report from gaza

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday November 22, 2002 17:55 by tracey and peter - gluaiseacht bobssista at yahoo dot co dot uk

report from gaza

we arrived into raffa a city in the gaza strip last night to the sound of gunfire. we met with other internationals to try to discuss what our actions would be. it was hard to hear each other speak as rounds of ammunition were been fired all around. thats lots of us tax dollars been fired into the air. the palestinians told us that the soliders fire at anything that moves and walking around at night can be very dangerous. on our way to the family we were staying with bullets were passing over our heads. but our palestinian friends didn't even bat an eyelid. it becomes normal they told us.
the reason for us coming here is to stay with families whose houses are been demolished to make way for another wall. this time to separate eygpt and palestine. half of raffa lies in eygpt and the other in palestine. 300 houses have already been bulldozed, the reason according to the idf is to stop weapons been smuggled in through under ground tunnels. the families are at best given an hours notice that they are about to loose their homes and at worst they start to bulldoze while the family are inside. this has resulted in 2 deaths already.
this morning a man showed us around his appartment block. all the walls were covered in bullet holes. everything in raffa is covered in bullet holes. another man showed us places where people died after been hit by stray bullets. he showed us the spot where his 8 year old niece was shot. all over the town are pictures of the martyrs. a martyr is anyone who has died as a result of the israeli occupation, children hit by bullets and sucide bombers alike.
the locals here are very protective of us and don't quite understand why we are here. we want to negotiate with soliders to allow the families more time to collect their possesions when their house is being demolished and also we want to look at the wall and inspect the wide area bulldozed around it. (to see if there really is any tunnels} but the locals worry too much about us. today to show them that we are not so easily intimidated by the army and to show the army our presence we (7 internationals) slowly approached the tanks waiving our passports in the air. 2 tanks fired up their engines and drove towards us. we motioned to them that we wanted to proceed towards the wall. a hand appeared from one of the tanks hatches signalling us to back away. we slowly proceeded towards them and they fired about 3 shots at the ground in front of us. we decided we had pushed them far enough and anything more could cause problems for the locals.
raffa is a hopeless case. we can't think of anything to do. the people have become resigned to the fact that they will loose their homes. so when we got an sos call from bethleham 3 of us decided to leave for bethleham. bethleham is under siege because the suicide bomber that blew up the bus in jerusalem was from there. revenge will be taken on all the people of bethelam. collective punishment is a war crime.
i've just heard the news about caoimhe. we had planned to go to jenin next week anyway so we will be able to visit her. if anyone wants to send her support messages you can email them to this address and i will print them out and give them to her.
thats all the news for now. once again i urge people to write to the isreali embassy or protest there.
peace,
tracey and peter