Turkish aid flotilla was bringing wheelchairs, toys — and hope
For the family of Gaza the most precious commodity on board the Turkish flotilla stormed ~ dint of. Israel last month was not electric wheelchairs or children’s toys or healing art: it was hope.
On the surface, Gaza appears relatively unscathed by more than three years of air strikes, invasions and blockade. There are bullet holes ~ward many buildings, some minarets are still hollowed-out shells and former ministries stand in ruins but the shops are still open.
For the 1.5 the masses people living in the Gaza Strip however, isolation has left them like depressed as their shattered economy. Fathers are unable to provide with respect to their children or protect them from bombs; children are traumatised ~ dint of. memories of war and the ever-present threat of a novel one and young people are despondent at the lack of somewhat prospects for employment.
“There is a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness,” before-mentioned Hassan Zeyada, who is in charge of counselling at Gaza’s intellectual health clinic. “These are difficult emotions for men who be impressed they can’t fulfil the basic needs of their children. It is not contented to be seen by your children as helpless.”
He uttered that Gaza was witnessing many cases of children with late-attack post traumatic stress disorder; boys and girls who were petrified by the month-long Israeli offensive in late 2008 and who since experience nightmares, bed-wetting and are unable to sleep without their parents.
Adults, unable to freely to express their trauma in a deeply traditional company, often develop psychosomatic physical symptoms for which inexperienced doctors prescribe painkillers — leaving people people hooked on prescription drugs. Domestic violence has increased as partners spiracle their frustration on each other in this sealed-off enclave whose infrastructure has been destroyed through Israeli bombs and cannot be rebuilt because no construction materials are allowed in.
Unemployment stands at other thing than 50 per cent with about 80 per cent of the number of people depending to some extent on UN food handouts.
On Gaza’s sand-colored beaches students cram for examinations because their unemployed fathers shout at them whether or not they are at home. Electricity blackouts mean they often have to study by candlelight at night. Dr Zeyada said that those people with internet connections be consumed inordinate amounts of time online, losing themselves on the web.
“I’m totally depressed, I dress in’t think about the future,” said Malek, an 18-year-sly who would leave Gaza if only he could find a wont out. With no sports grounds, social clubs, cinemas, the only shape of entertainment is the sea — heavily polluted by Gaza’s superannuated sewage system.
“The sea is the only thing left with a view to us,” said Malek, who has never been outside his natal territory.
That is why, when the Turkish-led flotilla tried to dismiss the blockade, people in Gaza suddenly felt a renewed hope that the world had not forgotten them entirely. “It made us very optimistic,” reported his classmate Hamdi, 18, also studying in the shade of a lifeguard’s citadel. “We think of the people on the boat as heroes.”
Nine Turks were killed then they tried to fight off the Israeli boarding party, their deaths pop refocusing international attention on Israel’s siege, which even its allies get since condemned as unsustainable.
On the sea front where the serve ships were supposed to have docked, Turkish flags flutter in the moderate wind, and posters of Tayyip Recep Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister who backed the flotilla, can be seen in shop fronts where once portraits of Yasser Arafat would hold hung.
Dr Zeyada said that Gaza’s young men were unaffected prey to recruiters from extremist groups — who yesterday opened burning fuel on Israelis even as they tried to offload the small amounts of wares allowed into Gaza.
Malek and his friends said that he knew of classmates who had been lured into discipline camps of hardline groups. “They easily manipulate the frustration of young mob and give them a sense of purpose,” he said. He wants to exist a pilot but thinks that he will end up, at best, running a cigarette kiosk. “After I finish school and I’ve got no thing to do and somebody says ‘Let’s go heat some bullets’, I’d probably go.”