Open letter to Gaza

Of course my blog today was supposed to replay an email I recieved from ex-friend of mine about Forget & Forgive as I have promised.

But with the destruction and bloody action being caused by the Israeli war machine, I don't think I am capable to think of anything else.

It is extremely difficult for me to be here in the in South of Lebanon watching events unfold on the ground in Gaza from this very close distance.
With a broken heart I watch the news from this unprecedented and savage Israeli attack on my folks, and family in Gaza.

In the last two days around 450 Israeli air strikes have hit dozens of locations in the overcrowded Gaza Strip. Their “military targets” are mixed in with homes, schools, hospitals, and universities. As of this writing, 350 people are dead and more than 1400 injured.

It's all are Unnecessary deaths

I am distraught thinking about the fate of these injured people. I know the situation of hospitals in Gaza well through reports I am reicvieing at work. The siege of Gaza has left hospitals without one hundred basic medications and many important diagnostic and laboratory equipment is not working because spare parts aren’t available and the fluctuation of current from our irregular power supply has left some equipment beyond repair. In this period of crisis, Gaza hospitals are also lacking crucial medications and supplies for their operation rooms.

I’ve watched the chaotic scenes inside Gaza hospitals as staff struggle to find space for all of the injured and dead. The unprecedented numbers of casualties come in from ambulances and cars in a near-constant stream. But emergency situations are nothing new in Gaza; it is the impact of the siege that has changed the odds. I know that we would be facing a different situation if the 18 months of siege hadn’t drained the supplies of medicines and food, making it difficult to treat and feed patients.

I’ve spoken to several of my contacts of UN staff in Gaza and each one of them is overwhelmed and demoralized. Even with all of their training, the material conditions in Gaza are preventing them from doing what they are capable of.

I know how ambulance drivers were not allowed to reach the injured in previous military attacks on Gaza. Many lives could have been saved then too if the ambulances reached the injured at the right time. A few minutes can be the difference between life and death. I wonder whether we will hear reports like this again once the emergency situation is over and there is time for truth and reflection.

The first military air strikes struck at the exact time that school children make their way home. several primary schools are very close to the police headquarters which were among the first targets. These horrifying facts explain the high number of women and children amongst the dead. Thirty children and nine women have been reported dead and another 130 children and 38 women injured at the first hour of strike.

Reading the reports coming from Gaza and made heart sunk further with their first-hand accounts of the death and destruction. On a personal level I am mourning the loss of one of my friends, Ibrahim Mahmoud El-Farra, age 22. He was killed in the first attack on the presidential palace. F16 fighter planes fired three big missiles at the building. his family told me the ground shook and that the blast broke all the windows of the nearby building.

My friend, and an unknown number of other victims, is still under the rubble. The scale of destruction is too large for Gaza’s small number of rescue workers. They are slowly pulling body parts out of the rubble as Israeli air strikes make more and more piles of rubble and people.

The number of reported deaths will increase in the next few days as more bodies are recovered and more of the seriously injured cases die because their serious but treatable wounds cannot be treated in Gaza.

With all the deathes and destructiono going on in Gaza, I must ask the Israeli, isn't the same plan you have applied in Southern Lebanon (the exact same one) and ended up failing.

With an aching heart I continue to watch Gaza from a distance. I cannot blank my eyes off from the reports my office is reiceiving on hourly basis, cannot detach myself from what is going on there. Not while my our colleagues work hard under such extraordinarily circumstances. Not while the whole population of Gaza face such horrible atrocities and constant fear. The nightmare isn’t over.

But I will ask one thing from the resistence:

DON'T STOP THE ROCKETS, CAUSE THIS IS WHAT LOOSE THE ISRAELI DEFFENCE ARMY THEIR WAR... AGAIN