Growing old in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

“In Gaza we don’t lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women’s rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women’s Day, when many of the world’s women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza’s women fight for the most basic of rights.

“It is difficult to live in this small piece of land, where basic needs like clean water, regular electricity, proper sanitation and means of recreation are not met. Women in Gaza are particularly traumatised by the continuous Israeli military attacks,” says Farra.

A 2009 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report highlights the suffering of Palestinian women under the illegal Israeli-led siege imposed on Gaza for the past seven years, and under the 23 days of Israeli attacks in 2008-2009 which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, including 112 women.

The report, ‘Through Women’s Eyes’, notes Gazan women’s continued struggle “as they attempt to come to terms with their grief and their injuries; with the loss of their children, their husbands, their relatives, their homes, and their livelihoods.”

For Hiba an-Nabaheen, 24, a media studies graduate from Gaza’s Palestine University, the biggest issues facing women in Gaza are the poverty and unemployment that result from the siege.

“How can a woman whose husband has died or been imprisoned continue to take care of her children? The deadly Israeli wars we endure don’t compare to the growing poverty we face. I’m a university graduate and can’t find work, and many graduates like me face the same problem, including those with exceptionally high marks.”

From a family of ten, Nabaheen is the only child to have yet gotten a degree. “My father is disabled and cannot work, and my siblings are younger than me. Even my sister who has a 98 percent average in high school won’t find any work when she finishes university.”

Um Oday, 30, would love to work. “I have three young children to care for, but my husband is very supportive of me working, if I found work. In addition to my university education, I’ve taken different training courses in the hope that I’ll find work. But in Gaza, there is none.”

Tagreed Jummah, director of Gaza City’s Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC), agrees that the siege is the main oppressor.

“The siege affects us all, but it especially affects women,” says Jummah. “In recent years, more women have been forced to become heads of the family because their husbands have been killed, are in Israeli prisons, or are unemployed as a result of the siege. But the majority of these women have no means of earning money.”

An August 2012 United Nations (UN) report, Gaza in 2020: A liveable place? cites unemployment as “higher than in the late 1990s.” The report highlights the impact on women, whose unemployment rate in early 2012 was 47 percent.

For Malaka Mohammed, 22, an English Literature graduate from Gaza’s Islamic University, and now employed at the university, higher education is both her greatest ambition and greatest obstacle.

“In Gaza, whether you are a woman or a man, you face the same consequences under the siege and the occupation. I’d like to do a Masters degree, but there is no English Masters programme here.”

For the past over ten years, Israel has banned Gazan Palestinians from studying at universities in the occupied West Bank.

“Studying abroad is very expensive, so I am searching for a scholarship, but even then I will be among thousands of people applying.”

Egypt under the Mubarak regime was complicit in preventing hundreds of Palestinian students holding places and scholarships in foreign universities from leaving the Strip.

Rana Baker, studying business administration at the Islamic University, and a freelance journalist, is active on numerous political issues facing Palestinians.

“To be honest, when it comes to the impact of Israel’s siege and colonial policies on the people of Gaza, indeed all of Palestine, I do not think that the experiences of men and women differ from each other,” says Baker.

“When Israel deliberately bombards schools, both males and females are affected. When talking about the limits Israel forces upon our aspirations, both genders share the same suffering. The Israeli government acts with indifference to the Palestinian population. The same lethal policies are applied to men, women and children in an indiscriminate manner.”

But women do have particular problems. The siege-manufactured poverty leading 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million Palestinians to be food-aid dependent has caused increasing rates of malnutrition and anaemia in women.

A June 2012 joint report by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and Save the Children notes that anaemia affects 36.8 percent of pregnant women in Gaza and that anaemia can result in “poor pregnancy outcome, reduced work productivity in adults,” and “contributes to 20 percent of all maternal deaths.”

For UPWC’s Tagreed Jummah, the Palestinian woman “represents Palestinian resilience, resistance, is strong, and is a mirror of the Palestinian struggle and steadfastness. We’ve lost families, children, and suffer under the closures and Israeli army attacks. We carry all of the suffering of our people, but we continue living and continue resisting.”

In its report on the suffering of Gazan women, PCHR highlights that prospects will not improve until the siege on Gaza is lifted and normal economic activity allowed.

“The dire economic situation means that many women and their families are sliding deeper and deeper into abject poverty. They have suffered the horrors of an illegal war, and now are struggling just to survive.”

Palestinian children join in to make use of limited time given by the Israelis for gathering olives in Deir Istiya village in the occupied West Bank. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
SALEM, Occupied West Bank, Oct 29 2012 (IPS)

Affixed to a large cement bloc, the rusted, grey gate leading Palestinian farmers from the northern West Bank village of Salem to their olive groves was opened for four days this year.

“The road is closed by this gate and it’s (always) closed except for two times in the year,” says Adley Shteyeh, a member of the Salem local committee.

Salem residents own approximately 10,000 dunams of land on the eastern side of their village. The area can only be accessed with a permit issued by the Israeli military authorities and after crossing the gate and an Israeli settlement bypass road.

“Usually we need ten days or more to do our work on the other side (of the bypass road),” Shteyeh said. Over his shoulder, a handful of villagers could be seen cutting branches off their trees, to make sure they get all the olives before their permits run out.

Last week, two Palestinian farmers from Salem attempted to cross the bypass road in a tractor to access the olive trees. Before they could manage to do so, an Israeli military jeep blocked their passage. Moments later, IPS witnessed two more army jeeps arrive on the scene.

Then, about a dozen Israeli soldiers held a group of Palestinian and international supporters, who were on a tour of the village, and local Palestinian residents, on the suspicion that Palestinian youth from the village threw stones at nearby Israeli settlers.

After over half an hour, the group was finally let go, and the farmers were given access to their olive groves.

“If someone tries to cross this road without coordination, he is either beaten or harassed by settlers or the Israeli army,” Shteyeh says. “Settlers have come in and vandalised land, and beat up people inside the village also.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (UN-OCHA), there are 73 barrier gates in the West Bank. Closed year round, the Israeli authorities only open them for limited amounts of time during the olive harvest.

Since the start of October this year, UN-OCHA estimates that Israeli settlers have vandalised or destroyed approximately 1,000 olive trees belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.

This destruction has negatively impacted the economic viability of the olive oil industry in the occupied Palestinian territories, which accounts for 14 percent of the agricultural income in the area, and supports approximately 80,000 Palestinian families.

“Any losses relating to settler violence, or the ongoing restrictions on access for farmers to their olive groves throughout the year, has an impact on the local economy,” Ramesh Rajasingham, head of UN-OCHA, tells IPS via e-mail.

“The sad thing here is that, in many of these cases, a family that could previously support itself has had its livelihood pulled from under them and therefore suddenly find themselves reliant on support from humanitarian organisations and donors; this reliance on aid, in turn, further contributes to the crisis of dignity. This situation is entirely avoidable.”

But harvesting olives is more than just a means of sustenance for many Palestinians.

“Our lives are bound to the olive trees,” farmer Jamal Abu Hijji tells IPS. A 48-year-old father of four, Abu Hijji spent a sunny October afternoon last week with his two brothers, their wives, and their children in his olive tree grove in the Nablus-area village of Deir Istiya.

Together, using ladders and small plastic rakes, they combed through each branch and knocked olives onto plastic tarps set up below the trees.

Abu Hijji explains that during the olive harvest season, he works from 6 am to 4 pm each day for about one month, to cultivate almost 300 trees. But, in addition to harvesting, he must work at a local olive press to meet his family’s needs.

“The outcome is modest to make a living, but it is important for us as we have lived here and inherited the lands and the trees from our fathers and grandfathers,” he said. “Its significance is not for a great materialistic value; it is more because of the moral value, the traditions and the land. I am Palestinian and I want to protect my land.” (END)

Selling yoghurt in Gaza in an attempt to make some sort of living. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Sep 30 2012 (IPS)

“The overwhelming majority of people we work with tell us, ‘We don’t want the aid, we want to have an opportunity to work and earn money’. Especially people who had a decent job but lost it in the last many years: before asking for any aid, they ask for a job.”

In his work as Gaza-based communications officer with Oxfam GB, Karl Schembri interacts on a regular basis with some of Gaza’s most impoverished Palestinians, poverty he says is avoidable.

“Gaza cannot be called a humanitarian situation, it’s all man-made. It’s a situation of de-development, where the infrastructure and knowhow was there and development was occurring,” he tells IPS, referring to the years before 2006 when, after Hamas was democratically elected, Israel imposed its suffocating closure of the Gaza Strip.

“Despite the Israeli occupation, Gaza’s economy was somehow on its feet…until they were banned from exporting. The biggest natural market for Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, is now out of bounds, as are regional markets like Jordan.”

In its August 2012 report, ‘Gaza in 2020: A Liveable Place?’ the United Nations (UN) draws the same conclusion. “One of the main reasons for the economy’s inability to recover to pre-2000 levels has been and is the blockade of the Gaza Strip,” says the report.

Banned from exporting anything, including agricultural goods, furniture, textiles, and food products, the vast majority of Gaza’s factories have shut down, affecting the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians formerly employed there.

“Gaza’s economy was utterly destroyed during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, including 95 percent of factories and businesses,” says Khalil Shaheen, director of economic and social rights for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).

“Under Israel’s illegal closure of Gaza, the total ban on raw materials has impaired the ability of these factories to operate again,” Shaheen tells IPS. Roughly 80 percent remain closed, or are scarcely operating.

“The fishing community has been completely affected by the daily Israeli navy attacks and by being denied access to the sea,” he says, noting that Palestinian fishers are forced by Israel’s unilateral decision to fish within three miles of Gaza’s coast.

“But fishers are attacked even within 400 metres from the shore,” Shaheen says. “The Israelis are trying to prevent all Palestinian fishers from fishing in Gazan waters.”

A September 2012 UN report cites the unemployment rate “for refugee youth in Gaza at 59 percent,” a staggering statistic foretelling that the dramatic unemployment levels will not decrease any time soon.

“Soaring unemployment is a result of systematic Israeli policies, including completely denying the Gaza labour force from the Israeli market,” says Shaheen. Palestinian labourers formerly worked in Israeli construction and labour, he says. “Palestinian workers were highly skilled in all aspects of construction.”

Jaber, father of six children, is out of farm labour, work in Israel, and any of the potential fields he is skilled at working in. “Ten years ago I worked in Israel, as a mechanic, on farms, in construction, various jobs. Since the borders closed, I haven’t had solid work, I’ve only done odd jobs but that doesn’t suffice to care for my children.”

The few jobs that remain in Gaza under siege are some of the most dangerous.

“Even though it’s dangerous work, the tunnels are a source income for unemployed workers and their families,” says PCHR’s Shaheen. “But the average daily wage has dropped from 100 or more dollars to about ten dollars.”

The risks for such a pittance are enormous. According to medics, since 2006 more than 160 Palestinians have died while working in tunnels.

“The majority were killed and injured by Israeli bombings of the tunnels, or tunnel collapse and consequent suffocation, or electrocution,” says Shaheen.

In the past two months, Egyptian authorities have been destroying and closing tunnels. Shaheen estimates that at least 150 tunnels have been totally destroyed, and another 150 shut down. “Forty thousand used to work in the tunnels. Now its 5,000 at best,” he says.

“Even children help contribute to their families’ income,” says Shaheen. “All over the Gaza Strip children are in the street trying to sell chocolates, gum, and trinkets.”

Worse, they are gathering the rubble of destroyed homes in Gaza’s border regions, risking Israeli army fire. “Tens of children have been injured when Israeli soldiers targeted them while they were trying to collect rubble in border areas for resale in construction.”

From Mar. 26, 2010 to Dec. 27, 2011 alone, Defence for Children International documented “30 cases of children shot whilst collecting building material or working near the border fence.”

Unemployment not only affects families’ purchasing power, it affects their morale, says Oxfam’s Karl Schembri.

“What we’ve seen in the last five years is the emergence of a new class of poor: people who were working in Israel or even in factories here, becoming jobless overnight. They had nice, decent houses and all of a sudden had no income. This was a huge blow to their dignity and sense of purpose.”

The self-immolation of a young man from Gaza’s Beach Camp earlier in September 2012 brought to light the less-discussed issue of suicide, formerly uncommon in the predominantly Muslim Gaza Strip.

“Suicide here is a sign that Palestinians in Gaza are living with very little hope and few opportunities to build towards a better future,” says Shaheen.

“There is only one solution to the unemployment problem: end the illegal closure of the Gaza Strip. And end the shameful international conspiracy of silence which offers impunity for Israel’s illegal actions.”