Palestinian children light candles at Holy Family Church in the West
Bank city of Ramallah Jan. 25. The church celebrated a special Mass
with prayers for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where an Israeli-imposed
blockade had left much of the territory without power and little access
to food and other necessities.
CNS PHOTO/ABED OMAR QUSINI/REUTERS |
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service
JERUSALEM (CNS) — Shatha Halu, a first grader
at Holy Family School in Gaza City, put on his backpack and climbed down
the 10 flights of stairs in his building on the way to school.
At the bottom of the stairs he turned to his mother, who had made the
long trek down with him and, looking up the steps, asked her how he would
be able to climb all the way back up after school with his heavy bag.
“It is a very bad situation,” said Msgr. Manuel Musallam,
pastor of Holy Family Church, who recounted the story in a telephone interview
with Catholic News Service Jan. 21. “This lack of electricity is
stopping civilization, stopping life in Gaza.”
Israel closed the border to the Gaza Strip and temporarily banned imports,
including the fuel necessary to run Gaza’s power plant, following
a sharp increase in the number of rockets Palestinian militants fired
into Israeli border towns. Gaza is controlled by the militant Islamic
group Hamas.
Following an international outcry, on Jan. 22 Israel allowed enough fuel
for electricity for two days to be pumped into the Gaza Strip. It also
delivered cooking gas, medicine and food. Israel promised enough total
fuel delivery over three days to allow the Gazan power plant to run for
a week, but said a ban on gasoline would continue.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Jan. 30 rejected an appeal to ease the restrictions.
Ten human rights groups had petitioned the court to end the fuel cuts.
The Israeli government argued that it was allowing sufficient fuel into
the area to meet basic humanitarian needs.
On Jan. 23, tens of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt to buy
goods after militants blew up most of a seven-mile border wall at the
Rafah border crossing.
Msgr. Musallam said Jan. 21 that while Holy Family School has a generator
for its electrical needs, it would soon run out of the gasoline needed
to run it. The school and the church can function without electricity,
he said, but the hospitals were in dire need of fuel to run their generators.
He said he donated his last fuel to Shifa Hospital, which was requesting
donations so it could treat patients. At least five people died in Gaza
hospitals due to the lack of electricity.
“We can manage with not using our computers, but in the hospitals
the sick people need the electricity to survive,” said Msgr. Musallam.
He said many people had been unable to bathe for nearly a week, since
electricity is needed to pump the water. Some teachers asked to bathe
at the convent, since the church has its own generator.
Parents asked that the school be closed because they were embarrassed
to send their unbathed children to school. However, the priest said he
would keep the school open because “we must challenge the situation.”
He added that when the children are together at school they can talk to
their friends, play and be distracted from the difficult situation for
a few hours.
Israel said it provides about 60 percent of Gaza’s electricity,
and another 5 percent is provided by Egypt. The power outage mainly affected
Gaza City.
Msgr. Musallam said children arrived at school without having eaten breakfast
because there was very little food to buy in the shops, and bakeries stopped
baking bread because they had no electricity. Teachers, who had nothing
to offer their students to eat, readjusted their teaching schedules because
the children were tired, complained of headaches and were unable to sit
through two hours of lessons, he said.
The previous weekend two of the school’s students were injured by
shrapnel following an Israeli missile attack, the priest said, and after
receiving initial first aid treatment at the hospital, they were sent
home because there was no possibility of giving them further treatment.
“We must stop shooting, but also the (Israelis) must stop. That
is it,” he said.
Israel said that in January 400 Qassam rockets had been fired into Israeli
border towns — more than half from Jan. 15 to Jan. 18. Since the
blockade, the number of missiles was reduced to a trickle, said Israeli
officials, who added that when the Hamas government wants to stop the
rockets it can.
The heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land called
on the international community, U.S. President George W. Bush and Israel
to end the blockade “in the name of God.” In a Jan. 22 statement,
they said the blockade was “illegal collective punishment, an immoral
act in violation of the basic human and natural laws as well as international
law.”
The church leaders also urged the Palestinian leadership to unite “for
the sake of their people in Gaza” and called for the gunmen to stop
firing missiles into Israeli territory.
“We would say to all concerned parties while . . . you persist in
firing rockets into Israel you encourage public opinion outside this land
to feel there is a justification for this siege,” they said.
“We pray for the day when the people of Gaza will be free from occupation,
from political differences, from violence and from despair. We pray for
the Israelis and Palestinians to respect human life and God’s love
for every human life,” they said in the statement released by the
Jerusalem Inter-Church Center.
Gisha, the Israeli Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, said in a Jan.20
statement, “We condemn the illegal rocket attacks on civilians in
southern Israel, but punishing Gaza’s 1.5 million does not stop
the rocket fire; it only creates an impossible balance of human suffering
on both sides of the border.”
Caritas Jerusalem called for “an immediate end to the blockade facing
Gaza, an urgent appeal to help address the humanitarian situation there
and for an end to all military actions by the Israeli army and by militants
in Gaza.”
Abraham H. Foxman, U.S. director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in
a Jan. 23 statement, “We are stunned at the torrent of condemnation
that has been aimed at Israel in recent days by the international community
regarding Israel’s defensive responses.”
Noting that Hamas has attacked Israel, he asked, “Where is the outrage
from the international community in response to the rockets falling hourly
on . . . targets in southern Israel?”
He said Israel has the obligation to protect its citizens and unsuccessfully
has tried other measures.
Sahar Shaat, a project officer at the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief
Services Gaza office, said she had been studying for her master’s
exams by candlelight.
“There are continuing electricity shortages about eight hours every
day according to schedules and according to areas,” she said. “We
are in winter and it is very cold, and we are without heaters. All the
people in Gaza use electric heaters.”
She said there was still gas for cooking, and meat and chicken were available,
but people were worried about what would happen if that food runs out.
Food cannot be kept in refrigerators because it will spoil without electricity,
she noted.
“There is a shortage of everything. If we find something it costs
double” the normal price, she said, noting that employees of nongovernmental
and humanitarian organizations felt helpless in the face of the growing
shortages.
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