al-Sarraj: “Gaza is quite a dynamic place now”

January 31, 2008 11:15 am henrymunsonjr Gaza under Hamas

“Gaza is quite a dynamic place now”: an interview, openDemocracy, 29 - 01 - 2008
Eyad Sarraj

The breach of the Gaza-Egypt barrier is changing the region’s political calculations, the psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj tells the bitterlemons project.

bitterlemons: How has the border breach affected the situation on the ground in Gaza?

Eyad Sarraj is a founder and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP)

This article was first published in the independent website BitterLemons.org

Eyad Sarraj: Well, most people are not in Gaza at the moment. Some say that almost 700,000 people have been traveling in and out of Egypt. Gaza is flooded with the things that Israel did not allow us to have before and people are swarming to the markets to buy computers, cement, lamps, oil, fuel and even windows. When Israel bombed the deserted Palestinian interior ministry (on 18 January 2008), all the windows in the surrounding buildings were shattered. With no windows allowed in from Israel, they could not replace them before, but now there are new windows in place.

Everything is available in the market now. From forty NIS ($10.8) a packet, cigarettes are now down to six. There is chocolate for the children. People are almost euphoric since they can get out of the prison, even if it is only for a short respite. People go to El-Arish for a picnic, eat fish there and spend a couple of hours. Families sometimes go for the day and come back at night. Gaza is quite a dynamic place now.

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