Tag: Gaza

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Israel deports 14-year-old girl to Gaza, without telling her parents

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An electric cart provides transportation through the 900-meter caged terminal spanning the restricted access zone at the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Jul 2, 2012. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Activestills.org)

Ghada had spent her entire life in the West Bank, yet somehow found herself deported to the Gaza Strip after being arrested by Border Police officers.

By Edo Konrad | +972 Magazine | Jan 31, 2018

“It should be noted that the girl and her father are illegal immigrants in Israel, and therefore she was sent to Erez Crossing . . . entered the Gaza Strip.”
— Israel Prison Service statement

Israeli authorities deported a 14-year-old epileptic Palestinian girl from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip earlier this month, without notifying her parents, and despite the fact that she has never lived there a day in her life.

Ghada, who was born in Ramallah where she has lived much of her life, was arrested by Israeli Border Police officers on January 13 for being in Jerusalem without a military permit. She was traveling back to her home in a-Ram, just northeast of Jerusalem where she lives with her mother and siblings, from her aunt’s home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya.

Her father, though originally from the Gaza Strip, currently lives in the West Bank as well, her mother told Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which is representing the family. When Ghada was born, Israeli authorities listed her address as Gaza for an unknown reason.

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What I learned about UN aid to Palestinians growing up in Gaza

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UNRWA schools provide a generous hand to overcome the tribulations of life in the beleaguered Gaza Strip, encouraging students to dream big despite the obstacles around them.

By Muhammad Shehada | Forward | Jan 22, 2018

Each semester, UNRWA supplied free medical glasses to shortsighted students and ran periodic medical and dental examinations; they also provided vaccinations to all students. For many years, UNRWA provided students with healthy meals on a daily basis, handing out fruit, sandwiches, milk and homemade pastries that employed thousands of people in a project funded by Mercy USA. These meals helped many poor students, who had no food at home, to focus better; a few children wouldn’t eat these meals, but would hold on to them, taking them home to share with their starving families.

Last week, the US announced its decision to start defunding UNRWA, the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency. If defunded, an immediate catastrophe will surely follow.

UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinians through a combination of food, schools, medical and other services, means life to more than two thirds of Gaza’s two million residents — as it did for me. I grew up studying in UNRWA schools.

I can still clearly remember the happiness and excitement in my late father’s eyes on my first day of school, the same UNRWA school where he studied himself as a child. He put me in his old classroom, and even sat me down in the same old wooden bench were he sat 30 years before. I remember so clearly the dream in his eyes, that I’d be as successful in life as he was.

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Gaza is still under seige: Please support the Ahli Hospital campaign

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(photo: AFEDJ)

A letter from our brothers and sisters at the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.

“Gaza is still under siege. All borders are closed. In Gaza’s crisis, Ahli Hospital is a place of refuge and hope. Everyone who comes to Ahli for help is equal. We are living Christian values every day. People know this. They know that at Ahli they will be treated with dignity and respect. We are so thankful for your generous support of our mission.”
— Suhaila Tarazi, Ahli Hospital’s Director

Dear Friends,

I just returned from a trip to Gaza. I visited three Community Based Organizations that work in the poorest neighborhoods of Gaza, identifying families who need medical care and arranging treatment for them at Ahli Hospital’s Free Community Clinic.

The clinic serves the poorest of the poor in Gaza, one of the most desperate places on earth. The conditions I saw people living in is appalling. No clean drinking water, raw sewage polluting the water and land, and for most families, just two hours of electricity every day. Yet the Palestinian people living in this political tinderbox remain hopeful for their future.

Ahli Hospital needs your help. Your gift of any size will help keep open the doors of Ahli Hospital’s Free Community Clinic and continue to provide life-saving care to the desperate families and children living in Gaza. Continue reading “Gaza is still under seige: Please support the Ahli Hospital campaign”

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Overcoming isolation in Gaza: A report back

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Gaza City. (photo: Brant Rosen)

Even under the brutality of Israel’s blockade, we could not help but be struck by the beauty of this place and the dignity of its people.

By Brant Rosen / AFSC Acting in Faith / Oct 18, 2017

I heard one young woman speak of entering into Israel through the Erez Crossing for the first time to travel to the West Bank for meetings. . . . She was eighteen years old and had never seen an Israeli Jew in person in her life. Up until that time, she said, she had only seen them as “helicopters, planes and bombs.”

I’ve written a great deal about Gaza for over ten years but until this past week, I haven’t had the opportunity to visit in person. I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity to experience Gaza as a real living, breathing community and I’m returning home all the more committed to the movement to free Gaza from Israel’s crushing blockade — now eleven years underway with no end in sight. . . .

It’s extremely rare for Americans to receive permission from Israel to enter Gaza through the Erez Crossing. Permits are generally issued only for journalists and staff people of registered international NGOs. Though I was technically allowed to enter Gaza as an AFSC staff member, I wasn’t 100% sure it would really happen until the moment I was actually waved through the crossing by the solider at Passport Control in Erez.

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“1984” in Israel and Palestine

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Nablus, 1990. (photo: Alex Levac)

We must get the Israeli public to recognize this basic human truth: Occupation by a foreign government cannot be a substitute for sovereignty, just as slavery isn’t freedom, war isn’t peace and ignorance isn’t strength.

By Dmitry Shumsky / Haaretz / July 13, 2017

A Palestinian state that faithfully reflects the national yearnings of all parts of the Palestinian people, which deserves national freedom like any other people  . . . will only come about with the end of the Israeli occupation and liquidation of the lion’s share of the settlement enterprise.

In one of the most trenchant articles ever written here against the occupation, Prof. Shlomo Avineri wrote that any denials of the fundamental fact that Palestinian residents of the territories — who have been under Israel’s direct or indirect control since 1967 — are under Israeli occupation “recall George Orwell’s book ‘1984,’ in which the government declares that slavery is freedom, war is peace and ignorance is strength” (Haaretz Hebrew Edition, March 17).

A recent op-ed by former Defense Minister Moshe Arens (“Gaza, a failed Palestinian state,” June 26), which claimed that the Gaza Strip is a “sovereign Palestinian state,” is clear confirmation of Avineri’s diagnosis.

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Feeding Malnourished Children in Gaza

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Abdullah and his family at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. (photo: ABM)

The Australian Anglican Board of Mission is supporting treatment of children with malnourishment and anemia.

By Anglican Communion News Service
May 16, 2017

“All families are grateful for the program. Many mothers were shy when speaking to me, but their concern or happiness comes across in their facial expressions and gestures. One mother, Tahreer, said her two year old boy had improved a little after completing the program. She would like him to go for a second round of treatment so that he could continue to improve.”
— Dr, Julianne Stewart, ABM Programs Director

Since the 2014 bomb attacks, Australian Anglican Board of Mission (ABM) partner, the Al Ahli Arab Hospital (a medical facility of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem), has continued to help children restore and maintain their health. Parents and children are benefiting from this assistance in Beit Hanoun, a poor area of Gaza, near the Israeli border. People there were very hard hit in the 2014 bomb attacks.

The Child Nutrition Program seeks to build health profiles for children and help families that are struggling to cope. Over the course of three months, children are given a medical assessment by an expert pediatrician and a program of nutritional supplements is developed. The hospital provides the necessary supplements and monitors the children for signs of improvement. Dr. Julianne Stewart, ABM’s Programs Director, visited the Gaza Strip last year and met with some of the families that have been supported by the hospital.

On her journey, Julianne met with three year old Abdullah. Abdullah completed the program and is doing well according to the social workers and his mother. His mother Hyat is just 34 years old and has nine children under 18. Abdullah is the youngest. Hyat said, “Abdullah is doing well. I thank God he has improved. We give him his vitamins, enhanced milk, and food parcels from the Ahli. He is 12kg now.”

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Archbishop of Canterbury Visits Israel and Palestine

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Archbishop Justin Welby described his short visit to Gaza, the densely populated and impoverished Palestinian territory, as “extraordinary.” (photo: Ariel Schalit / AP)

Justin Welby’s sermon in Jerusalem talks of anger and fear in “probably the world’s most complicated region of conflicts.”

By Harriet Sherwood / The Guardian
May 7, 2017

Gaza was “genuinely breathtaking, something I’ll never forget,” Welby told the Sunday programme on BBC Radio 4. Aides said he had been struck by the physical devastation of the region, the “collective trauma” of its people and their anxiety about the future. He was also inspired by the resilience of those he met, including medics who have committed to staying in the Strip.

The archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of the suffering and persecution of Christians and others in the Middle East, saying he has heard voices of anger, fear and insecurity while on a 12-day trip to the Holy Land.

Justin Welby was preaching to a packed congregation at St George’s Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem on Sunday morning before being installed as an episcopal canon later in the day.

In his 10-minute sermon, he said Christians in the region had belonged to a “suffering church for centuries. Sometimes life has been better, sometimes it is less bad. But the nature of suffering is that when it is happening it is all-consuming.”

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