BBC Guide: Gaza under blockade

August 11, 2008 Gaza under Hamas No Comments

BBC NEWS, Guide: Gaza under blockade, August 11, 2008

For the past year, Gaza’s 1.5m people have been relying on, on average, less than a fifth of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005. Some weeks significantly less than that has arrived.

Only basic humanitarian items have been allowed in, and virtually no exports permitted, paralysing the economy. Reduced fuel supplies and lack of spare parts have had heavy knock-on impacts on sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities.

In the wake of the Hamas takeover, Israel said it would allow only basic humanitarian supplies into the Strip. No specific list of what is and is not classed as humanitarian exists, although aid agencies say permitted items generally fall into four categories - human food, animal food, groceries (cleaning products, nappies etc) and medicines.

In September 2007, the Israeli government declared the Strip a “hostile entity” in response to continued rocket attacks on southern Israel, and said it would start cutting fuel imports. Israel maintains the blockade has at no point caused a humanitarian crisis - but in early 2008, a group of aid agencies described the situation as exactly that, and the worst situation in the strip since Israel occupied it in 1967.

Darwish: I long for my mother’s bread, my mother’s coffee, her touch

August 11, 2008 Darwish No Comments

Richard Silverstein, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s Greatest Poet, Dies | Tikun Olam, August 10, 2008

My Mother

I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother.

And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touch the depths of your heart.

If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand.

I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest.