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Members' News
Members are invited to submit pieces – up to 800 words – on any current experience of the Israel/Palestine issue. News please, not opinion! Please email to info@ldfp.eu
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Andrew Baldwin - blog: Britain-Palestine All Party Group Visit to the Gaza Strip, 4 -8 March 2010
Last weekend a delegation of UK Members of Parliament set out for the Gaza Strip, on a fact-finding mission to see what has changed since Operation Cast Lead over a year ago. I was extremely fortunate to be allowed to join the delegation in my capacity as Researcher to Colin Breed MP, who is Vice Chair of both the All-Party Group and of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, (CAABU) who facilitated the trip.
So it was then, that at 5am on Thursday morning we clambered into taxis and drove across the Sinai to the Rafah Crossing. There was much trepidation as I took my first steps in the Gaza Strip, armed only with a Foreign and Commonwealth Office letter which considered our attempts to gain entry as nothing short of “reckless”. It is always good to have your country's full support when venturing abroad.
Our hosts for the weekend were the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. I must put on record the remarkable courage and ingenuity of this organisation in the face of overwhelming odds. Whilst the international community bickers and squabbles, UNWRA stays out of the limelight and focuses all its attention on providing for the Palestinian people. We were to see a large number of their projects in the next few days.
We were thrown somewhat into the deep end, as our first stop was to view the Rafah tunnel systems, which bring everything from food, to instruments to cars from Egypt . Since the blockade was forced upon the Strip, after its people had the audacity to return to power the wrong people, all ‘luxuries' have to be imported illegally through tunnels controlled by Hamas. I was led to believe the blockade was intended to break Hamas, but it appears to have worked phenomenally well in doing the complete opposite. The blockade has prevented legitimate businessmen (many of whom we met) from trading with their neighbours, forcing them to choose between going under or converting to the black market (and paying Hamas to use the tunnels). As a result, the private economy in Gaza has collapsed and unemployment has sky-rocketed.
The United Nations tries its best to make do in areas where the state cannot provide (which appears to be everywhere). We were taken to a housing project in Khan Younis where we were met with row upon row of unfinished apartment blocks in varying states of incompleteness. With international support, funding and materials the UN was in the process of creating hundreds of new homes for refugees but unfortunately the Israeli blockade on Gaza came into effect before they could be completed. Without concrete, the buildings lie idle, unfinished and unusable, while the refugees make do with tents.
The most impressive part of the visit was seeing first hand the work of UNWRA, especially in terms of schooling. All refugees are guaranteed a place in a UNWRA school, and they solve the problem of not having enough schools by using each one twice, for a morning and afternoon shift. I was impressed by the number of subjects taught, and how good the childrens' English was – certainly better than my knowledge of French at the same age!
My most serious concern for the children though is that the blockade is creating a whole new generation of Palestinians who have never met their Israeli peers. It is worrying that their only knowledge of Israelis, as depicted in their drawings at school, is via the sound of an F-16, or an Apache gunship. This cannot be good for future peace plans, and will almost certainly play into the hands of radical elements.
We visited a number of bombed out buildings (they are everywhere) and some families had patched up holes with breeze blocks where shells had ripped through their living rooms. We also stopped at the American School , or more accurately, the expanse of rubble that was until recently the American School . It seems ludicrous to me that the money is there for rebuilding, but because of the blockade it cannot be used. Any rebuilding has been done haphazardly, using materials smuggled through the tunnels, and many families are still living in tents.
All this devastation, juxtaposed against the warmth and kindness of the people left a strange feeling in my stomach. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians just want to get on with their lives without fear of attack from their trigger-happy neighbours. For their part, they must put pressure on, and challenge, radical elements that seem to think it a good idea to send rockets into Israel . It clearly is not, because it only piles more misery onto an already depressed population (the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reported to us that over two-thirds of Gazans are showing signs of mental distress).
I was pleasantly surprised by my trip to Gaza . Its people do not need handouts or political promises. They need the international community to get its act together. The money is there for investment, the people are willing and able to rebuild and the UN has shown itself to be more than capable of providing the people with the services they need.
Any more stalling from the international community would be nothing short of “reckless”.
Brief account of visit to Gaza Jan 2010. Baroness
Dr Jenny Tonge.
Full report will appear on the website of the European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza in due course.
A delegation of 60 MPs and Peers from all over Europe and the European Parliament, visited Gaza in January.The trip was organised by the ECESG and included Lib Dems Andrew Phillips, Jenny Tonge (both House of Lords), John Barrett MP and Jim Tolson MSP, Gerald Kaufman MP and included UK reps, Clare Short MP, Bob Marshall Andrews MP, Martin Linton MP, Lynne Jones MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP. Peers Lord Ahmed and Lord Low led the delegation. A very moving conversation between the latter and a small boy, blinded by Israeli action, can be seen further down this story.
 So much damage has been done to a small area that was bad enough the last time I visited but is now devastated.The Israelis were particularly careful to wreck houses and their families living near the border with Israel. The Samouni Family for instance had lost 29 members and was living in a tent on the site of their flattened house, with some family members camping out with other family or friends away from the border.
Hospitals and all civilian infrastructure have been badly damaged. The sewage works and electricity generating plant were further damaged, causing all sewage to flow into the sea. The stench near the lovely shoreline of Gaza is intolerable.Fishermen are limited to a limit of 3 miles (down from 6 miles last year) and so no fish can be caught—all poisoned by sewage.
The cement works and a flourmill were blown up, neither apparently having any connection with rockets but I guess the Israelis wanted to be on the safe side. Everyone heard abut the UN main store and the UN school which was bombed but the Red Crescent buildings were also damaged.
John Ging the UN man responsible for UNRWA in Gaza summed it up nicely ''.Human development is going backwards here. We are seeing the destruction of a cultured and civilized society.” He told us that not a penny of the $4.5 billion dollars, pledged by the International Community, had been spent yet, because of the continuing and worsening blockade by Israel.
I was particularly concerned to look at the state of health of the children of Gaza.
Hundreds were badly injured during the offensive and many cannot get out of Gaza for proper treatment. The hospitals and surgeons of Gaza used to be as good as anywhere but they now struggle to cope without proper supplies coming in. There are some surgeons from the UK and elsewhere going in voluntarily to help, but attention has been diverted somewhat by the Haitian Earthquake.
 The doctors of Gaza struggle on. 60 per cent of the children are malnourished and have been for some years now. The main meal of the day for them, provided at schools by UNRWA is a biscuit and a yogurt, which John Ging said was totally disgraceful but was all they could do, This malnutrition is shown up in listlessness, poor concentration and stunted growth. The boy, who talked to Lord Low in the video here, was eleven years old and looked about seven. To watch the video, click on the image to the right.
All of the children are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but of course in their cases it is not ‘post', it is ongoing. They are constantly terrified by the sonic booms and gunship excursions, which Israel has resumed recently. This means bedwetting and poor performance at school. The Minister of Health for Gaza told me how exam results in then schools have plummeted and the children are a huge concern to the community and to UNRWA. One student when asked what his feelings were towards Israel replied “Hatred. Nothing else.” This from a highly educated, bi-lingual student was frightening and depressing, but I challenge anyone to fail to understand, after seeing what these people are going through.
The world moves on and the people of Gaza get forgotten and because we do nothing, they become angrier and angrier and the children grow up vowing revenge on Israel.
Why oh why can't Israel see that this is no recipe for its long-term survival?
Jenny Tonge's visit to Damascus 13-16 March 2009.
This was my second visit to Damascus in 3 months and was organised by the European Campaign to end the Siege of Gaza, who had also been the sponsors for my trip to Gaza, by boat, in November.
On my first visit, which was to speak at a 'Right to Return' conference attended by thousands of Palestinians from all over the Middle East, Lord Ahmed had accompanied me.
On that occasion, we were both able to meet Khalid Masha'al, Chair of Hamas' political Bureau under a great cloak of security! He is the effective leader of Hamas outside Gaza and stays in Syria.
We were very impressed by what he had to say and I resolved that with the help of the European Campaign, we would bring as many parliamentarians as we could out to meet Hamas.
If there is ever to be peace in the Middle East we need to talk to our so-called enemies!
On the second visit I was accompanied by Lindsey Northover and William Wallace from the House of Lords, Clare Short and Lynne Jones, from the Commons, Sandra White MSP and Chris Andrews, from the Irish Parliament.
We were treated to a brief tour of the key sites in Damascus, which is a stunning city, and the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. It's a place that gets into your being somehow, like all those places in Palestine that, whether we are religious or not, form part of our culture and upbringing!
We had meetings with Khalid Masha'al at the Headquarters of Hamas, President Asad, in the Presidential Palace, and Dr Ramadan Shalah, Head of Islamic Jihad, who insisted that he was Palestine, based and had no connection with other jihadists in the Middle East.
Khalid Masha'al repeated even more convincingly, what he had told Lord Ahmed and I, in November, which had also been endorsed by Ismail Hanniyeh, Hamas' leader in Gaza.
Hamas will accept a state of Palestine based on the pre 1967 borders, which de facto means accepting a state of Israel. He would not however utter the words 'right to exist'.
Hamas will also always consider a truce and have offered a ten-year truce, refused by Israel. He pointed out quite rightly that the 6-month truce of last year had been broken by Israel's incursion into Gaza and killing of 6 people. He was also sore that no progress had been on the opening of the crossings despite the ceasefire. He commented that he felt that Israel did not want peace in any circumstance.
I asked about the Hamas Charter, which is a chilling document, written 20 years ago and he commented that the state of Palestine would have a new constitution, which would NOT include the charter!!
Questions about Cpl Gillit brought the predicable response that 11,000 Palestinians including 40 parliamentarians, were prisoners in Israel and no one mentioned them.
He insisted that the talks in Egypt between Hamas and Fatah were progressing and we later learnt that Islamic Jihad were also there. He claimed contact with several countries but could not name them.
Masha'al is a shrewd, plausible and actually very likeable man, who everyone agreed should be included in all talks on the peace process. Most Palestinians I have talked to hold him in great esteem, and when he appeared at the Right of Return conference in November was cheered for ages by thousands of ecstatic Palestinians. There will be no solutions without Hamas.
Dr Ramadan Shalah was an even greater surprise to meet. Educated in Egypt and Durham University, he was fluent in English and had a terrific grasp of the problems. He agreed with Hamas up to a point and would accept their 2 state solution if it ever occurred, but, like many in the West, fears that it is no longer attainable and that Israel's intention is to drive as many Palestinians as possible into Egypt and Jordan and make an underclass of those who remain, who would then have to struggle to attain justice and equal rights.
Another picture painted by this man was of increasing anger and resistance to Israel/USA/ Europe by people and an increasing number of states all over the ME. Lebanon and Gaza where preliminary skirmishes, heralding a wider and more terrible war all over the region.
After I tackled him on the use of suicide bombers, his eloquence knew no bounds, "WE love life and happiness like any other human beings," was the reply.
President Asad gave us a warm greeting. He was pleased that the UK was talking to Hizbollah, but emphasised that the siege of Gaza must be lifted and prisoners must be released. He also thought that the main problem was, that Israel did not want peace and would carry on as long as the USA in particular, continue their support.
He told us that the Palestinians would continue to have support in Syria - we had learned that they have all the same services and rights as Syrians, except the vote, which they do NOT want!
He stated quite emphatically that he would never trade Hamas for the Golan Heights - there have been suggestions that to get the Golan back Syria would have to expel Hamas.
"We will never expel Hamas for Golan - where would they go? Into the sea?"
President Asad felt that relations with Iran and the Arab League have improved since Gaza, and defended Egypt somewhat on the grounds that the government there were afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control.
Amazingly too, he felt that the UK position had changed and that Miliband was 'different'!
I think that the visit was productive and will herald more visits by parliamentarians. My ambition is for so many of us to have met the Hamas leaders that our government will look stupid if they do not start talks - perhaps they have already. Who knows?
As a Syrian official said to me, "Palestine is the beating heart of Islamic terrorism, when will your governments' realise this and ACT."
Quite so.
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