My diary from Gaza

By Andy Slaughter

UPDATE:

Friday 20th February: Tel Aviv – 12:28 pm, Fri 20th Feb 2009

Last night we had dinner with Jocelyn Hurndall. Jocelyn’s son Tom was deliberately shot by an Israeli sniper while protecting children in Gaza in 2003. She now works in the UK for the Palestinian University and was in Jereusalem to look at some of their projects and is now a tireless campaigner for the Palestinian cause. This morning we were in the old city of Jereusalem and saw where the Israeli settlers have occupied parts of buildings in the Muslim quarter and met UNWRA to discuss their 60th anniversary this year. Now we are at Ben Gurion airport and on our way back to the UK.

Next week we will be briefing Parliamentarians on what we have seen and I’ve been granted an adjournment debate next Wednesday in the House of Commons on the continuing need for aid to Gaza. This was a highly informative trip and I am very grateful to the Welfare Association who funded it, CAABU and Richard Burden MP’s office who organised it.

Jerusalem – 4:02 pm, Thursday 19th February

This morning we were taken on a tour of the Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem by Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization. Although all settlements are illegal under international law there are over 190,000 Israelis living in 64,000 properties in the area the Israelis call East Jerusalem, and we were taken today to see evidence on the ground of plans to massively expand settlement building to form a ring around the Palestinian old city. This will also have the effect of cutting the West Bank in two.

On our way into the city to meet with OCHA (the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and, later, the British Consul-General, we came across a group of Palestinians who had been evicted from their homes. 28 Palestinian families who were “temporarily” housed by the UN in 1956 having been made refugees in the 1948 war are now being evicted by Israeli forces to make way for religious Jewish settlers who claim the area is of religious significance.

While we were there, an elderly woman who is living in a tent as near as possible to her former home received a telephone call from the Israeli police to let her know that they were coming to demolish her tent – for the fifth time.

UPDATE:

Ramallah – 5.18 pm, Wednesday 18th February:

After meeting human rights organizations in Gaza , we made the trip to the West Bank . It only took us three hours to clear the border this time, but given that there were fewer than a dozen people trying to get through and the Israeli processing centre can take 700 people per hour, we thought this was excessive.

Today, we toured small businesses on the West Bank – self help and self sufficiency smallholdings, to help people in times of shortage, and small factories (which, unfortunately, are virtually shut down because of the blockade). We also saw more evidence of the barrier being built through Palestinian land: this both destroys thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland, and cuts the land off from the villagers who own it. It also allows the Israelis to build illegal settlements on the West Bank , which we saw was still happening, and prevents almost any free movement by Palestinians.

This afternoon, we were granted an hour and a half’s audience with Prime Minister Fayyad, who told us about his hopes for a Transitional Government to reunite the West Bank and Gaza and urged Britain and the EU to put pressure on Israel , both in relation to its military aggression and its economic strangulation of the occupied territories.

UPDATE:

Gaza City – Tuesday 17th February

Just about to set off for the crossing back into Israel, as we have been told they are closing it early, and one of the two MPs who crossed yesterday was held up for several hours. Tonight we are going to Ramallah on the West Bank to begin meetings with the Palestinian Authority.

This morning we were again the guests of the Welfare Association, a major Palestinian aid charity. We visited a new, £5m hospital which was due to open on the 1st Jan: the Al-Wafa, which has been heavily damaged by Israeli helicopter and shell fire, rendering it unusable.

We also visited what should be a new sewage pumping station, which cannot be built because of the complete prohibition on building materials coming into the Gaza Strip in the last two years. As a result, most of the drinking water is contaminated and sewage is flowing straight into the sea. We made an unscheduled stop on the way back at the Palestinian Parliament building, which (for no apparent reason) was completely destroyed by Israeli F16s on the third day of the attack…

UPDATE: Gaza City – 5:38 pm, Monday 16th February 2009

An incredibly hectic and harrowing day: we began with a visit to a kindergarten partly collapsed when the police station next door was bombed. But while this might be seen as “collateral damage”, what we saw next utterly horrified us – whole villages such as Beit Haynoum and Abn Rabo, which had been flattened first by F16s then bulldozed with dynamite.

We visited the Al-Qudz hospital, a major which was bombed it seems with white phosphorous shells and had to be evacuated (including the intensive care unit).

The main business district in Gaza has been annihilated: over 650 major businesses over the Gaza strip have been destroyed by the Israeli action. Finally, we visited the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), whose own warehouses of food and medicine were bombed by the Israelis.

UPDATE: Gaza City – 10:17 pm, Sunday 15th February, 2009

While it was still daylight, our hosts (the Welfare Association) took us to see some of the devastation in Gaza city and to hear eyewitness accounts from women and children caught in the fighting. We visited the Quattan children’s centre, which remains a fantastic £7m resource centre for all of the children of Northern Gaza.

It opened two years ago – five years late, because of the Israeli blockade. There we heard from a member of the al-Saloumi family, 35 members of which were killed in one Israeli attack. We also visited the Gaza Music School, a newly opened facility for children aged 7-12 years that was totally destroyed by bombing on the first day of the Israeli aggression.

UPDATE:

Erez – 1:42 pm, Sunday 15th February, 2009

After 6 hours at the checkpoint, we have finally been allowed through and have been delivered to our hotel in Gaza City by the UN. We have driven past a number of bomb sites, including the Police HQ where an attack on the first day of the incursion during a parade by new police cadets killed over 100 people.

We are staying by the beach – this might sound pleasant, but in Gaza, this means that the locals were subjected to bombardment by sea as well as by tanks on the land border. This continued for 20 days. Our hosts are the Welfare Association – a humanitarian relief agency, run by expat Palestinians. We are shortly to be taken to see some of their rescue and rehabilitation projects. I’ll let you know what we see….

Erez – 11:58 am, Sunday 15th February, 2009

It is noon. We have been waiting about three and a half hours to enter Gaza. Erez is supposed to be the main crossing point for people and, situated at the north-east corner of the Strip, is the entry point closest to the West Bank. There is an airport terminal sized processing centre, but it is completely deserted.

The Israeli officer on duty at the border post said our papers were still being processed (after a week) and we have retired to a coffee bar about a mile away. We met Aidan O’Leary the deputy head of UNWRA (United Nations Welfare and Relief Agency) who told us it could be along wait.

Saturday 14 February – Ashkelon

It is 6pm Jerusalem time and we are just arrived at the Dan Gardens Hotel in Ashkelon. I left Shepherds Bush at 4.30am this morning but, apart from a short period of detention for our CAABU (Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding) rep at Ben Gurion Airport, a hassle-free journey.

Ashkelon feels like an out-of-season holiday resort (which is what it is). It is one of the towns that came within range of missiles fired from inside Gaza recently. But other than some faded warning posters on a bus shelter, there is no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

A curious place to spend Valentine’s Day.