The Dominion - Eva Bartlett

The Same Boat

Moira Peters — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:15:33 +0000

Israel's attack on flotilla mirrors daily reality in Gaza

GAZA—On the evening of May 30, 2010, I awoke to a text message from a Gaza-based international activist saying that the Freedom Flotilla was being instructed by the Israeli Navy to halt its course to the Gaza Strip. The vessels were more than 70 miles from Gaza’s coast.

I wasn’t surprised. In every one of the nine Free Gaza trips from Cyprus to Gaza, the Israeli Navy commanded boats in international or Palestinian waters to turn around. Five voyages succeeded in ignoring the Israeli Navy’s threats and sailing on through international waters into Palestine.

Earlier that day, Gaza had been preparing for the arrival of the flotilla. A sea demonstration had ventured a couple of kilometres out; an Israeli gunboat patrolled another kilometre or so out and had been shooting on some poor fishing trawler.

In the morning of May 31, 2010, I awoke to text messages saying the boat had been attacked by the Israeli Navy. I wasn’t surprised. In December, 2008, as Israel pounded Gaza from the air, land and sea in a 23-day assault, Israeli gunboats rammed a Free Gaza vessel.

"The gunboats gave us no warning... They rammed us three times, hitting the side of the boat hard. We began taking on water and, for a few minutes, we all feared for our lives," said Free Gaza co-ordinator Caoimhe Butterly, who was on board during the 2008 attack.

Images of the latest attack on the Freedom Flotilla showed Israeli commandos dropping from military helicopters and firing on the passengers. Scenes of shocked faces carrying the dead and the injured emerged from the chaos.

"The attack on the Mavi Marmara [vessel] came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by [the] Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis," said Kutlu Tiryaki, captain of another vessel in the flotilla, as reported by The Guardian.

This latest brutality, in which elite Israeli commandos opened fire on peace and justice activists on at least two of vessels and according to some estimates killed 19 and injured up to 60, was criminal but not shocking. That the Israeli commandos did so in international waters, far from Israel’s coastline and jurisdiction, was also not shocking.

Utmost respect for the killed and injured aside, I am not surprised.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said the flotilla was carefully inspected before departure: “I want to say to the world, to the heads of state and the governments, that these boats that left from Turkey and other countries were checked in a strict way under the framework of the rules of international navigation and were only loaded with humanitarian aid."

There was no-one on board "other than civilian volunteers" he said.

Given that Israeli commandos boarded the vessels in international waters, and if, as the activists on board allege, the soldiers fired first with live ammunition—not rubber-coated bullets or tear gas—Israel's self-defence spin is simply not credible.

Having borne witness to Israeli attacks on clearly-marked medics (16 emergency workers killed by Israeli soldiers) and civilians (nearly 1500 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were non-combatants) during the War on Gaza in December 2008, as well as the variety of war crimes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers, little surprises me now.

Having watched an Israeli soldier target an unarmed youth in his femoral artery because the young man protested the Israeli-imposed no-go zone, I’m not surprised by any Israeli action. Ahmed Deeb, 21, bled to death when the bullet exploded in his thigh.

On a daily basis, Israeli soldiers shell and fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians. Accompanying fishermen and farmers, I have seen and experienced this first-hand. I’m no longer surprised, although at first it was unimaginable: they are firing live ammunition on visibly unarmed people, I said. There are children here, older men and women. What threat do these people pose, I wondered.

The United Nations (UN) reports that two fishermen have been killed and 12 injured since January, 2009 alone, and these are only the reported cases.

In the border regions, unarmed farmers, workers and residents face daily attacks from Israeli soldiers enforcing a brutal no-go zone well beyond the 300 metres Israeli authorities say is off-limits. Tens have been killed and injured by these Israeli attacks.

But attacks are not limited to Palestinians working on Gaza’s waters and border region lands. Under a siege imposed shortly after Hamas was elected in 2006 and tightened brutally since mid-2007, all of Gaza’s 1.5 million suffer. The health sector has been decimated: the Israeli war on Gaza destroyed or damaged more than half of Gaza’s hospitals while the Israeli-Egyptian-international siege prevents 141 vital medicines from entering, and has led to more than 360 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

Gaza’s sewage and sanitation systems are collapsing; their alarming state has been well-documented by the UN, World Health Organization (WHO) and other international organizations.

Ninety-eight per cent of industry has been shut down, contributing to unemployment levels of roughly 50 per cent and an increase in the number of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, as well as the number of desperate Gazans willing to work in them.

Without the siege on Gaza, the more than 1,000 tunnels would have no market for the goods they bring in daily. The more than 150 workers killed in the tunnels (by Israeli bombing, tunnel collapses, electrocution, Egyptian gassing and bombing) would have had alternative employment options.

Malnutrition is rife, particularly among children, with anaemia and growth stunting on the rise at a drastic rate.

Israeli officials claim that there is no “humanitarian crisis” as they admit more than enough food aid for each person. However, this aid is largely in the form of carbohydrates, leaving families deficient in protein and vitamins. The caloric requirements Israel authorizes per Palestinian in Gaza perpetuate the sentiment of Israeli governmental adviser Dov Weisglass who sought to “put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

The farmers and fishermen targeted by Israeli soldiers are providers of produce and protein not permitted through Israel’s borders. Their harvest would enable Palestinians in Gaza to stave off slow starvation. Roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies in the region Israel unilaterally deems and mortally enforces as off-limits.

When I sailed to Gaza in November 2008 with the third Free Gaza voyage, I knew there was an element of risk: either we wouldn’t reach Gaza or we would be abducted by the Israeli navy. It was a risk worth taking but above all it was a small risk compared to the dangers Palestinians are exposed to every day.

Participants of the Freedom Flotilla, comprising nine vessels and nearly 700 people from over 20 countries, knew there was a significant risk the Israeli navy would attack or halt their boats.

And while the Freedom Flotilla carried needed construction supplies as well as toys, sweets and books for children, the significance of sailing to Gaza to break through the isolation and penetrate the siege cannot be overemphasized.

The siege, as crippling and cruel as it is, is about more than an engineered humanitarian, social and economic catastrophe. It is about the right to self-determination, the right to open borders and to freedom of movement.

The world should question not only the killing of non-threatening civilians in international waters, but also the validity of Israel’s jurisdiction in the whole matter. Does Israel occupy Gaza, or not? If so, why are malnutrition and poverty levels rising in the Gaza Strip?

Huwaida Arraf, abducted from international waters, said previously that "[w]hen states and the international bodies responsible for taking action to stop such atrocities chose to be impotent, then we—the citizens of the world—must act. Our common humanity demands nothing less."

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer living in Gaza. Read more about life in Gaza on her blog, ingaza.wordpress.com.

Flotilla Fish

Frustration, Suffocation and Crisis

Moira Peters — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:03:08 +0000

Strife, siege on Gaza continue one year after Israeli bombardment

GAZA—The Gaza Strip was already spiraling under years of siege long before the F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tanks, warships, unmanned aerial vehicles and armed soldiers waged a 23-day war on the Strip in winter 2008-2009.

The agricultural sector, which used to provide 50 per cent of Gaza’s food needs, had been steadily failing as a result of the siege and Israel’s policy of aggression in border regions. The Israeli-led, internationally-complicit siege bans all but roughly 40 items from entering Gaza.

In 2008 the Agricultural Development Association (PARC) reported a desperate need for nylon used in hothouses, irrigation piping, fertilizers, seeds, seedlings and pesticides. In March 2009, the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reiterated the call, adding animal feed, livestock, olive and fruit tree saplings, saying the need was "urgent" and "very urgent."

The Israeli war on Gaza destroyed between 35 and 60 per cent of agricultural sector, tearing up irrigation networks, destroying hundreds of wells, water pumps, and cisterns, farm buildings and machinery, and killing over 35,000 cattle and sheep, and over 1 million chickens and birds.

The most fertile areas of the impossibly small Strip lie in Gaza’s border regions—inhabited but largely undeveloped. Of the 175,000 dunams of cultivable land, 60-75,000 dunams have been destroyed by Israeli invasions and operations.

The Israeli-imposed “buffer zone” in theory renders 300 metres flanking the borders off-limits. Israeli authorities say anyone within that zone risks being shot by Israeli soldiers. In reality, Israeli soldiers shoot and shell up to two kilometres from the border, rendering more than one-third of Gaza’s farmland inaccessible.

Since the end of Israel’s war on Gaza on January 18, 2009, at least 13 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 39 injured in and outside of the “buffer zone” by Israeli soldiers’ shooting and shelling. Children are among the casualites.

Despite the danger, farmers continue planting and farming. The inability to regularly access their land has meant many farmers sow low-maintenance crops instead of the diverse array of vegetables, grains and fruits that once flourished in Gaza.

Before Israeli bulldozers razed the fruit and olive trees that abounded along Gaza’s borders, bee-keepers were able to produce high-quality honey two or three times per year. Many bees have died out from Israeli bulldozing and during the last Israeli war on Gaza. In the absence of trees, most of the remaining bee-keepers substitute sugar-water for flowers.

The Palestinian fishing industry, employing more than 3,500, has been devastated by Israeli attacks on fishing boats, confiscation of boats and equipment, and the abduction of Palestinian fishermen.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen have the right to fish 20 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast. Israeli authorities have steadily down-sized fishing zone limits. In 2008, fishermen were warned not to go beyond six miles. Currently, Israeli gunboats prevent fishermen from passing three miles.

Fishermen report being attacked by machine gun shooting, water cannons and shelling from Israeli gunboats within three miles of the coast. Israeli naval soldiers routinely force Palestinian fishermen in large vessels, or small hassakas just 2-300 metres off the coast, to motor or row out beyond the Israeli-imposed limit, whereupon the fishermen are abducted and arrested.

Abducted fishermen report being forced at gunpoint to strip, jump into the water (frigid in winter) and swim tens of metres to a retreating Israeli gunboat where they are hauled aboard, blindfolded and handcuffed, sometimes beaten, interrogated and taken to Israeli detention for one or more days.

The interrogations often include coercion, via threat and financial enticement, to work with Israeli intelligence.

Their fishing boats are frequently confiscated for months, often returned damaged or with equipment and parts missing.

Fishermen say the bounty of fish lie beyond the six mile limit. Reduced to fishing along the coast, the sparse catch comes from waters contaminated by 80 million litres of raw or partially-treated sewage pumped daily into the sea for want of proper sewage maintenance plants.

While Egypt is building a steel wall intended to cut off the hundreds of tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt, tunnelers say they will dig deeper. Palestinians in Gaza say they need the tunnels: they are a lifeline, bringing the imaginable—chocolates, cigarettes, medicines, appliances—to the unimaginable—livestock, cars, people.

Unemployment remains rife at near 50 per cent, with food aid dependence and poverty at over 80 per cent. Educated youths with university degrees languish without work, or take jobs driving taxis for a paltry salary. Students craving higher education, and with scholarships abroad, remain imprisoned by Gaza’s siege-closed borders, losing study and scholarship opportunities.

One year later, virtually nothing has changed, except the frustration, suffocation, and manufactured crises have worsened.

A complete schedule of Israeli Apartheid Week with speaker biographies is available on the website.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer living in Gaza.

Trauma

Fishing Group

Beit Hanoun

Gravel & Sand Dad & Kid

Buffer Zone

Fishing Steam

Sheep

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