January 2010
Christian Aid supporters gave an amazing £550,000 to our Gaza crisis appeal last year.
One year on, your support has enabled our partners on the ground to reach thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable. However, only a long-term solution can prevent violence escalating again, and provide the security Israelis and Palestinians crave.
Food, farms and rehabilitation
The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) bought produce from 98 poor farmers and 60 women’s cooperatives. Food baskets were then distributed to 1162 poor households – reaching some 9000 people.
This approach provides food for the poorest while supporting some of the most vulnerable farmers in Gaza’s shattered agricultural sector.
In addition, your generosity meant that PARC could provide cash for work for 227 poor farmers to rehabilitate damaged farms.
Medical support
The Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (PMRS) provided emergency healthcare to 10,721 patients in the midst of the crisis and over the following three months. Seventy-five of these needed daily care and dressing over the rest of 2009 – PMRS has been there for them.
Christian Aid was able to support PMRS to recruit 13 extra staff to cope with the increased need, including providing physiotherapy and rehabilitation.
Counselling and care for children
Our partner the Culture and Free Thought Association (CFTA) is based in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the south of the Strip, one of the poorest areas in Gaza.
Last year, CFTA distributed food, blankets and winter clothes to 400 displaced families with no other access to this kind of support, reaching about 3,400 individuals.
And this winter, CFTA provided 1,000 children in Gaza with warm clothing to protect them against cold weather and associated illnesses.
CFTA runs two centres for children and teenagers. They have become safe spaces where children can receive counselling, and do drawing and drama therapy to help them express their feelings.
The CFTA centres are one of very few places where children can find non-violent channels to process their pain and anger.
This is crucial support for children who have lost parents, brothers or sisters or who were injured in the attacks. Helping them cope with feelings of fear and anger is important not only for their own emotional development but also for the hope of a future peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Accountability and long-term solution
We have been able to provide aid to the most vulnerable people and start the painful process of reconstruction, but the Israeli ‘blockade’ – severe restrictions on movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, is preventing reconstruction and recovery.
Failing Gaza Read our new report
The blockade breaches the prohibition on collective punishment in international humanitarian law.
The best way to ensure that violence does not erupt again is to hold all parties to the conflict accountable for their actions, ending a culture of impunity that has plagued the conflict for decades.
One of our Israeli partner organisations, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, was the first to send an independent fact-finding mission into Gaza.
PARC has investigated damages to agricultural land. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is gathering evidence to use in claims and investigations, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission to Gaza, headed by Justice Goldstone.
In July 2009, another partner, Breaking the Silence, published a book of testimonies from 26 soldiers who served in the Gaza conflict, aiming to open discussion in Israeli society and abroad about the human rights abuses that took place.
Only a long-term solution that ensures the rights and needs of all people – both Israeli and Palestinian – will prevent violence erupting again, in Gaza and across Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory, and even the broader Middle East region.
Failing Gaza Read our new report