From Gaza with love

Dr. Mona El-Farra, Middle East Children’s Alliance director of Gaza Projects, is a physician by training and a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice in the occupied Gaza Strip. She wrote the following on 11 July.

Where shall I start?

Shall I start with the numbers, which keep increasing and changing? Ninety killed, mainly civilians. Six hundred injured. One hundred and forty demolished homes.

Or should I start by mentioning all the different areas of the Gaza Strip that have been constantly hit, day and night? Nonstop. If it is only about numbers, then let me tell you all about thousands of Palestinian children who are terrified night after night, day after day, by the sounds of the Israeli shelling. The children have deep feelings of insecurity when it is dark. And no shelters.

The Israeli army has restarted its punitive home demolition policy, illegal under international law. Yesterday a six-storey building where my relatives live in Khan Younis was hit and levelled to the ground. One hundred and six relatives were made homeless. Even if the Israeli army’s goal was to punish one of the Hamas activists, there is no justification for this cruel, brutal and collective punishment.

Eight members of the Kawarea family were killed in Khan Younis when the jet fighters destroyed their home. The Israeli army spokesman said: sorry, it was a mistake.

What a gentle, well-behaved and civilised army.

Walking through the streets of Gaza City, where I live, can be a real nightmare. The drones and jet fighters are in the sky, and you cannot anticipate what will happen in the next minute. Are they going to target a car behind you or in front of you? Will you be caught in the blast? Will others be dying right that minute somewhere else? Will others be forced to leave their home in five minutes only to be bombed two minutes later?

Yet, despite the fear, I had to go to the Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip to be with the medical emergency team and help as much as I could. This morning we received an injured deaf young man from Jabalia. He was working in a farm that was hit. Tens of cows and sheep were killed too.

I am so tired and sleepless. I don’t feel settled outside my home, despite the generosity of my friends who are hosting me. But my building, my neighbourhood, are too unsafe. Nowhere is safe, but, with intense shelling nearby and broken windows, I had to leave.

The shelling is continuous, crazy and everywhere. Warships fire missiles against the beach in Gaza City. Rafah town is under severe missile shelling; 10 people in Rafah were killed when their home was levelled by a US-made F16.

The UN agency that runs schools and clinics for Palestinian refugees opened its schools to receive homeless people from different areas. Now larger numbers of people will drink from MECA [Middle East Children’s Alliance] water purification units.Nobody is asleep in Gaza. No place is safe. The Israeli military attacks are coming from every direction.

From Gaza with love.

[First published at Gaza’s Ark – gazaark.org.]