An email to friends from Gaza

10.01.09/Gaza / Yasser Jamei – A young man in Gaza sends an email to his West Bank friends o say, “Thank you for your concerns about the situation here in Gaza and about my safety.”

Yasser is one of the more fortunate, if there is such as thing in Gaza.
He writes:

Currently the situation is still as bad, and even worse, than what appears in the media.

The whole population is in shock, and still there is no safe place.

The electricity is off for more than 20 hours per day. In Gaza city itself, there has been no electricity for two weeks. With the continuous destruction of civilian houses and buildings by the F16s and helicopters, no one is sure that he will live another day. The news of Israeli soldiers gathering people in houses and then demolishing them, and the news of air strikes on the schools that became shelters for the families, are intensifying the horror among the population. We do not know what will happen next, and it seems that things will get worse.

As any other Palestinian, I was waiting for the decision of the United Nations. Today the decision saw the light, but the war continues. Both sides considered that the UN call is not enough. Israel says that it wants guarantees that there will be no projectiles from Gaza, and Hamas wants guarantees that the siege will end, and that there will be no attacks on Gaza. During the last two weeks over 700 civilian Palestinians were killed, at least 400 of them are women and children. Over 2,300 were injured. I do not know how many people should die until a ceasefire is reached.

Many of us think that we are going to die one way or the other. For the last two months cooking gas was not allowed to come to Gaza. Electricity plant fuel was not allowed to enter also. Flour is very limited and it has been absent in the market since December. People are living as in the 30s and 40s of the last century. Many of us also think that the only safe place is the place where we will all go - the cemetery.

With time we continue to find out new levels to the brutality of the Israeli army. Soon the whole world will discover things that no one imagined would happen as will any other Palestinian. I hope that the world is one day going to open its eyes.

Perhaps I should apologize for this traumatizing email, but I kept waiting for days before coming to this Internet café which has a generator. I was waiting for things to improve. I was waiting so that I could tell you that everything is over, and that we are safe and sound. Unfortunately time passes and I can not write any of that.

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