Salena Tramel's blog

Today I attended a panel at Harvard featuring authors of the Lancet Special Series Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They discussed and suggested reasons for the rapidly deteriorating health of those living in Gaza and the West Bank, including a lack of access to food and medicine. These vital resources remain blocked by obstacles such as the Wall in the West Bank and inaccessible borders in Gaza. Panelist Mitchell Plitnick, the U.S.

Sunday marked Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Land Day is an annual commemoration of the events of March 30, 1976, when the Israeli army and police killed six unarmed Palestinian protesters and injured 96 others during a peaceful protest in the Galilee.  More than 300 people were also arrested in the demonstration opposing the Israeli authorities' seizure of 5,500 acres as "closed military zones."

Since returning from Gaza where I went on a Grassroots International program trip that coincided with the International Women's Delegation co-sponsored by Code Pink, Grassroots International and others, I am finding it very difficult to write.  I sit at night staring blankly at my more than a hundred pages of notes and find the personal testimonies from the War too horrific to have actually happened or to exist between the pages of my beat-up notebooks.  I spend hours sorting through thousands of photographs and stop every now and then to remind myself that the images are part of my recent experience and responsibility now and not some archives from Sabra or Shatila or Jenin or Beirut that somehow made their way onto my hard drive.   

Grassroots International's partner, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) has long played a crucial role in defending the Palestinian people's human right to land, water and food.  One of their goals is to contribute to the achievment of sustainable and integrated rural development in Palestine, and they have been a key actor in building a secular and democratic civil society.  Since 1983, they have worked tirelessly with rural and refugee (from the war of 1948) farmers. 

Grassroots currently funds PARC's innovative Urban Agriculture program in Gaza, which encourages food sovereignty and security by establishing networks of rooftop and backyard gardens.

Peasant organizers in Haiti - including Grassroots International's partners and allies - are uniting their efforts to collaborate in rebuilding their country.  These organizers plan and mobilize across the island, linking issues such as environmental degradation and food scarcity to failed agricultural and economic policy and demand political action.  Their advocacy and education activities are centered on reducing prices of food by increasing natural production and warning that the international financial crisis could have a deadly impact on Haiti if economic and agricultural policies fail to change. 

All morning I have been talking to people in Gaza City while they were helplessly watching the United Nations headquarters and millions of dollars of much needed food and medicine go up in flames.  The UN plays a critical role in Gaza as it is the primary vehicle for feeding more than 80% of Gaza's 1.5 million people who depend on food aid.  A UN distribution coordinator in Gaza City explained to me that they had allocated scant reserves in three supply warehouses in Gaza City, Karni, and Rafah.  All three have been incapacitated by Israeli attacks.      

B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) has joined eight other prominent Israeli Human Rights organizations in calling on their government to put an end to their actions in Gaza.  B'Tselem is Hebrew for "in the image of" and used as a synonym for human dignity.  Since 1989, they have worked tirelessly to educate the Israeli public and policymakers on the reality of human rights violations in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.  Today-as the death toll in Gaza has just passed 1,000-B'Tselem's voice is needed more than ever to bring an end to the violence. 

Grassroots International consultant Safa Joudeh has been reporting on the crisis in Gaza from Gaza City, providing first-hand accounts of the affects of the violence on the civilian population.  Two of her accounts were recently published, Living in Gaza, Under Starlight and Bomb Blasts and Displaced and Desperate in Gaza.  Both of these stories offer a glimpse of what is taking place behind Gaza's closed doors.   

When I talk to people in Gaza these days, two things usually come up.  The first, even in the midst of such a devastating war, is sincere gratitude for keeping in touch.  The second is the question of why the world - especially the US whose taxpayers are financing the war - is silent.  Although our actions have not yet been able to halt the attacks on Gaza, I can honestly tell our Palestinian friends that we are not silent. 

Yesterday, I was on the phone with a friend in Gaza when we were cut off by a loud noise.  When I reached her a few minutes later, she politely apologized for the interruption, explaining that a missile had just hit a target next to her apartment building for the sixth time that day.  "It's already totally flattened," she said, "I don't know what more they want."