GAZA CITY, Jan 8, 2012 (IPS) – By Eva Bartlett *(blog version longer than published version)

“During hard times, we have survived off olive oil,” says Ahmed Sourani from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee.

“Including during the last war,” says Sourani, referring to the 23 day war Israel waged on Gaza three years ago. “Many people who couldn’t leave their homes had only bread and olive oil to sustain them for long periods.”

Even during the first Intifadah (Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation), olives and olive oil were vital to survival. “They enabled many thousands of very poor Palestinian families to survive,” recalls Sourani. “When the Israeli army imposes curfews on us, preventing us from leaving our homes, it is our main food source. Most students take za’atar (wild thyme) and olive oil sandwiches to school for their lunch.”

This source of sustenance has been targeted by Israel over years. In November 2008, Oxfam reported that since 2000, 112,000 olive trees had been destroyed in the Gaza Strip.

“According to Israeli authorities, the ‘buffer zone’, an Israeli-imposed no-go zone prohibiting Palestinians from their land, is 300 metres from the Gaza-Israel Green Line border,” says Sourani. “But in reality it extends well beyond 600 metres, encompassing 30 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land.”

The UN cites areas of up to two kilometres into Gaza from the border rendered inaccessible due to Israel’s policy of shooting, shelling and intrusions into Gaza’s borderlands.

According to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC), more than 42 percent of the 175,000 dunams (one dunam is roughly 1,000 square metres) of cultivable land in the Strip has been destroyed during Israeli invasions and operations. The World Health Organisation reports that the last Israeli war on Gaza alone destroyed up to 60 percent of the agricultural industry.

Despite the systematic campaign of destroying olive trees and rendering farmland inaccessible, Sourani says that “some areas of Gaza still have olive trees that are hundreds of years old.” These are particularly in Zaytoun, Sheyjayee and Tuffah neighbourhoods.

The comparatively insignificant number of ancient trees aside, the average age of a tree is around five years, Sourani says.

In the face of the Strip’s increasingly barren farmlands, Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture now plans non- violent resistance to Israel’s decimation of the Palestinian agricultural industry.

Ahmad Fatayar from the ministry says that over the years including and following the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, Israeli-influenced policies and economic incentives were designed to force Palestinian farmers away from growing trees on their land towards working in greenhouses or as labourers in Israel.

After Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian farmland, Palestinians found it difficult if not impossible to cultivate their olive trees.

“We have established an olive tree arboretum in order to cultivate one million olive trees throughout the Gaza Strip, particularly in the buffer zone which has been so largely destroyed,” said Fatayar.

Fatayar lists a surprisingly vast variety of benefits and uses of olives: “They can be cultivated in streets, school yards, and in front of houses and can endure severe dryness, salty water, can be stored for long periods, and are used in various industries like food, animal feed, coal, compost, and medicines.”

For an average Palestinian family of eight members, he adds, “two or three olive trees suffice to provide the oil and olives needed for yearly consumption.”

Their practical nutritional and economic aspects aside, olive trees are important for many more reasons, says Ahmed Sourani. “Palestinians also consider the olive tree a symbol of the land, of independence, of peace and dignity.

“We use olive oil for everything, even for the hair. When we are sick, we rub olive oil on our bodies. It is even a source of cosmetics: we use it to make kohl, a non-toxic version of eyeliner. Olive tree leaves are medicinal and can be used in pharmaceuticals and as a tea to treat diabetes and stomach pain.”

To meet the needs of the disproportionate number of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip (1.6 million in 365 square kilometres), much of Gaza’s olives and oil needs were previously met by farmers from the occupied West Bank.

An Oxfam 2010 report notes that “the Israeli imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip has affected the import of olives and olive oil from the West Bank considerably.” It notes an increase of imports of “oil that was reduced in price because it had reached its expiry date.”

“Now we only get a small amount from the West Bank, the rest coming from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Spain,” says Sourani. “But we still prefer the olive oil of Palestine: Surri, the favourite olive tree and oil, originally from Roman times.”

Like olive trees, date palms hold special historical, nutritional, economic, and cultural importance for Palestinians. “They are an important source of nutrition, are very productive and don’t cost much to raise,” says Sourani.

“Date palms can be cultivated in only one or two square metres,” notes Ahmad Fatayar. “A single date palm tree can produce from up to 200 kilograms of dates.”

The Ministry of Agriculture’s plan for self-sufficiency includes the nurturing of date palm trees.

“One seedling will about seven years later yield a fruit-bearing palm tree and another ten seedlings,” says Fatayar. “Ten seedlings will seven years later yield ten productive palms and 100 seedlings.”

According to the Ministry’s estimates, by 2020 there will be roughly three million seedlings, a significant number of which will be productive.

The benefits of successful date palm include food (molasses, sweets and oil), textiles (furniture and cloth), agriculture (animal feed), and paper.

see also:

dignified beyond losses

beit hanoun olive harvest

settler attacks on palestinian farmers  and  here

When Hassan and Jamal approached a body in the road, it was during the first day of Israeli-declared “cease-fire hours”, supposed humanitarian hours when civilians were to be allowed to move about without fear of Israeli bombing, shelling or shooting.

Hassan, a Palestinian Red Crescent medic, was uniformed, as was Jamal a volunteer with the Red Crescent. The ambulance I was in was flashing its lights and siren.  The stretcher the two men carried was flat, blood-stained from other martyrs, but quite obviously just a stretcher.  And when Hassan and Jamal walked from the Dawar Zimmo intersection of eastern Jabaliya towards our ambulance, sides to their sniper predator, their hands were full with the dead body they carried.

At this point, walking away from wherever the sniper was huddled (typically 2nd or 3rd floors of homes whose wall has been bored with sniper firing holes), the Israeli soldier began shooting at them, and us. Hassan and Jamal ran for it, body and all, until bringing the body back was impossible. Dropping it, they stumbled and ran for their lives.

This was during “cease-fire” hours. They were medics. Medics don’t need ceasefire hours to work, they are supposed to be protected under international law which dictates that medics attend those in need as needed.

Hassan thankfully wasn’t assassinated like Arafa or 15 other medics during Israel’s 23 days of bombing, shelling, and terrorizing the Palestinians of Gaza.  Four were killed in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.

But he did get a nasty flesh wound, the bullet sailed through his thigh.

Noble as the rest of the medics, Hassan was back on his legs and at work after less than a week.

According to statistics from the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health and the PRCS, since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed at least 56 medical rescuers, including paramedics, drivers, doctors and volunteers –an average of one rescuer every two months – and have injured another at least 500 medical rescuers.

Since 2000 at least 144 Emergency Medical Team members have been arrested while on duty– including 64 between September 2000 and August 2002.

The original account, from three years ago: They Shot Hassan
published: Electronic Intifada By Eva Bartlett

On January 7, as I and a Spanish human rights advocate and documentary film-maker, Alberto Arce, accompanied Palestinian medics to retrieve the body of a man shot earlier by invading Israeli forces, we were also shot at as the medics carried the body towards the ambulance. It was in Dawwar Zimmo, eastern Jabaliya, near the area which has been occupied by Israeli soldiers since the land invasion began. It’s an area where 10s are thought to have been seriously injured by bombing and shooting from the Israeli army, and where many, many more will lie dead, uncollected for days, or weeks, out of reach of the medics whose duty is to retrieve them.

Hassan al-Attal and Jamal had gotten out of the ambulance, a clearly-marked 101 ambulance, and approached the corpse lying in the middle of the street. They wore their PRCS uniforms –Hassan’s was bright red with reflective tape, Jamal’s bright orange and white, also with reflective tape –and approached slowly, hands free of all but a stretched to take away the body. Arce filmed as the medics picked up the dead man, put him on the stretcher and began the retreat towards the ambulance. Arce was still filming when the shots cracked out, rapidly but evidently a targeted sniper’s shot, not a machine gun. Incredibly, Hassan and Jamal continued to try to evacuate the body, running with the dead man, before finally dropping the stretched and fleeing for their lives.

It was about 1:30 pm, it was the first day of Israel’s self-declared “cease-fire” and the sniper was aiming at the medical personnel. The ambulance’s siren was still screaming, the driver had been moving quickly away from the sniper, to avoid further hits on us or himself, and we were frantically scouring to see Hassan and Jamal. In the days prior to this attack, 7 medics had been killed since the start of Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza’s population. Tens more had been injured, and Hassan was to join their ranks. A sniper’s bullet caught his thigh, and as he scrambled into the ambulance, the blood seeping through his pants alerted us to his injury.

These medics are all too aware of, many all too familiar with, the mortal risks of their job in the face of invading Israeli soldiers with, apparently, no regard for the Geneva Conventions which should allow and oblige medics to reach the injured and the dead, without fire from the invading army.

It was frightening. I thought we’d lost them both, and they are both young, wonderful men doing a job worthy of medals. The 10-15 seconds it took before Hassan and Jamal could jump into the ambulance and pull down its back door were a painfully long stretch, during which I’d feared the worst. As we pulled away, a final bullet caught the back door of the ambulance.

Medics worked quickly on Hassan’s thigh injury: the bullet had penetrated from the inside of his upper left thigh, digging into muscle, and exiting a couple of inches from the entry wound. He was impressively brave about it, though obviously in a great deal of pain.

Arce’s video footage caught the incident, and is testimony to what we’ve seen, what medics have told us they’ve long endured, and what Israeli authorities beligerently continue to deny: Israel is targeting medical personnel, as Israeli forces target journalists, civilians, and these days in Gaza anything that moves. No sanctuary, no safety, no guarantee of medical service.

*Jamal, in his volunteer medic vest, next to the recognizable ambulance.

see also:

rescuers targeted, one year on

Israeli attacks on emergency workers still affecting Gaza’s safety

Defend The Rescuers

affecting and affected

War on the Wounded: human rights violations perpetrated against Palestinian medical personnel in the Gaza Strip

Lives Destroyed: Series of Personal Testimonies, Reveal How One Year after Operation Cast Lead, Life in Gaza is Not Back to Normal  Day 17: Rescuing the Rescuers, Hamouda Towers, Jabalia, North Gaza

Targeted Civilians: A PCHR Report on the Israeli Military Offensive against the Gaza Strip (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009)’  Destruction of Medical Facilities and Transports pp 92-98

MAP Statement 20 January 2010

Israeli Bombs inflict more pain on Gaza hospital

Memories have a way of  overpowering.   And Arafa Abd el Dayem’s death should do so.

Three years on and his murder is no less painful, his loss no less present.

Arafa, when shredded to death by an Israeli-soldier-fired dart bomb (a dart bomb is a shell filled with between 5000-8000 dart-shaped metal nails, designed to bore into their targets and split apart upon impact, ensuring  maximum damage), was a long-term medic with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, as well as a high-school teacher and father.

We had just spent a night searching for the martyred body of a teenage night-watchman at the American High School, bombed by Israeli warplanes… returning in the morning for the charred corpse of the young Bedouin boy. I’d left Arafa and his colleagues, all genial, joking through the madness, compassionate… to return to Gaza City to write up some notes, share the reality with those outside Gaza.

And he was killed.  In a flash: on duty, retrieving injured and martyred; loading the casualties into his flashing ambulance when the Israeli-fired flechette bomb bored through his ambulance and his body, shredding him.

‘Shredding him’ doesn’t suffice to describe the mutilation of his body, a body of a medic, visibly-clothed, weathered in Israeli-warfare. He had lived through numerous Israeli assaults, giving of himself as Palestinian rescuers do, knowing his ambulance or self could be wrongfully-targeted (human rights law theoretically protects medics and rescuers from the assault of their occupiers…which begs the question: what’s the point of such law if it doesn’t actually ensure protection of such rescuers and medics?).

His wife and children knew he was target for assassination, yet of course hoped that wouldn’t happen.  He was a medic, after all.  Why kill him?  Really, why?

But kill him, shred him, the Israeli soldiers did.  Maybe I feel his death was worse because I knew him.  But Ahmed’s colleague, Dr. Issa, was decapitated while carrying a martyr down from a building already attacked by the Israeli army.

“The Israelis had fired numerous missiles on Hamouda tower, a 5 story building in Jabaliya district. When we got there, we were told there was a martyr on 5th floor. I was the first to enter, everyone else was afraid. I found the body and Dr Issa Salah came up to help.

We were carrying the corpse down the stairs when the Israelis fired on us. The bomb blast decapitated Dr. Issa. His head hit me in the back of my head . I thought I’d been hit by shrapnel or something. Now I’ve got shrapnel in my head, but its bone shrapnel, from Dr. Issa. And shrapnel in leg from the bomb blast.

In a society where nearly everyone suffers from the continuous Israeli attacks, invasions, and wars, venting is not easy, and going to a psychologist is not the norm.

“After the war, I became extremely, extremely nervous. I was agitated and got angry easily. Sometimes if someone was making noise or annoying me I’d want to hit them,” he says, still smiling his open smile.

“I was never rested. When I’d wake, I’d still feel like I hadn’t slept.

Until today, I still have nightmares from the war.

Having spoken with Abu Basel many times during and after the Israeli massacre of Gaza, I thought I’d heard most of his horror stories.

He is a calm man, when not driving the ambulance, and relates all his stories in the same laid-back tone, whether joyful or atrocious.

Upon request, he begins to recall some of the many dangers he was exposed to during the last Israeli attacks, not to mention the nearly 2 decades before that.

He recalls being with medics and 4 ambulances, 2 metres from the Al Kurdi house in the Jabaliya region when an F-16 bombed it.

“How in the world are you alive?” I ask.

“It’s in God’s hands,” he replies.

from the war on Gaza

We chat. He is friendly, a distant cousin of Jaber’s,  ready to help me if I need anything.

Offhandedly, hardly expecting me to notice, he mentions his house was destroyed, in May 2010…I suspect he is Jaber and Leila’s western neighbor and that I’d seen the ruins of their home post-Israeli military bulldozers and tanks, the day after their destruction.

He is benevolent smiles and confirmations:  yes, that was our house.

I remember the wreckage trail, from Leila and Jaber’s bulldozed vegetable crops and chicken/storage barn, to the dark brown, freshly –ravaged earth of his bulldozed land and home, he and his wife stoically standing in front of their ruins, Jaber and Leila beyond stoically sobbing at their third consecutive year of Israeli army invasion and destruction.

Now, a year but little change later he chats nonchalantly with me about his many losses.

“During the war (2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza), our house was bombed. My son,” he says, hands apart the length of an infant, “he was killed in their bombing.”

So now, three years and little relief later, he is headed out, to search for work outside of Gaza, if he can.

He looks older, over 40, meaning he stands a chance of being able to leave Gaza if the Egyptian authorities abide by their discrimination against Palestinians under-40 trying to leave Gaza.

“Life is hard. I’m going to search for work so we can re-build our home.” Algeria, Libya, Sudan…”Wherever, I’ll go wherever I must to find work.

He speaks with an easy smile and warmth, with humility borne of faith in God and of living for decades under occupation.

*The Amal Institute for Orphans cares for 120 of Gaza City’s orphans. 

GAZA CITY, Dec 23, 2011 (IPS) -By Eva Bartlett

Yousef walks barefoot into a children’s room with four beds and points to a snoopy-blanketed bed by the window. “That’s where I sleep,” he says. A red remote-controlled toy racecar sits atop a new mini-laptop. The closet is full of clothes, a pot of soup simmering on the gas range in the spacious kitchen, and the wooden dining table is piled with seasonal fruit.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of children in the Gaza Strip, the seven-year-old’s naked feet are not a result of poverty. Quite the opposite, his home in the Rafah-based SOS Children’s Village, run by an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), does not leave him wanting for shoes, clothes, school supplies, regular meals or a safe abode.

His home, one of 14 in the village hosting 111 orphans, is new, has plenty of natural light and is larger than the cramped refugee camp homes in which more than 75 percent of Gaza’s population lives.

Yousef, his brother, and his younger sister are among what Al Jazeera news cites as the Gaza Strip’s 53,000 orphans. Over 2,000 children more were orphaned during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza. An orphan here is defined as a child who has lost his father or both parents, as men are traditionally the income-generators in Gaza.

Yousef’s father died of natural causes, and his mother lost a leg after being injured during the war on Gaza. So Yousef and his siblings were more apt to join the increasing numbers of children selling trinkets in Gaza’s streets, or scouring dumps and streets for sellable recyclables.

“The family was already very poor. Now his mother has no income and no way to provide for her children,” says Samar, an employee at the SOS Rafah village. The children would not have finished school, she says, let alone have been cared for adequately.

With donations from groups and individual sponsors, children like Yousef are able to stay at the SOS village where they attend a nearby regular school, learn life skills for their future independence, and have their university tuition paid. Their medical needs are met, and they are encouraged to mingle with non- orphan children and to visit their real families on weekends.

“At any time their mothers can visit them here at the village,” says Samar. The need for such sponsorship, whether home-based or institute-based, is immense. Some programmes, like the Dar el Yateem association, sponsor orphans who remain in their families’ homes. With headquarters in Deir al Balah, Dar el Yateem has eight branches throughout the Strip which provide child sponsorship, transportation to schools, school uniforms and study materials, and daily meals for orphan children.

During Muslim holidays, the association gives food to the orphans and other impoverished families and organises activities for the children throughout the year.

Other Islamic charities throughout Gaza fill similar roles of basic child sponsorship and emergency assistance.

The needs of Gaza’s orphans have increased so dramatically over the years that many more international charities and NGOs are taking active roles in child sponsorship, extending the scope to widowed mothers.

“One of the problems we face is that people sometimes focus only on orphans whose parents were martyred by Israeli attacks,” says Hazem Sarraj, chairman of the Amal Institute for Orphans in Gaza City.

“But we have many more orphans whose parents died of natural causes or from reasons related to the siege imposed on Gaza. Many people in Gaza suffer from depression, due to our situation here. Some die from it.”

Other siege-related deaths include patients denied exit permits for treatment outside of Gaza, accidents and fires related to misuse of generators during the daily electricity outages, and men and youths killed in tunnel collapses or electrocution by poor wiring in the narrow tunnels.

“We have 120 orphans, ages five to 18, who live at our institute,” says Sarraj. “They eat and sleep here, go to regular schools, and visit their families on weekends.”

Until many countries cut ties with the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed its siege on Gaza in early 2006, the Amal Institute, established in 1949, was functioning well and expanding its programmes.

“All development in our institute has stopped since the siege,” says Sarraj. “The buildings we currently have we built with money from the Islamic bank and foreign NGOs and donors, before the blockade.”

The institute ensures the orphans’ needs are met financially, educationally, medically and socially. But Sarraj worries about the institute’s funding.

“Our means are very limited. Do you know what it takes to care for 120 orphans, to provide them food, clothes, medicine, and everything they need? We have to pay our employees’ salaries as well. We are independent, not political, but the siege is punishing us, our orphans. We used to receive more donations before the siege, but now we get very little.”

The institute continues to run under the siege, providing quality care and offering extras like the chance for orphans to study martial arts and music, and opening day programmes to more than 500 non-orphan children in the city. Like most societies helping orphans, counseling is given to address traumas Gaza’s children, particularly orphans, endure.

“Until now we are still suffering from the last war on Gaza,” says Hazem Sarraj. “We are living as though in a bad dream.”

*playground at the SOS Children’s Village-Rafah

Like the din of the few generators running in the harra (neighbourhood) or the last gasps of my low budget candle or the calls from mosques throughout the town –and surely the entire Strip –on the over 500 prisoners to be released from Israeli jails today (it’s 7 pm and they still haven’t been released. Another 5000 permanent prisoners, many of them still with 10 or more years of captivity, remained locked up and throughout the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, new prisoners –including youths accused of throwing stones at the heavily-armed Israeli occupation soldiers –are daily abducted from their homes and streets).

A clementine. From Gaza. Juicy, delicious, not picked early and sent halfway around the world. Not long ago Gaza was known for its wonderful citrus fruits, olives and dates. This clementine didn’t come from the Israeli bulldozer-ravaged border areas.

The flashlight my brother gave me: compact, a few dollars at army surplus, and so helpful in these blackouts when one has few candles.

The blankets we are lucky to have, many of them, to make up for the lack of any sort of heating in the house. And my wool socks from home.

The tent families who don’t have enough blankets, candles or likely any wool socks.

The families sitting like me in the dark (candle no more), bored to tears without one of the few pleasures they have: cheap TVs which broadcast cheap Turkish dramas. The majority of families won’t even have this, are listening to battery powered radios or, if lucky, sitting around a fire of bulldozed trees’ sippingh teeth-achingly sweet tea, a small glass per person and a lot of good humour despite it all.

The dark and generator hum lulls into drowsiness. Little left to do but sleep till the power comes back on and the laptop can re-charge.

This is the routine every 3rd evening, with the previous morning and afternoon’s cut power. Instead of planning around family schedules, many plan around power outages.

Most mornings are quiet, just bird calls, rooster crows, and footsteps of children leaving for the 7 am school start (they go early since 85% of schools in Gaza run on double shifts, for want of space for the students since more schools need to be built and those damaged or destroyed in Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza need to be repaired or re-built).

Often, Emad’s father is already awake and fiddling with the series of pumps (and generators if the power is already out) that bring town water to the various tanks that supply the 50-some people in this home.

And on any given day the aggravating buzz of Israeli drones or hum (or rush, depending on whether they low-fly) of Israeli warplanes is the elevator music background that all of us wish would just end already.

Today, Friday, the kids sleep in but most women rise early to get to Friday markets and stock up on the week’s produce.  For many it is a meagre shopping trip, bringing back essentials like onions, garlic, potatoes and tomatoes.  For those with more means, the bundles include hot peppers, plump and peppery radishes, cucumbers, eggplants and lemons.  Excesses, luxury amidst the 80% food aid dependency and consequent high rates of malnutrition (An estimated 75 % of Gaza’s children are malnourished and 30 % are stunted in growth. Food aid= flour, sugar, vegetable oil, rice) might include avacados when in season, eggs, carrots, sweet peppers, lettuce (80% of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on food-aid and live on less than $2 a day. [Prior to 2002, only 10 % of refugees were dependent on UN aid]).

In 2007, in the south Hebron Hills region of the occupied West Bank I lived with displaced families sheltering in tents made from scraps of cloth, plastic and tin.  Their diet was extremely simple and, were they not continually attacked by Israeli occupying soldiers and illegal Jewish colonists, would have been a well-rounded, nearly self-sufficient diet including milk, yogurt and cheeses made from their sheep and goats milk, olives and olive oil from their trees, cucumbers, tomatoes and cactus fruit when in season, and taboon bread, the sourdoughy, stone-baked bread that compliments za’atar or merrimea tea so well.

Every few mornings or so, women in Palestine make large batches of bread, hobbez as it is known here (pitta as it is known elsewhere).  In farming areas where farmers have grown and ground their own wheat, the bread is dark brown and dense, with a nutty flavour.

But most families get bleached white flour from the UN, and the pale doughy bread reflects this.  Like baguettes when steaming hot the bread is tasty but sadly nutritionally deficient. As many people don’t have ovens (or if they do, they might not have cooking gas), hobbez is cooked in outdoor taboon (which can be as lovely as a domed mud-brick oven or as ingenious as a metal barrel fitted with a sliding drawer, wood-fed fire stove) …

…or an electric hotplate. This is Emad’s mother’s choice cooker, which is one reason why baking batches of hobbez in one bout is more practical (do it while there’s electricity).

The excess bread is frozen and later thawed and toasted over a low flame.  In Nablus, nearby villages, and Azzoun I saw good reason aside from the practicality of making large amounts of bread at one time: when a lock-down (“curfew”) is imposed by the Israeli occupying army (meaning no one except the Israeli occupying army is allowed on the streets, not students, not the employed, not even medical workers), those with hobbez in the fridge fare better through lock-downs which sometimes last for days, even weeks, on end.

Like olives, bread has much meaning here, allowing families to survive through the regular invasions, or through the wars Israel wages on Gaza, but also being the main component of most meals, dipped in Palestine’s luscious olive oil, spooned into molocchriya (the tasty green soup favoured here), stuffed with dried za’atar for kids’ lunches, and whose aroma warms the home like any house where bread is baking. If only the flour used was flour ground by Palestine’s farmers as was decades ago, and the olive oil from the thousands of ancient olive trees razed over the years by the Israeli occupying army.

A typical Palestinian car interior (decor-wise. If speaking of the actual condition of cars, more typical are these). But as cluttered as most cars seem, with their numerous stuffed animals and dangling, flashing hearts and Cowboy Up stickers plastered on tattered windows (I have no idea why), this is the norm in Palestine.  In the occupied West Bank in 2007 I marveled at the same decor in serviises (shared mini-van taxis), surprised by such a feminine, childish touch, with a burly or devout man behind the wheel who more often than not used to have other work before taking to driving taxis. I’ve written before, but it bears repeating: for such an occupied people suffering for over 60 years of dispossession, assaults, imprisonment, and further dispossession, Palestinians are some of the most openly-loving, child-doting people I’ve ever encountered, even if their car decor is ridiculous.

Gaza’s most pleasurable place  (when ignoring the gross pollution –double meaning of gross–of the sea and the daily  Israeli occupying army’s naval assaults on Gaza’s brave fishers, also gross…).

GAZA CITY, Dec 9, 2011 (IPS) -By Eva Bartlett**

[re-published at Electronic Intifada]

“Taking our water is not like taking a toy. Water is life, they cannot play with our lives like this,” says Maher Najjar, deputy general director of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) of the recent Israeli threat to cut electricity, water and infrastructure services to the occupied Gaza Strip.

“Everything will be affected: drinking and washing water, sewage and sanitation, hospitals, schools and children,” says Ahmed al-Amrain, head of power information at the Palestinian Energy and National Resources Authority (PENRA).

The Israeli Electric Company provides 60 percent of the Strip’s needs, paid by Palestinian customs taxes collected by the Israeli authorities.

Gaza buys 5 percent from Egypt and tries to generate the remaining 35 percent at Gaza’s sole power plant, maimed by the 2006 Israeli bombing and destruction of its six transformers.

On Nov. 26, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, threatened to cut Israeli electricity, water and ties to Gaza‘s infrastructure serving the 1.6 million residents of the Gaza Strip. The threat is Israel’s reply to reconciliation efforts between rival parties Hamas and Fatah, which have held recent meetings in which they pledged to work towards forming a unity government.

“This is the true meaning of collective punishment,” says Jaber Wishah, deputy director for branches affairs at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). “Children, women, elderly, patients, students, all are subject to this threat.”

Following the 2006 democratic elections which brought Hamas to power, Israel has imposed an increasingly severe siege on the Strip, depriving Palestinians of most essential and basic goods, including livestock, medicines, machinery and replacement parts, and the industrial diesel needed to run the power plant.

“Israel has been steadily cutting electricity and destroying infrastructure over the years, but this is the first time they have explicitly threatened to fully cut everything,” says Wishah. “It is absurd to blackmail the population with their lives because of political issues.”

It is also illegal.

Wishah and Israeli rights group Gisha note that Israel continues to militarily occupy and control the Gaza Strip, despite the 2005 pullout of Israeli colonists and military bases from the Strip.

According to international law, Gisha says, Israel is responsible for the well-being of the Strip’s population, including ensuring electricity, water and a functioning infrastructure.

Under its siege, Israeli has since 2007 limited the amount of fuel and industrial diesel allowed to enter Gaza, resulting in daily power outages throughout the Strip, ranging from 8 to 12 hours, and interrupting water, sanitation, health and education services.

“Palestinian electricity technicians have asked Israeli government to repair a main line recently damaged, as has the Israeli Electric company. But the Israeli government refuses to do so,” says Ahmed al-Amrain.

“The lack of electricity, he says, “will oblige families to buy diesel for small generators indoors, which can lead to serious accidents and burns.”

More than 100 Palestinians died in 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, Oxfam reports, from generator- caused fires and carbon monoxide inhalation.

Generators do not suffice for hospitals, which need a constant supply of electricity.

While they allow some vital machinery to run during power outages, other services, like laundry, are not run on generators. “There is not enough electricity,” says Amrain. “They are for emergencies only and are made to run for short periods, not continuously. They are absolutely not an alternative solution for electricity in the Gaza Strip.”

“Generators are made to run for short periods, not continuously. They are absolutely not an alternative solution for electricity in the Gaza Strip.” Blood plasma, medicines, hospital food, even cadavers, as Gisha points out, need electricity to be maintained at appropriate temperatures.

“It will be a complete catastrophe if Israel cuts the electricity. Half of the population would not have access to water,” says Maher Najjar. Gaza has over the years suffered an increasingly alarming water crisis.

Currently 95 percent of the ground water is undrinkable according to WHO standards, which sets acceptable chloride (salinity) levels at 250 mg/liter. “Gaza’s average levels are between 800-1000 mg/l chloride due to sea water intrusion,” says Najjar.

The WHO reports that nitrates, believed to be carcinogenic, are over 330 mg/l in the Strip, far exceeding the 50 mg/l accepted levels.

The sea water intrusion into ground water sources is a consequence of both over-extraction of Gaza’s coastal aquifer and poor maintenance of the water lines, long-standing problems due to the Israeli occupation and siege of Gaza.

“Since 2000 we have had plans to repair and expand water projects in Gaza, but until now only about seven of 100 projects have been completed,” says Najjar.

Gisha notes that CMWU has been waiting for spare parts and materials, like pipes and filters, since June 2007, items banned by Israel under its siege on Gaza. This inability to maintain pipelines “caused an increase in rate of water loss in pipes from 30% in 2004 to 47% in 2009, increasing the need to pump more water,” reports Gisha, which in turn “is likely to speed up the depletion and salinization of the aquifer.”

According to Najjar, just 10 percent of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents get water every day. Another 40 percent get water every two days, 40 percent get water every three days, and 10 percent get water once every four days.

The inability to consistently pump well water to water lines is compounded by the obstruction of natural water flow from the occupied West Bank into Gaza.

“Israel has drilled over 1,000 wells around the Gaza Strip for their own use. They cut the water flow before it even reaches Gaza,” says Najjar.

While the amount of water supplied by Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, is just 5 percent, it is the threat of Israel cutting electricity and infrastructural needs that most haunts Gaza residents. “Chlorine is vital for our water treatment. Without it, we cannot pump a drop off water,” says Najjar.

Already, for want of adequate electricity and treatment facilities, up to 80 million litres of partially and non-treated sewage is pumped into Gaza’s sea daily, raising nitrate and fecal bacteria levels and contributing to water-borne diseases.

In 2008, the WHO reported dangerous levels of faecal bacteria along a third of Gaza’s coast. By 2010, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported that acute bloody diarrhoea and viral hepatitis remained the major causes of morbidity among refugees in the Strip.

“We need continuous electricity to pump waste-water from homes to sewage treatment plants,” says Najjar. “Generators substitute during power cuts, but without the regular supply of electricity, waste will flood the streets.”

In March 2007 (correction from previously stated August 2007), a sewage holding pool in Beit Lahiya overflowed, drowning five residents of the village nearby.

Hamas maintains that it would accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. These are borders which Israel has yet to define and continues to blur with expanding illegal Jewish settlements and occupation of Palestinian land.

“I think the Israelis are serious with their threat,” says Wishah, “because they don’t pay any attention to the international opinion, nor to international laws and conventions, like the Geneva Conventions, that they’ve signed, which forbid collective punishment. They feel they are above the law and beyond any legal pursuit.”

**[blog version longer than published version]

*Umm Nasser village, flooded by sewage in 2007 (photo: Mohammed Omar, Rafah Today)

*Umm Nasser village, flooded by sewage in 2007 (photo: Mohammed Omar, Rafah Today)

see also:

Attack on Water Brings Sanitation Crisis

Red Lines Crossed: Destruction of Gaza’s Infrastructure

A Sewage Tsunami Hits Northern Gaza

Israel’s control of the airspace and the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip