Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib writes:

My brother, Mohammed, has survived nearly a year of war in Gaza while working to aid its people. He has scrambled out of the rubble of an air strike that destroyed our family home, and he has seen far too many of our relatives wounded or killed. Through it all, he has somehow remained unscathed. However, he recently fell severely ill battling a hepatitis infection.

Mohammed is a deputy director of programs for one of the larger international medical NGOs operating in Gaza. He has worked closely with the humanitarian community to address one disaster after another. But now diseases such as polio and hepatitis are starting to spread through an already battered, weak, sick, tired, malnourished, and desperate population. Raw sewage, trash, and unsanitary conditions are present throughout the Gaza Strip; Mohammed has no way to avoid them while working in the field.

The spread of disease, breakdown of law and order, proliferation of crime, rise of food insecurity and malnutrition, collapse of the health-care system, and continued cycles of displacement from one area to another have completely and utterly broken Gaza’s population.

After enduring unimaginable suffering and loss, the people of Gaza are desperate for a future that does not include Hamas or Israel controlling their lives. They want the sacrifices that were forced upon them to produce a radically different future. And yet, as I write this, there is still no end in sight. [Continue reading…]