MAP: On the Ground in Gaza

December - Update from the Health and Nutrition Cluster for Gaza

5,000 people living in tents. OCHA reports at least 200 families. Although the number of people in tents needs to be clarified is known that there are villages such as the Bedouins village in Beit Lahia which is all tented

Although previous distribution of blankets by several organisations, the MoH central stock is out of these items. Hospitals in specially maternity and neonatal wards are in need of wool blankets and electric portable heaters to prevent newborns hypothermia.

Besides the possible need of winterised tents, shelter in damaged houses is another concern. Leaky roofs and the rush and need of reconstruction materials will increase, forcing the population to look into the rubble and as a consequence increasing the possibilities of UXO accidents

During UNEP's mission to the Gaza Strip in January 2009, asbestos was observed in several buildings that had been destroyed during the recent events. Limited sampling undertaken at that time also confirmed the presence of asbestos in some areas.

The pollution of groundwater is contributing to two main types of water contamination in the Gaza Strip. First, and most importantly, it is causing the nitrate levels in the groundwater to increase. In most parts of the Gaza Strip, especially around areas of intensive sewage infiltration, the nitrate level in groundwater is far above the WHO accepted guideline of 50 mg/litre as nitrates (see Palestinian Water Authority, 2002).

Second, because the water abstracted now is high in salt, the sewage is also very saline and hence infiltrating sewage only adds to the salinity of the aquifer. It has been well known and well documented for decades that higher levels of nitrates in drinking water can induce methemoglobinaemia in young children or Blue baby syndrome. When haemoglobin is oxidized it becomes methemoglobin, its structure changes and it is no longer able to bind oxygen or deliver it to the tissues, and anaemia can result. Infants suffering from methemoglobinaemia may appear otherwise healthy but exhibit intermittent signs of blueness around the mouth, hands and feet.

A disturbing feature of nitrate as a contaminant is that it is colourless, tasteless and

odourless. This, and the fact that the population has not been warned about it, meansthat people will continue to consume drinking water with high nitrates unless they are informed about it. In 2007 a study showed that the proportion of children with methemoglobin was 48.5 percent. It can be expected that the problem is still prevalent in the Gaza Strip, and in the absence of widespread awareness, a large number of children are at risk.

August - UN and MAP Demand Gaza Access

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator, representing UN aid agencies in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), represented by at least 25 NGOs (including MAP), demanded full and unfettered access into and out of Gaza in particular to restore the Gaza educational system.

During the 23 days of Israel's "Operation: Cast Lead" in Gaza, 18 schools were completely destroyed and at least 280 were damaged. Today, one month before the start of the new school year, more than six months after the ceasefires, none of these schools have been properly rebuilt or rehabilitated due to lack of construction materials.

Since the imposition of the blockade, students have faced chronic shortages of educational supplies including textbooks, paper and uniforms, though we acknowledge the recent moves to allow textbooks, uniforms, and stationery into Gaza. These are welcome first steps. However, the quantities, kinds and predictability of goods being permitted into Gaza are still far below what is required for normal life. Even prior to "Operation: Cast Lead" the education system was already under severe duress due to the two year blockade that has caused a crisis of "human dignity" in Gaza.

"The blockade has caused untold suffering to children in Gaza, who face another academic year in terrible conditions", said Philippe Lazzarini, acting Humanitarian Coordinator of oPt. Together with the communities we serve, the United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian organisations working in oPt collectively call for immediate steps to end the blockade, as is required by international humanitarian and human rights law. We call on the Government of Israel to urgently facilitate entry of construction materials and supplies for schools in the coming weeks, and to ensure that students, teachers and trainers can freely exit and enter Gaza to continue learning.

Click Here to see the July UN Fact Sheet on Impact of the Israeli Offensive on Children and Education:

During the military offensive, at least 280 schools and kindergartens were damaged/ severely damaged, including 18 schools were destroyed (8 government, 2 private and 8 Kindergartens). 6 of the destroyed government schools are in North Gaza alone, affecting almost 9,000 students who had to relocate to other schools.

Six university buildings were destroyed, and 16 were damaged. According to the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE), 164 students and 12 teachers from its schools were killed during the Israeli military offensive; 98 of the students killed were from north Gaza. A further 454 students and 5 teachers were injured. A total of 86 children and 3 teachers who attend UNRWA schools were killed, and a further 402 students and 14 teachers were injured.

School children, thousands of whom lost family members and/or their homes, are still suffering from trauma and anxiety and are in need of psychosocial support and recreational play activities.

At the peak of the offensive, almost 51,000 individuals, among them approximately 28,560 children, had sought refuge in 44 UNRWA schools across Gaza, causing considerable wear and tear on classrooms, sanitation facilities and furniture.

According to Ministry of Education and Higher Education, it needs to build 105 new schools to cater for yearly increase in student population. Construction materials needed includes items such as 25,000 tons of iron bars, 40,000 tons of cement.

Around one-fifth of school children are iodine deficient. The prevalence of anaemia among children 9 - 12 months old of age is 61.6%; and prevalence among pregnant women is around 29%,10 and 22% of children 12 - 59 months old lack Vitamin A.

Palestinians communities on the edge - View Report

July

Still Broken in Gaza

MAP's Head of Advocacy Andrea Becker returned from a visit to our Gaza Office last month, she talks of her experience visiting the beleaguered territory.

"People paying attention to the detail of the horrors inflicted on Gaza may remember the tragic story of the Samouni family. Twenty-six members of the same family were killed in their home during the January attacks. Two others were killed in a separate attack. Another was shot in the leg as he led women and children away from the area. He bled to death in the street as ambulances were prevented from entering the area.

Even if you don't remember their story, the Samounis definitely remember us. They remember the international journalists that arrived after the war in their droves. They remember the cameras, the questions and the interviews as they sat on the rubble of their lives telling their stories to the world.

Six months on, little has changed for the Samouni family. We found them still living in the ruins of their home, within a neighbourhood of shattered concrete and sand, each demolished home its own story of destruction and death. We sit on thin mattresses on the floor, sheltering from the oppressive summer heat. Their ongoing hospitality to all who visit them is remarkable. We drink hot sweet tea as they recount the details of their ordeal: those long days of constant attack and terrible fear, not knowing what had happened to so many of their loved ones, unable to help injured family, and not knowing what was yet to come. Long days and hours bound and blindfolded, kept behind as human shields, taunted by soldiers and told their family had been killed, and that they would be next. Days without food, water and access to the most rudimentary health care.

Yet months after the end of Israel's 'Operation Cast Lead', the war on Gaza and the Samouni family is far from over. Before the assault started on 27 December, Palestinians in Gaza endured a deepening humanitarian crisis, as Israel's blockade prevented all but a few basic supplies from entering. The blockade is ongoing. Normal life is impossible for everyone, and reconstruction a dream far removed from reality.

Cement is forbidden from entering Gaza and like thousands of other families, the Samounis have done whatever they can to rebuild, and survive. The room we sit in is half of what used to be their three-bedroom home. It was the boys' room. Using second hand bricks and corrugated iron, the family built a makeshift shelter. A small kitchen with donated items: floor, oil, sugar, hummus. Mattresses and blankets lie piled up in the corner.

All things needed for reconstruction are rare and prohibitively expensive. Rising prices of basic goods have doubled or trebled, items such as tunnel smuggled cement are ten times the price they used to be. The Samouni family can barely afford one bag of cement, but need ten to build basic shelter. The second hand corrugated iron roof under which we sit cost $800, eating deep into the minimal compensation money given out to families by the United Nations and other NGOs trying desperate to alleviate their suffering. Inexcusably the situation in Gaza remains barely changed from the day the attacks finished".

April 2 - Gaza Stories

By Louisa from MAP's Partner - PCHR

As farmer Jamal al-Bassyuni plucked a stalk of ripening wheat, a posse of young men danced in his field. The dancers were flanked by a lively crowd, many of them women wearing the traditional Palestinian embroidered thob dress. Despite the nearby rubble of destroyed houses, and tracts of land laid to waste by bulldozers and tanks, the mood was defiantly sunny. Local farmers and their supporters were celebrating Palestinian Land Day.

Land Day was launched in 1976, as a commemoration of the deaths of six Palestinian citizens of northern Israel killed by the Israeli military as they demonstrated against expropriation of their land. It has become an important symbolic day of action across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, highlighting the plight faced by farmers like Jamal Bassyuni and his family, who live in Izbat Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.

'I have worked on this land with my brothers for sixteen years' says Jamal. His family owns 360 donumms of land that stretch right up to the infamous Erez border crossing.

'If you had visited here even ten years ago you would have seen why we love this land so much. There were trees everywhere: we had apple, orange and lemon trees, and we grew olives, grapes, pears, almonds, pomegranates, dates and mirabella plums. Beit Hanoun was a garden.'

Local farmers across Izbat Beit Hanoun were renowned for their citrus fruits, especially the orange trees whose blossom famously perfumed the air. But these days there is only a smattering of fruit trees left. Since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, Israeli bulldozers and tanks have destroyed more than 42,000 donumms of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of it in border areas like Izbat Beit Hanoun and the farmland in the eastern Gaza Strip.

Jamal says his land has been bulldozed many times. 'When our trees were first destroyed in 2002 we replanted them' he says. 'But our land was bulldozed again in 2003, then 2004, and the following years as well. Every time we replanted, the bulldozers would come back and destroy our work again. We had been living here for a long time, but the Israelis finally drove us off our own land.'

After years of Israeli incursions onto their land, the al-Bassyuni family eventually left their farmhouse and moved to a house on the edge of nearby Beit Hanoun town. They worked on their land during daylight hours, and employed a local man, thirty six year old Mousa Mohamed al-Jeraitli, to guard the farmhouse at night. On 5 January, Mousa Jeraitli and his family were inside the farmhouse when it was struck by an Israeli projectile. Mousa was killed and one of his sons was injured in the attack. The farmhouse was also destroyed.

During the recent military offensive in Gaza more than 14,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and several thousand more donumms of land were ravaged by tanks and bulldozers. The scale of destruction of land and civilian property across Gaza indicates Israel's intention to systematically destroy Palestinian homes and their livelihoods.

Farmers across the Gaza Strip, especially those living in border areas, continue to face danger if they attempt to work their own land. Israel's unilaterally-declared 'buffer zone' of 350 metres inside Gaza's borders has continually been expanded by Israeli military incursions, and farmers living more than a kilometre from the border have had their fields destroyed. Farmers report being shot at by Israeli soldiers as they try to plant or harvest their crops and the border areas are gradually being emptied as more and more families are being driven from their own land.

As the dancers stamp and cheer for the land, Jamal al-Bassyuni points to the ruins of his former home. 'All the years we lived here we had no electricity' he says. 'But we had our farm, and our land gives us our feeling for life. I know every inch of this land, and my family still come here every day, though we are afraid, especially after the war and what happened here. We are not growing trees here now, but we are still planting wheat and vegetables. Because in our hearts we are farmers.'