Letter from Gaza

This is the innocent boy which the parent was killed by the IsraHellian zionist...

This is..

A Letter from Gaza

I wonder how the people in the different countries imagine the Palestinian who lives under this severe siege imposed by one of the most powerful armies in the world.

In the following lines, I am not going to exaggerate or write a fiction story. I am going to tell a part of my life in this specific time period as an example of the Palestinian who lives in a camp for the second generation, missing the conditions for the human being’s life that are wanted by every person, and how I am now living under the terror of nightly shelling and the “closure” that is now so strong it must be called “siege” like in the Middle Ages.

I am Palestinian, and I live in the western camp that is next to Khan Yunis city, in the southern Gaza Strip. My house is located 250 meters from the junction of the main camp road and the road for the Israeli settlement of Neveh Dakalem. This junction is known by the media as “El-Tuffah Passage.” It used to be a “joint checkpoint,” where for six years, Israeli and Palestinian security worked side by side. Now it is only Israelis, and it is guarded by tanks. This camp’s streets are all sand and the roads between the buildings are not even real streets, they are not developed yet. I can see the Israeli soldiers every time, whenever I open my front window, but nowadays I can’t stand to have a look, even I can’t open it because one of the bullets passed the front window. It was on 13 November, I will not forget. It stopped in the opposite wall, my mother was sitting close to where the bullet stopped.  

I live with my parents, my wife and my two kids named Nour, 15 months old, and Mohamed, 4 months old. My home contains 3 bedrooms, one kitchen, and a bath. Its roof is made by plastics and this means that my home can’t stay facing and receiving more bullets and rockets. At the moment we already have holes in the roof, the front walls, the bullet that passed the front window. 

I am a human rights activist. I work at Al-Dameer Association for human rights, based in Gaza City, which is supporting the rights of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and also in Palestinians ones. I am not dealing with my job as just any kind of job, but I am doing it because I believe in the message of human rights, because I’m a human being and I have my own experience: I spent two years in the Israeli jails during the first intifada, I was tortured by the Israeli soldiers, and I am prevented to go to the West Bank or to pass the “Green Line” into Israel. So I am staying in Gaza Strip, trying to defend the victims every where.

Sahar is my wife. She works in Gaza City also. She is computer specialist and works at the state information service as a chief of the computer section.  And this makes us to leave our two kids at nursery near my home in Khan Yunis camp. We go together every day. We must pass the Israeli checkpoints along the main road to Gaza, both of us afraid to think what would happen if any Israeli soldier shot toward us. This has happened during the last weeks, and this is happening now in these days. Before this Intifada we were passing the Israeli and joint patrol checkpoints, but they did not make troubles to us. It is completely different now. 

In one place, from the entrance to the Gush Katif Israeli settlement to the curve called Abu Holly near Deir Al-Balah city, a distance of about one-kilometer, we have to pass under the Israeli tanks with heavy guns. There are four tanks and every one has three heavy guns, and four armed soldiers. We feel that this kilometer is longer than 20 kilometers. After passing we start to think about going back later in the day, and what we will do if the Israeli soldiers close the roads and impose us to stay far from our kids? It happened one month ago, while coming back from work, the Israeli soldiers closed the road to khan Yunis and we stayed three hours until they opened it. We thought that they will close it for couple of days, my parents started to call us, the nursery waited us till 5 o’clock in the afternoon and we were in a very bad condition. How are we going to stay without seeing Nour and Mohamed? Who will take care of them like us, and how many times the road will be closed and for how many days. Many questions come to our minds, and also my parents who imagine the same questions and more “they have the parents hurts.”

And the suffering continues at nights when the random shooting and shelling starts. At this time we start to think how to protect our two kids, my parents and ourselves. The catastrophe is that the Israeli soldiers usually start shooting at nights without any justification. They shoot when they hear the adthan, the call to sunset prayer from the mosque loudspeakers, or at other times with no provoking shooting from Palestinians, it is just whenever they want to practice terror against the civilians.  

Where shall we go far away from the daily bullets and the tear gas? The Israel soldiers shoot tear gas and we faced this several times.  They shot near my home and inside the house of some of neighbors. We were very terrified and did know how to protect our kids, so we protected them inside the room but at the moment we also knew that the room could not protect them. But what shall we do?

Instead of spending good time with the kids, they suffer. They need to play with their toys and they have the right to play with their parents inside the home or out side, but the situation does not allow to them to do so, that is why they suffer without feeling, but we ourselves who know their suffering from the night’s transfer, mostly, we spend the nights at my sister’s home where she lives in the eastern part of Khan Yunis, where it feels more safe.

These conditions influence us negatively whether in our acting or in our psychological terms. I went to doctors more than 30 times to check my health and I did many medical tests with normal results, but because of the daily suffering, I feel that I am not active or have some damage to my health. Moreover, I am not doing well in my work as in the past, it is unbelievable to going on while seeing the killing, shelling, bulldozer of the many farms all over Gaza Strip, and the closure that does not have any end we see. It would not be if there were no occupation, and no practicing evil from one man to his brother. For that is what we are, and how it comes to this? Why the world does not live in peace co-existence?

Why this war? Why does so much of the rest of the world spend enjoyable life thinking how to develop their life at the moment we live in this condition?

Finally, the most important question is, when this suffering will be ended? And by whom?

I think that the Israeli government can make an end to the conflict, by recognizing the Palestinians’ rights under international law and the resolutions of the United Nations and implementing other international conventions, and at the same time the Palestinian Authority must do the best in order to achieve the peace. The international community and especially the United States is if they want to impose the Israeli government to obey the world calling for peaceful co-existence. We of the first intifada generation did not live our childhood or our youth here in Gaza Strip, not like in other countries. And now it is not clear at all that we may live any beautiful days that we can talk about to the coming generations.

Written by: khalil Abu shammala

Director of AL-Dameer Association For Human Rights

Gaza.

Telefax: +9727-2826660

Tel: +9727-2840661

Email: aldameer@p-i-s.com