Rami Almeghari

At the bus stop at Palestine Square, in the bustling heart of Gaza City, 25-year-old Said Ramadan cried to passersby, “Fuel, fuel, fuel! Come and buy!” Last week Ramadan took advantage of the blasting through of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and the brief respite from months of siege to travel to the nearby Egyptian town of al-Arish and stock up on gallons of fuel. Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.

Three kids, their mother and their aunt hurried towards the Salah al-Din gate in southern Gaza on Wednesday. The mother, in her early thirties, explained in a rush, “We are heading to al-Arish [the Egypt border town] to follow my mom and brother who entered today after the borders were reopened.” The family was not alone; thousands of other Palestinians thronged nearby, on their way to al-Arish, following the blasting through of the Israeli-built steel walls by Palestinian resistance fighters earlier that day. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from the Egypt-Gaza border.

It’s almost midnight. I rushed to my laptop when I saw the glow of the lamp after almost 12 hours darkness following one of the electricity cuts that hundreds of thousands of Gazans like myself have been subjected to over the past week or so. As a journalist in Gaza, I was keen to file to my editors a story on the electricity cuts. I did the job, I talked with the people, I collected the material but when I went to my office and sat down in front of my PC, there was no electricity. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.

“He insisted that we all take a photo; it was the first in the last 12 years since we got married, as if he was feeling his death was approaching,” says Ghada al-Khatib, widow of Awni al-Khatib at their home in al-Shati’ refugee camp in western Gaza City. Awni al-Khatib died a few days of the brain damage he suffered since 1990 when he was shot in the head by an Israeli-fired, rubber-coated steel bullet. Awni is one of thousands of Palestinians who sustained injuries from such bullets during the first intifada that broke out in 1987. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza’s Shati’ refugee camp.

“We are in a prison. Our situation is so miserable in the arena the Egyptian authorities have placed us in. Yesterday a 45-year-old woman pilgrim died in front of us,” says Nayef al-Khaldi. The 55-year-old al-Khaldi is stuck at an arena turned into a shelter at the Egyptian border town at al-Arish along with more than 1,100 other Palestinians following the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.

A 500-meter-long street in the heart of Gaza City is empty of cars and vehicles, but full of men, women and children. Omar al-Mokhtar Street is considered the largest commercial area in Gaza where people from all over the coastal region have always come to shop, especially during the holiday season. In recent days, Gaza, like other Islamic communities around the world, prepared to celebrate Eid al-Adha, a major holiday marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. Normally a time of joy, this year’s Eid is different from past years because Gaza suffers from the tight Israeli closures on all travel and commercial crossings. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.

With the majority of gas stations closed in Gaza due to the escalating fuel crisis, a group of local Gaza taxi drivers shared the fuel in their cars’ tanks, for the sake of going back home, rather than earning a living under already dire economic conditions. Majed Abu Sam’an, a driver of a Hyundai taxi minibus, was parked along with other drivers in mid-day Tuesday, 4 December 2007, siphoning gasoline from his car’s tank into that of another. “We are helping him so he can go back home, as he has been stuck here in Gaza City since the early hours of morning. We went to all the gas stations but they were closed, no fuel to buy,” says Abu Sama’an. Rami Almeghari reports for EI.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza has recently begun training Palestinian resistance fighters to respect international humanitarian law. For the past several years various Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza have fired crude homemade rockets at nearby Israeli towns, killing about a dozen Israeli civilians and recently injuring 69 soldiers in one such attack. The rockets usually land in open spaces but cause panic amongst Israeli civilians. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports on the training designed to minimize civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict.

“We do not recognize those who hold talks in Annapolis; they do not represent the Palestinian people,” said Ismail Haniyeh, the dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister, in response to the Washington-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli summit in Annapolis. The streets of Palestine bore witness that it isn’t only the Hamas leader who doesn’t grant legitimacy to the Palestinian negotiating team at the Annapolis conference. On Tuesday, 27 November, large crowds of Palestinians in Gaza poured out of their homes — as did their brothers and sisters in the West Bank — to protest what they call the “renunciation of Palestinians’ legitimate rights.” EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.

“We had been waiting for an urgent referral to an outside hospital for the past six days, until he died today,” said Dr. Ismail Yassin Monday, in response to the death of one more patient at the Gaza Children’s Hospital. Tamer al-Yazji, a 12-year-old chicken pox patient, died on Monday on his hospital bed after his referral to an Israeli hospital had been delayed. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari talks to Gaza health care workers and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel about Israel denying Gazans access to health care and the reports of Shabak pressuring patients to inform in exchange for permission to travel.