Orthodox Jews demonstrate outside Downing Street in favour of lifting Israel’s siege of Gaza (photo: HSPC member).

Gazan novelist to talk at HPSC meeting

Two years after the last assault by Israel’s armed forces on Gaza, life for the Palestinian residents is far from returning to ‘normal’, as award-winning novelist Ahmed Masoud from Gaza will attest at a talk on Wednesday 27 July organised by Hastings Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Here HPSC’s Gill Knight describes the current situation in what even David Cameron described as the ‘world’s largest open prison’.

Two years ago, the world was in shock watching schools, hospitals and homes being relentlessly destroyed in the Gaza Strip by the superior air, sea and land power of Israel. We were appalled at the awful daily body count that, at the end of the 51-day onslaught, included over 550 children. In Hastings over 300 people marched for Gaza and we read the names of the dead children in front of the town hall, joining in with worldwide protests. The UN has estimated that it will be 2020 before Gaza is restored to ‘normality’.

But what a normality. Gaza is a coastal strip equivalent in size to the distance from Hastings to Eastbourne and 12 kilometres at its widest, into which 1.8 million people are squeezed, 75% of them already living as refugees before the latest offensive. Under siege, blockaded for the last 10 years, Gazans live in a what even David Cameron has described as the “world’s largest open prison”. 80% of the population are dependent on handouts as the siege, according to the World Bank, has shaved 50% off Gaza’s GDP; 43% are unemployed, including 67% of the youth. The 2014 offensive by Israel, virtually the occupying power, was the third in the last eight years and has created even more deprivation.

Two years later, little has been achieved in the reconstruction that was promised at the end of the onslaught. According to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, reconstruction or repair of the homes of 74% of Palestinian families who were displaced has not even begun; just 15% of Gazan families that were displaced in the war have been able to return to their repaired or reconstructed homes; more than 16,000 families, amounting to approximately 90,000 people, remain displaced or homeless. Roughly 160,000 of the homes that were damaged have been repaired, but hundreds of thousands more remain to be done. Behind each and every statistic there is a human being, a living tragedy.

Often in war and its aftermath the brunt is borne by women and children, and Gaza is no exception. They comprise almost two-thirds of the 11,231 Palestinians injured, 10% of whom are permanently disabled; in addition 1,500 children were orphaned and 27,000 of their homes completely destroyed. Moreover, the impact on women is further worsened by living conditions: a recent Oxfam report estimates that 30% are living in tents, makeshift shelters or even in the open air, leaving them vulnerable and lacking dignity and privacy.

There are many ways for us to take action to end this situation and achieve peace and justice for the Palestinians: join Palestine Solidarity locally and nationally; pressurise our government, who declare that Israel is the friend of the UK, to end the siege; and support BDS – the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction campaign, similar to the one used against apartheid in South Africa.

Currently the campaign is focusing on Hewlett Packard. HP systems are used in biometric ID cards which restrict and control Palestinians’ movement. They provide technology and equipment to the Israeli Navy which maintains the blockade of Gaza and their technology supports the Israeli military checkpoint system.

Ending the Siege of Gaza Talk by Gazan novelist Ahmed Masoud. Wednesday 27  July at 7pm in the Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Road, Hastings TN34 1DT. The talk will be followed by a showing of Where should the birds fly?, a documentary by Fida Qishta depicting the reality of Gazans living under the siege. “My camera is my only weapon,” Frida says. Admission by donation. Meeting organised by Hastings Palestine Solidarity Campaign (website, Facebook page).

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