Sunday, January 31, 2016

Gaza Speaks: This Is What the Decade-Long Siege Has Done to Us

Jan 31, 2016 

Whenever Mariam Aljamal’s children hear the sound of thunder at night, they
wet their beds. Their reaction is almost instinctive, and is shared
by a large number of children
 throughout the Gaza Strip. 
Mariam’s three children – Jamal, Lina, and Sarah – were all born a few
years after the Gaza siege was first imposed in 2006, and all of them have experienced
at least one Israeli war.
“My kids feel scared when the electricity goes off, which is most of the time,”
says the 33-year-old mother from Nuseirat Refugee Camp, who has a degree in
Communication and is currently pursuing her MA. “They are still living the trauma
of the 2014 offensive. War is still haunting my family, and life has become
so hard for us.”
Indeed, after years of trying, Mariam is yet to find work. Unemployment in
Gaza is the highest in the world, according
to the World Bank
.
The siege on Gaza was imposed in stages, starting January 2006, when the Hamas
movement won the legislative elections in the Occupied Territories. Donors’
money was immediately withheld, so the new Government could not pay the salaries
of its employees. The conventional wisdom, then, was the new Government would
soon collapse, and Hamas’ rival, Fatah, would quickly resume its control over
the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The Israeli hope, which was reinforced by the US and also shared
by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and many in his party
, never came to fruition.
To speed up the projected collapse, Israel began sporadic bombardment of Gaza
and carried out a sweeping campaign to arrest many of its elected MPs, coupled
with a Fatah and Hamas dispute, which eventually turned into street battles
in the
summer of 2007
.
It was then that the siege became complete, now ongoing for ten years. During
this time, Fatah resumed its control over the PA in the West Bank, reconciliation
between Hamas and Fatah largely failed, the Rafah border has been mostly sealed,
and Israel has launched three major wars that have killed thousands.

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