after a 12 storey house was bombed to rubble. But it is possible to interpret the words a bit if you want, and it may also be deliberately. It is extremely difficult to refute allegations after a house has been turned to rubble, and false accusations have been thrown around before. The only thing one can be sure of is that there is a danger to stay in the same house as someone from Hamas, and given the fact that Hamas is the governing body, all public employees have their paycheques signed by Hamas.

Netanyahu has made the civilian population in Gaza, as well as civil infrastructure, legitimate targets for the Israeli military. It is no longer possible as a civilian to opt out of the war, to remain neutral. In Little Italy, it meant keeping track of what the other 99 families were, where they work, their political affiliations, choosing sides, and being forced to take an active position. That there is a war against the civilian population is more evident than ever. A civilian population that under the Fourth Geneva Convention must be protected during war.

There is now an additional 100 families who must seek temporary accommodation somewhere else. Somewhere where they think they know that n one is hired by those who were elected by the peolple, and where they can prove their innocence before those who receive them. They will be happy if they take care of their trash, teach their children or perform surgical operations on their parents, but living in the same building can be fatal. You cannot opt out of the war, it is no longer possible to remain neutral. You cannot as a civilian remain civil. Not for Israel.

17th August 2014 | Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

The military assaults on the Palestinians have been going on for over a month, and even if the war should end while I’m writing, the exhausting consequences of it will continue for some time. Concern for your own life, for your family members and friends, and that the house where you are in will be attacked and fall down, is easy to understand even when you watch the news hundreds of miles from the violent epicenter. But the consequences are so many more.

There is the feeling that the sky is pressing you against the ground and the noise of the angry buzzing of all drones overhead. How do you describe that to somebody at a safe distance?

There is almost no access to electricity now that Gaza’s only power plant was bombed. But electricity is so much more than the switch on the wall. It means that the clothes have to be washed by hand, scrubbing, wringing. There is no sorting of white and color or setting the degree; all items go into the same bucket. If warmer water is wanted it is heated on the gas stove.

There is still food available in shops and on street markets, but without power the refrigerators and freezers do not work, and in 30-degree heat the food soon goes bad. It has been a long time since I went to the butcher now. And prices have started to rise, not fast, but little by little. Add to this that the banks are closed, and factories, workshops and other workplaces have been bombed, leaving employees with no income. For all those who had to flee their homes without the ability to bring anything, and those that already literally stood penniless, life is even more difficult.

Before the war, water came, though salty and unfit for drinking, when I turned the tap. That is no longer a given. After I had to rush to the bathroom and realized afterwards that I couldn’t flush, I place an extra bucket of water on the side. But I’m lucky – hundreds of thousands of people are cut off from the water supply. This presents problems even with the washing bucket, and it is difficult for people to keep themselves and their children clean.

Our great dependence on water is understood only when there is nothing, and outside the small stores where stainless steel water tanks are formed and people sometimes queue to buy filtered groundwater – if there is anything in the tanks. Even the more expensive bottled water runs out sometimes in the stores, though hardly anyone would use it to take a shower in it, let alone flush the toilet with.

That brings us to the sewage system that does not work in many places since the pipes and pumping stations have been destroyed. In some places small streams of untreated sewage are flowing through buildings, across roads, and down towards the sea. And in 30-degree heat, where food cannot be kept chilled and with inadequate access to water, one can just wait for the outbreak of diseases.

Families have done what they could to house relatives, putting hospitality and solidarity to the test over more than a month, shared their clothes, food, and water, and sacrificed their private life. But what happens when these long-term guests cannot return home? Are they still welcome to curtail the living space when the violence of the war ebbs? And what of those who pitched tent-like homes in the park behind the al-Shifa hospital and elsewhere, who have no access to food, water, sewers, electricity? Where should they go? How will their children be able to study under these conditions?

It is discerned among the ruins in Shujaja and other areas along the buffer zone, that life must somehow go on. Some are lucky and their houses can be repaired, if they can get hold of building materials, and if they can pay. But far too many others have not been that lucky. Where their houses once stood are now collapsed concrete piles or deep craters. Tarpaulins have been spread among them, forming open tents for protection from the sun. Here and there the smell of something dead under all the layers of fallen concrete is perceived. It may be from an animal, or from something else. And amid all the destruction people are trying to find their possessions that are still in one piece, children are playing amongst the rubble, and some are making tea over an open fire.

The consequences of war are not just death and blood, dismemberment and pain. They is so many more. And they do not end when the soldiers return to their barracks.