The catastrophe of the Bedouin village, Um Nasser, is long past its short moment in the world’s spotlight. Yet, here nothing has changed since that dreadful day just over two months ago. The people are living in tents along the side of a hill at the top of which rests a tank. During my visit there planes flew overhead and a surveillance balloon hung in the air filming our every move there. For Salim Abu Eteq every step is recorded, every motion noticed. At night when homemade projectiles are launched into Israel from Gaza just west of the village, the tank on the hill constantly fires its shells over the heads of the villagers below.
Salim’s home was destroyed in Beit Hanoun when he lived there a few years ago, so he moved to Um Nasser. Here his home was hit by an Israeli missile that was meant for his neighbor’s home. So he moved his family into a shack. This shack is what was wiped out when the sewage flood came on March 27th. His mother and 1 year old boy were killed that day. When I met Salim just days later, he was taking refuge in a UN tent with the survivors of his family. Today, he is afraid to reach even that tent with the tank located just hundreds of meters away.
But the world has forgotten.
He kept insisting to visit me in my home, inside I cringed. How can I host this man in my home with walls, a full fridge, comfortable bed, a guest room and couches, with a door that locks at night? How can I?
I diverted the course of the conversation. The stench of sewage filled the air and I longed for the comfort of the van I would be driving home in.
Showing posts with label bedouin village. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bedouin village. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Like 1948
The girl pointed to her throat and made a mark where the water had reached answering a question that was never posed. Two weeks after a flood of sewage wiped away parts of the Bedouin village in Northern Gaza the three little girls I encountered, along with 250 other displaced families are living in tents, like 1948.
I was there to distribute parcels to 20 families containing just a few of the vital needs, clothes, shoes and baby’s milk. One woman exclaimed, “the world has forgotten us,” she lost everything in the flood, her home, her kitchen, the children’s clothes. They were left with the clothes on their back. She was, like her ancestors, living on the floor, in a tent, with “UN” stamped in blue letters, with a small gas stove and a few mattresses, her kids roaming the desert hills all around, like 1948.
Wasfi Al-Abraq’s home was one of the first to go. He was tending his field when the floods came. He wasn’t able to reach his children and wife. They managed to escape through the back of the house, but not much was left of it. The walls have crumbled, electricity sockets and light switches remain at knee level because of the swamp of sewage and sand that entered and remained in Wasfi’s home. The small tent provided by the UN didn’t provide enough shelter for Wasfi, his wife and eight children. So they built a shack adjacent to the tent, like 1948.
Dozens of homes collapsed, cars were crushed, fields gone, cupboards, kitchens, bedrooms, furniture, all beyond use. Graffiti on the walls of a shell of a house said “in the past we had a home,” another wall read, “here drowned the child, Jamal.”
The existence of elderly women living on the hot dessert ground, children brushing their teeth at public faucets, roaming spaces of donkeys and goats doubling as a neighborhood playground and shacks and tents void of food, clothes and really much of anything, all posed the question, what lead to this?
The place felt like a camp created for famine victims escaping a drought and yet this calamity was man-made. What are the 5000 inhabitants of the Bedouin village actually doing next to massive pools of sewage that like this last one could break because they are overused? These families who once roamed the Negev dessert to practice their trade raising livestock were one day herded into the tiny space of Um Nasser, the Bedouin village. Their rights robbed on behalf of the rights of others, in 1948.
The tents on those hills and the displaced people within them are a hollow echo of those fateful days of 1948.
They are a stark reminder to the world of a past that is easier forgotten.
I was there to distribute parcels to 20 families containing just a few of the vital needs, clothes, shoes and baby’s milk. One woman exclaimed, “the world has forgotten us,” she lost everything in the flood, her home, her kitchen, the children’s clothes. They were left with the clothes on their back. She was, like her ancestors, living on the floor, in a tent, with “UN” stamped in blue letters, with a small gas stove and a few mattresses, her kids roaming the desert hills all around, like 1948.Wasfi Al-Abraq’s home was one of the first to go. He was tending his field when the floods came. He wasn’t able to reach his children and wife. They managed to escape through the back of the house, but not much was left of it. The walls have crumbled, electricity sockets and light switches remain at knee level because of the swamp of sewage and sand that entered and remained in Wasfi’s home. The small tent provided by the UN didn’t provide enough shelter for Wasfi, his wife and eight children. So they built a shack adjacent to the tent, like 1948.
Dozens of homes collapsed, cars were crushed, fields gone, cupboards, kitchens, bedrooms, furniture, all beyond use. Graffiti on the walls of a shell of a house said “in the past we had a home,” another wall read, “here drowned the child, Jamal.”
The existence of elderly women living on the hot dessert ground, children brushing their teeth at public faucets, roaming spaces of donkeys and goats doubling as a neighborhood playground and shacks and tents void of food, clothes and really much of anything, all posed the question, what lead to this?The place felt like a camp created for famine victims escaping a drought and yet this calamity was man-made. What are the 5000 inhabitants of the Bedouin village actually doing next to massive pools of sewage that like this last one could break because they are overused? These families who once roamed the Negev dessert to practice their trade raising livestock were one day herded into the tiny space of Um Nasser, the Bedouin village. Their rights robbed on behalf of the rights of others, in 1948.
The tents on those hills and the displaced people within them are a hollow echo of those fateful days of 1948.They are a stark reminder to the world of a past that is easier forgotten.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Bedouin Village: 21st Century Ghetto.
At 9am on Tuesday morning sewage flooded a section of the Bedouin village North of the Gaza Strip.
The village is surrounded in the North by a border with Israel and large pools of sewage in the South. The pools take up 350.000m2.
The pools were built in 1976 under Israeli military order. They were constructed over the purest water aquifer in the Gaza Strip and have begun to seep into the aquifer, creating huge risk of polluting water in Gaza.
Four people were killed on Tuesday, including two young children and an older woman who were swept away in the sewage.
The pools were built to serve 50,000 people, by 2003 they were being used by over 200,000. In 2006 a separate pool was built on a hill over the village to which overflowing sewage was pumped.
On Tuesday morning the pool broke, causing the sewage to flood into the village in the valley below. According to a villager the water reached 3 meters in some places.
The Palestinian Authority has long been warned that this environmental crisis needs to be addressed. This situation was not made a priority.
Israel on the other hand continues to prevent building materials from entering the Gaza Strip.
Such a catastrophe brings to light Israel’s unwillingness to take the responsibilities it is required to as an occupying nation.
The Bedouin Village is the 21st Century ghetto.
the sewage pools
The sewage ran down this hill and flooded the valley below
Homes and shops are flooded
destroyed shacks 
A collective funeral tent
Sand is pilled in front of homes to prevent further flooding
returning to 1948: refugees yet again
The village is surrounded in the North by a border with Israel and large pools of sewage in the South. The pools take up 350.000m2.
The pools were built in 1976 under Israeli military order. They were constructed over the purest water aquifer in the Gaza Strip and have begun to seep into the aquifer, creating huge risk of polluting water in Gaza.
Four people were killed on Tuesday, including two young children and an older woman who were swept away in the sewage.
The pools were built to serve 50,000 people, by 2003 they were being used by over 200,000. In 2006 a separate pool was built on a hill over the village to which overflowing sewage was pumped.
On Tuesday morning the pool broke, causing the sewage to flood into the village in the valley below. According to a villager the water reached 3 meters in some places.
The Palestinian Authority has long been warned that this environmental crisis needs to be addressed. This situation was not made a priority.
Israel on the other hand continues to prevent building materials from entering the Gaza Strip.
Such a catastrophe brings to light Israel’s unwillingness to take the responsibilities it is required to as an occupying nation.
The Bedouin Village is the 21st Century ghetto.
the sewage pools 
The sewage ran down this hill and flooded the valley below
Homes and shops are flooded
destroyed shacks 
A collective funeral tent 
Sand is pilled in front of homes to prevent further flooding
returning to 1948: refugees yet again
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