Gaza: I may never find out

14 January 2009

Mohammed Ali, Media and Advocacy Researcher with Oxfam in Gaza, writes from his home in Gaza city.

My fifteen-month-old child is already showing signs of trauma. In the middle of his few hours of slumber he wakes up and starts screaming as if someone has hit him. I wonder what his small mind is thinking. I wish I could console him, but what would I say? How can I explain to him what is happening? How can I reassure him?

Today he started throwing up and his temperature is high. But I cannot take him to the doctors; they only have the capacity to treat the most severe cases - those on the verge of death.

My sister called, she was out of breath and unable to speak clearly. In the background I could hear the cries of her children. She pleaded with me, "please can you calm them down". A moment later my ten-year-old niece came to the phone, whimpering, I asked her why she was crying. " We are going to be killed...I was just praying the prayer of death...there was a bombing...near to us...my brother had glass broken over him..." she answered.

My sister called me later in the day, telling me that her neighbours have received a threat from the Israeli army that they are going to destroy their home. So every time Israeli fighter jets fly over their home, my sister hears screams coming through the walls.

My brother went out today to try to find some food towards the end of the three-hour lull in fighting. He returned empty handed. What he did bring back was a story of the three people he saw killed, just across the road from him.

At a UN School where I spent most of my day, I heard some words from a lady I spoke with which are still rattling around in my head, " Dead people are lucky, they do not have to see and hear the horror that is going on around us ...we are living between life and death." I had no words to relieve her suffering - I simply put my hand to my chest.

I was excited about us recently getting more electricity than usual but today I saw something on TV, which made me not want to be able to watch it. A thirteen-year-old girl was being filmed, she had lost her two legs in a recent Israeli attack, and she was smiling. I sat there watching her with tears rolling down my cheeks as she told the journalist that she too hoped to be a journalist one day.

A moment later, a small boy appeared, he had lost both of his eyes in another Israeli attack. At the end, his head motioned towards the camera and he innocently said " thank you". I thought to myself, this poor boy has been blinded and it is as though he is thanking the world that is watching...for what?! For doing nothing?! For watching more death and destruction unfold before their eyes?!

It is the world that has been blinded to what is happening here...how many children's futures need to be destroyed before this over, before anyone comes to help us?!

When I look at these children I think of my own. I cannot hold my tears back and sit there sobbing like a child.

I wonder, how many lives will have to be lost and ruined before the world decides to act? I may never find out.