Breaking Into a Prison

This August, the Free Gaza Movement will set sail from Cyprus to Gaza on a ship carrying needed medical supplies. We will not be asking Israel for permission.

We are students and teachers, human rights observers and aid workers, lawyers, medics, activists - parents and grandparents. We are Americans and Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians, Australians, South Africans, and more. We are of all ages and backgrounds. Collectively, we have years of experience volunteering in Gaza and the West Bank. Because of our human rights work, the state of Israel has banned many of us from re-entering Palestinian areas. Because of the ongoing blockade, the rest of us find it almost impossible to enter Gaza at all. Despite deteriorating conditions, the great need for international assistance, and the invitations of our Palestinian partners - the Israeli Government will not allow us into Gaza to help. Will you help?

For over two years the state of Israel has severely restricted the Gaza Strip’s ability to import fuel, spare parts, and other necessary materials. Israel maintains complete control over Gaza's air space and territorial waters, near complete control over travel into or out of Gaza, near complete control over Gaza's imports and exports, and near complete control over Gaza's own tax revenues. Little is allowed in. As a result, Gaza’s economy has completely collapsed. [1]

Running water is now available to most households for only four to six hours a day. Sewage treatment centers no longer function properly. Millions of liters of raw sewage have been pumped into heavily populated neighborhoods, and in order to avoid being forced to literally flood these residential areas with even more raw sewage, the Mediterranean Sea has been turned into a toilet. Since January of this year over 10 billion liters of untreated and only partially treated sewage have been released into the Mediterranean. Gaza's fishermen state that the sewage has killed off most of the sea life in the immediate vicinity. [6]

The humanitarian condition of the one and a half million men, women, and children illegally incarcerated in Gaza is now at its worst point in the last forty years of Israeli occupation.