ACT Dateline

Occupied Palestinian Territories 01/06

As year nears end, a call for a 'just peace on equal footings'

By Chris Herlinger, ACT International

Gaza City, December 20, 2006--As 2006 nears its end, the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) continues responding to a humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip that, at best, remains unsettled and, at worst, has shown signs of worsening with recent violence.

"We can't lose hope; otherwise it will be a disaster for the Palestinians," Constantine S. Dabbagh, the executive director of the MECC committee for refugee work in the Gaza Strip, said in a recent interview just as violence flared anew in Gaza. MECC is a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.

Though a truce along the Israel-Gaza border is now in place following a series of border incidents that have left dozens dead, observers like Dabbagh within Gaza are not optimistic about long-term prospects for stability or peace in the 360 square-kilometer coastal area that some Palestinians have compared to the world's largest prison - or, in more cynical moments, the world's largest mental asylum.

Though Gaza is officially under Palestinian control following an Israeli withdrawal in 2005, humanitarian and human-rights organizations, both within and outside the region, say that Israel maintains effective control over Gaza. A coalition of Israeli human-rights organizations said in mid-November, for example, that by controlling air space and territorial waters, as well as movement in and out of Gaza, "Israel bears legal obligations regarding those spheres that it continues to control."

The statement by such as groups as B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Israeli sections of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights, also noted that the population of Gaza "is extremely poor, living on less than US$2 a day," and that a majority of the population remains dependant on international humanitarian food assistance.

The groups also said that in the four months ending in mid-November, the Israeli military had killed more than 300 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and that more than half of those killed were unarmed civilians. Sixty-one were children - one of the reasons Dabbagh and others contend that Gaza is still, in effect, being occupied by the Israeli military. (While expressing regret at the loss of civilian life, Israeli officials have affirmed what they say is Israel's right to defend itself against rocket attacks launched from Gaza.)

To those like Dabbagh, who have spent their careers tackling the humanitarian situation within the Palestinian territories and working for a political settlement they say will address the need for justice and security for Palestinians and also guarantee security for Israel, the statements from the Israeli human rights groups are welcome.

But Dabbagh, a courtly, dignified man of 68 whose United Nations tie clip is a sartorial reminder of his days working with the world body, cannot underline enough how he feels continued Israeli and Western policies and the present stalemate - exacerbated by international sanctions since the election of the militant Islamic party Hamas in Palestinian legislative elections almost a year ago - are hurting the day-to-day life of Palestinians. (Adding to tensions are recent incidents like the December 11 attempted assassination of a senior member of the Fatah party in Gaza, an attempt that instead resulted in the deaths of three of the man's young sons. Such incidents are fueling tensions between Fatah and Hamas, observers say.)

What Dabbagh calls the "continuity of the occupation" harms the ability of the MECC, for example, to get materials shipped into Gaza from sister organizations in the occupied West Bank.

That, in turn, affects the ability of the MECC to continue with such programs as a vocational training program for some 187 young people - a group strikingly idealistic and hopeful, given the massive obstacles placed in the way of humanitarian work in Gaza.

"We want to be of continued service to the people of Gaza, whose needs are not being met by the ministry of health," Elias Abed Manneh, who works with Dabbagh as the chair of the MECC's committee for refugee work in Gaza, said in reference to the problems caused by the sanctions that have drastically cut social services within the territory.

Among the ACT-supported programs in Gaza through ACT appeal MEPL61 (Emergency Assistance to the Palestinian Population) are one-time cash grants to families to assist with food purchases. Another program is providing people with various medical services, including medical treatment at its Gaza clinic, provided at a minimal fee.

Dabbagh and Manneh said they expect MECC's medical caseload to continue increasing given social service cutbacks elsewhere - and indeed, as Dabbagh showed a visitor the MECC facilities recently, the waiting room for medical services was already filling up at an early morning hour.

Talk returned, as it inevitably does in the Palestinian territories, to the politics and tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.

"All we want to do is to live together in peace," Manneh said.

Dabbagh glanced at his colleague and was ever firmer, saying: "A just peace."

In a later response to queries about how the MECC community was faring amid the bout of recent violence, Dabbagh said that while "the MECC family is still OK," he reiterated a call made during the earlier interview, saying while he and others working in humanitarian efforts in Gaza "appreciate all relief assistance provided to our people, we still need to be free and recognized, and live in atmosphere of a just peace with our neighbors on equal footings."

(ends)

Chris Herlinger, a communications officer for ACT member Church World Service (CWS) and a New York-based freelance journalist, was recently in Gaza as a member of a delegation of journalists who won the 2006 Eileen Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence, a prize awarded by the humanitarian organization Catholic Relief Services, which is not affiliated with ACT or CWS.

ACT is a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies worldwide. The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland.

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