Factional violence turns Gaza into 'hell on earth'
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Factional violence turns Gaza into 'hell on earth'*
17 May 2007 12:49:00 GMT
Saeed Taji Farouky
I've hardly left the house in three days. Last night, I took shelter in
the bathroom as bullets flew past my fourth floor window.
The situation on the ground in Gaza was already dire, even before May 13
and the latest intense escalation in violence. "Gaza is hell on earth,"
Fareed told me unsentimentally as we sat in his comfortable East
Jerusalem apartment only last week. It was so easy, then, to take a taxi
back to my hotel and walk around the corner for a coffee and a late dinner.
But in Gaza, night and day, the city is a ghost town. Hardly anyone
dares step outside. There are rumours Fateh gunmen are simply shooting
at anything that moves, and some families have been trapped in their
homes for four days. Electricity supplies are low, and fuel shipments
were cut off following Tuesday's violence at the Karni checkpoint,
Gaza's only supply line.
Following a strike by the municipality over unpaid wages, rubbish is
piled high in the streets. It's set alight every night, filling the air
with an acrid smoke. Now, even if the city's cleaners wanted to return
to work, the streets are too dangerous.
Dr. Musa El-Haddad - a retired doctor living in Gaza City - went on to
the streets yesterday to buy enough bread for three days. His family
have already run out of coffee. All but a few shops selling essentials
are closed in the strip's capital city after masked gunmen - on a
rampage through the streets and shooting into the air - harassed most
shopkeepers into locking their doors.
Ahmed, who runs a small supermarket around the corner from my hotel,
recounts his experience: "A group of gunmen came by yesterday. They were
going shop to shop and intimidating us, trying to force us to close." He
stayed open today, for his sake and the sake of his customers, but his
plans for the future aren't so clear.
"Both sides are at fault. No one knows where this is heading. I don't
see a way out..."
Musa chuckles as he helps his wife Maii in the kitchen, explaining that
they dared only head outside for a few minutes. The streets are
patrolled by masked gunmen, and snipers have taken up positions on the
roofs of the city's high-rise buildings.
The city's doctors and nurses have shown an incredible willingness to
keep hospitals operating as usual, with staff often sleeping overnight
in the building. Maii, Musa's wife, was even considering going to work
in her downtown clinic located directly in front of Gaza's Islamic
University, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting the Gaza Strip
has ever seen.
That night, things get even worse. The city is under siege. Laila
El-Haddad, an incredibly brave and dedicated Gaza journalist, and I are
reporting from her living room. Outside, Fateh and Hamas factions
exchange heavy arms fire, RPGs and mortars rounds in a battle to control
strategic areas of the city.
As shots are fired frighteningly close to her kitchen window, her son,
Yousuf, bounds around the house oblivious. He's only three years old. I
try to imagine how all this violence and chaos is affecting him, the
trauma he must be experiencing. I hope he's still too young to
understand. Maybe he'll come out unscathed.
Laila tells him the sound outside is someone making popcorn in the
streets. During a lull in the fighting, Yousuf jumps to his feet.
"They've finished making popcorn. Can we go out side and see?"
We hear reports that residents of several high-rise residential towers
in Western Gaza City are trapped inside, their buildings taken over by
unidentified gunmen. They've set fire to some of the buildings, burning
residents' cars and firing at ambulances. Gunmen are searching every
flat for suspects. It's impossible to evacuate any of the wounded.
We manage to contact a woman named Um Muntaser in Borj El-Saleh, a
residential tower in the west of the city. She tells us over the phone
that some children in the building are wounded, and her son passed out
from smoke inhalation. Nobody can move, and gunmen are paying no
attention to the innocents around them.
"We have been living in our kitchen for the past two days," says the
42-year-old mother of seven. "Eleven or 12 apartments have been
burned... There are snipers everywhere... We are human beings. What's
our fault in all this?"
Um Muntaser, and all the other innocents of Gaza, are the ones paying
the heaviest price for this vulgar and obsessive power struggle.
Several hours into the fighting, Mustafa Barghouti - the Palestinian
Authority's Information Minister - responds positively to Hamas'
ceasefire offer, scheduled to begin in two hours. That night, still
reading news of the ceasefire, gun battles continue to rage on the
streets. I hear children screaming as the fumes of burning rubbish fill
my lungs.