The Dominion - Egypt

Forgotten at the Gaza-Egypt Border

hillarybain — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:53:17 +0000

"His father died this morning," a hotel guest explained, gesturing to Raed, slumped and silent in his chair, face long.

It was Wednesday, August 20 in Sinai's al-Arish, a town about 50 kilometers west of the Gaza-Egypt border. Two days earlier, the approximately 450 Palestinians who had been waiting to enter Gaza were finally supposed to be permitted entry. Days before, the announcement had been made that the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza would open to allow passage into and out of Gaza. Many of the Palestinians at al-Arish had been waiting since the beginning of June for the border to open. Others had been exiled for over a year, outside of Gaza when Egypt sealed the border shut following Hamas' taking control of Gaza in June 2007.

Silenced and out of the international spotlight, the Palestinians waiting in al-Arish said that their plight at the closed crossing is either ignored or politicized. Many were running out of money, while others had completely run out, having waited for the opening of Rafah for weeks without earning an income. Approximately 200 of the Palestinians who waited to re-enter Gaza were in dire financial circumstances, many borrowing money, others begging, some sleeping in the streets.

Many came from countries where they hold work permits, taking vacation time to visit family not seen in years. "We risk losing our jobs and our residency permits," explained Mahmoud, a 28-year-old truck driver now living in Sweden. "Otherwise, we must leave Egypt without having seen our families in Gaza," he said. "We are now merely running on hope and faith that the border will open one day," added 22-year-old Sameh (not his real name), from Gaza's northern Jabaliya refugee camp and formerly a student at one of Cairo's universities.

There appears to be little support from the Palestinian Authority and its diplomats in Cairo. Many Palestinians who arrive to al-Arish have no idea how they can enter Gaza, asking others in the same situation or even foreign journalists for advice and help. The lucky are directed to the PA representative in al-Arish, who adds their name and passport information to the long list of those waiting. Some, however, feel it makes little difference if their name is on the list.

Waiting

"I've been waiting for two months now," said Sameh, the university student who hoped to continue his studies in Gaza. "I put my name on the list right away, but it didn't achieve anything. We've been told repeatedly that the border will open soon, but weeks have passed and here we are still here, wasting our money. No one is looking out for us, not our own representatives, not the Egyptian authorities," he added.

"I've been here since July 23," explained Muhammad, who left Gaza in 1996 to continue his university studies abroad. Recently his mother in Gaza became very ill but doctors were unable to diagnose her ailments. Worse, due to the deteriorated conditions in hospitals and clinics, the lack of medicines and equipment and sufficient staff, she is not a priority case. There are too many more critical patients, including those injured during Israel's frequent pre-truce military operations in Gaza.

Stuck waiting in al-Arish, Muhammad feared his mother would die before he could see her and was frustrated at the game being played with their lives. "My family is the sacrifice of a political problem. We aren't Fatah, Hamas, or any faction. My mother needs help for her condition, but can't get it, and I need to be with her, but can't get in," he said.

Muhammad explained the process of trying to leave Egypt to Gaza: "I went to the Rafah crossing and was told by Egyptian authorities to go back, that the crossing was closed. I returned to al-Arish and gave a copy of my passport to the representative from the Palestinian embassy and was told I must wait. But I have no idea how long they will make me wait, nor how long I can wait. I have a wife and my studies back in Europe."

Jaber was accepted to the Cairo University faculty of medicine in 2005. Since then, he has spent the last three summer vacations trying, and failing, to enter Gaza to see his family. He was not convinced he would succeed before the school year resumed. "I don't think the border will open," he said. "I think I'll spend another year here without seeing my family. It's very difficult staying here, waiting, hoping to see your family but realizing that you can't." He added that he is not alone in his separation from Gaza: "This isn't just my story. I have maybe five other friends also studying at the faculty of medicine who want to go back to Gaza."

When the rumors spread that the border would open, waiting Palestinians packed their bags and headed to the crossing. Most did so in vain, hoping they would be able to show their ID and cross into their homeland. However, the stranded inevitably ended up back at their al-Arish accommodations, waiting for the next rumor.

A handful of medical patients did pass through into Egypt, seeking treatment and then returning home. They held the coveted yellow cards, Egypt's recognition of the ill or injured, the key to the closed border gates. Seven crossed back into Gaza one day, 15 another day, five the last time. But they were a scant fraction of those who needed to return home.

Raed, a 34-year-old Ukraine-trained doctor, and his Ukrainian wife considered trying to return to Gaza in January with their daughter and young baby when the Rafah border wall was torn down by Hamas in a temporary break of the siege. "I need to be near my family, my birthplace. My children need to see their grandparents," Raed explained. He had unsuccessfully tried to enter Gaza a year before and ultimately returned to Ukraine to work. But in January, his newborn baby was too young, he felt, to travel and live in Gaza. He'd wait six months before trying to re-enter.

Entering Gaza became all the more urgent after Raed's father was placed in an intensive care unit due to acute respiratory problems. The family joined the hundreds of others waiting in al-Arish hoping to bid loved ones in Gaza a last goodbye. Raed lost this chance Wednesday, when he learned of his father's passing.

Policy of separation

"Fifty days. I've been waiting here for 50 days now," explains Mahmoud, the truck driver living in Sweden. "I was due to start work two weeks ago, and I keep telling myself I'll leave Egypt tomorrow. But then I hear that maybe the border will open. I can't give up this option. I can't give up my hope."

Meanwhile, Sameh, the university student, spoke of separation, not only between Palestinians in and outside of Gaza, but of Gaza from the West Bank. Referring to the 19 June ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza, Sameh said: "By enforcing the truce only in Gaza, Israel is trying to enforce the idea of separating Gaza from the West Bank, as two separate states. But West Bank Palestinians are just like us, and we can't ignore the oppression they in the West Bank face under occupation."

On August 30, just before Ramadan began, Egypt finally opened the Rafah crossing for two days, allowing in most of the Palestinians waiting in al-Arish at the time and letting hundreds of Palestinians and Egyptians inside Gaza exit to Egypt. However, this was a one-time measure and not a change in policy. With the Rafah crossing tightly re-sealed, the siege is still firmly in place. The thousands of patients still needing medical care outside of Gaza, the hundreds of students still cut off from their schools abroad, and the countless separated families continue to call for the border to open, and to remain open.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing.

This article was originally published on The Electronic Intifada.

Forgotten at the Gaza-Egypt border

A Long "Hot Winter" and Painful Spring

hillarybain — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:49:46 +0000

Putting a name to Gaza's injured

CAIRO, EGYPT -- Bedridden yet painfully conscious, nearly paralyzed with no feeling from the waist down, 16-year-old Abdul Rahman (nicknamed Abed) is one of the hundreds injured by intense Israeli shelling and firing on Gaza between February 27 and March 3, 2008, during an operation dubbed "Hot Winter" by Israel. According to a World Health Organization report, during this period the Israeli army killed at least 116 Palestinians--nearly half of them civilians and more than a quarter children, including a six-month-old infant and a 20-day-old baby--and injured 350. Later counts tallyed the number killed as over 150, with more than 55 killed in one day alone. Over half the week's fatalities and injuries occurred in and around Jabaliya, the refugee camp where Abed was born and has called home all his life.

At 11 a.m. on March 2, Abed stood on the roof of his family's home, observing as Israeli tanks overran the camp. No curfew had been announced and he was unaware of the presence of soldiers on a neighbouring rooftop. The youth was struck from behind by an Israeli sniper bullet that dug into his spine, destroying three of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed and bleeding on the roof, where he lay for 15 minutes before his younger brother found him. The 13-year-old dragged Abed to the stairs and down into the family's home, dodging further sniper fire as he went. The invasion outside continued, preventing ambulances from reaching Abed. Three hours after his injury, the teen was finally taken to a hospital in Gaza City, where doctors, after seeing his injury, were surprised to see the boy was still alive. Unable to provide adequate emergency care in Gaza, they immediately loaded him into an emergency transfer ambulance bound for the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

With the high number of serious injuries, Rafah crossing--closed virtually continuously since June 2007, when Israel imposed complete closure on Gaza--was opened temporarily to allow some of the wounded passage for treatment in Egyptian hospitals. Due to the siege and its detrimental impact on the availability of essential medicines and functioning equipment, Gaza's own hospitals are not able to meet patients' needs. As one of the more critically injured, Abed was transported to a hospital in al-Arish, roughly 50 kilometres from the Rafah border, and eventually to Cairo's Nasser Hospital, where he arrived 15.5 hours after being shot.

Over four months later, Abed lies gaunt and sickly pale, wondering how this happened to him and waiting for a series of operations that may help him recover. The operations to strengthen the broken vertebrae and plug the bullet wound in Abed's spinal cord have only a minimal probability of success and ‘success’ would still mean being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Dr. Saleh Abu Sobheh, a surgeon who treated Abed in Cairo's Palestine Hospital for a period, is more grimly pragmatic: "Spinal surgery is a highly risky procedure. Abed will be paralyzed for life and will be lucky if he does not suffer brain damage from the operation."

On seeing him in the hospital, one might imagine he had always been a slight, sickly boy, not a youth who used to enjoy football and who lifted weights every day. Activity and sport were some of the things he didn't allow Israel to deny him under the siege. Now he can barely lift a bottle of water.

Samir (who prefers to be known by his first name), an Egyptian accountant and humanitarian, volunteers by helping Palestinian patients from Gaza in Cairo, visiting different hospitals to see that patients are receiving adequate treatment and are able to pay for their care. Samir, who has monitored Abed's case since Abed arrived in Cairo and has consulted with his doctors, explains, "The first operation will be to strengthen his vertebrae with a sort of metal splint." Without reinforcing his vertebrae, even the negligible weight of his now-emaciated mass would put immense pressure on the remaining vertebrae, causing further damage. Samir adds, "The two operations will take place during one week. Samples which two months ago were taken from Abed's spinal cord will be re-injected into the hole left by the bullet." Like Dr. Sobheh, Samir is also worried and he cautions that, "This is highly experimental surgery."

Abed's options are few: to remain bedridden for life or to risk brain damage to try to regain some feeling from his waist down and be able to sit upright. Either way, according to Dr. Sobheh, "People who suffer spinal injuries usually develop respiratory disease." Altogether, there is little hope to coax him through his long days of waiting. He is one of many injured from Gaza who have become numbers that disappear into statistics.

His current caretaker is "Uncle" Rahme, an unrelated Palestinian in Cairo who travelled from Jerusalem to oversee the medical treatment of his two nieces. Although they'd never met, Uncle Rahme took pity on Abed's isolation and dependency. "Of course I am helping Abed. His father isn't allowed to leave Gaza and he has no family here. I'm here, so I do what I can for him. But he's very unhappy to be away from his family--he's not used to that." Since arriving in Cairo, Abed has been transferred to five different hospitals due to considerations in specialized treatment and cost. Uncle Rahme followed Abed from Cairo's Palestine Hospital to al-Farook Hospital in Cairo's Maadi suburb. But in a few weeks, when Uncle Rahme returns to Jerusalem, Abed will be left alone to deal with his injuries and paralysis; Abed's father's attempts at obtaining an exit permit to leave Gaza to be at the boy's side have thus far been denied.

Down the hall from Abed's room at the Palestine Hospital, 34-year-old Ziyad Hashan lies waiting for his intestinal tract to heal enough for a colostomy, a procedure needed as a result of his intestinal injury. His pelvis has begun the slow road to recovery, time being the only medicine. His urethral and bladder injuries were treated surgically in Gaza. He must wait another three months before doctors can perform the colostomy.

Hashan's complicated injuries are the result of an Israeli attack on Khan Yunis in late March. Shortly before 4 a.m. on March 28, Hashan was en route to his parents' house next door to pick up his father for morning prayers. Four shots rang out, one of which hit him in the pelvis from behind. He never made it to the mosque, where his father was already waiting.

The Israeli army maintains, in statements to Hashan's Gaza-based lawyer, that Hashan was caught in a conflict between the army and Palestinian fighters in Gaza. His father, who was permitted to accompany Hashan from Gaza to Cairo for treatment, countered: "There was no shooting. I had left five minutes before Hashan was shot. I heard nothing. He wouldn't have left the house if there was shooting." Instead, he says, Israeli undercover soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes, posing as Palestinians. Hashan noticed nothing unusual.

After Hashan was shot, his father recounted that he and another son had carried Hashan for half a kilometre; ambulances were unable to get nearer as an Israeli fighter plane flew overhead. "Ziyad lost so much blood he nearly died." And yet, Hashan counts himself "lucky" that someone was around to carry him to safety. In the same incident, one neighbour was killed by the shooting and another wounded in the forearm.

Hashan previously worked in ground operations at Gaza's airport until it was shut down by Israel. Since then, he has had trouble putting enough food on the table for his three young children. This will become even more of a concern with his medical expenses, which, once he leaves hospital, will be his burden to bear. Even after surgery, he will need continual check-ups to monitor his situation and healing.

The family's lawyer has contacted an Israeli lawyer who plans to file a complaint against the Israeli army for having shot an unarmed civilian. Hashan, perhaps subdued by his injuries and depression, is less vocal than his father, who illuminates the injustice: "He is just a normal citizen who was going to knock on the door of his parents' house, on his way to pray."

Israel's siege, backed by the US and EU, has more than crippled Gaza and has meant that injured Palestinians like Hashan and Abed, as well as hundreds suffering from cancer and chronic kidney, liver and heart disease, cannot be treated within the confines of Gaza. The Gaza-based Popular Committee Against the Siege lists over 180 Gaza patients who have died over the past year due to unattainable surgery or lack of medicine because of Israeli-imposed closures. Dr. Sobheh points out that, given the circumstances, "the quality of emergency care in Gaza's hospitals is phenomenal." However, he adds, serious surgery and treatment is out of the question. According to Dr. Sobheh, "What we really need to focus on is getting foreign doctors into Gaza. Before the siege, specialists used to visit Gaza's hospitals to share knowledge and techniques with Gaza-based doctors." Since the siege, this has become impossible.

Back in their respective Cairo hospital beds awaiting surgery, Abed and Hashan are just two of the "faceless victims," testimony to the agony of Palestinians in Gaza confronting continued military attacks and a cruel siege that has largely been ignored and minimized by the international community. Abed hopes one day to sit in a wheelchair with his father by his side, and like Hashan, wants to see an end to Israel's siege and the attacks that brought them here.

This article was originally published on The Electronic Intifada

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities.

Abdul Rahman

Judges steering Egyptian reform

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:31:27 +0000

In an attempt to gain an influence-free judiciary and independent press in Egypt, protesters-- including over 300 judges and hundreds of journalists-- staged three major demonstrations in May.

According to the Gulf Times, "judges threatened not to supervise parliamentary elections [in September] in order to pressure the government into granting them full independence from the executive." The absence of judges supervising the elections would have put the government in danger of violating the Egyptian constitution.

Confrontations between the Egyptian government, judges and the press began surfacing in 2005 with allegations of massive vote fraud and election rigging in previous elections.

Since then, a number of arrests and disciplinary actions-- including withholding of wages and firings-- have allegedly been taken against judges, journalists and protesters.

The protests in May were in response to the prosecution of two senior Egyptian judges and have been met with violence and mass arrests by Egyptian police.

Aljazeera

Gulf Times

BBC

United Nations Development Program

Egyptian cabinet resignation

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 20:44:03 +0000

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has replaced his prime minister and forced the resignation of his entire governing cabinet. The long-awaited cabinet reshuffle by President Mubarak, who has governed since 1981 and can only be said to be democratically elected in the loosest sense of the word, are expected to be the first step towards major economic, social, and political reforms in the economically stagnating North African nation.

Ahmed Nazief, the virtually unknown former state information minister, was appointed the new Prime Minister and was given 24 hours to form the new Cabinet. The outgoing Prime Minister, Atef Obied, had served in the position for four years, during which only a few of the reforms supported by President Mubarak and his son (and likely heir) were implemented.

The appointment of Mr. Nazief, a proficient but politically unconnected administrator, is said to be typical of President Mubarak, who has always been careful to keep real political power for himself alone.

» ABC News: Egyptian cabinet resigns; Mubarak appoints new prime minister

» AP: Egyptian Prime Minister, Cabinet Resigns