Life after Gaza’s “ceasefire”
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What has life been like in Gaza since the ceasefire?
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. Since the ceasefire was announced late last year, Gaza has dropped out of the headlines. But the horror of living there hasn't stopped. Israel has killed at least 857 people in Gaza and wounded almost 2,500 in near-daily attacks since last October. And Palestinians are still in a daily struggle for survival. Independent journalist, author of The Palestine Laboratory and filmmaker Anthony Lowenstein recently travelled to the Middle East and has been speaking to people in Gaza. Today, he tells us about what he saw on the West Bank and the future for Palestine.
It's Wednesday, July 8th.
What challenges do Palestinians face daily in Gaza?
So, Antony, you've recently travelled to the Middle East, including to the West Bank, which I want to ask you about. But to begin with, obviously, it's incredibly difficult to get in or out of Gaza at the moment. But I know that you spoke to people there and have been speaking to people regularly. So could you start by telling me a bit about what they say to you about what life is like in Gaza right now?
Yeah, it's worth just reminding people that the situation in Gaza obviously has been, or the war, the genocide has been going for nearly three years. And basically no international journalists have been allowed in apart from a handful who will take official Israeli military tours. Some have done that. It's obviously a propaganda tour. But if you want to be an independent journalist, no one's getting it, literally nobody. I have got a number of contacts in Gaza who are Palestinian, who are living there, including a doctor who I've had contact with for a while. One of the things, the real challenges he says to me is people have no hope. There's no sense that things are going to change, that there's no...
rebuilding. There's no pathway. There's no sense of a future. There's Israeli government ministers literally saying every day, our goal is still to remove all Palestinians from Gaza. I'm not talking about killing them all, but finding countries that will take them. So when I speak to this doctor, He said to me recently he organized this day for kids. I saw photographs. These kids were maybe 8, 9, 10. And to try to give them some color, some fun, some enjoyment. They were playing games. Pretty basic stuff that any kid would enjoy. But because these children have been through such hell for the last... three-odd years, he said the kids really enjoyed it. It was almost to take their mind off the horrors when they leave this place.
And he showed me the photos. There was balloons up and streamers and just trying to give a bit of, you know, basic stuff that any kid in the world really enjoys, or adult for that matter. But then they go back to their grim reality where just finally he showed me also photos of kids There's no decent sanitation, and this is across the whole of Gaza. So diseases from this lack of sanitation is rampant. There's lots of stories of when people are sleeping in their tents. Don't forget it's the middle of summer there, so of course it's incredibly hot. There are lots of rats running around all of Gaza, biting particularly, even adults too, but particularly kids, getting lots of diseases. It's completely...
It's still apocalyptic. I mean, that's the best way to describe it. It's both what he has said to me, this Gazan doctor, and what I'm hearing. And one other story just briefly would be worth telling is that a friend of mine, Palestinian, who has family still in Gaza, she's left. She was telling me that recently, because there's no sanitation, people have to find their own way to go to the toilet, basically. And this family member was digging a latrine pit away to dispose of human waste. And while he was digging that, he fell in and he couldn't get out. And she was telling me about just the fear of this, that this person thought they were going to die. They could not get out. Someone else goes to help them.
They also fall in. Now, you can just sort of, when I tell that story, you can almost just picture the sense of, think about 35, 40 degrees.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What has life been like in Gaza since the ceasefire?
0:01–0:57
2
What challenges do Palestinians face daily in Gaza?
0:57–4:18
3
What insights did Antony Loewenstein gain from his visit to the West Bank?
4:18–10:08
4
How has the situation in Gaza changed since the ceasefire was announced?
10:08–16:02
Speakers
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