Updates

During my visit to Israel and Palestine earlier this month I was able to spend five and a half hours in Gaza.  I intended to spend several days visiting AFSC’s staff and partners in Gaza but the Israeli military didn’t approve the permits I required to enter Gaza until the day before I was scheduled to return to the United States.

"The economy in Gaza is collapsing," writes the World Bank in a new report published at the end of September.

On September 7, 2018, Palestinian activists invited anti-Zionist Israeli activists to have tea and protest in solidarity with the Great March of Return. Since the Gaza siege fence and occupying military forces stood between them, they instead joined the demonstration from the eastern side with Palestinian flags and spoke with the Palestinian protestors by phone.

For more than 100 days, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip emerged from the shadows of occupation and blockade. Thousands of Palestinians, women and men, old and young, partisans and independent, marched to the barbed-wire fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel and raised their voices. Despite living under blockade and witnessing brutal wars, a majority of the protestors maintained the peaceful and nonviolent nature of the March of Return.

Last week 70 members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent an open letter to the US Secretary of State requesting immediate action to “alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.”

The Independent ran a story a few days ago by their Middle East correspondent Bel Trew about a Palestinian girl in Gaza, 13 year old Fatima Abu Shedeg, who dreams of going to the Olympics in 2020.

Last week the Episcopal Church held its tri-annual General Convention in Austin, Texas. The Episcopal Church is a mainline Christian denomination with three million members in the United States and is the U.S.-based member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

A recent article from The Guardian highlights the creative ways in which Gazans create opportunities and engage youth in the face of blockade. Gaza Sky Geeks, a “tech hub and co-working space”, trains youth in coding and modern online business practices.

Since at least 2007 Israel has imposed a military no-go zone along the boundary between Israel and Gaza which extends up to one and a half kilometers into Gaza.  Anyone entering this no-go zone can be shot by the Israeli military.  

Two weeks before her twentieth birthday, Asmaa Tayeh wrote, “I have spent my life so far in a prison called Gaza, which is in Palestine. I call it a prison because if you committed a crime and were sentenced to prison for 20 years, you would be unable to do anything except eat, drink, sleep and maybe study–achieving nothing. And that’s all that’s possible here...” (This article was first published in garnet news)

During the Great Return March, university student Muawiya Alai volunteered with a Palestinian Red Crescent medical team providing assistance to those injured during the protests. While in the field and wearing his medical uniform, Muawiya and a colleague were shot by Israeli snipers.