Inspired and inspiring:

In cooperation with Palestinians in Gaza, and partners in the US, Australia and other countries, the Canadian Boat to Gaza has just announced a new, very creative challenge to the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Gaza fishing boat after Israeli naval attack  (Photo: Saed Bannoura)

The Gaza’s Ark project will build a boat in Gaza, using local resources.  The boat will be constructed by Palestinian hands and expertise, with international assistance.  Then a crew of Palestinians and internationals will sail it out of Gaza, carrying Palestinian products to fulfill trade deals with international buyers.  Gaza is the only Mediterranean port to and from which shipping is forbidden.

The Gaza’s Ark project will help revitalize the ship building industry in Gaza, badly damaged by the invasion and blockade, and help transmit this disappearing expertise (another impact of the blockade) to younger generations.

Through trade deals negotiated between Palestinian producers in Gaza and international businesses and NGOs, a channel will be established to export Palestinian products still available despite the blockade.

Gaza’s Ark will also train Gaza’s sailors in the use of up-to-date electronic sailing equipment and techniques, denied to them for years by the blockade.

Although it will help in a very limited manner to alleviate Gaza’s unemployment crisis by paying wages to the boat builders and providing business opportunities to traders, this is not an aid project.  It is a peaceful action against the blockade which Israel unilaterally, unreasonably and illegally imposes on Gaza.

Gaza’s Ark also stands in solidarity with the Palestinian fishery in Gaza whose ability to operate in territorial waters and to derive a livelihood is threatened and attacked by the Israeli naval blockade.

This project will challenge the blockade by building hope on the ground in Gaza.  It affirms that, given the chance, the Palestinians of Gaza can rebuild their economy through outbound trade that threatens no one’s security.

With your support, work on Gaza’s Ark will start this summer.   Contact information follows below.

By the way, in case you were wondering what happened to the Canadian boat Tahrir: Along with its cargo of medical supplies the Tahrir was seized by the Israeli navy in international waters last November while it was sailing peacefully toward the Gaza Strip.  Such seizures are considered acts of piracy under international law.  Though Israel has never found nor even claimed to find anything dangerous or prohibited on board, it continues to hold the Tahrir.  Despite many requests, the current Canadian government has consistently refused to ask Israel to release the Tahrir and its cargo of desperately needed medical supplies.

For now the Tahrir (Arabic for freedom) remains under arrest.  On the other hand, try as it might, Israel can’t arrest the unquenchable yearning for freedom.

Follow the progress of Gaza’s Ark via regular updates here on the web, here on Facebook. and on Twitter (@GazaArk).

For more information, contact Gaza’s Ark at info@GazaArk.org.

Just in from the We Divest Campaign:

Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF [a US pension fund management firm for people in academic, medical, cultural, governmental and research fields] has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio.  As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861.  Today it is zero.

Israeli Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, at work in Palestine

“We applaud this decision,” said Rabbi Alissa Wise, Director of Campaigns at Jewish Voice for Peace and National Coordinator of the We Divest Campaign.  “It’s long past time that TIAA-CREF began living up to its motto of ‘Financial Services for the Greater Good’ when it comes to the people of Israel and Palestine.”

Since 2010, We Divest has been urging TIAA-CREF to drop Caterpillar and other companies profiting from and facilitating Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

“By selling weaponized bulldozers to Israel, Caterpillar is complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights,” said Rabbi Wise. “We’re glad to see that the socially responsible investment community appears to be recognizing this and is starting to take appropriate action.”

Caterpillar has come under increasing criticism from human rights organizations in recent years for continuing to supply bulldozers to Israel, which uses them to demolish Palestinian civilian homes and destroy crops and agricultural land in the occupied territories, and to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.

On the same day, June 21, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation announced that Caterpillar has been removed from the MSCI World Socially Responsible Index, a list used by Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds to determine acceptable companies for investment.  MSCI offers investment advice to 6,200 clients around the world, from pension plans to “boutique hedge funds.”

Last month, Friends Fiduciary, a Quaker institution, divested $900,000 worth of shares in Caterpillar stating: “We are uncomfortable defending our position on this stock.”

Next week, at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly in Pittsburgh, church commissioners will vote on a motion to divest from Caterpillar and two other companies, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard, which also profit from Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.

The motion follows years of thwarted attempts by the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) to negotiate with Caterpillar before calling for selective divestment.  The Committee’s  report notes that “Caterpillar’s complicity in non-peaceful pursuits led the 2010 General Assembly to denounce the company’s profiting from involvement in human rights violations.  Sadly, despite significant support for the shareholder resolution calling for a review of its human rights policy, Caterpillar has become even more intransigent.  It has cut off all communication with the religious shareholders. Caterpillar continues to accept no responsibility for the end use of their products.”

On June 30, 2012, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) will begin its 220^th General Assembly.  Among other issues, it will tackle proposals from Church committees to divest from three companies that profit from the Israel’s military occupation of Palestine: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions.

In the light of intense pressure on the Church to not adopt such a policy, including the usual unfounded accusations, eg the divestment call is ‘one-sided and ill-informed’ and ‘anti-Semitic’— yesterday New Profile (an Israeli feminist organization of Jewish males and females working to counter militarism) sent an urgent plea to the Church.

New Profile protest in Tel Aviv, under attack by Israeli police

On the assumption that other organizations will inform the Church amply on the horrific experience of the 45-year occupation on Palestinians, the New Profile letter focuses mostly on the deeply corrosive impact it has on Israelis:

New Profile, an Israeli organization, wishes to express appreciation to PCUSA for contemplating the adoption of a selective divestment policy as a means of bringing peace to Palestinians and Israelis.  We fervently support such an endeavor, and hope that PCUSA will indeed adopt it as a non-violent means of ending Israel’s Occupation of Palestinians and their lands, by divesting from three companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions.

We wish to assure PCUSA that it is no more anti-Semitic to criticize and oppose Israeli government policies than it was anti-American to oppose the Vietnam war.

Indeed, ending the Occupation can only benefit Israelis.  For, the Occupation exacts a price from Israelis as well as from Palestinians.  In addition to loss of life and increased militarism, Israelis have witnessed these past years a steady devaluation of human life, as is evident from the socio-economic sphere and the affliction of post-traumatic distress. It also seems clear that without outside help, Israel’s Occupation of Palestinians and their lands is unlikely to end.

Successive Israeli governments have spent enormous amounts of money on expansion, to the detriment of social benefits for the Israeli population.  While it is true that had there been no Occupation, Israeli governments might not have spent the money on social benefits, the fact that expansion continues apace reveals Israel’s intent to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state and to rid the West Bank of as many Palestinians as possible.

To this end, money is spent on maintaining a large military presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, on erecting the apartheid wall at 4 million dollars a mile, with 400 miles planned (twice the length had it been built on the ‘green line’), constructing 6,000 more units in highly subsidized settlements (this past year alone, some 12,000 new settlers moved into the West Bank, 4,000 more than were evicted from the Gaza Strip).  Much money goes also for constructing super-highways for Israelis-only in the Occupied Territories, as well as for new lookout towers (that can double as sniper towers), and checkpoints galore (mainly separating Palestinian communities).

While all this is taking place at considerable economic cost, poverty in Israel has increased sharply.  Over ¼ of Israelis now live under the poverty line.  A staggering 34.1 percent of them are children.  Last year 1 of every 5 children lived under the poverty line; now 1 of every 3 children goes to bed hungry.  And every 4^th elderly person is poor.  No wonder, then, that Israel’s elderly tend to be “suicidal,” as Yedioth Ahronot revealed in a report showing that over 50 percent of suicides in Israel every year are committed by people aged 65 and more.  There are additional worrying trends.  Not only are the few rich getting richer and the numerous poor getting poorer, but also many in the middle class who have jobs are sliding into poverty due to low wages.

One result of the increased poverty is that now 25% of Israelis forego medical care because they cannot afford it.  75% of the poor cannot afford medication.  But of all the sad statistics, one of the more shocking is that 60,000 Holocaust survivors now live in desperate straits.  It is shameful that of all places in the world, in Israel, Holocaust survivors live in dire poverty and misery.

The worsening economic conditions contribute, in turn, to escalation of stress and violence. Thus one of every five elderly Israelis is subject to abuse, mainly by spouses or children.  Additionally, the Israeli police recorded a 36 percent increase in violence among minors in 2004, a 24% increase in violence among them the first months of 2006, and a 55% increase of violence against children these past 10 years.

A direct cost of Occupation and a threat to Israel’s welfare is post-traumatic stress, which can result in addiction to drugs and alcohol, and can also contribute to violence.

A rehabilitation center that opened in 2001 with capacity for 25-30 addicts, soon discovered that most of the problems resulted from experiences addicts had while in the military.  The center, Kfar Izun, then publicized itself, and was shocked to receive 900 requests for help in the single week following its revelation.

A counselor at a rehabilitation center terms the malady  “a ticking bomb.”  Help, he says, is unavailable for many soldiers who have gone “into terrible distress of drugs, beatings, violence, impatience … soldiers who clashed with a civilian population, and when they were discharged understood that they had been wrong.”  Hundreds, he reveals, “are roaming about with the feeling that there is no point to living, and the path to suicide and drugs is very easy. We are afraid that former soldiers will commit criminal acts as a result of their distress.”

One young woman, having succumbed to drugs after her discharge, blames the drug phenomenon on the “sick Israeli society”— a “society of war.”  The soldier who killed “a man or a child” or “entered the home of an Arab family at night, beat a child, a mother and took the father into detention” upon release takes drugs “to try to forget the pictures that are with him all the time since then.” She said that drugs are “an expression of the strong desire of young Israelis to escape from the insanity that has been forced on them.”

Yehuda Shaul, a former conscript, caps it all: “It’s a situation that screws up everyone. … People start out at different points and end up at different points, but everyone goes through this process. No one returns from the territories without it leaving a deep imprint, messing up his head.”

I hope that the above data will help PCUSA realize that every non-violent endeavor to end Israel’s Occupation would be a humane act to Israelis as well as to Palestinians.

Sincerely,
Dorothy Naor*,
for New Profile

(*Meet Dorothy Naor and other members of New Profile in Our Way to Fight.) 

New Profile’s policy statement on Selective Divestment:

Continue reading →

…In which open-minded Israeli students defy an administrative stone wall.  A glimmer of hope (real hope, not the packaged kind) in a darkening place.

  Baydas family home, village of Shaykh Muwannis.  (photo: Zochrot)

A bit of context:  Israeli community group Zochrot (Hebrew for remembering) strives to raise awareness among Israeli Jews about the Nakba, the catastrophe of displacement that Palestinians have endured since 1948.  It’s a challenge, to say the least.  It was recently made a crime in Israel to mourn the Nakba on the day when the Zionist triumph is celebrated.

Amaya Galili is education coordinator of Zochrot.  In Our Way to Fight,  she argues that if the Israeli state is to have a liveable future, Israelis need to acknowledge the Nakba.

Here is Amaya’s account of what happened at one school:

At the end of April, Zochrot accepted a request from students at the Kibbutz Teachers Training College in Tel Aviv, to help organize an event in commemoration of the Nakba, on International Nakba Day, May 15.  It would be an opportunity to open a dialogue with future teachers about how to teach about the Nakba in various educational settings.

A group of students, together with faculty supporting them, planned to organize a tour of Shaykh Muwannis [a destroyed Palestinian village, on which Tel Aviv University was built], and an evening symposium on the Nakba with the participation of Sami Abu Shehadah, Amaya Galili and Eyal Naveh. The students hoped to create a space on campus for an open, frank discussion of the issue.

However, the college administration used a variety of bureaucratic excuses to make it difficult, and eventually impossible, to hold the event on campus, setting conditions and making demands not normally imposed on events organized independently by students at the college.

The students had originally planned to hold the event under the auspices of the student government association.  They were turned down, and told to obtain approval for an independent student activity from the Dean of Students, Dr Dvorah Gesser.  The Dean sent them to the head of the School of Education, Dr Yehudit Weinberger, who told the students “there’s no reason to discuss the Nakba on a particular day,” and that in any case the Kibbutz College addresses the Nakba throughout the year.

The students argued that the educational activity would provide an opportunity for discussion and analysis, and is therefore appropriate for the college, particularly in view of its stated policy of providing a forum for innovative and critical educational initiatives.  In response, the administration began to impose conditions on the content of the program. These included a demand to change the title of the event, to reword the invitation, to select the chairperson for the discussion, and to vet participants to ensure “balance.”  It was made clear to the students that approval of the event depended on their agreeing to all of these conditions.

In order to carry out what they felt was an important activity, the students reluctantly agreed to these conditions despite their displeasure at the administration’s censorship and crude interference.  They changed the title of the discussion from “What does the Nakba mean to me?” to one determined by the administration, “Narratives of independence and rebirth or Nakba – catastrophe and disaster – can they co-exist?”  They invited an additional speaker, Gil’ad Maniv, a teacher and pedagogical advisor in the Ministry of Education, to meet administration demands.

Nevertheless, the college administration refused to approve the event and continued to demand additional changes in wording.  For example, they required that “Female students invite you” be changed to “Students invite you,” the addition of the Hebrew date, and other edits. The students agreed to these conditions under duress, and understood that the event was now approved.  As this was now only two days before the event, they started to publicize it and to invite students.

Then, no more than an hour and a half prior to the start of the event, the college administration suddenly claimed that it had never agreed, and finally denied permission to conduct the event.

That evening the student organizers walked through the college, facing locked classrooms, and sought space on the college lawns.  In the background stood Dr Yehudit Weinberger and representatives of the student government, threatening to bring students before the disciplinary committee if they went ahead with the event.

Finally the students and Zochrot representatives convened on mats in a grove of trees outside the college fence, a grove that had been planted on the site where the home of the Baydas family once stood, in the village of Shaykh Muwannis.  The house was demolished in 2003 in order to construct apartments and expand the college.

About 70 students participated in the event.  After the panel discussion, many students expressed interest in learning more about the Nakba, both at the college and outside it, despite the administration’s attempts to prevent discussion of the topic.

The behavior of the college administration, from the inception of the students’ initiative to the administration’s final refusal, reinforces the need to discuss the Nakba in educational settings.  It also raises the question of how an institution which claims to be humanistic in outlook, one that educates for social responsibility, can be so determined to repress and censor free speech and the activities of its students.  How can it imagine that ignoring and silencing discussion of such a complex, emotional and central a social issue as the Nakba can be a lasting educational and pedagogical strategy?

We [Zochrot] call on the college administration to behave in a manner consistent with the values it claims to uphold, to continue a dialogue and discussion with the students, to support commemoration and study of the Nakba in a variety of ways, and to refrain from disciplinary action against student activists.

Nothing to add here.  Just:  please read this new interview with Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert.

 Dr Mads Gilbert with Palestinian emergency surgeons, al-Shifa hospital, Gaza, January 2009.  (photo: Norwegian Aid Committee)

For many people around the world, Israel’s three-week attack on the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009 provided a stark glimpse of the reality that Palestinians endure on a regular basis.  It was a scene straight from a horror film, a cause for concern and outrage.  For others, including Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert, it was a call to action.

A veteran anesthesiologist who had been deployed to help handle emergency medical situations in Palestine and in Lebanon, Gilbert made his way to Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital when the bombing began.

Although Israel’s air and land invasion of the Gaza Strip — known as Operation Cast Lead — happened three and a half years ago, its after-effects are still relevant today.  Gaza’s infrastructure has yet to fully recover and no one has been held accountable over the hundreds of civilian casualties.

Mads Gilbert spoke about Gaza during the invasion and since with Sami Kishawi.  An undergraduate student at the University of Chicago, Sami Kishawi is a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Chicago Movement for Palestinian Rights, two youth-led movements advocating for Palestinian rights through direct action.  The interview was published June 7 on The Electronic Intifada.

Sami Kishawi: How did you become involved in the solidarity movement for Palestinian rights?

Mads Gilbert: In 1967, when the Israeli-Arab war broke out, I actually volunteered to go to Israel. Like a majority of Norwegians, I was brought up with the narrative that Israel was a heroic, growing little country constantly attacked by its neighbors. So when the war broke out, the Israeli embassy issued an appeal for Norwegians to volunteer as kibbutz workers. It was presented as some form of novel socialist movement. I signed on.

That same evening, I was contacted by a friend of my sister, Ebba Wergeland, who had heard that I was planning on volunteering in Israel. I went to her dormitory where we had tea — and that’s where she told me about Palestinian history, a history I had not heard about.

The next day, I went back to the embassy and withdrew my volunteer forms and instead chose to became a member of the Norwegian Palestine Committee (NPC).

SK: What were your experiences like during your first medical missions to Palestine and Lebanon?

MG: In 1981, I witnessed first-hand Israel’s aerial bombardment of West Beirut and the destruction of the Fakehani neighborhood where the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] was headquartered at the time. Palestinian leaders issued an appeal to the international community to come to the aid of the wounded. Through the NPC, I organized the first Norwegian emergency surgical team and that was my first encounter with the Palestinian diaspora.

In 1982, when the invasion of Lebanon fully commenced, we again sent emergency surgical teams as a measure of solidarity. We managed to enter the besieged West Beirut where we worked in an underground makeshift hospital installed in the Near East School of Theology. Together with Lebanese and Palestinian doctors and nurses, we performed lifesaving surgeries around the clock, mostly in makeshift operating rooms located in the three underground stories of this Catholic school.

I think my devotion and my dedication to the Palestinian people were forever etched into my heart and mind during the dreadful summer of 1982.

SK: What brought you to Gaza during Israel’s invasion in 2008 and 2009?

MG: For the last fifteen years, I’ve been working in Gaza on and off. I teach at al-Azhar University and I’ve been working on numerous projects with the paramedics and staff at al-Quds and al-Shifa hospitals.

When the invasion began on 27 December 2008, I had just gotten back to Norway from teaching in Gaza. I was extremely worried because I was already aware of the toll the brutal siege of Gaza took on the health sector, food, water and security of the civilian population there.

My home city, Tromsø, has been a formal twin city with Gaza since 2001, and I immediately decided to make an effort to go back to support the hospitals, not because they cannot manage, but in solidarity and to be a witness and a voice. When my good friend Dr. Erik Fosse called me that very same afternoon, we quickly decided to make an emergency medical team and pack up to travel to Gaza.

SK: What caught your attention during your time in Gaza?

MG: First and foremost, I was extremely impressed by the Palestinian healthcare workers who were bravely working day and night to save their fellow people under the most difficult conditions possibly imaginable. The heroes were the Palestinians and not us. My impression also included the stoic bravery and unyielding courage of the Palestinian civilian population in the midst of death and suffering during the brutal Israeli onslaught.

Second, the character of the Israeli military attacks was unbelievably brutal and disproportionate. The attack on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and population, the repeated use of illegal weapons like white phosphorus bombs, and the testing of new and extremely destructive US-manufactured weapons like the DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosive] and other “small diameter bombs” all indicated that Israel used its force unjustifiably and disproportionately, clearly in violation of the international laws of war and humanitarian rules.

Also important is the very special fact that this onslaught fell upon an already besieged civilian society, already on its knees with a very young civilian population — the average age in Gaza is 17.6 years, and 58 percent are 18 years or younger — unable to seek any safe shelter, imprisoned as they were by the Israeli siege. But the most impressive aspect of it all is that they did not collapse. They organized rescue and they did not lose their humanity. The dignity and the discipline of the Palestinian people moved me deeply.

SK: On 3 January 2009, you sent a text message to your international contacts. It read: “They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza City two hours ago. Eighty injured, 20 killed. All came here to Shifa. Hades! We’re wading in death, blood and amputees. Many children. Pregnant woman. I’ve never experienced anything this horrible. Now we hear tanks. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. Anything. Do something! Do more! We’re living in the history books now, all of us!” It was a very passionate, a very urgent message. What was happening? What were you seeing and doing?

MG: Our hands were full that day. In the early morning, there had been waves of injured coming in. We were quite exhausted, all of us.

Suddenly, all of the Palestinians in the hospital went to their mobile phones to listen to the FM radio. That’s when we got the message that Israel was bombing a vegetable market in Gaza. We heard the ambulance sirens and the first wounded started to come in. I was in the disaster reception area at the ground level of al-Shifa and it was just hell. Victims were pouring in. I had to step back a few steps. I stood by the window and looked out. I saw the condensation streaks of the Israeli bombers and heard the orchestra of sirens. That’s when I wrote down and sent the message, without drafting, without hesitating, like a desperate reflex.

It needed to be said. I sent the text to some media people based across the border in Israel and to people in Norway. It spread like fire on a dry prairie. It was translated and spread all over the world. I think the reason for that was because it was a passionate message, an authentic one, more intense than the media stories, maybe. This cannot go on, I said. And yet it kept going on for another two weeks.

This text message became graphic in Norway, and it was translated and spread all over the world. This message, in a way, connected people to the realities of Gaza.

SK: We are all too familiar with the stories of despair, but did you experience any hopeful or uplifting moments during your medical mission in al-Shifa?

MG: Every day at every moment, there were uplifting moments. Even under desperate conditions, the hospital staff was working day and night. We had little food. We had an endless current of the most horrible injuries coming in and almost all of the staff — the doctors, nurses, ambulance people, and volunteers — was confronted with wounded family members and friends. Yet they never broke down or gave up.

Of course, we wept. We were all sad and we were outraged. But there was this strong feeling of being in al-Shifa for a greater cause, to show that military power and oppression, racism and occupation will not win in the end. The Palestinians of Gaza once again showed me the true qualities and humanity.

All the windows in the eastern wall of the surgical block were shattered. It was ice cold. The generators were broken and power blackouts were hourly. We were lacking trolleys and operating tables. We had to do operations on the floor. It was tense, yes, but the Palestinians remained calm. We used humor as a form of medicine. There was Arabic coffee all of the time and maybe some food. At the end of the first two weeks, we were actually all receiving emergency food rations from the World Food Organization.  Yet no one gave in.

SK: Is there anything to be said about Israel’s lack of accountability for the deaths of so many innocents?

MG: It is hard to understand how Israel has been vindicated without even being taken to trial or being faced with the same type of investigation that other state and governmental entities in similar situations have faced.

Given the moral responsibility of the Israeli government and its army, if you should judge Israel in accordance with the scale that we judge other states, I would say that Israel today presents itself as a failed state. They wage warfare against a basically unarmed, occupied civilian population, in sharp contrast to some of the most fundamental rules of humanitarianism and laws of wars. And Israel still chooses not to allow — let alone organize — independent legal examinations or investigations of the war crimes perpetrated by their political and military commanders and their soldiers.

I would also say that the international community is making a huge failure by not applying the same strict rules to Israel as it does to other countries. It’s an incredible double standard that allows Israel to go unpunished, attack after attack, war after war.

SK: What is the healthcare situation in the Gaza Strip like now?

MG: As a result of the Israeli siege, there has been widespread development of anemia among children and women due to malnutrition as a result of siege and poverty. Stunting, where a child is more than two standard deviations shorter than what it should be, is sharply on the rise. In 2006, around 13.5 percent of children were stunted. In 2009, 31.4 percent under age two were stunted.

In other words, every third child is less developed than he or she should be. And stunting does not only affect growth. It also affects brain development and the ability to learn. This is a direct consequence of malnutrition. Remember, this is not caused by drought or natural disasters, but a deliberate, man-made lack of food and water, imposed, planned, and executed in the most detailed way by the Israeli government. They even calculate how many calories to let in to Gaza to avoid outright starvation but to “just” cause malnutrition since that goes under the radar of human rights abuses.

Similarly, water cleaning plants and pump stations for sewage cleaning and waste disposal are destroyed and haven’t been repaired because spare parts have not been let in due to the siege. Spare parts sit for up to two years on the border without being let in. Donated trucks from the UN and Japan for solid waste disposal are also being kept out.

Instead, 280 donkey cart drivers are commissioned to manually pick up the waste from the 600,000 inhabitants of Gaza City who should, of course, have a modern system. Plus, there is no fuel for the water pumping stations. The blackouts can last for 18 hours a day and the lack of fuel for running the water pump stations means that 50 percent of Gaza’s population receives water for only six to eight hours a day every fourth day.

So why won’t Israel let Palestinians have clean water and allow them to clean the wastewater? Why will they not allow them to collect their solid waste? Clearly Israel wants to make life as difficult as possible for the Palestinian community in order to break their resistance, to humiliate them, and to conquer them. It is not going to happen.

SK: I visited al-Shifa less than one year ago and was astounded by how underfunded and under-resourced its facilities were. Is there anything people living outside of Palestine can do to help the hospital maintain its operation? And how can these individuals contribute to the Palestinian solidarity movement?

MG: We need to organize and increase political pressure. We have to influence our leaders, politicians and governments. We have to encourage the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the State of Israel. There is mounting support for the Palestinian solidarity movement.

Churches, universities, and sports teams must be convinced to boycott Israel. We must explain to people in Israel that they cannot expect “business as usual” as long as the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians continue. At the end of the day, such peaceful political pressure will force Israel’s population — and hopefully also the United States — to change its stance, I believe.

Ultimately, I think this work on the home front is more effective than trying to smuggle in equipment or supplies. The most fundamental demand is to lift the siege on Gaza and to allow for the reconstruction of the Gaza infrastructure: the schools, the hospitals, the roads and the waste management system. To end the occupation of Palestine and safeguard the return of the Palestinians in diaspora is a prerequisite for lasting peace.

SK: What about for those who are medically-inclined?

MG: For medical students, we need to raise awareness in medical schools. Students must be trained to see the evidence of the extensive and destructive effects the Israeli occupation has on population health. And why not get in contact with medical students in Gaza and make alliances? Involve yourselves with programs of exchange to other campuses and travel, travel, travel, travel.

Go there and see for yourselves, not necessarily to do medical work but to meet medical students and to make partnerships. They are well organized and highly motivated and it is obviously worth the effort. Solidarity between individuals and people is a strong force and much needed in the current situation in occupied Palestine — and in the refugee camps outside Palestine. Everyone can make a difference by being active, not by being idle.