Unbreakable blood-ties in the shadow of Gaza warfare
Release Time: 2009/1/12 0:00:00 From: Made In China.com Visits: 276031 Font Size: Large Middle Small
Special report: Palestine-Israel Conflicts
by Hossam Hamdan, Hua Chunyu
RAMALLAH, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Sara Ajrami, from the Gaza Strip, couldn't stop her tears every night when she sits in her daughter's home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, watching news about the embattled coastal enclave.
Sad TV stories from Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where her home is located, keep enwrapping the 63-year-old Gazan and make her terribly grieved.
Sara traveled to Ramallah about four months ago to cure her eye disease, after getting permit from Israel allowing her to be treated in a specified hospital in Ramallah.
Though Sara's eyes have recovered, she could not return to her home in Jabaliya after Israel's massive military offensive on Gaza started more than two weeks ago.
"I want to go back to my home in Jabaliya, and go back to my families, but I couldn't," Sara told Xinhua, with tears rolling in her eyes.
"Since Israeli army invaded Gaza, I sit every day, from night till morning, watching TV, and keep calling my families to make sure that they are still alive," she added.
Sara has asked the Israelis, through the Palestinian National Authority, to issue her a permit to go back, but did not get any answer.
Palestinians cannot travel between the West Bank, where PNA Chairman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds sway, and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip without a permit from Israel. Since the war started on Dec. 27, Israel did not allow anyone to enter Gaza.
On Saturday, bad news came, Israeli army arrested Sara's brother Mahmoud from his home in Jabaliya, and there is no message about what happened to his family.
"We kept watching TV, and kept calling my sister each hour until we get information that my brother was released after the army found that he was wounded," Sara said.
"I was terrified when I got the phone call from another daughter of mine, saying that my brother was wounded, and I couldn't sleep until I talked with him via phone, getting to know that he was treated and came back from Shifa hospital in Gaza City."
Compared with other Gazans who are forced to stay in the West Bank and do not have relatives to live with, Sara was lucky because one of her daughters, who got married with a West Bank man five years ago, now lives in Ramallah.
Some 15 students from Gaza are currently studying in the Berzeit University in Ramallah. Like Sara, they are also "watching TV, following what's going on in Gaza," said one of the female student.
The Gaza Strip, seized by Hamas from Abbas' long-dominant Fatah movement after one-week-long infighting in June 2007, has been struggling under unprecedented Israeli air and ground offensive for over two weeks.
The ongoing Israeli military offensive has killed 901 Palestinians, half of them civilians, said medical officials, adding that more than 3,600 people were injured.
At the same time, some West Bankers are trapped in Gaza, and couldn't get back to their homes either.
Raed Zglool, 41, from a village called Dora Al-Qare near Ramallah, was deported by Israeli army to Gaza five years ago, as a kind of punishment.
Raed and his family, who are still living in Gaza, couldn't help expressing their sadness in the conversation with Xinhua via phone, as the coming month will be the end of their five-year deportation.
"I hope the Israeli army will allow us to go back to my home in Dora Al-Qare, because the Israeli army are bombarding Gaza every day, and I am so worried about me and my little children," Raed said.
Raed spent three years in an Israeli jail before he was deported to Gaza. The Israeli army charged Raed of participating in activities against the Jewish state.
Since warfare started in Gaza, Raed's relatives kept calling him to make sure that he is still alive. Yousef, Raed's brother living in Ramallah, told Xinhua that "we have been calling him every hour."
Yousef said "we're seeing awful pictures from Gaza (on TV), and we are so worried about Raed and his family, he has five daughters and a son, and we are worrying about all of them."