Home and Home Sick: Returning from Gaza

Home Sick...for Gaza

by Kevin Neish

Well after 20 hours in the air I’m back home in Victoria and dealing with the jet lag and the culture shock.  Less friendly people here and I’m not constantly scanning the skies for F18s and drones.  The trip went very well, and I made some very good connections for future work and projects,  As such I expect I’ll be returning to Gaza some time soon.   Later this year hopefully, depending on the situation in Egypt.  So one last entry of random photos and minimal commentary.



In desperately poor Gaza they found the funds to build a stadium just for disabled athletes.



Which the Israelis shot a missile at in November 2012



And a few more missiles.



And a few more…


And a few more missiles.

I’m sure the Israelis will say that they only attacked this civilian target because of Hamas rockets supposedly coming from it.  But they rocketed the sewer and water plants, the electrical plants, the main bridges, the universities, high schools, UN elementary schools (all war crimes) and they used white phosphorous against many civilian targets (a serious war crime).  I say they are lying again and that this attack on a disabled athletes sports stadium was an intentional collective punishment attack, a war crime.



This is the rocketed municipal police station where several men had died, which I had photographed for an earlier blog.  Now, by hand, they are hammering the concrete debris back into gravel and then straightening the savaged re-bar, all for reuse.  Nothing in Gaza can be  wasted behind Israel’s blockade.



Another bit of recycling involves the massive concrete apartheid walls which the Israelis left behind when the Zionist settlers left Gaza in 2005.  These ones at the Rafah border crossing are the last of them and the Palestinians have decorated them with children’s paintings.


The rest of these hated Israeli apartheid walls were put to better use, as a breakwater for the port to protect  the Palestinian fishermen and women.

So to end on a mundane but important point, this is a model of a new sewer  plant which Gaza is building, the first of three.

As I said in my first blog entry, the Israelis blow things apart, like the previous sewer plant, and the Palestinians just carry on and build  a new one.  They are sumud in Arabic or steadfast in English.  They are not going to be defeated.
                                    
Thank you for my readers time, consideration and patience.