This center provides free access to books, art classes, music, dance, computers and study spaces for local children. (Bob Haynes photo)

As I pause to reflect on this visit, I know that the surgeons and cardiologist have seen scores of patients. The urologists have helped many children with complex surgical needs. Steve Gilbert has taught and discussed with hundreds of scientists – water, air and soil as polluted elements of the environment being their focus. The situation is grim.

I have talked with and counseled many women this visit – women whose desire it is to raise healthy, happy, secure children. Education is a primary value here. Schools are desperately overcrowded and children who are double-shifted go home to do their homework for three hours, then spend four or five hours with one or both parents – extending their learning.

Still, as the threat of attack is constant and the reality of extreme pollution is inescapable, the women I have talked with despair over the future for their children. The high unemployment rate means frustration and humiliation for men who cannot provide economic security for their families.

An example of Gaza's wall art. (Bob Haynes photo)

Young, bright Gazans express hope that the conflicts will end in a positive way when new leadership comes to power – the mothers I talked with only shake their heads and say, “God willing.”

One spectacularly bright light in Gaza is the Qattan Center for the Child. Funded by Mr. Qattan, a wealthy gentleman from the Gulf, the Center provides free access to books, art classes, music, dance, computers, study spaces and community for local children. Reem Abu Jaber, director of the Center, says she was born for this joyful work in an oasis of hope.

We have bid farewell to many friends in Gaza. The hardworking team of Amani, Marwan and Ashraf from Gaza Community Mental Health Programme has once again organized our days and made certain we were able to work as efficiently as possible.

It is late at night in Gaza. Dr. Ismail Zamilpa and Johanna Longacre, operating room nurse, are still in surgery.

More wall art. (Bob Haynes photo)

Monday evening, Bethlehem

It took only two and one half hours to pass our delegation through the Erez Crossing from this morning.

There were some questions, but we were greeted by an official of the crossing who told us they want to make the crossing more open. He would like to see more commerce and workers passing through the checkpoint and says that they have opened the crossing at all hours to assist people coming from Gaza who have medical needs, even on Fridays.

We asked him about the reason more patients aren’t allowed to pass to the West Bank for care and he told us that government of Gaza denies people permits to pass from Gaza, often until they are near death. The differences in reasons for delays vary with each person who speaks of them, but everyone agrees that the borders create enormous difficulties for the Palestinians who live in Gaza.

We stopped for lunch with an old friend in Jerusalem, Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the Palestine/Israel Journal. Hillel spoke of continuing hope for peace and told of several peace initiatives and groups that are working to resolve the impediments to peace.

Heavily armed guard towers dot the separation wall. (Bob Haynes photo)

The hospital’s medical director and told of expanded services and excellent care. We stood on the roof of the hospital and viewed the Separation Wall as it is being constructed close to the hospital, bisecting the Beit Jala area near Bethlehem from the open lands once included in this area – lands containing Palestinian olive groves and agricultural areas that will be inaccessible to the owners of the land.

We spent this evening in the offices of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center. We were treated to a homemade Palestinian dinner and listened to Yahav, a representative of the Israeli Center Against Housing Demolitions as he briefed us on the history of conflict here and spoke of possible resolutions. This is the organization headed by our friend, Zoughbi Zoughbi, and we heard of some of the excellent work the staff of Wi’am is doing in conflict resolution, women empowerment, child support and community negotiations.

The hopes for peace are strong.

Nabil once had a home in an area of conflict in southern Gaza. It was destroyed but he still visits some of his land just to tend crops. (Bob Haynes photo)

A team of doctors from the Advanced Mobile Clinic of PMRS has traveled to see patients in an area near Rafah very close to the “no-go” zone across from the border with Israel. No other medical teams serve this dangerous agricultural area. On a regular basis, rockets leave and missiles enter. During Operation Cast Lead (2008/2009), 200 homes were destroyed here.

Nabil’s home is gone; his leg was injured during the attacks by Israel, but he appears to have recovered. Now, he travels from his brother’s home in Khan Younis every day to tend the crops he has replanted. Even so, much of his land lies to the east in the area forbidden to him by Israel.

For the 2,000 people who live in damaged or make-shift homes in this area, the possibility of being caught in the middle of lethal conflict is constant.

Nabil says, “We are suffering from everything, not just health, water, lack of security – everything.”

He gives us this example: A child living here developed a high fever. The parents called for an ambulance but they were told that an ambulance cannot come to this area in the night – they would have to walk to a place of care (miles away.) There are no police in this area to protect them.

Um Suhail lives in a bullet-riddled home just outside the zone, near Rafah. (Bob Haynes photo)

Next to Um Suhail’s house, we see a large rectangular pool lined with plastic. Water for irrigation is collected here and a series of plastic irrigation pipes has been constructed by a business man from Rafah – providing water for the olive and fruit trees, peas, cabbage and cauliflower grown here.

There seems to be awareness that the soil may be contaminated by unclean water as well as by toxins from the white phosphorus and other agents used during Cast Lead and since, but crops are needed. Because unemployment in Gaza is extreme (we have heard from 45-80 percent, depending on the ages included in the statistic), sale of produce is limited and incomes from farming are very low.

Abu Hani, left, also had a home in the zone that was destroyed by Israel. He tells Dr. Mohamed, center, and Nabil that he still works his nearby land despite the daily danger from Israeli attacks. (Bob Haynes photo)

He says, “I spend my time in the land. The market is very weak and export is impossible under the siege. People have nothing and there is no work in Gaza for my son or family. The main problem is the siege and the occupation. Some NGOs help by giving us saplings for our orchards, but no money. I have a son in an Israeli prison. He has been there since he was kidnapped from his home following the capture of Gilad Shalit. He is married and has one daughter and one son. I have not seen him for four years. The Red Cross gives him messages from us every four months – we tell him we are well and he tells us he is suffering.”

Abu Hani continues: “The land is ill because of the war. There are poisons in the soil. The harvest of olives and grapes is low. Before the attacks, my harvest was big. Now even the rain is less. But the main problem is the siege. We are peaceful people. We like peace. We hate war. I hate the attacks and the destroying of my home and my land. War and the attacks mean killing and destroying and this affects me as a person. Israelis make rumors that Gazans are terrorists, but we like peace. If the gate is open, I would like to send my son to Germany to study. Please tell your people, tell your family, that you met peaceful people in Gaza.”

The Israeli blockade, among many other things, has created a dire shortage of construction materials. Gazans make do with tents, plastic, mud and whatever else they can. (Bob Haynes photo)

Dr. Mohamed tells us these people do not register on a poverty scale, their poverty is so great. Still, we are met by the smiling and gracious Fatima, a woman known to Dr. Mohamed as a patient. She speaks to us of her life and invites us into her home – a cement rectangle divided into an empty room for gathering, four bedrooms leading directly from the empty room, and a tiny cooking area. More than twenty people live in this space. Married sons and their families each have one of the small bedroom with as many as seven people per room. Before we leave, Fatima insists on serving us cola,- then hugs and kisses us “Good-bye.”

Smiling and gracious, Fatima, a woman known to Dr. Mohamed as a patient, welcomed the group into her tiny home, which was shared with more than 20 other members of her extended family. (Bob Haynes photo)

The young man tells us that his father left the family and now it is his responsibility to feed this family of six. Because there are extremely few employment opportunities in Gaza, the family often goes without food. Last week, he says, they had no food for three days.

UNRWA helps them every three months, but what they receive is not enough to last and they are often hungry.

Dr. Don Mellman writes this blog: As a neurosurgeon, I have a “private practice” in Gaza. There are patients who learn of my being here and make individual arrangements to be seen. One patient was seen in his home on our last visit to Gaza and I will see him again before we leave… house calls in Gaza.

Besides consulting in surgery, Don has provided consultation in the intensive care unit and will consult in the neurosurgery clinic at Shifa hospital. This is a clinic for problem cases in neurosurgery.

Because of his experience working with neurosurgeons in Gaza, Don says he has great respect for and a very high opinion of their knowledge, skills, judgment and ability to work under extremely adverse conditions.

On Dec. 27, the second anniversary of Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza, Seattle-area activists are launching a Metro bus ad campaign to expose the use of U.S. taxpayer money to support Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people.

Inspired by similar public advertising campaigns in Chicago, San Francisco, Albuquerque and other cities, the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign is launching the advertising campaign aimed at securing equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as an end to United States military aid to Israel, which continues at a time of economic crisis and severe budget cuts that have resulted in massive unemployment. A companion website at www.stop30billion-Seattle.org suggests ways that people can get involved locally.

The initial campaign begins on 12 Metro bus routes in the city of Seattle, with the slogan “ISRAELI WAR CRIMES: Your Tax Dollars At Work”. The ads will run 4 weeks.

Seattle activists will also hold a vigil and protest in downtown Seattle on Monday, December 27, starting at 5:00 pm at 4th & Pine St. The walking vigil will be in memory of those killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza and in protest of Israel’s ongoing crimes against human rights.

December 27, 2008 was the first day of Israel’s three-week military offensive against the captive population of Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them non-combatants, more than 300 of them children.

A formal inquiry by the United Nations found grounds for a criminal investigation i nto war crimes by Israel. The UN report concluded that Israel’s assault was not in self-defense, but was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. Amnesty International found evidence that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields, and Israeli soldiers have testified publicly to other human rights violations. Yet the U.S. government has pledged $30 billion in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years, even though the U.S. Arms Export Control Act prohibits the use of U.S. weapons against civilians.

An increasing number of US citizens are becoming aware of this issue. “I had never heard the whole story of the Israeli occupation. I never anticipated US complicity in Israel’s crimes. I had no idea,” says one volunteer with the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign. “When I began to learn the truth, it was like an avalanche. I became angry. Why all the lies? Why the blackout of information? Why the silence from our government?”

Another volunteer was in the West Bank during Israel’s assault on Gaza. “I was in Ramallah during the entire Operation Cast Lead – watching TV with people from Gaza in the evening in the hotel reception area, talking with our staff in Gaza each morning to see if they had survived the night of bombings.”

The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign is incorporated in Washington State.

For more information: www.stop30billion-Seattle.org.

Dear Mr. Blair,

You do not know me. Why should you? Or maybe you should have known me and the many other UN officials who struggled in Iraq when you prepared your Iraq policy. Reading the Iraq details of your “journey”, as told in your memoir, has confirmed my fears. You tell a story of a leader, but not of a statesman. You could have, at least belatedly, set the record straight. Instead you repeat all the arguments we have heard before, such as why sanctions had to be the way they were; why the fear of Saddam Hussein outweighed the fear of crossing the line between concern for people and power politics; why Iraq ended up as a human garbage can. You preferred to latch on to Bill Clinton’s 1998 Iraq Liberation Act and George W Bush’s determination to implement it.

You present yourself as the man who tried to use the UN road. I am not sure. Is it really wrong to say that, if you had this intention, it was for purely tactical reasons and not because you wanted to protect the role of the UN to decide when military action was justified? The list of those who disagreed with you and your government’s handling of 13 years of sanctions and the invasion and occupation of Iraq is long, very long. It includes Unicef and other UN agencies, Care, Caritas, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the then UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela. Do not forget, either, the hundreds of thousands of people who marched in protest in Britain and across the world. Are we all naive, delusional victims of a dictator’s propaganda?

You suggest that you and your supporters – the “people of good will”, as you call them – are the owners of the facts. Your disparaging observations about Clare Short, a woman with courage who resigned as international development secretary in 2003, make it clear you have her on a different list. You appeal to those who do not agree to pause and reflect. I ask you to do the same. Those of us who lived in Iraq experienced the grief and misery that your policies caused. UN officials on the ground were not “taken in” by a dictator’s regime. We were “taken in” by the challenge to tackle human suffering created by the gravely faulty policies of two governments – yours and that of the United States – and by the gutlessness of those in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere who could have made a difference but chose otherwise. The facts are on our side, not on yours.

Here are some of those facts. Had Hans Blix, the then UN chief weapons inspector, been given the additional three months he requested, your plans could have been thwarted. You and George W Bush feared this. If you had respected international law, you would not, following Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, have allowed your forces to launch attacks from two no-fly zones. Allegedly carried out to protect Iraqi Kurds in the north and Iraqi Shias in the south, these air strikes killed civilians and destroyed non-military installations.

I know that the reports we prepared in Baghdad to show the damage wreaked by these air strikes caused much anger in Whitehall. A conversation I had on the sidelines of the Labour party conference in 2004 with your former foreign secretary Robin Cook confirmed that, even in your cabinet, there had been grave doubts about your approach. UN Resolution 688 was passed in 1991 to authorise the UN secretary general – no one else – to safeguard the rights of people and to help in meeting their humanitarian needs. It did not authorise the no-fly zones. In fact, the British government, in voting for Resolution 688, accepted the obligation to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

I was a daily witness to what you and two US administrations had concocted for Iraq: a harsh and uncompromising sanctions regime punishing the wrong people. Your officials must have told you that your policies translated into a meagre 51 US cents to finance a person’s daily existence in Iraq. You acknowledge that 60 per cent of Iraqis were totally dependent on the goods that were allowed into their country under sanctions, but you make no reference in your book to how the UK and US governments blocked and delayed huge amounts of supplies that were needed for survival.

In mid-2002, more than $5bn worth of supplies was blocked from entering the country. No other country on the Iraq sanctions committee of the UN Security Council supported you in this. The UN files are full of such evidence. I saw the education system, once a pride of Iraq, totally collapse. And conditions in the health sector were equally desperate. In 1999, the entire country had only one fully functioning X-ray machine. Diseases that had been all but forgotten in the country re-emerged.

You refuse to acknowledge that you and your policies had anything to do with this humanitarian crisis. You even argue that the death rate of children under five in Iraq, then among the highest in the world, was entirely due to the Iraqi government. I beg you to read Unicef’s reports on this subject and what Carol Bellamy, Unicef’s American executive director at the time, had to say to the Security Council. None of the UN officials involved in dealing with the crisis will subscribe to your view that Iraq “was free to buy as much food and medicines” as the government would allow. I wish that had been the case. During the Chilcot inquiry in July this year, a respected diplomat who represented the UK on the Security Council sanctions committee while I was in Baghdad observed: “UK officials and ministers were well aware of the negative effects of sanctions, but preferred to blame them on the Saddam regime’s failure to implement the oil-for-food programme.”

No one in his right mind would defend the human rights record of Saddam Hussein. Your critical words in this respect are justified. But you offer only that part of this gruesome story. You quote damning statements about Saddam Hussein made by Max van der Stoel, the former Dutch foreign minister who was UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iraq during the time I served in Baghdad. You conveniently omitted three pertinent facts: van der Stoel had not been in Iraq since 1991 and had to rely on second-hand information; his UN mandate was limited to assessing the human rights record of the Iraqi government and therefore excluded violations due to other reasons such as economic sanctions; and his successor, Andreas Mavrommatis, formerly foreign secretary in Cyprus, quickly recognised the biased UN mandate and broadened the scope of his review to include sanctions as a major human rights issue. This was a very important correction.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, who in the years of sanctions on Iraq was his country’s permanent representative to the UN, is not mentioned in your book. Is that because he was one of the diplomats who climbed over the wall of disinformation and sought the truth about the deplorable human conditions in Iraq in the late 1990s? Amorim used the opportunity of his presidency of the UN Security Council to call for a review of the humanitarian situation. His conclusion was unambiguous. “Even if not all the suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war.”

Malaysia’s ambassador to the UN, Hasmy Agam, starkly remarked: “How ironic it is that the same policy that is supposed to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction has itself become a weapon of mass destruction.” The secretary general, too, made very critical observations on the humanitarian situation in Iraq. When I raised my own concerns in a newspaper article, your minister Peter Hain repeated what the world had become accustomed to hearing from London and Washington: it is all of Saddam’s making. Hain was a loyal ally of yours. He and others in your administration wrote me off as subjective, straying off my mandate, not up to the task, or, in the words of the US state department’s spokesman at the time, James Rubin: “This man in Baghdad is paid to work, not to speak!”

My predecessor in Baghdad, Denis Halliday, and I were repeatedly barred from testifying to the Security Council. On one occasion, the US and UK governments, in a joint letter to the secretary general, insisted that we did not have enough experience with sanctions and therefore could not contribute much to the debate. You were scared of the facts.

We live in serious times, which you helped bring about. The international security architecture is severely weakened, the UN Security Council fails to solve crises peacefully, and there are immense double standards in the debate on the direction our world is travelling in. A former British prime minister – “a big player, a world leader and not just a national leader”, as you describe yourself in your book – should find little time to promote his “journey” on a US talk show. You decided differently. I watched this show, and a show it was. You clearly felt uncomfortable. Everything you and your brother-in-arms, Bush, had planned for Iraq has fallen apart, the sole exception being the removal of Saddam Hussein. You chose to point to Iran as the new danger.

Whether you like it or not, the legacy of your Iraq journey, made with your self-made GPS, includes your sacrifice of the UN and negotiations on the altar of a self-serving alliance with the Bush administration. You admit in your book that “a few mistakes were made here and there”. One line reads: “The intelligence was wrong and we should have, and I have, apologised for it.” A major pillar of your case for invading Iraq is treated almost like a footnote. Your refusal to face the facts fully is the reason why “people of good will” remain so distressed and continue to demand accountability.

To read more about life in Iraq under the sanctions, click here.

This morning, our delegation was allowed to pass through Erez Checkpoint into Gaza. On the Israeli side, the director of Erez warmly welcomed us. The open tunnel that leads a walker to Gaza from the Israeli side was completed after our visit last fall. Concrete and barbed wire open to views of desolate land and armed Israeli guard towers.

Members of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation cross into Gaza. (Bob Haynes photo)

Nine delegates of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility have come here to work with medical and allied health care colleagues. We are to attend to patients, consult and teach – while we learn about life here in 2010.

Our initial meeting with leaders of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, our host organization, was an introduction to the “situation” and to the work of the Mental Health Programme.

The majority of the 1.6 million residents of Gaza are traumatized – either directly by Operation Cast Lead, by the daily threat of further attacks or by the effects of the ongoing siege.

With this nearly universal level of trauma, Gaza Community Mental Health is striving to normalize individual responses to an abnormal situation. They are educating medical and allied health practitioners to care for the highest functioning individuals in primary care clinics. In this way, the most seriously affected individuals may be treated by the limited number of mental health specialists.

The siege, in place since 2007, denies residents of Gaza basic the needs of life: a variety of foods, building materials, electricity, fuel, medicines, school supplies…

We will be in Gaza for ten days, trying to understand. Already, we see the human spirit at work – many programs for children, empowerment clinics for women, reuse of materials retrieved from destroyed buildings, small business ventures in development – all attest to resilience and strength of community.

We are grateful to be here.

The event, “Iran-Israel-U.S.: Resolving the Nuclear Impasse,” is planned for December 16th at Seattle’s Town Hall. The organizers say that many in the progressive community are deeply concerned that the United States and/or Israel may take military action against Iran. These fears have been exacerbated by the recent House bill that provides for severe sanctions against Iran and by the continued statements from neocons in the United States and Israel declaring military force as the only way to curb Iran’s nuclear efforts.

The organizers of this event, in a recent fundraising letter, say, “This conference will present a comprehensive approach that could resolve major difference through diplomacy and open a new era in relations between these three current enemies. It will also discuss the best means of supporting the Iran reform movement in its efforts to encourage a government based on democracy and tolerance.”

One of the key organizers, Richard Silverstein, said, “The purpose of this event is to show the American people that there are legitimate ways to resolve the differences between the U.S. and Iran short of force and violence. Most analysts believe that neither sanctions nor a military attack can impede Iran’s nuclear program in any serious way. The only way to resolve this issue is through diplomacy and negotiation.”

The conference will feature three analysts who will discuss U.S. and Israeli policy options including sanctions and the possible military attack. The speakers will be: Reza Firouzbakht, national board chair, National Iranian American Council; Ian Lustick, political science professor, University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. Keith Weissman, former director of AIPAC’s Iran desk.

The conference coalition includes: the Middle East Center, Jackson School of International Studies, Univ. of Washington; the Stroum Jewish Studies Program, Univ. of Washington; the American Friends Service Committee; the United Nations Association; Peace Action of Washington; the Network Promoting Peace with Iran; Jewish Voice for Peace; and American Muslims of Puget Sound.

“I hope to show that Israel sees its interest as stirring up as much animosity as possible against Iran within this country — if Israel had its way I believe it would attack Iran,” Silverstein said. “But I hope we can do everything possible to show that the way to ease a possible Iranian nuclear threat is not through the path Israel would choose.”

The conference, despite its support, is not a done deal. Organizers are still trying to come up with the full $4,000 that the Town Hall event costs. So far, donors have come through with about $1,500. So there is a considerable amount of money to be raised.

If you are able to help, a tax-deductible contribution may be made to:

American Friends Service Committee
c/o Iran Conference (note this on your check as well)
814 NE 40th Street
Seattle, WA 98105

Or you may mail a check to:
Richard Silverstein
1110 37th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122

According to the U.N. press release on the report, “the Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli military operation, code-named ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. Families are still living amid the rubble of their former homes long after the attacks ended, as reconstruction has been impossible due to the continuing blockade.”

The press release goes on to say, “Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the population of Gaza…” And that, “The report concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.”

That is one of the most chilling parts of the report to me – the details of deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Not only for its implications for the ongoing efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but also for its implications about international law and international justice.

During the first Gulf War and again in 2003, the United States deliberately targeted Iraq’s electrical grid and its water sanitation systems. And, in fact, for years leading up to the second Gulf War, the United States and the United Nations, itself, enforced a draconian sanctions regime against Iraq, which caused the deaths of, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly the young and the elderly, in a misguided effort to get the civilian population to rise up against Saddam Hussein.

To date there have been no legal repercussions for the United States or the United Nations for that particular “systematic policy… which made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.”