Gaza Strip

Ayman Talal Quader is a blogger from the Nuseirat refugee camp located in the middle of the Gaza Strip. On his blog titled “Voice From Gaza,” Aywan chronicled eyewitness accounts of the war and the continuing siege of the territory as well as his own attempts to leave Gaza in order to further his education in Spain. Although classes start on 8 February, he has yet to receive approval from the Egyptian government to travel to Cairo for his flight to Spain. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre recently spoke with Ayman in Gaza.

The Israeli military recently dropped hundreds of leaflets warning Palestinian residents from the village of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip not to travel within 300 meters of the border — the distance of Israel’s so-called “buffer zone.” In response, local activists marched to and nonviolently demonstrated inside the “buffer zone” against the illegal action. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre recently spoke with demonstration organizer Saber Zanin.

Atef Abu Saif took his grandmother’s stories of Jaffa to heart. These memories and these stories are the only treasure and wealth of the refugee. They are the sole inheritance for the children of the dispossessed generation. Memories of what once was. Stories of what ought to have been. Marryam Haleem writes.

”We have been living a man-made disaster actually for the past 62 years,” said Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, a chairman of the Gaza-based Committee to Break the Siege. “We would like to send out a message of solidarity to the people of Haiti, who are now facing a natural disaster.” Rami Almeghari reports from the occupied Gaza Strip.

”This is the first time I’ve returned here since my friends were killed,” Ahmad Hammad says. He stands at the edge of a vacant plot and gestures to its far end which lies over 1 km from the border separating Israel and the Gaza Strip. Hammad, 24, recalls the day two years ago when three of his friends were torn apart by an Israeli-fired surface-to-surface missile. Eva Bartlett writes from the Gaza Strip.

Fathiya Abu Jbara lost her husband and two sons in an Israeli air strike on the family home during Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip last winter. The Electronic Intifada correspondent Rami Almeghari reported on the strike a few days after the attack and one year later, visits the family again to see how they are coping.

Majid al-Athamna, 70, stands next to his new home in Gaza’s Izbet Abed Rabbo neighborhood of Jabaliya. Since the Israeli attack one year ago, which destroyed his family’s three-story building, he and his family lived in a tent. Rami Almeghari reports from the occupied Gaza Strip.

Daoud Suleiman Ahmad, 48, an unemployed construction worker, has been unable to find work for almost three years due to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Life for Ahmad and his family in the al-Maghazi refugee camp has been desperately difficult, something that is particularly on his mind during the upcoming Eid al-Adha holiday. Rami Almeghari reports from the occupied Gaza Strip.

Ahmad’s first day of school was in 1991 during the first Palestinian intifada. Then six years old and living in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Ahmad was a good student who enjoyed school. He worked hard and was always the first in his year. However, he was to have a different attitude towards education as frequent Israeli violence made completing his studies a struggle. Marryam Haleem writes from Beit Hanoun.

Tareq Abu Daya, owner of a popular souvenir shop in the heart of Gaza City, has recently offered his customers a new kuffiyeh, or traditional checkered scarf, on which the name of Judge Richard Goldstone is inscribed. “When the famous UN report of Judge Richard Goldstone was first made public, I thought of something that would be in honor of such a significant report that accuses Israel of war crimes against Gaza during the last war,” Abu Daya said. Rami Almeghari reports from the occupied Gaza Strip.