Image Credit: Mohammed Omer, Rafah Today 2007-07-17.
Israel again shelling civilians and homes near Rafah, thousands stranded and at-risk of death at Egypt Gaza border
BBSNews 2007-07-17 -- By Mohammed Omer. An impossibly crowded area. Chaos. A slow, imprisoned death. This, briefly, is the appalling life - though it is hard to term it living - at the Rafah border.
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Rafah border where thousands are stranded.
Image Credit: Mohammed Omer, Rafah Today 2007-07-17. |
Terrible food, sparse water, poor hygiene, and inadequate shelter. The conditions are ripe for tragedy. Seriously ill people face preventable deaths as, despite their desperate need of medical care, the Rafah border remains closed, preventing passage to medical facilities and to safety back home. For Gazans, it is the equivalent of shutting down Los Angeles airports and banning all other transportation while F-16s, helicopters, and warplanes hover over the static population of the city, ensuring no one can make it back home.
For over one month, at both the Palestinian and Egyptian sides, people have been waiting at the Rafah border - without medicine, with little to no food or water, shelter-less and blistering under the searing Gazan summer sun. All are waiting for the first of 7 consecutive gates to be opened, which will allow the stranded thousands to cross into Gaza or out to seek medical help.
The Rafah border is strictly controlled by Israel, closely monitored by video-cameras. Israel is not allowing the border to open, despite previous agreements to keep the crossing open for 24 hours. Slighting that agreement, Israel hasn't opened it lately. So, each day ordinary citizens are paying the price, one which comes at the cost of health and life! At least 28 have died as a result of the strict denial of passage to and from Gaza at the Rafah crossing, completely closed since June 10, where nearly 6,000 Palestinians wait without adequate food, water, or shelter in the intense sweltering heat of summer. Even those with severe medical emergencies are being denied passage.
Patients have the right to medicine, children to drinking water, and people to respect - at the very least respect as humans, not to mention as Palestinians, Muslims, or Arabs. Frequently I wonder, how can anyone allow human beings to suffer like this, to be kept waiting even though many are only a tantalizing half an hour away from home. Yet their proximity to home has no impact on their reality: they are stuck, trapped, in another country without the basic services of citizens. Where is the international outrage and action?
It is impossible to fathom that ambulances should be held back with suffering people in critical need of medical care following operations in hospitals in Egypt and other Arab countries. Additional salt in their many wounds comes with the loss of nearly 6000 people's suitcases.
Over phone, 25 year old Mohammed Abu el Karash, with an injured backbone and who has returned from Nasser hospital in Cairo, explained how he was kept waiting inside the ambulance for 13 hours before he gave up and went back to the Cairo hospital: "I have tasted death many times. I can't move at all, even to go to the restroom - I'm waiting for the international community to let us back to our homes, immediately, to end our undue and extended suffering at the border," he said.
Added to the border troubles are the deaths and injuries from repeated Israeli invasions in the last weeks. A July 5 invasion of Al Boreij refugee camp in central Gaza left 11 dead, including 3 civilians, and over 30 injured, including many children. In the same incursion, a clearly unarmed Palestinian cameraman was shot repeatedly in both legs, resulting in their amputation, by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers, in the latest of many attacks on journalists.
"I feel like our lives don't matter to the European Union observers and Israel—they never care. Aren't we human beings like them?" he asked.
Israel is currently carrying out a new military incursion in southern Gaza, particularly the Rafah area close to the very border where many of the thousands of civilians are stranded. Heavy shelling from tanks has injured many civilians and caused severe damage to numerous homes.
Mohammed Omer is a young journalist/photographer in the Gaza Strip. He and his family have a very rough time in living day to day and they have lost much. In October of 2003, one of Mohammed's younger bothers, Issam, was injured and had to have a leg amputated. Later in the same month another younger brother, Hussam Al-Mouhagir, was killed in his home; shot to death by the Israeli Army that occupies and regularly devastates Palestine. These stories are written by Mohammed who knows no peace, only the continued devastation forced upon civilians who have little voice in the world. Mohammed has covered the Occupied Territories for several years. In 2006 Mohammed won the New American Media National Ethnic Media Award for best Youth Voice. On May 18th, 2007, Mohammed was shot at by unknown militants in Gaza yet he continues to report. Visit Mohammed's Web site, or write to him to get a more complete picture of what is really happening that main-stream news sources rarely brings to its audience. We are proud to feature articles from Mohammed Omer here at BBSNews, his reporting is some of the only original, on the ground reporting available from the Israeli Occupied Territories.
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