The photograph above is an AP photo of a Palestinian boy who is waiting by his sick brother’s side with a manual air pump, for fear of the power going out and disabling the child’s electric respirator.
That is only a small glimpse of the reality for the powerless–in more than one sense of the word–in Gaza, as shared by Rory McCarthy in The Guardian.
He writes:
Israel said its closure of the Gaza strip was intended to halt the firing of makeshift rockets by Palestinian militants into southern Israel.
Yet Israel’s stark new policy has meant no fuel or food aid has come into Gaza since last Thursday. Large parts of the overcrowded strip had no power, leaving it without lights and heating, closing bakeries and forcing hospitals to rely on generators and their own limited fuel reserves. As night fell nearly all Gaza City was in darkness. Simply put, it was “collective punishment,” said the European commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Osama Nahal, a paediatric doctor in the European hospital’s special care baby unit, looked resigned. “Politics is politics, but the care of human beings must be away from politics,” he said. His unit now has 10 newly-born patients, of whom two are on ventilators.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment