(Student from Gaza)
It is difficult for many to imagine everyday life for a resident of the Gaza strip under an Israeli blockade since 2007. So when we talk about Gaza and the situation over here, it's really hard to be described in few words. And if we want to ask anyone out here , you would hear such words as; occupation, siege, unemployment etc. Then the tears will prevent him to complete the answer. In Gaza you will hear the cries and screams of children saying ;Gaza is fear.. .pain … it is the cemetery of hope . But always the final answers from both young and old, that this won't stop them from demanding for their rights, especially their freedom and their right to return.
Children of Gaza are unable to play wherever they want, because any suspicious object left by the tanks might explode suddenly. Child of Gaza sleeps while he is holding his toy to protect it, kisses his parents because he is afraid of waking up on the morning next to their died bodies. Child of Gaza is surrounded by fear from all around. Even he want to raise his gaze to the sky in order to pray for God to save his family, his friends and his country, he finds aircrafts blocking his prayers toward the sky.
As a result of the siege upon Gaza, people lose many of their work opportunities gradually, because all the facilities of commerce and industry are affected as well as all the vital facilities including power and water. In Gaza no day would pass without electricity blackouts for many hours or probably days. Even though there is generators in some places, it is difficult to provide the fuel needed to run them. The economy of Gaza is at a standstill, and “normal” life has become a daily hell for the Palestinian population. The money has been cut off in order to punish the Palestinian people for electing the Islamic Hamas instead of Fateh. These funds constitute the vast majority of the money that used to fuel the economy, the governing institutions, and the social services in Gaza.
Public health has been decimated. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) reports that over 70 percent of the people in Gaza are dependent on food aid from the United Nations. The WFP adds that there has been a 14% increase in the numbers of people receiving this aid in one year. The WFP itself describes its food rationing as “a band aid in an attempt to prevent a further decline of livelihoods and nutrition among the poorest.”
| Part of the Gaza Flotilla |
No one can deny that the Gaza War and the siege upon it was and still is a very severe way as a form of collective punishment for the people in Gaza. And despite international criticism over the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the international concern over the May 31st flotilla incident, and the many tries of convoys to break the siege, the blockade has continued uninterrupted for four years, and the daily struggles and overwhelming despair of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza have been largely overlooked and misrepresented internationally.
Finally what I have mentioned is a very small glance for the suffering of the People in Gaza. And despite all victims after war, all sorrows, and all what Israel commits against us, we won't submit or relinquish. We'll struggle until we get our freedom.
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