Special Report, Pages 9-10

ANERA’s Bill Corcoran Describes Gaza One Year Later: Picking Up the Pieces

By Delinda C. Hanley

IN A FEB. 18 talk entitled “Gaza One Year Later: Picking up the Pieces,” Bill Corcoran, president of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), described current conditions in Gaza to a dismayed audience at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC. Corcoran, who had recently returned from his fifth trip to Gaza following Israel’s attack last winter, showed a short video of Gaza’s ruined industrial zone. The clip focused on an ice cream factory Israel destroyed which once employed 270 workers and was a favorite field trip destination for Gazan schoolchildren. Now the building is a shell, littered with smashed machinery and refrigerators that have been cannibalized for spare parts. Nothing in the industrial zone has been rebuilt—Israel forbids building materials from entering Gaza.

Corcoran asked audience members to look at the situation in Gaza through the lens of what they see on TV from Haiti every day. It’s impossible to compare the suffering of people, Corcoran acknowledged, because both are heartbreaking. “First of all,” he emphasized, however, “Haiti was a natural disaster. Gaza was manmade. This didn’t need to happen. Second, in almost any nation a year after a disaster you can see governments and NGOS rebuilding the lives of people.“ He predicted that a year from now many Haitian homes could be rebuilt and schools could be in session. “In Gaza 15,000 homes were damaged or destroyed,” he stated. “One year later not one single family home has been rebuilt.”

There are 1.5 million Gazans living in an 140 square mile-area—twice the size of Washington, DC. Half the populace is under the age of 16. Gaza’s population density exceeds Hong Kong’s—but Gazans are living in isolation, behind borders which have been entirely shut down since November 2008. Prior to the closure, each month ANERA trucked in a million dollars of medical supplies to Gaza. When Israel launched its 22-day attack in December 2008, killing 1,400, hospitals already were short of medicines.

Eighteen schools were destroyed, and Israel has only recently permitted trucks to deliver cement to repair U.N. schools. Israel prohibits spare parts for wells and irrigation pipes. As a result, every day 65 million liters of raw sewage are dumped untreated into the Mediterranean—an ecological disaster for the entire region. People can get sick from eating fish caught along the coast, depriving them of a valuable source of protein. Gaza’s power plant is on the verge of collapse, due to lack of fuel and spare parts.

Between 40 and 50 percent of Gazans are unemployed, and the rest are underemployed. Gaza’s society is fractured, Corcoran said, with no ability to heal itself. ANERA provides boxes of food purchased and assembled in the West Bank to help feed Gazan families. “It’s quite pathetic to see people standing in line for food. They’re proud people,” he pointed out, “and we try to keep it as quick and dignified as possible in a situation that must be humiliating.” At least 10 percent of Gaza’s children are malnourished, and ANERA’s Milk for Preschoolers program has cut down the incidence of anemia from 39 to 19 percent.

Before the Israeli attack, Corcoran says children would run up to visitors in Gaza. Now when they see a stranger, they hide behind their teacher or cry. Bedwetting is common in 11- and 12-year-old children. The psychological effects are obvious to all observers.

When it comes to fixing things, Gazans are having to think creatively. For example, since Israel refuses to allow Gazans to import concrete or steel pipes, they decided to manufacture their own plastic and came up with an ingenious idea. Since fields and damaged greenhouses are littered with plastic sheeting, ANERA employs hundreds of workers to pick up the plastic, recycle it and melt it into irrigation pipes.

A year after Israel’s attack on Gaza, thousands of homeless Gazans are still living in tents. Doctors Without Borders estimate that “500,000 people in Gaza are now using Tramadol, a synthetic opiate coming in through the tunnels. People are self-medicating because they’re so depressed,” Corcoran concluded. “That’s where they are right now, and that’s why the world needs to pay attention to this. It’s in the long-term interest of everyone, Israel, and world peace, that we not let this humanitarian disaster continue unchecked.”

To view a video of Corcoran’s talk, visit <www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/9289/pid/3584>.