Gaza in a Cage.

Yasir lives in a prison.

In March 2007 Yasir and his father were caught in crossfire between Palestinian factions as they were walking home. A bullet hit Yasir’s spine leaving him crippled from the neck down.

Yasir’s prison is his body.

Since that day Yasir has lived in various ICUs in Gaza City. Daily, the injured enter and leave the hospital around him; many of them leave dead. Yasir is ten years old and very aware of what goes on around him. During his one-month rehabilitation stay in Israel he learned to speak despite his new condition. His sentences are short and barely audible, but he speaks.

Yasir is limited to the inside of a hospital intensive care unit, not unlike the community beyond the walls of his room.

Gaza exists in a cage.

With the very rare exception Gazans are unable to travel beyond the borders designated to the “Gaza Strip” by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. People are transported in and out of the Gaza Strip to better medical facilaties, often due to deadly attacks by a neighboring state and its strangling siege that, not unlike Yasir, is causing Gazans to experience a slow death. They too raise their voice, but it is only barely heard, their cry for help rarely reaching beyond the walls that encage them.

Gaza’s cage is the double-standard of a silent world.

The gates to those walls have grown increasingly sealed shut over the past two years. The source of this act is a people voicing their opinion in a democratic election that the world’s sole superpower, the USA strongly supported and heralded. Subsequently the election outcome was renounced and Gaza’s inhabitants collectively punished for an opinion the world did not approve of. One may criticize the views of a political party, but to punish a whole people for the vote of the majority is untenable by the international law standards of our time.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said,

Israel must immediately either withdraw from the Gaza Strip completely, thus handing over control of the Rafah border to Palestinian and Egyptian officials: or else Israel must acknowledge its continuing occupation of the Gaza Strip, and, as an Occupying Power, act upon its legal obligation to establish an orderly and transparent mechanism, mediated by an independent third party, that will guarantee freedom of movement for the people of the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday one of those walls came down, whether legally or illegally, it came down and raised the voice of a people strangled by the injustice of a world community that turns a blind eye to injustice. Although it is chaos that has followed, slightly enlarging the size of this cage, the crumbled walls sound out the hypocrisy of a world that remains silent in the light of its two-faced disposition.

Yasir is waiting for a donation for his family to purchase the medical equipment that will allow him to move out of the ICU and back into his home.

Gaza is waiting to one day be given the chance to be free, to create a home to live like people do all across the world; not within closed walls.

Zoo Break

The metal wall that stood between Gaza and Egypt is folded over like a piece of paper.

Yesterday a group of women massed at the Rafah terminal crossing that has been sealed shut with only two exceptions of a few hours since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

At 2am the border was stormed and from that time on the population across the entire Gaza Strip has been thinning out as people young and old head to the border.

Why?

To get a breath of fresh air, to see something different, to take their sick to the hospital and buy food and household goods.

Two nights ago Nusseirat camp where I was visiting was out of candles and electricity had been out since the night before.

It is hard to find public transportation as taxis and buses are all heading South, just to get out.

For now electricity is back for hours at a time. Israel allowed in enough gas to restart Gaza City’s main power plant and hospitals but none for gas stations. They remain closed.

Despite the shortage, vehicles are running. Today prices to Rafah are double for a space on the back of a truck what they were for a seat in a taxi yesterday.

Escaping from this cage of boredom is being done at any price.

The increased siege over the past week finally caused an explosion.

Cigarettes are down from 20 shekels to 7.

The bakeries have flour to make bread.


image 1: AP

1:57

1:57 minutes we have left before the power is shut off in all of Gaza. Most of the power lines from Gaza’s main electricity station have already run dry, two lines remain.

Dr Attallah pointed out that the siege on Iraq lasted two years and then they attacked it. Maybe tonight its Gaza’s turn?

People are panicking and buying up what is left to buy. In less than two hours we wait in the dark to see what is to come.

Two nights ago I spent at Jamal’s place in Beit Lahya refugee camp. It was freezing. Jamal and I got there at 10:30pm knowing that electricity had been out all evening and that it would return some time then. We found his wife Salwa and Maysa, Haitham, Majid and 2 year old Abdullah huddled around a fire. Maysa said they had been there since 5pm. We joined them until Salwa prepared us dinner at which point we moved in doors and used their electric pot, which they use to bake bread turned upside down as a makeshift heater.

Tonight they won’t have the heater and Gaza is out of wood for their fire.

Good night Gaza

My driver tonight informed me all gas stations in Gaza are out of gas. All gas in Gaza enters via Israel, which directly or indirectly controls all of Gaza’s borders. Two days ago Israel allowed the last shipment in.

Yesterday, an empty government building was bombed by an F-16. Over forty civilians were wounded, mainly children. One woman was killed. Most of them were near the building attending a wedding. This incident was a no-no for Israel, but in the overall equation it has already been forgotten, today the world of breaking news is on to bigger and better events. The children with charred faces, one family with a mother less, mourn on. But even they, are already getting used to the matter. They have no other choice.

In Gaza weddings often turn into funerals.

The UN’s food aid trucks are being prevented from entering Gaza as well. This zoo is closed for a few days and its inhabitants will have to wait until its keepers consider letting in the bare necessities.

Bakeries have closed, they are out of flour.

The absurdity of the matter is that Gaza’s keepers will eventually let food and gas in because a humanitarian disaster that draws too much attention is of no benefit to any entertainment park’s administration. So it is only a matter of days till the bakeries are happily selling bread again. Until then, everyone will make due because they too know that a zoo with no feed may actually make a headline or two.

With a much increased siege since June of 2007 there is no cement in Gaza. These days graves, which here are usually covered with cement, are laid over with asbestos or scrap metal.

Electricity comes and goes but tonight I have the honor of turning off my own lights as I go to sleep.

Good night.

Gaza Zoo closed

Christians stream out of Gaza for Christmas

EREZ BORDER CROSSING, Gaza Strip (AFP) — Hundreds of Christians in Gaza flocked to the heavily armed crossing with Israel on Monday after securing permission to leave the Hamas-run territory for Christmas.

Married couples laden with suitcases and young children, teenagers with parents, and grandparents wrapped up against the chill struggled to walk unaided on the long muddy path from the main road to the Erez checkpoint.

Most were hoping to pray on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, the small town in the West Bank where the Bible says Jesus was born. Others were hoping to visit relatives in the occupied West Bank, Israel or Jerusalem.

"We only got the permission last night. It took a month to come through, so then we had to immediately prepare everything and pack," said Rania Sabieh, guarding the luggage and her two children as her husband went to register.

"We're going to Bethlehem to pray. For one week. We have friends there, but then we'll come back to Gaza. My husband doesn't have a job but the children need to go back to school here," said Rania.

Israel has imposed a total closure on Gaza since Hamas -- a radical Islamist movement officially sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state -- seized armed control of the territory six months ago, routing Palestinian moderates.

Declaring the territory a "hostile entity", Israel has imposed cuts on fuel deliveries and allows in only essential humanitarian supplies.

The United Nations has warned that Israeli restrictions on Gaza are pushing the local economy to the brink of collapse.

Israel has granted permits to 520 of about 3,500 Christians living in Gaza to leave in order to celebrate Christmas and the New Year in Israel and the West Bank until January 2.

"Today we are coordinating for more than 500 Christians in Gaza to go to Israel and the West Bank for the Christmas celebrations," Israeli Colonel Meir Press told AFP by telephone.

"The Christians will be leaving today. It's a special privilege," said Shadi Yassin, spokesman for the Israeli military administration.

"They will be receiving a special permit that allows them to travel between the West Bank and Israel freely and that way they can celebrate and participate in Christmas and New Year as they choose," he said.

Exchanging Donkeys for Cars

Donald McIntyre for the Independent,

For, while working donkeys have been bought and sold in Gaza since before Samson pulled down the Philistines' temple, it is a long time since they have been as valuable as they are now. Prices have risen, according to the traders, by up to 60 per cent since Israel closed off the enclave after Hamas's enforced takeover of the Strip almost six months ago.

Yet despite that – and, he says, that the donkey feed has also gone up from five to 15 shekels (£1.95) a day since June – Mr Sabour has decided it makes sense to sell his car and buy the creature instead. The unemployed Mr Dabour has sold his car and now intends to use a donkey and cart to sell cucumbers, onions and other vegetables door to door. "There are no jobs here, so I am going to create my own work," he said.

read on

Hamas Advisor's letter to Condoleezza Rice

"Your predecessor General Collin Powell stated that the U.S. has to find a way to engage with Hamas because it won the Palestinian elections and it continues to enjoy support among a large portion of the Palestinian people. He did not make that statement because he is less of an American or less committed to the service of America. He simply practiced at home what you are preaching about democracy abroad.

If you were even-handed in this conflict, if you engaged with us openly then the chances of peace would dramatically increase. As it is, you are setting yourself up for failure and with that failure will come more pain and anguish for the Palestinian people, a further colonization of our lands and a blank space in history for the Bush administration's role in making peace in the Middle East."

read the rest of Ahmed Yousef's letter

Today in Gaza

Cutting the Power in Tel Aviv

Notice that appeared on doors of homes in Tel Aviv Today:

"Cutting power is a step taken when no other alternatives remain, and one we are forced to take given the presence, in your city, of neighborhoods full of headquarters of an army that carries out war crimes and harms civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Out of humanitarian concerns, the power cuts will not be total, and we will leave it to your discretion whether to divert the remaining electricity to hospitals, the sewage system, or private homes."

read on