Silenced bells: Gaza’s cry amidst devastation

2010

www.thelancet.com Published online July 2, 2010 1 Published Online July 2, 2010 For all Palestine Abstracts and accompanying Comments see http://www.thelancet.com/ health-in-the-occupiedpalestinian-territory-2010 Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, West Bank, occupied Palestinian territory (N M E Abu-Rmeileh PhD, W Hammoudeh MPH, Prof R Giacaman PharmD) Correspondence to: Dr Niveen M E Abu-Rmeileh, Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, PO Box 14, West Bank, occupied Palestinian territory [email protected] Humanitarian crisis and social suffering in Gaza Strip: an initial analysis of aftermath of latest Israeli war Niveen M E Abu-Rmeileh, Weeam Hammoudeh, Rita Giacaman Abstract Background 1400 people were estimated to have died, and many were injured during the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestinian territory, from Dec 27, 2008, to Jan 18, 2009; and the destruction of infrastructure, including homes, was unprecedent...

The editors of this remarkable collection ask, 'After the smoke clears, who will remember the dead?' Their answer, and that of their dozens of writers, poets, journalists, and analysts, is "We will." We, they said, Palestinians of Gaza who survived the slaughter, we Palestinians from elsewhere in Palestine and refugees in far-flung exile, we allies and friends from around the world, we will not let the world forget. During the 50 days of Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza, Tel Aviv's best efforts to keep the world in the dark and to keep the West believing the lie of self-defense, all failed. They failed because Palestinians did not all die, and those who lived were determined to tell their story in their own voices: their poetry, their memories, and their children. This extraordinary book joins the narrative of Palestine's witness-of oppression, brutality, and death, but also of life reaffirmed and resistance reclaimed."-PHYLLIS BENNIS Institute for Policy Studies "Readers will find this rich anthology highly informative, evocative, and inspirational. They will find in it culture, creativity, and commitment. And they will also find it painful, emotional, and overpowering, such is the unremitting cruelty with which Palestinians are treated. But read it they must.... It enables us to communicate, even more powerfully, why justice is needed and needed now, and why Israel must be brought to justice. If any book is a must-read by the Prosecutor and judges at the International Criminal Court, this book is it."-NADIA HIJAB Executive Director, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network "Gaza Unsilenced is an outstanding collection of short essays that discuss different aspects of Israel's murderous assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014. Given the ability of Israel and its American defenders to propagandize and distort the historical record, it is imperative that books like this be published and widely read. Israel cannot be allowed to create a false history about the horrors it has inflicted on the people of Gaza and the Palestinians more generally."-JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "Israel takes the hammer to Gaza, but it cannot snuff out Palestinian voices. These continue to testify to the inhumanity of the Israeli occupation. There are also silences-the book ends with a list of the names of those killed in Israel's 2014 bombing of Gaza, human beings who cannot tell us their stories. This book tries to fill that gap."-VIJAY PRASHAD Editor, Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation Just World Books exists to expand the discourse in the United States and worldwide on issues of vital international concern. We are committed to building a more just, equitable, and peaceable world. We uphold the equality of all human persons. We aim for our books to contribute to increasing understanding across national, religious, ethnic, and racial lines; to share more broadly the reflections, analyses, and policy prescriptions of pathbreaking activists for peace; and to help to prevent war.

The corporate media has largely ignored the brutal chronology of events in Gaza and the horrific living conditions in Gaza that have gradually intensified since Israel officially left the territory in 2005. While the reasons for such blinkered journalism are beyond the scope of this article; I will offer an idea for the reader’s consideration: “…the imperial mentality is so deeply embedded in Western culture that this travesty passes without criticism, even notice.” (Chomsky & Pappe: 2010.) Considering the current state of affairs in Gaza; this absence of depth and context creates the false impression that Palestinians are innately violent and self-destructive.

Annals of Global Health

Palestine, since 1948, has endured frequent military occupations and uprisings, intifadas, in a limited geographic area that has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises. The prolonged nature of this military occupation has created a biosphere of war that is uninhabitable, whereby Palestinians suffer from physical, psychological, and social wounds. Israel also imposed restrictive measures in Gaza, making it difficult for Palestinians to obtain permits to work and travel throughout Palestine. Israel continued to intensify the restrictions on Gaza, reaching a blockade on the Gaza Strip, which cut off Palestinians from Jerusalem, where hospitals, banks, and vital services are found. This form of permanent siege resulted in a surge in the unemployment rate, poverty, and poor nutritional and wellbeing status. The siege also resulted in the largest open-air prison, as people became stuck between an incomplete life and the absence of total death. The major challenge is that humanitarian interventions, in the case of Gaza, are ineffective, as they are part of the siege framework. This is because any humanitarian aid meant for Gaza needs to be approved by Israel. Thus, when the emergency becomes chronic and humanitarian interventions become part of the siege framework, how can Gaza rebuild its health capacity in a permanent emergency, and to what extent can the humanitarian sector make a change?

Disasters, 2020

This paper examines the siege of the Gaza Strip since 2007. Research on sieges tends to address the coping strategies employed by besieged communities, and humanitarian issues of the impact of siege, humanitarian access, and the prioritization of needs with little or no attention to reconstruction. However, Gaza is unusual as a siege context under which reconstruction has become a high priority in the aftermath of its three destructive wars with Israel. Following an overview of research on sieges in contemporary warfare and a brief contextualisation of Gaza, this paper examines why reconstruction outcomes have varied over time through the application of a theoretical framework that stipulates the importance of four factors-time, needs, political context, and scarcity. Based on these factors, Gaza was found to represent a most-likely case for reconstruction under siege. However, despite these conditions, the large-scale reconstruction necessary to transform Gaza has not actualized.

IAEME PUBLICATION, 2024

The war on Gaza, which began in October 2023, led to the loss of lives and has been continuing for more than eight months, destroying everything that affects life and the components of society and its infrastructure, which has had profound psychological, social, and physical effects on the residents there. It has deepened the humanitarian, economic and social losses among the Palestinians, leading to a huge gap in all people’s means of living, maintaining the stability of their mental health, and a decent quality of life in general. These losses are not only immediate, but also have long-term effects on the social fabric and community resilience. This paper explores the deliberate strategies used by Israel to deepen Palestinian losses in Gaza since October 2023. The author explores the types and scale of losses suffered by Gazans and examines lessons learned in dealing with loss and longing for the past, from other similar conflicts that have occurred in the modern era. This paper proposes a variety of bottom-up, interdisciplinary, community-based approaches to dealing with feelings of loss and bereavement as well as feelings of heartbreak. The goal is to strengthen resilience, empower individuals, and promote a culture of compassion and solidarity in Gaza

Under constant assault by Israel, Gaza looms large in our minds and media-a land in which the violent exercise of power seemingly excludes all other possibilities for action. Gaza is frequently examined through the prism of occupation and violence. Rooted in settler-colonial and geopolitical scholarly traditions, this prism expands our understanding of power. Yet it grants scant voice to the multiplicity of Palestinian identities and perspectives. Communicating these silenced perspectives demands a methodological shift-from the realm of abstraction to the domain of culture, including architecture and urban design. * In other words, a shift from the epistemologies of power as a relational conception to its material rendering in the design and construction of the urban environment. Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp's edited volume, Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope, offers such a novel approach. Rather than deal in denunciation and solidarity, Sorkin and Sharp illuminate the agency of architects and urbanists working from within, utilizing Gaza's modest "as-found" resources and urban potentials to subvert oppression. While recognizing the dynamics of power and conflict, this subversion throws off the constraints of these phenomena, seeking out new possibilities in the politics of reality and representation. Specifically, the authors juxtapose the local work of architects and planners against the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM)-the tripartite planning regime initiated in the aftermath of Israel's 2014 "Operation Protective Edge" that has, as detailed by Sara Roy in the preface, systematically undermined Gaza's Indigenous economy. † In a series of essays covering twenty-two projects, Sorkin and Sharp assemble an international cadre of architects, designers, environmentalists, planners, and activists to "imagine and celebrate the spaces of steadfastness and even hope" in Gaza (p. 11). They do so subversively, leveraging a Marxist-activist approach to the explicit presentation and distribution of architecture as a means to mediate between "limits and possibilities" (p. 14), resist top-down reconstruction, and transgress disciplinary boundaries and power relations. The immediacy of their activism is effectively mirrored in the book's eclectic arrangement, which skillfully threads common interests via the various modes of intervention-thwarting, educating, remapping, and envisioning. Thwarting relates to the understanding of Gaza as a "microcosm of our time" (Baconi, p. 24), where nihilism, dehumanization, and even "critical trends of urbanization" (Sebregondi, p. 198) are tested. Under absurd conditions, argue Salem Al Qudwa (pp. 26-42) and Omar Yousef (pp. 76-84), everyday architectural practices in Gaza are laden with the meanings of modern architecture in the developing

Developing World Bioethics, 2019

Using Madison Powers and Ruth Faden's definition of ‘well‐being,’ the authors argue that Israel, the international community and public health practitioners have a justice‐based obligation to assist the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Focusing on Palestinians in Gaza, the authors first outline a normative framework of justice, as articulated by Powers and Faden. Following Powers and Faden's assumption that empirical assessments of justice can be made using the six dimensions of well‐being, the authors next present current data on the living conditions in Gaza and describe how these conditions prevent residents from achieving sufficient levels of well‐being. Using these indicators to demonstrate that Palestinians living in Gaza suffer deficiencies in these dimensions of well‐being, the authors present a strong argument from justice to assist the residents of Gaza. The medical, public health, and bioethics community cannot sit idle while injustice c...

Journal of Iranian International Legal Studies (IIntbar), 2024

Hermeneutics, the art and science of interpretation, has evolved significantly from its origins in biblical exegesis to its contemporary application in various fields of humanities and social sciences. This article however tries to analyze the contemporary relevance of hermeneutics in the crisis of Gaza. While it is not acceptable to refer to a living fact as absent or indifferent in the course of human crisis, this work tries to find relevance in the multifaceted hermeneutics of events, cities and even people in the crisis of Palestine. The article also examines the contributions of major figures like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur, offering insights into how hermeneutical methods continue to shape our understanding of texts, meaning, and human experience.