Podcast: Oxfam staff report one year after Operation Cast Lead transcript

[Willow] It’s been one year since Operation Cast Lead devastated the Gaza Strip.. During Cast Lead, Oxfam was on the ground delivering direct aid to people heaviest hit by the conflict. Today, Oxfam is working even harder to help communities in Gaza recover.

I’m a Communications Officer with Oxfam in Jerusalem and I recently went out to speak with my colleagues in Gaza about what Oxfam is doing now. Mike Bailey, Oxfam’s Media and Advocacy Lead told me why and how our response in Gaza has changed:

[Mike] Our programme has expanded so that from the initial office of seven staff during Cast Lead, we now have three times as many working in the office in Gaza and that’s a reflection of the increased humanitarian need that has been created not just from the blockade but particularly from the aftermath of three weeks of conflict and combat during Cast Lead. We’re not only doing dry food and water distribution but were also helping people to become independent through introducing rabbit farming, rooftop gardening, and we’re currently exploring introducing fish farming as another way that people can be independent of food aid and humanitarian aid and get back on their feet despite the constrictions of the blockade, which a year after Cast Lead and two and a half years after it was first introduced, is still going on.

[Willow] Oxfam places a great emphasis on recovering livelihoods in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli blockade makes economic development projects nearly impossible. One year past Cast Lead, many people are having a hard time finding ways to cope.

[Sound clip, Nawar Thabet crying, introducing her situation in Arabic]

[Willow] That’s the voice of Nawar Thabet. She is one of 180 women who benefited from a psycho-social support project Oxfam implemented to address the mental health needs of women who lost family during Cast Lead. Nawar lost her mother and sister to an Israeli airstrike on their home. She still traumatised, she told me she isn’t sure if she will ever get back to the person she used to be, but she said the programme showed her that she needed to live for her two small daughters. Emma Conlan, Oxfam GB’s Civil Society Programme Officer, had this to say about the psycho-social support project:

[Emma] Forwhat it was, it was a very successful project. And I learned a lot, I learned about the strength of these women who were supporting their husbands and their children and still living in tents. Theydidn’t want to be passive recipients of this project, that they wanted- how could we use them, how could they be more active, could they be helping out with the food distribution, you know, having a purpose, really.

[Willow] After talking to people in Gaza, I found a purpose was what everyone really wanted. But people are still having a hard time understanding why they’re in the situation they are living in now. At the Beit Lahia Development Association, a local partner of Oxfam , I met Abdul Salem. He lived in America for ten years, before returning to Gaza in 2006 to help care for his elderly mother. He was initially happy to be returning. Now, he is uncertain about what the future holds.

[Abdul] To be honest, I don’t like staying here because of what I see, people suffering from everything, all kinds of problems are here, lack of food, lack of water, very expensive life, borders are closed. So there’s no place to hide. There’s no place to go, you know, you can’t do nothing, nothing, just you sit and you wait for bombs from the sky to destroy your house, just empty your mind, relax, and whatever happens, it happens. If you are under control, you have to say welcome to everything. This is it.

[Willow] For now, from Gaza, one year past Cast Lead, this is Willow Heske for Oxfam GB- Jerusalem with the help of Karl Schrembri for Oxfam GB- Gaza.

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