My heart is with Gaza tonight

Photo: Children play in the rubble of their homes in Jabaliya, destroyed by the Israeli offensive in January. Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Polaris/eyevine

A year ago, the bombardment of Gaza began. For 23 horrible days, I watched the small area of Gaza get bombed day and night. In the end, over 1400 people were killed, over 300 of them children. All the dead children were from Gaza.

As always, it is the non-combatants who suffer the most in war. Here is one child’s story:

Childhood in ruins

It was Friday 16 January and Ghiada was studying for exams. Her father, a pharmacist, woke from a nap, demanding tea and shouting at the younger children to be quiet. "Suddenly I could hear my cousin downstairs, screaming 'Dead! Dead!'" A shell had hit the building – a block of five apartments, housing the extended Abu Elaish family – smashing windows and causing extensive damage to the flat below.

In the ensuing panic, Ghiada defied her father and followed him downstairs. "One room was completely black. I saw Aya [my cousin], she was on the ground with wood on top of her. There was a big hole in the wall."

Ghiada tried pulling Aya out from under the furniture. A second shell struck. "There was a big light for a second," she says. "I saw some windows smash and I heard screaming all around. A piece of shrapnel hit me. I started to scream for help and then fell down unconscious."

This particular attack is one I remember very well. The uncle of this child was a physician who worked in an Israeli hospital, and he called into an Israeli TV station pleading for help for his injured children and lamenting the dead children in front of his eyes. Without understanding a word of the phone conversation (on either end), it still left me with a horror at the violence that was being inflicted on this family. Amazingly, this man, Dr. abu Elaish, still is promoting peace and reconciliation. This report says that he has moved to Canada.

And a year after this brutal assault, the people of Gaza are still not allowed to rebuild. More than 20,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. The blockade will not allow in materials to build or repair their homes. This is having a psychological effect, beyond the physical effects.

Overcrowding, lack of privacy and poverty are contributing to what some in Gaza call the "mental siege". Tensions within families are increasing, say Gaza's mental health experts. "Some parents themselves have depression and anxiety. Some become more aggressive towards their children," says Zeyada.

Schools have also suffered from the bombardment and the blockade.

Thirty-two of the UN's 221 schools were damaged in the Israeli assault, plus scores more government ones. None have been repaired because Israel does not allow construction materials into Gaza, saying they could be used to make weapons. "So the schools, where the windows were blown out or other damage was done, have been cleaned up, made safe, and continue in operation today without the physical repairs because we haven't been allowed to bring in one pane of glass or one bag of cement since last January," says Ging.

The policy is promoting extremism inside Gaza, along with destroying hope. More children see their parents as unable to meet their needs, so they look to outside forces that use violence as a role model. The blockade and the bombardment has created more hostility, and will continue to do so as time goes on.

Hunger stalks the children of Gaza. Newborn babies are suffering from malnutrition.

A year after the bombings, one man in Gaza is living among the ruins and among the graffiti written on the walls of the house he is living in.

Gaza one year on: The aftermath of the tragedy

Now Hilmi mainly potters round the house, set amid devastated orchards and chicken coops in the southern Gaza City district of Zeitoun. The graffiti in English and Hebrew on the interior walls, left by the men of the Israeli army's Givati brigade, are the only relics of their two-week occupation of the building – a gravestone drawn beside the words "Gaza we were here"; "One down and 999,000 to go"; "Death to Arabs". Has the family deliberately kept the graffiti visible? "Yes, but anyway we didn't have paint to cover them," he says.

His sister lives with him, and here are some of her memories:

One of Hilmi's duties is to help look after his dauntingly self-possessed 11-year-old sister Mona, who turns the pages of artwork inspired by her memories of the morning of 5 January 2009. "This is me cleaning the face of mother who is dead. This is my father who was hit in the head and his brains came out. This is my dead sister-in-law. This is my sister taking the son from my sister in law..."

A year on, and there are still acres of rubble in Gaza. There are still people living in tents. What little building materials that do come in, come via the tunnels to Egypt.

Surveying the wreckage, tunnel worker Abu Yusef recalls that he once earned 300 shekels (£48) a day as a gardener in Israel when the crossings were open, and would willingly do so again rather than risk his life for a third of that. "If there was other work, I wouldn't look at a tunnel again," he says.

Sixteen human rights groups have made the claim that the world has betrayed Gaza by failing to end the blockade.

World has betrayed Gaza Civilians: rights groups

"The international community has betrayed the people of Gaza by failing to back their words with effective action to secure the ending of the Israeli blockade which is preventing reconstruction and recovery," said the report.

….. "World powers have also failed and even betrayed Gaza's ordinary citizens. They have wrung hands and issued statements, but have taken little meaningful action to attempt to change the damaging policy that prevents reconstruction."

Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs said:

"It is not only Israel that has failed the people of Gaza with a blockade that punishes everybody living there for the acts of a few. World powers have also failed and even betrayed Gaza's ordinary citizens. They have wrung hands and issued statements, but have taken little meaningful action to attempt to change the damaging policy that prevents reconstruction, personal recovery and economic recuperation."

The world has turned it’s back on Gaza, and it’s back on justice and ending human suffering. But I remember them, and I totally support the Gaza Freedom March.

REMEMBER THESE CHILDREN - Total killed since 2000

Israelis 124

Palestinians 1,441

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