Gaza Visit - Day One - Tuesday 21 July

Posted on July 21, 2009 at 11:38 PM

Six o’clock on Tuesday 21^st July.  Its a rude awakening to be on the road to Gaza from Jerusalem at that hour.   A modern highway took us to the Border Crossing at Erez a couple of kilometres before the crossing.

We stopped for coffee at a roadside café.  Mainly young soldiers in uniform occupied the café lounging contentedly with their weapons.At the crossing we were met by Aidan O’Leary, a young Dubliner, working with the United Nations Work and Relief Agency (UNWRA).  Erez crossing, a modern structure at the border of Israel and Gaza, was almost deserted as the border crossings have been virtually closed to Palestinians since the Israeli army incursion into Gaza on 28 December 2008. Immediately on the Gaza side of the border we saw the mounds of rubble which had been an industrial zone where 2,500 had worked.

As we proceeded along the road into Gaza City we passed pedestrians, donkeys and carts and the odd battered car.  We quickly came to residential houses and a second industrial area which had also been targeted by the Israel artillery and tanks.  Hamrad, a Palestinian businessman representing the private business sector, took us on a tour of the destruction.  He pointed out individual factories which were shelled , demolished and run over by tanks to ensure that the equipment in the factories was pulverised and rendered useless.

The month long incursion into Gaza has left a toll of destruction everywhere.  Compared to the thriving modern state of Israel that we had just left, Gaza was desolate, barren and desperate.

We observed the good work of UNWRA in providing schools, accommodation and summer camps for the children.  However with the blockade on border crossings all work had to be stopped.  Basic raw materials for construction were unavailable since the Israeli incursion into Gaza six months earlier.€4½ billion had been pledged by the international community for reconstruction but none of the money could be spent because Israel refused to open the border crossing to people and commerce.The Gaza Strip and Gaza City were being stranded.

A meeting with John Ging, an Irismhan and Director of UNWRA, and a group of professional Palestinians provided an valuable insight into the Palestinian mindset.  They despaired of Israel’s ruthless, destructive and intransigent attitude.However they believed that eventually a solution would have to be found thorough negotiation.

It would be on the basis of justice and honesty and respect for the human rights of both peoples.The EU had a major role they felt in ensuring that human rights were not violated and in searching for a solution.

The results of the 2006 elections which brought Hamas to power  should have been recognised by the international community they said and there should be prior international agreement that the next elections in 2010 would be recognised.  Three of the group were surgeons trained in Ireland.  They said that hey had never experienced injuries of the severity that they had experienced during the Gaza conflict. 

They described in graphic detail how white phosphorus peeled the skin and flesh and still burned on even after being covered with sand or the injured limb immersed in water.As we headed back towards the Erez Crossing in the afternoon we passed the American International College,  a symbol of peace through  education, which had been pulverised by Israeli artillery and totally destroyed.We were processed through the checkpoint at a very leisurely pace and eventually we were back in Israeli territory.  It was  as though we had passed through a time warp. 

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