Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 15 January 2008
| Gaza’s sole power plant. |
It’s almost midnight. I rushed to my laptop when I saw the glow of the lamp after almost 12 hours darkness following one of the electricity cuts that hundreds of thousands of Gazans like myself have been subjected to over the past week or so.
As a journalist in Gaza, I was keen to file to my editors a story on the electricity cuts. I did the job, I talked with the people, I collected the material but when I went to my office and sat down in front of my PC, there was no electricity.
I have done my best over the past three days to have my report done in due time. I rented a benzene power generator but as soon as I plugged in my PC, the screen went black.
I came home, switched on the generator once again, and my children happily insisted on seeing their favorite TV program. However, another failure occurred, this time with the satellite receiver.
I tried to appear cheerful in front of my children, the room illuminated by a kerosene lamp. I collected my children, my nephews and niece, who live in the same building, and in lieu of cartoons, I began singing some traditional Palestinian songs and others.
The children were happy, thank God, simply because I knew how to sing. But with so many other situations in Gaza, the solution is not so simple.
At Gaza City’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, there is the infant care ward. They have incubation equipment but urgent care is crippled when there’s severe power failure.
The hospital does possess power generators, but they are for emergency situations and not suitable for day-to-day operation, says Naser al-Sa’di, the director of the infant care ward.
| Three-week-old baby Sabrin Doush lies in an incubator in al-Shifa Hospital. |
Dr. al-Sa’di took us on a tour of his ward, explaining how difficult the situation is for such babies under his care.
“The life of this three-week-old baby, Sabrin Doush, is threatened. If the power cuts completely, this baby is likely to die. We cannot deal manually with every baby. Therefore, more deaths are likely to happen, unless we have a continuous current.”
In another corner of al-Shifa there are 200 renal failure patients, whose lives are also threatened by the power cuts.
The department does have dialysis machines but such equipment cannot work properly under these conditions.
Dr. Mohammad Shabat, director of the department, is concerned for the lives of his patients. “They need dialysis treatent three to four times a week; electricity is very important here. The dialysis machines make errors during the power outages. Any patient who does not receive the needed dialysis within 24 to 48 hours will likely die.”
And why is the electricity cut? Gaza used to belong to the technical age. But in October an Israeli court decided to uphold the government’s decision to turn off the lights in Gaza as part of the state’s siege of collective punishment against the beleaguered Strip.
The Gaza power plant used to receive EU-funded fuel from Israel. The plant provided 45 percent of Gaza’s daily electricity needs while Israel provided for the remaining amount. Gaza’s sole power plant, all six of its transformers were destroyed by Israeli bombardment in 2006. Then this past September, ostensibly in an attempt to deter the firing of homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel, the state declared the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity,” and the following month it imposed severe cuts of fuel supplies to the coastal Strip, causing additional hardships for the already struggling population.
“The Gaza power plant needs 450,000 cubic meters of fuel to generate 80 megawatts daily. Such a quantity has been decreased to 250,000. The problem can only be resolved by the Israeli government,” says Derar al-Sisi, deputy-director of the Gaza power plant.
Al-Sisi adds, “We have appealed to all concerned bodies, including the European Union, the Palestinian Authority and even to the Israelis, through Europeans, but we have not heard an answer so far.”
In the meantime, we Gazans are trying our best to live normally as our fate is toyed with in a court in Jerusalem.
A living martyr
Rami Almeghari writing from Shati’ refugee camp, occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 8 January 2008
| The al-Khatib family’s last family portrait with Awni. (Rami Almeghari) |
“He insisted that we all take a photo; it was the first in the last 12 years since we got married, as if he was feeling his death was approaching,” says Ghada al-Khatib, widow of Awni al-Khatib at their home in al-Shati’ refugee camp in western Gaza City.
Awni al-Khatib died a few days of the brain damage he suffered since 1990 when he was shot in the head by an Israeli-fired, rubber-coated steel bullet.
Awni is one of thousands of Palestinians who sustained injuries from such bullets during the first intifada that broke out in 1987.
“Awni’s state of mind has been unstable since we got married as he has always hoped for death rather than staying alive,” Ghada explains.
The young widow, in her twenties, speaks of her husband’s traits, saying was kind and tolerant, to the extent he favored his family over himself.
However, he always prayed to die sooner rather later, she recalls.
Ghada explains that Awni fainted frequently — in the street, at home and anywhere else.
“We have lost a tender and a kind-hearted husband and father, and I don’t think anything in this life can compensate us such a great loss. He had been recently insisting that we sell our house for the sake of paying back some debts. Awni was a very good father; he has always been aware, despite his fatal injury.”
Ghada concludes her talk by saying, “Abu Jehad [Awni] has simply been a living martyr.”
Awni left behind six children, including a nine-month-old daughter, who all live in a small, ill-equipped three-room home off one of the alleys of al-Shati’ refugee camp.
Abdelrahin al-Khatib says that his brother Awni was shot and wounded in the head in the Shati’ camp when he was 16 years old in 1990.
Later on, he was treated at the Israeli hospital of Tal Hashomir for a couple of months. He was moved back to Gaza when his condition stabilized, the rubber-coated steel bullet still lodged in his head.
Following the injury he suffered seizures that disrupted his daily life, and was of an unstable mood most of the time, says Mohammad.
“God has given him mercy,” believes Mohammad.
During the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising against the Israeli occupation, the Israeli army employed several means of suppressing the popular resistance, including firing rubber-coated steel bullets, disabling the bodies of thousands of stone throwers.
According to the Palestinian Wounded Society, 70,000 Palestinians were wounded between 1987 and 1993, 40 percent of them with permanent disabilities. Many suffered brain damage or had their limbs amputated.
The death of Awni al-Khatib is not the first and surely not the last of this type of injury, as there are thousands more “living martyrs.”
