A Journey to Rafah

[bluesoul]

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

The Gaza Strip is far more than a prison. One need only spend time in Khan Yunis or Bureij, Jabalia or Nuseirat, Gaza City or Beit Hanoun to recognize the flaw in the prison analogy. In Gaza you are more than an inmate in a giant penitentiary. You are a walking human target, shadowed by hired killers who can destroy you and your surroundings at will. Your home belongs to bulldozers and dynamite, your cities and refugee camps to F-16s and helicopter gun ships. In Gaza your livelihood is diminished each day by an impoverishment that is as deliberate as it is merciless. There is neither escape from desperation nor refuge from terror. Nowhere is this more evident than in Rafah.

Rafah, a city with a population of about 120,000 (smaller than Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza City, and Hebron) has lost more people than any other city in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the beginning of the second Intifada. It is the poorest of all Palestinian cities, and its Shaboura district is the poorest section of Rafah. There, whole families live together in one-room shacks made of corrugated iron with dirt floors and sheet metal, cardboard and tarpaulin roofs. Children run barefoot in the streets ill-clad and ill-fed. Nowhere in Palestine will one find conditions as miserable and destitute as they are in Rafah, approximately 80% of whose citizens are refugees sometimes two and three times over.

Since 29 September 2000 the Israeli army has killed 275 people in Rafah, more than three dozen of them since October 2003. Seventy-six of the dead have been children. It has destroyed a total of 1,759 homes, 430 of them since October 2003 displacing a total of 12,643 residents, 2,894 since October 2003. Unemployment is nearing 70 percent in Rafah, with a poverty rate of 83.4 percent as of the end of the third quarter of 2003. Malnutrition affects a large number of Rafah's children as does Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. British MPs on a visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories have been quoted as saying, "Rates of malnutrition in Gaza and parts of the West Bank are as bad as anything one would find in sub-Saharan Africa." The Palestinian economy has all but collapsed. As in Rafah, overall unemployment rates are in the region of 60 to 70 percent.

<snip>

A must read!

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein03272004.html

[Violet_Crumble]

1. Definately a must-read article...

And those who should read it is anyone who clings to the belief that Palestinians are living nice, happy middle suburbia lives just like our own, and that malnutrition and the horrible conditions they live under are all their own fault and nothing to do with Israel's occupation...

Violet...

[Rhiannon12866]

7. I agree

Do you remember my long-lived thread "Why friends of Israel should see Gaza?" I posted it because I was just so horrified at the lives these people were being forced to live and the horrific conditions, but it has been a year, now, and things have just gotten so much unspeakably worse. What can be done? Foreign aid cannot get in and the Bush* administration takes no interest. After all, this is a no-win situation and they have an election to win. These poor beleaguered people have no one in their corner.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. I remember that thread...

I get angry when I read about the terrible conditions Palestinians have to live under and then see people blaming them for it....

It's great to see you posting round these parts again, btw. I always enjoy yr posts :)

Violet...

[Rhiannon12866]

9. I thought that you would. That thread was around for an unbelievably

long time. Hard to believe it was over a year ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7501&forum=DCForumID30

You know I agree with you on this issue. These people were already living under unspeakable conditions. To realize it has gotten much worse just boggles the mind and breaks the heart.

Thanks for welcoming me back. Sometimes I just lose heart, but something always seems to draw me back. I think this is the most important issue to be solved in our world and just cannot believe that greater attention isn't being paid to it.

Rhiannon

[Aussie_Hillbilly]

2. Horrific

:cry: :mad:
I had no idea the situation was that bad in Gaza. As bad as Stalin's gulags. Or Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Why does nothing of this appear in the mainstream media?

Why do Western governments do nothing?

[Jim Sagle]

3. Maybe because it really isn't like the gulags or Cambodia?

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jim Sagle]

5. The gulag and Cambodia were about killing MILLIONS of people.

How is this worse? :shrug: Please give a link. I really do like hearing the truth. I don't know why I gave you the contrary impression. :shrug:

[tinnypriv]

6. Rafah is being gradually erased

There are dozens of reports on this by now, from Israeli, US, UN, Palestinian sources etc.

The reason is so the IDF can expand their zone of control around the major settlements and the Philly corridor/border with Egypt.

It is no coincidence whenever Israel enters Rafah (pick whatever laughable pretext you like), dozens of homes end up being erased, in those two exact areas. Nowhere else, usually.