An appeal for an abandoned people

The Independent's Christmas Appeal will focus on the dispossessed of the Palestinian territories, for whom 2006 has been the worst of times

By Donald Macintyre in Gaza
Published: 05 December 2006

"Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.......

Certainly, the 1.3 million population of this ancient coastal strip of territory, a mere 225 square miles, can never have experienced as intense a swing of hope to despair as they have in little more than 12 months. Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw Israel's settlers and troops in August 2005, unilateral and circumscribed in both its genesis and its implementation as it was, made many Palestinians here, almost despite themselves, hope for a better future.

As 2006 nears its close and The Independent launches its Christmas appeal partly focused on Gaza, it is easy to see how cruelly those hopes have been mocked by what has happened this year........

For the immediate survivors of the Israeli shells that killed 17 members of the Athamneh family as they tried to flee their home in Beit Hanoun as it was attacked, the bereavement is, if anything, harder to bear now that more than three weeks have elapsed since it happened. In late afternoon sunshine on Sunday, in the now eerily peaceful alley where the carnage was perpetrated, Hayat Athamneh, 56, a strong woman who lost three adult sons, all fathers themselves, sat with their still devastated and injured brother Amjad, 31, and his wife, who lost their own son Mahmoud, 10. "Now I feel it," said Hayat, covering her eyes as they fill with tears. " It wasn't so bad at the beginning. There were a lot of people around. Now there is nobody."........

Who does Mr Zarhouk, who voted Fatah in the last election, blame? "I blame democracy," he says with a flash of sarcasm. "The whole world wanted us to have democracy and said how fair had been our election. The problem is they didn't like our results."

The world's boycott since those elections did not only end salaries for the PA employees on whom Gaza's economy disproportionately depends. The health service, in many ways highly professional but desperately under-equipped, is also suffering. In her bed at Shifa Hospital, Intisar al Saqqa is waiting for the drug Taxoter which doctors said she needs to treat a breast cancer which has spread to her lung and her liver. "Every week, they say it will come on Monday," says her mother, Hadra, 62. "But it doesn't. Inshallah, it will come soon." Her daughter says: "I don't blame anybody. I just want this [the political problems beyond her control] to end. ".....

Similarly, a year after Condoleezza Rice brokered an agreement to open up Gaza's borders, a UN report said last week that Gaza's access to the outside world was "extremely limited" and that commercial trade was " negligible". That is diplomatese for saying Gaza is ­ the word every Palestinian uses ­ a prison again. Israel refuses to take the blame, saying the boycott and closures result directly from security anxieties and from the refusal of Hamas to modify its stances on recognition and violence......."