I am still haunted by the look I saw on a traumatized child’s face following the heavy rain and floods of 2013 in Gaza. I shook hands with hundreds of people hope and despair intertwined in their eyes. Permits for gravely sick patients that needed to leave the confines of Gaza in order to stand a chance of survival. I spent hours on end talking to authorities to facilitate the issuance of permits. I spoke to young mothers whose children’s vocabulary included words unimaginable to those of a child in the West. I accompanied mothers and fathers on their long journeys to visit their children in Israeli detention. The 15 months I spent in Gaza gave me the opportunity to get to know the land and the people, walk through its fields and crops, share meals with farmers on their lands lands that they were not permitted to access for over ten years lands that were bulldozed and destroyed by military offensives.
I am the current head of mission for the ICRC in Jerusalem and the West Bank, previously head of office in Gaza. I am a humanitarian professional and have spent the last ten years of my life in some of the most volatile places on earth. I have seen how they must live their lives, surrounded by restrictions and measures, including checkpoints, movement restrictions, loss of land and home demolishment. I have met them in their diaspora and I have lived amidst them in their occupied homelands Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Jerusalem - I have lived alongside Palestinians at different stages in my life. Nidal Alwaheidi/ICRC 2017Ĭhristian Cardon, ICRC head of mission in Jerusalem and the West Bank In conjunction with various conflicts in Gaza, her agricultural lands were ruined several times.
Thurayya Abu Haddaf is a farmer from Qarara, east of Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel.
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