Bolton MP's diary of despair in Gaza

12:08pm Friday 9th May 2008

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Bolton South-east MP Dr Brian Iddon has returned from a Parliamentary delegation to war-torn Gaza.

The secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Britain-Palestine Group gives some of his impressions of the current political and humanitarian situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

GAZA, Monday, April 14

THIS was my third visit to the region over a period of 10 years and the most depressing of those visits.

During our visit to Gaza, the United Nations (UN) minibus that had brought us from our hotel in East Jerusalem had to be washed down carefully unless the dust picked up inside Gaza contained explosive material, readily detectable by the Israeli staff on the checkpoint.

We discovered the situation in Gaza to be bleak. There was no public transport and few cars moving due to a severe fuel shortage.

On the Wednesday previous to our visit, two Israeli civilians had been killed at the fuel depot on the border by Palestinian militants, and fuel supplies had been cut off again. Some Gazans have adapted their cars to run on cooking gas. Those people with a job - nurses, doctors, teachers and other public servants - were walking to work and often arriving late.Most artisans are now unemployed and most businesses that rely on import and export are destroyed.

Electricity supplies frequently break down, and fuel supplies were limited to two to three days when we visited, even at Shifa Hospital, the main trauma centre, where we saw in the intensive care unit some terrible injuries inflicted by the ongoing conflict.

Treatments for cancer, including medicines, are not available in Gaza, and Israel is letting out very few critical patients currently.

Medicines and other consumables are in short supply, 50 per cent of the ambulances are out of action, there is no transport for staff and spare parts cannot be obtained to repair broken equipment. Eighty patients will die if electricity at Shifa Hospital fails for more than 30 minutes and 250 will die if they are without electricity for more than one week.

Oxfam has declared the situation in Gaza as an emergency and runs a voucher scheme to feed 500 families in Gaza City using local farmers, who provide fresh vegetables, chickens and eggs at just above the cost of production.

Getting back into Israel from Gaza was even more problematic than getting in. We arrived back at Erez only to find the checkpoint closed. We were told that an unexploded Kassam rocket had landed inside the vehicle crossing point.

Outside, at the first turnstiles we had to display on a table the contents of any bags that we carried to CCTV cameras. As we were undergoing this procedure there was a loud bang - an exploding Kassam rocket - very close to us and we could detect a sense of panic in the voice of the young Israeli woman directing operations on her intercom. At first we sheltered in the arches of the entrance doors, but we were instructed to proceed into the "processing shed" and shelter in the toilets just inside, which were essentially also bomb shelters.

SDEROT, Tuesday, April 15

Sderot receives, on average, 15-20 Kassam rockets every day. On February 8, they received 70 between the hours of 3pm and 10pm. Around 1,400 rockets were fired into the town in 2007 and, in the first three months of 2008, 900 have arrived.

Ten people have been killed so far by Kassam rockets since firing began in 2004, and many more have been injured. They include children. There has been considerable property damage; 500 buildings damaged so far.

Sderot was established in 195,1 with new arrivals coming from Iraq, Iran, Kurdistan and North Africa, especially Morocco. The early settlers lived in tents until very small new homes could be built for them on a larger plot of land. Today, few of these small houses remain. The population live in continual fear and are traumatised, especially all the children.

Kassam rockets are usually fired when the children are going to and from school and around 8pm and at midnight. The border guards give the town between 15 and 17 seconds to take shelter.

All the bus shelters have been reinforced and large concrete shields have been erected on the side of public buildings, including schools, facing in the direction of Gaza. In return, Sderot children are tying messages of peace to balloons and sending them over the border to Gazan children.

TOUR OF THE WEST BANK WITH ALI-HAQ Wednesday, April 16

After touring the old city of Jerusalem, we moved on to the West Bank. We cannot take our eyes off the problems that Palestinians are experiencing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

There doesn't appear any doubt now that it is the intention of the Israelis to annexe East Jerusalem into Israel. New roads are being constructed so that Palestinian traffic is diverted away from Jerusalem. It is almost impossible for Palestinians to drive in their own cars to places like Bethlehem, Hebron and Nablus, and the Palestinian taxi trade is thriving in the West Bank. These towns are virtually prisons.The small town of Azzun lies on route 55, on the Nablus to Qualqiliya road. Until March 9 drivers could enter the town's main street. That was before "collective punishment", allegedly as a result of children throwing stones at settlers' cars, was inflicted on the town by the IDF, who have blocked off the main access to the town with a large mound of boulders and earth and razor wire. Events at this junction are monitored on CCTV by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

The closure has resulted in an 18-mile detour to reach the town, which uses a very narrow road passing through two small villages. All aspects of life in this town are affected by the presence of the IDF and settlers. The town has been under curfew; including, for 30 separate days, a 24-hour curfew. The night before our visit, the IDF soldiers came into the village and shot out all the street lights late at night.

Around 35 children have been arrested in Azzun and sent to a detention centre far away in the Negev desert, where they are kept under military "administrative detention"' without charge Ten days before our visit a 17-year-old boy had been shot in the stomach and was bleeding badly. IDF soldiers stopped the ambulance for 30 minutes while he was bleeding. He was photographed by the soldiers and one of them stepped on his injuries. As a result of this injury the boy lost seven inches of his intestines.

Qualqiliya is the only town in the West Bank with a zoo, where we had lunch. It was a joy at least to see some Palestinian children there enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the IDF have killed one of the two giraffes with tear gas, albeit not deliberately, but it is still there stuffed in the museum attached to the zoo.

RAMALLAN Thursday, April 17

We were told that Ramallah is invaded by the IDF almost on a daily basis and that people are arrested at random. The Geneva Convention is almost totally ignored by the Israelis.

There are currently 9,087 Palestinians detained, some under "administrative detention orders" in Israel jails, against international law, many of them elected representatives. There have been 700,000 arrests of Palestinians since 1967 and 6,000 children, aged 12-17, arrested since the First Intifada. Almost every family has been affected. Visitors are rigidly controlled; men between the ages of 16 and 46 cannot get visitors permits, and telephone calls are not allowed. Prisoners' health issues are ignored; required medicines are not made available. There is mental and physical torture. Usually, prisoners are tied to chairs for long periods of time in order to get them to confess to "crimes". Mental torture involves threats to harm family members. President Bush will be in Israel for its 60th Anniversary Celebrations in June, and a high-level conference is planned in Egypt later this year in Sharm El-Sheikh.

BETHLEHEM Friday, April 18

East Jerusalem is being cut off from the West Bank by a ring of settlements and the meandering security wall.

East Jerusalem is now almost completely surrounded by Israeli settlements, the wall and check points, ready for its annexation to Israel.

These facts on the ground will be difficult to reverse.

Bethlehem is also completely surrounded by the wall and settlements, also with a new airport-like security entry point.

In one part of Bethlehem the wall runs along the old Jerusalem to Bethlehem road. This has trapped a Christian enclave on three sides by the wall.

The sun hardly shines any more on these people. "Ich bin ein Berliner" is part of the colourful graffiti on the wall at this place.

Businesses in general have collapsed all over Hebron due to the tight ring of security that the IDF have established around the town to protect the large Jewish settlement in the heart of Hebron which is where their prophets are buried

COMMENT by Brian Iddon: Sad outlook in a troubled regionOptimists believe that, when a peace settlement arrives in this region, it will arrive quickly. I am not so sure. We often compare the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with that which previously existed in Northern Ireland. I pointed out to my colleagues that, after the many atrocities associated with that struggle, probably the tipping point' was the Omagh bomb, which shocked the world. As a result, even the American-Irish stopped funding the IRA.

We have had worse atrocities on both sides of the divide in the Middle East, with Palestinians suffering by far the worst atrocities. Perhaps their "Omagh moment" is yet to come, when the world will wake up to the fact that they have to stop the violence using all means possible? The headline story in the Jerusalem Post of Thursday, April 17, 2008 reads: "Israel considering large Gaza incursion soon after Bush visit" (for Israel's 60th Anniversary celebrations in June).

More bloodshed is inevitable in this region, sadly.