Heavy artillery shelling along the border. Tank gunfire. Scenes of fierce clashes between the IDF and Palestinian fighters. Friends watching the daily news reports on Gaza call my cell phone during the day, expecting me to be staying at home, and are surprised when I tell them it’s business as usual, I’m in the middle of today’s program with the kids (Haneen! Get your butt back in your seat!) and could they please call back in a couple of hours? You can only put life on hold for so long. After the first two days of the Israeli incursion, we all got tired of just waiting around with our ears stuck to the radio, listening to minute-by-minute reports yo-yoing between imminent truce and a full-blown invasion. Read more about Two Weeks, and Counting
Most areas of the Gaza Strip are currently experiencing an extremely difficult period — Israeli warplanes and tanks never stop, day or night, firing heavy artillery against every target possible. Homes, institutions and infrastructure never escape the Israeli shelling; power and water plants have been severely hit so far, main roads have been damaged, buildings and homes have been shelled. Moreover, civilians along with resistance fighters have been killed and wounded due to such non-stop Israeli aggression. It is as if Gaza has returned to 1967 and the first days of its occupation. Read more about The games children play in Gaza
On a sunny Friday afternoon, Tawfiq Saad sits in front of his house, drinking tea and watching his four children play in a small patch of land right across the house, near the northern border of the Gaza Strip, in the small town of Beit Lahiya. Suddenly, a thunderous sound echoes throughout the area, and clouds of smoke rise less than a hundred metres from his house. The terrified children dash to the house screaming. The youngest of them, five-year-old Najat, jumps into her father’s arms and starts crying. Read more about Palestinian blacksmith dreams of returning to job in Israel
Yesterday, after a trip around Bait Hanun, Gaza’s northern breadbasket, I headed to the Erez Crossing to give some journalist friends a lift. They were headed to Jerusalem, where they were based, and to where I am I unable to travel.I hadn’t been to Erez in a while, namely because there is no point. I am forbidden from entering the West Bank based on the arbitrary decision of some official in the Israeli security matrix. Or maybe not so arbitrary. Because obviously with a pen in one hand, a dirty diaper in the other, I am a very real and potent threat to the Israeli security establishment. Read more about Where the Sidewalk Ends
28 September 2005 — During the last few days, Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with horrible explosions which have shattered our skies, shaken our buildings, broken our windows, and threw the place into panic. We have been bombed since Friday 23 September, day and night. Usually between 2:00-4:00am, between 6:30 - 8:00 in the morning during the time children go to school, and in the afternoon or early evening. The explosions are heard and felt all over the Gaza Strip with the same intensity. Read more about Stunning Gaza!
Despite the hot weather in Gaza, thousands of Palestinian citizens poured Monday into the evacuated colonies at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip. Elderly, youth, children, fishermen, farmers and family members were keen to have a historical look at the three settlements of Duggit, Eli Sinai and Nissanit. Fishermen pushed their boats into the sea, while hobbyists installed their fishhooks at the shore. Parents toured among the rubble of Duggit while teenagers were planting Palestinian and other different colored flags on the telegraph poles of the destroyed electric network. Sami Abu Salem writes from Gaza. Read more about Children of Gaza happy for "Bigger Prison"
GAZA, 11 April 2005, (WAFA) — Happiness and fear, hope and despair, eagerness and oppression, dreaming and deep thinking marked the chat between a group of deportees from the Nativity Church seige who were closely watching the TV in their flat, near the Presidential office in Gaza City. Some of them sat on a sofa, others on chairs and the ground, the ringing of mobile phones does not stop. As one of them speaks via mobile, the others stare at him, waiting for new information. “I have not slept for four days. I am thinking of returning home and hugging my mother. I have not seen her for three years,” said Issa Abu Ahoor, 39, from Bethlehem. Read more about The Nativity Church Deportees' Right to Return
GAZA, 14 April 2005, (WAFA) — The neighing of horses and the chirping of sparrows break the silence covering the Palestine Horsemanship Club (PHC) along the Gaza shore. Broken tiles cover the roof of the winter hall while cracks mark the walls. Silence and gloom have replaced the cheers of the crowds that used to be heard during the local competitive horse riding championships. Sami Abu Salem reports for WAFA from occupied Gaza. Read more about Horsemanship in Gaza: Palestinian dreams and Israeli obstacles
Amani Al-Hissi, a 25-year-old Palestinian blind woman from the poor refugee camp of Al-Shati (“The Beach”) in Gaza, studies Arabic literature, plays music, works as a radio presenter and depends on “help your self” as her strategy for managing the details of her own life. Ms. Al-Hissi, was shot by an Israeli soldier while she was six years old. One week after the shooting, she lost sight in one eye. Four years later, she completely lost her eyesight. WAFA reporter Sami Abu Salem writes from Gaza on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Read more about The Vision of a Blind Woman
It smells unbelievably bad here. To walk down any street, if you dare to, you skirt, or sometimes unavoidably walk through, pools of blood. There are shreds of human flesh, some of them unrecognizable as human remains — all over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street. The stench of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burnt to black char by the rockets fired by the Israeli Army’s American-made Apache helicopters. Volunteer crews are gathering these human fragments and bringing them to Jabalya’s two hospitals but the ambulances cannot possibly keep up with the flood of newly dead and injured. Read more about The "Days of Penitence": Gaza Sinks in a Sea of Blood
