Hello. We are Canadian health professionals responding to an appeal from Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, Director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre to end the siege in Gaza. We plan to meet with Members of Parliament to discuss this humanitarian appeal and use the letter that follows to aid the campaign. If you are interested in co-signing this statement, please send your name to: hpa...@gmail.com

*Humanitarian Appeal*:

We are Canadian health professionals who are deeply concerned about the ever worsening conditions of everyday life in the Gaza Strip brought about by the Israeli siege. We ask the Canadian government to restore Canadian funds for projects in Gaza and to demand that Israel lift the siege which contravenes the Geneva Conventions. This appeal is part of an international humanitarian campaign initiated by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme and issued by its highly respected director, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj. For a great many years, the GCMHP has provided mental health services to Gaza’s traumatized families and has persistently advocated for human rights.

Israel ostensibly withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but Israel continues to block all access to Gaza, completely controls its
water resources, and effectually prohibits the movement of goods and people including access to emergency medical care and food. The Israel Peace Bloc (Gush Shalom) states that “The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are completely dependent on Israel for their most basic livelihood. This complete dependence was created, consciously and deliberately, by all governments of Israel since 1967…. The people of the Gaza Strip have already been living for
a long time in terrible squalor, on the very edge of starvation. Now we push them even much deeper into hell. The state of Israel is today roughly trampling International Law, in indiscriminate collective punishments of a whole civilian population. We, too, will eventually pay the price.�?

After Hamas was democratically elected in early 2006, Canada was the first of many countries to irresponsibly withdraw funds from the Palestinian government. According to the UN agencies and the World Bank, the unemployment rate is now 70% and 1.1 million of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza depend on UN assistance to
survive, with 80% of Gazans earning only $2/day. Families live on little more than tea and bread, and the closed borders mean that they are deprived of life’s necessities like soap and medicine. According to Physicians for Human Rights/Israel and Checkpoint Watch (Machsom Watch), even children, pregnant women, and critically ill people are not allowed through checkpoints to access emergency medical care. In 2006, Israel destroyed Gaza’s electrical plant and continues to limit electricity which is needed for the pumping and treatment of water. Gazans now drink contaminated water. This last March, an uncontrolled discharge of untreated sewage that contained unexploded Israeli ordnance
overwhelmed 250 homes and drowned a number of inhabitants in the village of Beit Lahiya. Under these conditions, Gaza is vulnerable to disease outbreaks of epidemic proportions.

What does siege mean on the personal level? Gaza is now described as an open air prison. Israel has the fourth largest military in the world, and the population of Gaza is under constant technological surveillance, subject to extrajudicial executions and intentional maiming of children and adults. Dr. El-Sarraj and his colleagues describe the siege, and most tragically the children who grow up under collective punishment: “those children were subjected to several traumatic and violent experiences including beating, bone-breaking, injury, tear gas and acts of killing and injury, all of which experiences have left indelible effects on their psyche. Yet, to many, the most excruciating experience was seeing their fathers beaten helpless by Israeli soldiers without resistance. Those young men who are pursuing revenge and killing and are at times seeking even their own death are the selfsame children who cherished so many dreams of a better life but saw them fade away and fall apart the moment they saw their fathers fall helpless and defenseless victims of arrogant force incarnated in the Israeli soldier. No wonder then that the Palestinian child will see his model in that Israeli soldier and that his language will be the language of force and his toys and games will be the toys and games of death.�?

Gaza is one of a number of humanitarian disasters in the world that is caused by humans but that can be remedied by reparation. It is essential to acknowledge Canada’s shameful complicity in this needless disaster. As health professionals, we demand that our government restore funds to Gaza, lend humanitarian assistance to repair the extensive damage, and insist that Israel respect international humanitarian law and the appeals of innumerable international civil society groups and lift the siege.

The Palestinian International Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza:
www.end-gaza-siege.ps/IndexEn.htm

Thank you.

Reem Abdul Qadir M.S.W. R.S.W.
Miriam Garfinkle M.D.
Judith Deutsch M.S.W. R.S.W.