Three Mercy Corps staff members talk of their experiences during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza and how the war has affected the organisation's work in the region.

March 29, 2009

Jasem Humeid is a Palestinian living in Jabalia camp, Gaza, with his wife and five children. A health professional who has been working with Mercy Corps since July 2008, Humeid manages a psychosocial support programme for children in Gaza.

Since July 2007, Mercy Corps has been implementing a psychosocial support programme for children in the Gaza Strip. Following the war in January, my team and I decided to provide rapid psychosocial first aid for the programme's children, as well as other children. We went to their homes to assess the psychosocial needs of them and their families. Overall, these home visits revealed a major deterioration in the moods and behavior of a large portion of the children.

Among the children included in our current programme, many of them have passed through very painful experiences during the war. Two of those children are Sarrah Sameer Fauzy Qassas, 11 years old, and her brother Ahmad, 10 years old, who live together with their family in Gaza City.

Prior to the recent war on Gaza, Sarrah and Ahmad were well engaged in the psychosocial programme. They used to actively participate in the session activities, but things changed following the war. Sarrah spoke to our team about their experience:

"One day during the war, we were playing in our backyard when, all of a sudden, a shell fell very close to our house. As a result, we ran away and entered our house. At that time, there were 14 people in our house - our family as well as some other relatives".

"Once at home, we sought refuge in the bedroom, since it is located deep inside the house; we thought it will be a safe place... At that time another shell directly hit our house, destroying the living room wall and exploding inside the house with splinters spreading throughout the house".

"Our brother, Fauzy, 16 years old, was directly hit in the arm by a large piece of wood, leading to its amputation. Our cousin, Maram, 9 years old, was injured in the pelvis and thigh".

"At that time, we felt very horrified and scared; we yelled and cried a lot; before we fled the house to the street. When we reached the street; I saw a child hanging from a tree and her sisters with no legs along with their dead mother - it was horrible".

"An ambulance came and transferred my injured brother and cousin to hospital. After a few minutes, our neighbour's house was bombarded, so we ran away and sought refuge in our nearby uncle's house".

Ahmad told me that since that incident he hasn't been able to sleep and suffers from frequent nightmares in which he sees Israeli soldiers shooting at him. Sarrah says that she has also been having a hard time sleeping and that she feels scared and runs to her mother whenever she hears a vehicle siren.

Both Ahmad and Sarrah were visited at home by our team and have now rejoined our group sessions. They have told us that they are happier when they are with the other children and they feel more secure now.

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March 30, 2009

Isdud Al Najjar is a Palestinian woman living in Gaza with her husband and two daughters. She has worked with Mercy Corps since 2006, managing the office in Gaza.

Handling being a mother of two and pregnant with a third, plus being a humanitarian aid worker here in Gaza, is not an easy task at all. It was particularly difficult during the three weeks of the war on Gaza.

During the war, every time I left my house for work I tried to avoid the goodbye moment with my family, mainly with my little daughter "Kinda", since we were both scared that it could be the last time we saw each other. Every time I left the house she would hug me and make me promise to be back soon, even though I was not at all sure that I would be able to keep my word.

I still have vivid memories of each single moment I experienced during the war either with my family or with the people that I helped through my work with Mercy Corps.

The Samoni family was the first family I visited during the war. I was afraid to go to the area they moved to since I heard their dreadful and shocking story of losing 29 of their family members when their four-storey building was destroyed just three days previously.

When I went to their new shelter with a van full of emergency supplies, I was surrounded by tens of kids and women - all injured, traumatised, sad and terrified. Even though they were in a new place among other survivors, the smell of death seemed to be everywhere.

Life for the Samoni family will never be the same and neither will the lives of most of the Palestinian families who have been tragically affected by the war. When the shock of the devastation started to fade, what were left behind were grief, sorrow and depression for those who survived the atrocities but will never survive their awful memories.

Mercy Corps has been implementing an emergency response programme and has helped out more than 100,000 Gazans by providing them with food, temporary shelter and medical supplies. Unfortunately, thousands of those families are still living in shelters or temporary houses and closely monitoring the political situation.

They are watching for any positive progress that could bring about a peace agreement and open the Gaza Crossings and give them some hope of rebuilding their houses, protecting their kids' dreams and securing the peaceful, reassuring and just life that they deserve.

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March 30, 2009

This blog is written by Mercy Corps' Gaza staff member Safa Nasr. She writes about the people she met while distributing relief supplies at the Mercy Corps' distribution centre during the war in January.

Today in our distribution point I met Tahani, who came to receive her food parcel to be able to feed her family of five after they fled their house. Tahani's first house was nearly destroyed six months ago when an Israeli wheel loader demolished all the houses from the border right to her house. She took her kids out and stood in front of the big machine shouting that they were civilians.

Following this incident, she moved house, thinking that her luck would change, but this time the house did not survive the tanks' bombardment. She moved to her family house with nineteen brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. Her brother with a family of ten has also joined them as his house in the village was demolished too.

Sometimes, Tahani goes to the UNRWA shelter (the UN school) to relieve some of the burden on her family. In the shelter, every ten families share one classroom. They are usually offered bread and tinned food (fafa beans, tuna and meat). Blankets in the shelter were never enough as it gets really cold during the night. People in the shelter cannot bathe.

I also met Zareefa, aged 51. Zareefa has a large family of sixteen members. Her husband worked in Israel until 2000. Following the second Intifada, he was not allowed to work there and since then he has been unemployed.

During the invasion, Israeli tanks have moved close to the family's house and have sabotaged the power network in the area. Now, the family has no electricity. The water supply was stopped three days ago, making it really difficult for the family to cook, wash and bathe. The area was bombarded during the war, which made it impossible for the family to sleep in the house.

Another of my colleagues met a boy named Ahmad, 15 years old. Ahmad came to Mercy Corps stores with his cousin to collect the food package instead of his father, who went to Egypt for medical treatment a year ago and has not been able to get back into Gaza.

Ahmad comes from a family of ten and he has two older married sisters. Ahmad's mother is not able to work and the family receives aid from the UN. Ahmad's house was partially damaged when the Israelis shelled a nearby building.

Tahani, Zareefa, Ahmad - whatever their names and ages, they all were joined by a common grief that convulsed their lives and shattered their dreams.

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