Interview by Greg Dropkin
Published: 27/06/04
http://www.labournet.net/world/0406/mona1.html
We'd appreciate it if this could be circulated (she is Deputy Director of the
Union of Health Work Committees, Gaza. She was in Britain when the May
invasion began.)
__________________
Dr. Mona El-Farra:
Rafah — Looking Beyond the Abyss
Interview by Greg Dropkin
Published: 27/06/04
“On 20 May, the Israeli Army began to demolish the house of Ziad Hassan. As the family left, with permission, the Army opened fire from a tank, injuring Hassan’s wife and three children. A Palestinian ambulance attempted to reach the area to evacuate the family but was reportedly surrounded by tanks and bulldozers. The bulldozers then began to lift sand and rubble on top of and around the ambulance with the medical crew trapped inside. After about four hours, Israeli Army bulldozers began to remove the rubble and allowed the crew to leave the area with the severely damaged ambulance but without having evacuated the Hassan family.”
PCHR 20 May 2004
Dr. Mona El-Farra is Deputy Director of the Union of Health Work Committees (Gaza). She was in Britain when the May invasion began.
Yes, I was told this story too. In another incident, our emergency health team in Rafah along with other emergency health providers in the area, were surrounded by Army tanks. They were confined for 4 to 6 hours, and eventually allowed out only to be faced with more tanks which stopped them from reaching the casualties.
My colleagues told me that during the recent invasion at least 9 cases bled to death because healthworkers were not allowed to reach them. Their lives could have been saved easily if they received treatment at the proper time.
At our community centre in Rafah the 1st floor is the Medical Clinic, 2nd floor the Rachel Corrie Children’s Centre, 3rd floor the Women’s Centre. During this crisis the only hospital in the area, Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital, couldn’t cope with the number of casualties. So we had to adapt the Rachel Corrie Centre to a small emergency hospital for life-saving procedures.
After the first wave of home demolitions the Israeli Army attacked a peaceful solidarity demonstration on 19 May in Tal As-Sultan which had intended to take food supplies and water to these homeless people. To be attacked intentionally was like a massacre, intended genocide I can call it. This demonstration was attacked in order to intimidate any non-violent action in Gaza Strip, or in Palestine in general, I believe.
Infrastructure was knocked out as well.
Electricity, water and sewage supplies, yes. You can call Rafah a catastrophe area now. How can you link this to security? To the military Army security or the Israeli security? It is systematic intimidation, humiliation, aggression against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government.
What happened in Rafah was the climax of Israeli aggression during the last 3 years. They have demolished at least 4, 000 homes in the Occupied Territories including Rafah, making more than 20, 000 people homeless since the start of the current Intifada.
The Israeli Army mentioned that “Operation Rainbow” is creating a buffer zone, 300 metres in width, claiming this is to control some tunnels for smuggling weapons from Egypt to Rafah. There are some tunnels. But by no means is this justification to demolish all these homes and to make all these people homeless. I don’t think it’s for security reasons. They are going ahead with their plan to make the existing Palestinian state in Gaza and West Bank realistically impossible.
“The Israeli Army has been fighting the tunnels for three years and failed.
We proposed to Israel to allow the Palestinian Authority to handle the tunnel
issue. Nine months ago we took a few steps to close the tunnels. But after we
would close a tunnel, which ended in a certain house, the Israeli Army would
destroy the house and shoot at our forces. A month ago we confiscated arms and
arrested smugglers. Six of them are still under detention. Yet, in spite of
the measures, which we have taken, the Israeli Army entered this housing block
in Rafah, and destroyed houses. Therefore our conclusion is that the Sharon
government does not want the PA to take measures, they only look for excuses
to justify their aggression.”
Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the Palestinian Internal Security in Gaza City, speaking to former Knesset member Tamar Gozansky on 19 May.
It’s gone out of the news now. But is it over?
>From my experience living in Gaza Strip, it goes in phases, quiet for maybe 10 days, 12 days, and then anything can happen. We have never enjoyed a peaceful time with the Israeli government.
Women
54 women gave birth to children at the checkpoints. These women were in labour,
waiting to go to the hospital, but they were stopped and had to give birth in
the back of the car or ambulance. 29 of these children died at birth. I cannot
find the words to express my feeling about this. I don’t care about the
numbers, for me if one woman goes through this experience it is more than enough
of a violation of human health rights.
We are trying to tackle one aspect of this with our Delivery Kits. We began the programme during the invasion of Jenin, in case anything similar were to happen in Gaza. Women who come to our clinics for ante-natal services are supplied with a Delivery Kit in the last month. It has small instruments and instructions to help them with home delivery, with assistance from somebody living in the home.
They also have telephone numbers of our clinics in each area, and the hospital. Over the telephone, our doctors guide the woman and the people around her. Most people in Gaza now have mobile phones by the way, and not just for fun, they need them.
In Rafah this time, there were 3 women who were unable to reach hospital but gave birth safely using our Delivery Kits with the doctors on the phone. This is a part of our work I feel quite satisfied about, that’s how we alter our programmes according to the situation. It’s how a community should work, how people should help each other in difficult times, how we should stand strong with each other.
Psychological problems
People are taking all this pressure for 4 years, of course it has an effect
on all of us. I am in front of you now but I go through ups and downs, and I
am not ashamed of it, this is the nature of things. I am strong, I am supposed
to empower people, but I am a human being.
According to a recent study 97% of the population in Gaza now suffer from some psychological pitfall. Problems like anxiety, acute depression, sleeping disorders, nightmares, aggression amongst the family, mood swings. But - and this is the dangerous figure - 30% need serious psychiatric intervention, and this was not the case before. This is the usual outcome of the Israeli aggression against Gaza, and sadly most of the cases will be children. Children are surrounded by shooting, killing, home demolitions, road closures, checkpoints, area divisions, intense poverty with high unemployment and low family income.
Rafah is just 3 kilometres from the seaside. But because of the Israeli settlements, we are not allowed to reach the sea from Khan Younis or Rafah. If you ask Rafah children, aged 4, “what is the sea?”, they don’t know. This used to be a little outlet for people, but it is not there for them now.
How are you trying to deal with psychological problems?
We address them in the Rachel Corrie Children and Youth Centre and the Women’s Centre as well, on two levels. In the Rachel Corrie Centre our first aim is to have a place where children can come and feel free to paint, read, use computers, do folklore dancing, all these activities. For example through the computer we will link them with other children, and there are plans for English courses as well. We don’t like our children to be brought up with just the idea of killing and death, we want them to know that there is another bright side of life, there are other people internationally who support them, care for and love them so their world is not just an ugly world, there are good people who can help.
Rachel Corrie was one of the International Solidarity Movement volunteers who came to help the children of Rafah. We wanted to keep her memory alive, and her colleagues of course. The computer room in the Centre is named after Tom Hurndall, and the multi-purpose community room after James Miller.
We believe children who were brought up with violence will be violent one day, so we try to minimise this psychological aggression against their gentle psychology. This is one level of our work in Rachel Corrie.
Another level is healing the children’s psychological problems indirectly, through entertaining. We don’t go for direct psychiatric intervention. But through playing and activities, our psychologist in the Women’s Centre will be able to pick up the children who need psychiatric intervention.
We also refer patients to the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme who oversee our programme. They support us scientifically, our psychologist is trained with them. Their clinic is in Khan Younis and we have clinics in Rafah, but no psychiatric clinic, so we co-ordinate.
We have a Crisis Intervention Team in our Women’s Centre. When the Army withdraws or the situation allows, this team - Nurse, Healthworker, Psychologist, and Doctor - will go to the homeless families to see their social needs, health needs and of course psychological needs, which require follow-up either in the field or by inviting them to the clinic. Immediately after home demolitions people don’t show any psychiatric complaints, they feel numb, shocked, but the other things come later.
Healthworkers
Healthworkers’ main problem is their security at work, going to work,
or going to the casualties. This aggression is unimaginable, to shoot directly
at an ambulance driver while he is in clear uniform, on a clear mission, rescuing
patients. 25 medical workers were killed while on duty, in Gaza and the West
Bank. One of them was our ambulance driver, in my hospital in Gaza. Medical
facilities were attacked more than 400 times. Two weeks ago our Medical Centre
in Rafah received a few bullets, which just missed some of the patients.
Internationally, healthworkers and their unions should focus on this, to give medical workers the chance to work while their safety is secured.
We are constantly challenged on how to respond to emergencies while continuing routine services for chronic diseases like diabetes, heart conditions, hypertension, renal dialysis patients, these people should not be neglected so it needs a lot of effort to make the balance. Chronic patients are also affected by security issues - around 100 died at the checkpoints because they couldn’t reach hospital.
Another problem we face is how to obtain and store enough medications, medical supplies and equipment to meet the patients’ needs.
UHWC
The Union of Health Work Committees is a non-governmental grassroots community-based
health organisation, which offers mainly primary healthcare services and community-based
programmes, and we also run one hospital in Jabalia Refugee Camp. Our philosophy
is based on our logo “health services according to need”, and this
goes straight away against privatisation of health services. We believe that
every human being is entitled to public services, including the best of health
services, especially people who cannot afford it, marginalised, poor people,
this is our focus. We are part of building a Palestinian community based on
respect of democracy and rights, the rights of human beings to live in dignity
and to experience justice and peaceful life. So we don’t see health issues
separated from other social issues. We are working for equality and equity issues.
When we started 20 years ago, there were small committees in different areas of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. That’s why we called it a union, linking all the committees together.
We have 168 healthworkers in different roles, doctors, nurses, paramedics. And another 60 volunteers - in an emergency we always manage to get more volunteers. So far we have 250 community health workers, trained in First Aid and how to evacuate casualties, 50 in each area in Gaza including 50 in Rafah, and in an emergency they come to the Centre to be distributed. They also ensure that chronic patients receive their medications, children can get milk, women can receive care.
Over the last 4 years the number of women coming for antenatal health care has declined. This is linked to the invasions and closure of areas. The percentage of immunised children in Palestine declined by 12%, for the same reason. So we are going to face some diseases which had disappeared in the last fifty years, e. g. poliomyelitis, measles, tuberculosis etc., directly related to the decline in the vaccination services. In the context of malnutrition, measles can cause death by bleeding from every orifice.
The average social family income in the Occupied Territories is only $1 a day, which affects health directly. In Gaza 10% of children are suffering from frank nutritional diseases, according to a study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (US) which related this malnutrition to the number of closures, road divisions and curfews, and the increase in unemployment and low family income. Over 35% of children under 5 years old have iron deficiency anaemia, from the lack of a well-balanced diet. So you cannot isolate health from poverty and this is another burden for us as healthworkers. At some stage, we have to give food baskets for families as well as treatment.
Normally we would charge patients nominal fees, $1 per consultation, but since the eruption of the Intifada 75% of our beneficiaries get completely free treatment. The 30% who can afford these nominal fees do pay, because as an organisation we work for sustainability, and it’s important for people to feel that they pay for medications, nominal things. But in Rafah it’s completely free of charge.
Media
Rafah became a major international news story this time, after a long silence.
MP’s suddenly started talking about Rafah in Parliament, after never mentioning
it. Did you get this sense that the world had finally noticed?
Yes of course, but does it mean that the world waits to notice until we are nearly all killed? This has been going on for the last 4 years, and especially after Jenin when they did it on a large scale. Their strategy for the Gaza Strip was just to do it piece by piece and they did that for 2 years now, small incursions, in and out, homes demolished, not only in Rafah, in Beit Hanoun, in Nusseirat, different parts of the Gaza Strip. Every day there is killing, shooting, aggression, small scale. Every day at least 5 people are killed in Gaza, and nobody hears about them. But now with the maximum aggression in Rafah, ok thank you very much for the media to notice this, it was good but it was late.
Indeed. It also provoked some response inside Israel.
Yes, there were demonstrations in Tel-Aviv, and they came across the borders, they crossed through the settlements. I think this was a good reaction from the peace movements and the movements against war and for justice. But again I did not notice that it was well covered in the media here. It was covered in Al-Jazeera, but not here, I just got the news from some informal media like the internet.
The whole Gaza Strip was in a state of shock after the invasion, and Rafah people were the immediate ones who received the shock. They were busy healing their wounds, so I don’t think they took it in, but if we go further, later on, and discuss these things, I think it will be taken in a good way because the people of Rafah appreciate the efforts for example of the International Solidarity Movement, and they realise the difference between Israelis for peace, and Israelis for war. People are realistic, though, and they know that this sector of people in Israel is still very small in numbers.
Gaza plan
What is Sharon actually trying to do in Rafah?
Through this buffer zone, the so-called Philadelphia corridor, they will put the whole Gaza Strip under siege. From the West we have the sea, from the North and East we have Israel, and from the South the Egyptian border. So they will make it completely sealed, an unbearable living situation for the population of Gaza Strip.
Sharon wants to withdraw and leave Gaza destroyed, but to make the world think that he made a very big step in giving up Gaza, so now he will continue with the major West Bank settlements and the wall there. It’s very naïve to think that he is giving a concession in Gaza. They will keep on controlling Gaza. There is already an electrical fence with Israel, since the early 90’s.
But Sharon’s plans are co-ordinated with the Americans. If things are quieter now it’s because of the American election coming on. Bush put some pressure for his own interests, to have the election period go smoothly. He did it before, but usually in a very shy way, very soft pressure. Bush and Sharon organise together, they co-ordinate, and Israel is applying the American policy in the Middle East, for the American interest.
It is a mutual interest, anyway, they are two sides of the same coin. The Americans are occupying Iraq, and the Israelis are occuping Palestine. They have the same policies, the same vision for things. I believe it is part of the new global unipolar system, the Americans aim at controlling the whole world.
Some of the private security involved in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, were Israeli apparently. Had you heard this?
Yes I have, of course, and I had heard it before coming to Britain. I have also heard that some American soldiers came to the West Bank two years ago during the invasion of Jenin, to gain experience from watching the Israeli aggression.
USAID
We refused funds, medication and medical supplies from USAID [the US State Dept.
aid agency] because we feel strongly we should be in harmony with ourselves
and our beliefs. It was not easy to refuse $40, 000 worth of medications, but
it was easy for us to say “no” because we know where we stand.
We don’t want them to give us medications with one hand, and throw bombs at us with the other. By giving money to Palestinians they think that they are great, as if they are exempting their government from moral responsibility. No, this is not what we want. We want a change in the policies against our people.
Their fund comes with strings, as well. In Palestine we have different political factions and groups resisting occupation. USAID came along with a condition for us to sign - all organisations working in Gaza and the West Bank - that we will not give any help or any aid whatsoever for the families of the militiamen, or their relatives, or anyone related to “terrorist attacks”, in the eyes of the Americans of course because back home we consider it resistance. We refused this condition, as PNGO, Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organisations. But even before this my organisation refused to work with USAID.
It’s a kind of collective punishment because more or less every family will have someone in their family, not necessarily their son or daughter, but somebody within their extended family would be termed a terrorist.
Exactly, this is collective punishment and this is also against the Hippocratic Oath. We give this Oath when we graduate as doctors, that it is our duty to treat anybody. If an Israeli soldier needs treatment from me, do you think I will leave him alone? As a medical doctor I will go and treat him.
There was attack against an American convoy and some American citizens were injured. The nearest place was our Union of Health Work Committees hospital, the Al-Awda hospital. It was only 300 metres away and we received the American injured and treated them in our hospital.
And you would treat an Israeli soldier who was injured near you, even though in Palestinian eyes this soldier is a terrorist!
I would treat him, yes, of course. So we found it very ridiculous to ask us to sign this USAID condition. It is the attitude of somebody who has the power and money, who can humiliate us because we are in need of their money. No! We need support for our work but we are sure that we have a lot of supporters worldwide who believe in justice, who believe in our right of existence as Palestinians, and their money is then clean and clear money, support that goes with our goals.
James Miller
What did you think of the Channel 4 documentary by James Miller?
Honestly, I liked it. Some people were against it, but I found it very good as it was based on children in the middle of the crisis, or the war, faced with death and funerals every day. He left it to people to make their own judgement.
The camera was talking, and it showed some positive things. Ahmed’s friend Mohammed wanted to die. He wants to be in Paradise, but his mother told him “no”. I liked the mother. This was the best thing in the film, their dialogue. The mother said “no, I don’t want you to die, I want you to grow up, to live, to get married, to have children.” So we are caught in death because Palestinian people, we were forced to die, but even people who are resisting, they are not resisting just to die, they are resisting because they cherish life.
Ahmed was growing up very fast. After James was murdered by the Israelis, Ahmed understood that James didn’t want to die, he wasn’t a martyr in the way that Ahmed had imagined. He saw that James Miller’s children would be very upset that their father was dead.
Actually I must be very true with you, I didn’t like the militiamen getting Ahmed involved at his age. I didn’t like this at all, and it happens, James Miller was just genuine in showing it. But in the end, after the film, the child started again to go to school.
And thought of becoming a cameraman. Earlier, the interviewer asks the militiamen “don’t you think he is a little bit young to die?” and they say “when Ahmed leaves us there will be thousands of others”. So he was some kind of commodity.
Just some number. Yes, but trying to be objective, the militant faction themselves are promoting the idea of not getting the children involved. Last year the religious leaders spoke in the Mosque about martyrs and then three children aged 12 and 13 carried explosives to one of settlements, and they were shot. But that provoked alarm. All factions started to raise awareness to avoid children getting involved in this. Hamas, the ones talking in the Mosque, put out so many leaflets that children should not be involved, which I respected. So I was horrified to see it in James’ film, but it shows a part of our reality, really, which is not good.
The film brought back a personal memory. I have a daughter who is 11, my youngest. Two years ago with the invasion of Jenin, there was all this death and blood, and the threat of the same in Gaza and Rafah and everywhere. So when the children are brought up in a violent atmosphere, what do you expect from them? When they draw, they draw Army tanks. When they play, they play war games. So my girl, who was 9 then, came to me and said “Mama, mama, I know how to make cocktail bombs.” I said “what?”. She said “yes”. “Can you tell me how?” She started telling me “we put kerosene, and then we make the fire and we throw it.”
This is a girl of 9. Then I asked her “why, who taught you?” She said “the children at school, we are talking about this in class.” “Why you are talking about this in the class? Why do you want to make the cocktail bomb?” “Because they are coming to kill us, so how can we defend ourselves?”
The children saw their fathers helpless, everybody helpless, so the children came up with this idea in class, it did not come from a vacuum. And this is one of the city schools in Gaza, my child doesn’t live in Rafah or Jabalia.
I was horrified, I am shaking even now, and next day I went to school and told the headmaster “just talk to the children at the assembly, explain that resistance is something good but leave it to grown-ups, it is not for you” and I think other mothers did the same in many places in Gaza then, because the whole atmosphere after Jenin was panic. And I am sure now after what happened in Rafah, there is a whole state of fear and panic.
Civilian targets
We live in Gaza City, facing the sea not far from Arafat’s headquarters.
There was a lot of bombing in my area, and every time I have to gather the children
quickly to go to a safe place. Afterwards my daughter will come to sleep with
me because she is afraid, she is clinging to me. She started to wet her bed
again, like many other children.
At one time last year they were hitting Arafat’s headquarters directly and in the end they started to demolish it although it is empty, because he is in Ramallah. There is no warning, they just start.
It was 6 o’clock, I was watching TV. My son was at the window, “Mother, mother, the helicopters are just on top of our building.” They started bombing, and because it was so close, so close, our windows were broken and the whole flat was in smoke, with the burnt smell of dynamite, explosions. I thought “it is the end”. I told my son “on the ground, under the table”. I wanted to go to my daughters, but a rocket was coming so I couldn’t move, I got under the table. Nine rockets and I thought I lost my 2 daughters, sometimes I feel very guilty because I couldn’t reach them.
One was standing in front of the window, changing her clothes, then she turned. With the strength of the explosion, the door slammed and both of them were pushed inside the cupboard. After that we were safe, all of us. We couldn’t stay in the flat, we went to the basement and they started again at midnight from sea, from air, and from Army tanks. It was one of those nights. Seven days later my legs were still aching.
People are caught in the middle. Civilians are suffering from the war, more than the military people.
After the assassination of the Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported a discussion amongst Palestinian armed groups. Apparently there was agreement that resistance was legitimate and would continue, but it would be better to concentrate on military, not civilian targets.
We have noticed that, though we don’t know whether it was a strategy or because there was a big blow against Hamas, but I think it was strategy. I should tell you this, I think the act of suicidal bombing inside the Green Line is something horrible, for me it is not justified at all. I can understand why someone would go and explode himself in Tel-Aviv with all the atrocities people are facing in our country, but it is not justified because it is an attack against civilians. They are not soldiers, they are not in the military, they are just people going to the pub, school, hospital.
If you want to end up with one society where people are going to live together, how does this tactic help?
It doesn’t help, and it is also having a negative effect on our image as Palestinians abroad, because you know how the media is controlled. They make an event out of something small. Every day Palestinian civilians are killed in Gaza and the West Bank, and this doesn’t show up. But suicide bombing attacks are all over the media. So on this level it doesn’t help us, but on the human level too we shouldn’t do this.
You lose inside Israel too, where nobody will support such acts. I hope they are already going to stop it completely. But look at the reaction of the Israeli Army to military resistance! Look, it was a hyper-reaction in Zeitoun, and in Rafah, even harsher than the reaction towards suicidal bombing. They went very vicious, very cruel, very aggressive. Maybe it has something to do with the Army dignity or humiliation of the Army, I don’t know.
Sometimes you feel muddled up with these things, because in the first months of this Intifada it was absolutely non-violent. Demonstrations, protests, children were throwing stones, and yet in that 3 or 4 months at least 336 people were killed before any violent resistance to occupation. The Israeli government prefers violence because it gives them more excuses to attack people, although they don’t seem to need excuses.
One Democratic Secular State
What kind of future do you imagine?
Maybe I am imagining, as you said. In all my work, I am always looking at the children. Palestinian children should live in better circumstances, in peace, in dignity. We are not talking about peace dictated from one party onto another, from strong people to poor people, not peace at the price of losing dignity. I am talking about Just Peace.
Secondly, I think with what Sharon is doing there will be no chance for a viable Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza, with all the land confiscation and destruction of infrastructure. So maybe you will find it imaginary but I’ll say it. I believe that Palestine can be a place for both, Palestinian and Israeli, and Jerusalem can be an international city with the three religions.
It will be a democratic secular state in the area where Palestinian and Israeli can live together, with Palestinians not confined to the West Bank and Gaza. There will be the chance for the Right of Return, not just leaving the Palestinians in exile. But this idea of a democratic secular state is antagonistic to the idea of the Israeli state founded on the pure Zionist idea of expelling whole nations to have one state for one race, one religion. Palestinians are strong people because we are fighting for a just cause. For example we have the United Nations Resolution 194 which gives the Right of Return as an individual right for each refugee. He or she should decide whether to use this right or give up this right. It is not for Sharon, not for Bush, not for Mr. Blair to decide to take this right away from the Palestinians. It doesn’t mean the non-existence of Israel, there must be a formula for both things.
Israel receives immigrants from all over the world every day, and yet there is no place in Israel for Palestinian refugees, the original people who were living in that area! For me personally this is a red line. There is room for a democratic state where people can live in equity, equality, but this will not satisfy the Israeli government or Israel itself which was founded on a racial idea. That is how I feel about it, I have strong feelings.
Maybe it is impossible but I see it coming, maybe in one hundred years time. As people, we work for just and respectable ideas like this, so human beings can live with no fear, with equity, with social justice and all these things. I’m not related to any political party, this is my own vision but I’m sure there are some people who share this vision with me.
Yes, I am sure. It’s wonderful Mona, but what are the obstacles? The invasion of Rafah, obviously, but maybe other things. Not everyone wants this.
Palestinians want it, but the Israelis will not accept it, the fanatic Israeli, the right movement in Israel, and also the left, anyway the Israeli government will not accept something like this.
Palestinians support the Right of Return, but wouldn’t some people like to create a separate Palestinian state?
Yes of course, not all Palestinians agree with this vision, maybe I told you this is a mad, minority idea but this is my opinion. Palestine should not be Islamic or Israeli, Palestine should be a country for both to live in, and there is a place for both.
I hope that it’s going to be based on social justice and, to be socialist. But if you are talking about democratic and secular then the majority will control this, and not me, these are my hopes but it will be up to the majority of people what they want it to be, but it must not on any behalf be a state that’s based on religion.
You are putting women at the centre of the story, and if women’s rights are circumscribed by religion, then it’s not going to work.
Yes, I understand this, and the religious influence is strong in Gaza, even more than the West Bank. And yes, it is difficult for us, for our work, but we should not give up. Maybe we are a minority now, but you don’t know how things can change, and when you are convinced of an idea from inside, you work for it.
The community support what we are doing, and they respect us for our work. Maybe not all of them like the idea of me going without a scarf, or not being very religious, but they respect us, and we manage to carry on, a few of us. But I’m not fantasizing or exaggerating, we are a minority. But we give services for the majority, which helps us to keep going and mobilise more people to our ideology. It is coming slowly, slowly but surely. I shouldn’t lose hope as an activist.
Israel
There would have to be very strong alliances across the existing borders in
order to achieve the society you imagine, people inside Israel with whom you
felt “we are in this fight together”. Do you see people like that?
Up till now no, for me, and this needs to be changed. In my country we believe that there are people in Israel who support our cause in the way we see it, including the Right of Return, they are a very very small minority but they are there. But in these critical circumstances it’s difficult to make a movement, because the whole situation is muddled up and going into a dilemma. In the future things will come, I don’t know when. I prefer to keep away from this now because any gesture like that, at home, is considered “normalisation” and we don’t believe in normalisation of the relationship with the Israelis before the Occupation is over.
But you were interested in the video interview with Ilan Pappe.
Yes, he is a very courageous man. I want to show this to people, to try to work on the idea, slowly. It’s very important that people can watch this “State of Denial”, from that we can work on the next step, how to find our alliances in Israel.
Any Israeli who believes in the Right of Return is my ally. But there are some, even progressive people who don’t believe in the Right of Return, how can I make an alliance with them?
Yes, that’s quite a critical dividing point. On the other hand, if someone refuses to go into the Israeli Army then whatever their ideology, they have made a step even if they haven’t understood its consequences.
It’s a good step, and I respect them very much, though some of them do it because they are against the war, some them still believe in occupation, some of them do it because they just don’t want to go into the Army, but in general they are to be respected, because they made a positive step.
Solidarity, not Charity
We don’t need refugees to be treated as helpless. We are not waiting for
charity from other nations. We want a political solidarity stand from people,
for example the British people here, to make a change in the policies, to talk
to their MP’s, to protest against what’s happening in Palestine.
But we do need practical solidarity. We put a lot of effort into our People’s Fund, raising general support for the Union from small organisations, groups like Liverpool Friends of Palestine, PSC, women’s groups, children’s groups, it is a very important network. When someone donates even a small amount they are also learning about the Palestinian people. It is not just for people who have a lot of money. Every human being can have strong relationships with others.
Children and women who use the services will see them differently, if they think “actually there are people all over the world who are supporting us and linked to us”.
Yes, exactly. People in Gaza have a strong bitter attitude towards the British Government because what’s happening in our country is part of the British policy in the area, going back to Balfour, and ordinary people know this.
Do you see the trade union movement as a natural ally, internationally?
Yes, I see it as a natural ally, although our relationships are not that strong, and this should be corrected. For example we should have stronger relationships with UNISON, and I am working on that along with my colleagues. We need help with our medical supplies, with medical training, and we want healthworkers here to understand what we are going through and to try to defend our right to work safely.
Contact and donations
Union of Health Work Committees
Tel: 00972-8-2824272
Fax: 00972-8-2869220
VoicesOfPalestine.org
http://www.voicesofpalestine.org
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