Several parliamentary representatives and I travelled to Egypt on Thursday morning as part of a cross parliamentary delegation visit to Gaza. The group includes members of different political parties such as David Steel and Karen Buck, who have been to the area in the past, and I myself was here a year ago as part of the first delegation to visit Gaza after the Israeli occupation. Part of our aim is to see how things have changed over the year and what necessary steps the British government must take to end the humanitarian crisis in the region.

We left Cairo at 4:30 this morning for the long drive to the border. As we neared the border, checkpoints became increasingly frequent but the Egyptian authorities were by and large very helpful and friendly. We found as time went on that if we admitted Peter Crouch’s second goal had been offside, we made significantly quicker progress! Our final checkpoint was at the Rafeh terminal, which to our surprise took only 2 hours to get through; nowhere near the 8 hours it had taken last year entering from the Israeli side.

The border between Palestine and Egypt, as many people will be aware, is littered with tunnels (estimated at 1,200) that link the two countries. They are some of the only means by which such things as building materials can enter Gaza and as such are extremely busy. Members of the community we spoke to estimated that 2-3 people are killed each week due to collapsing tunnels or Israeli bombing here.

From here we moved on to Gaza city and a brief tour of Gaza’s first Archaeological Museum. The depth of history in this area is second to none, and the quantity and quality of Bronze Age material on display could surely attract a great many tourists in the future. The site itself is one of the few private enterprises that has succeeded in being built and finished over the past few years, as over 95% of such activities have ceased since the Israeli blockade. It is however, a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit that prevails amongst Palestinians and has provided a good deal of hope for the local people.

From Gaza city we then went on to the stalled UNRWA housing project, which since the blockade has essentially ceased. No building materials are now entering Gaza from anywhere other than the Rafah tunnels; material that the UN is not able to use. Schools, homes and shops lie in various states of completion, but are now beginning to deteriorate as they have not been finished. Since the middle of 2007 when Hamas took power, this has been the situation.

Tomorrow we will be visiting local hospitals and food distribution centres to see what effect the blockade has been having here.

Andy

Filed under: recent-news by Andy