Despite Israel’s declared “easing” in June 2010 of the total siege on Gaza, manufacturers there are hurting badly. In June 2011 the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that “only 5 percent of the pre-blockade export volume was reached from November 2010 to April 2011.”
According to Hassan Saifi, a representative of the ministry for religious affairs in Gaza, a quarter of the Gaza Strip’s 800 mosques were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli attack on Gaza in winter 2008-09.
Year by year, the warnings of Gaza’s health crisis grow more dire, with the latest warning from Gaza’s Ministry of Health stating the Strip is at emergency levels of medical supplies.
While Lebanon’s Naksa Day demonstrations were prevented by Lebanese security, demonstrations went on throughout the occupied West Bank as well as by Palestine supporters worldwide.
A gleaming new memorial towers over the center of Gaza City’s battered port, bearing the names of the Turkish solidarity activists who died one year ago when Israeli commandos firing machine guns air-dropped onto the Freedom Flotilla.
GAZACITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - “We try to be happy and celebrate with our families during Christmas, but the atmosphere is not cheery as in other parts of the world,” says Hossam Tawwil.
BEITHANOUN, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - “We grow on our roof because we are farmers but have no land now,” says Moatassan Hamad, 21, from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. “Our family is large and thankfully what we grow feeds us,” he says. They grow a variety of staple vegetables.
