After ceasefire, Gazans still don't feel safe

Report, Palestine Centre for Human Rights
10 February 2009

Foreign correspondents and camera crews have now begun to leave Gaza, in search of the next headline-grabbing location. But ongoing air strikes and violations of international law are a stark reminder that there is no real end to Israel's offensive here.

Since Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on 18 January it has continued to launch strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. Some families in the southern town of Rafah have been evacuated from their homes up to 10 times in the last 15 days.

Faten al-Shaer, a 31-year-old mother of one, lives just 150 meters from Gaza's southern border with Egypt. This area, known as the Philadelphi Route has been repeatedly targeted and is now a mass of rubble, sand and bomb craters. Her home is one of the few left standing here, surrounded by the grey concrete remains of homes, and the shreds of tarpaulin that once covered smuggling tunnels.

"I was baking bread when the bombing of the border area began on 28 December," says Faten. "Thousands of people took to the streets, trying to escape. Everybody was on the move. My mother, my five-year-old daughter Nagham and I ran to my uncle's house, which is further from the border." Other family members were scattered at the homes of relatives.

"During the war there was daily bombing of this area -- sometimes in the morning, sometimes at midnight," says Faten. "It went on for 22 days. When the ceasefire was declared we came back to the house but had to evacuate it again the next day because they started bombing again."

Faten and the 35 members of her extended family have still not spent the night at their home. They come back during the day but always leave before darkness falls.

"The children are suffering real trauma," Faten adds, as her green-eyed daughter Nagham clings to her. "Some of them are incontinent and they wake up in the night and start crying. My daughter Nagham has to hold onto me all the time. They understand it's a war."

The impact of the air strikes and incursions on the children of the Gaza Strip has been acute. Faten's seven-year-old nephew Dia was in school a few days ago, when he heard an unmanned Israeli drone in the sky. He automatically picked up his schoolbag and ran home, crying "The drones are still over my head. I can't take it anymore."

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