Gaza | IMEU

The Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of Palestinian territory along the Mediterranean Sea. Just 25 miles long and six miles wide, the tiny coastal enclave is one of the most densely populated places on earth and is home to approximately 1.7 million people. Three quarters of Gaza’s population are refugees who were expelled from the land that became Israel in 1948, and their descendants. A December 2011 Oxfam report showed that 80% of families in Gaza live in poverty, a figure that reflects Israel’s ongoing blockade and closure of the Strip’s borders.

Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

In Gaza, Family Lights Candles to Mourn Son on His 14th Birthday

Monday should have been Hussein Madi’s 14th birthday. Instead, his family sat mourning him in a tent in Gaza. The boy was shot dead three days earlier by Israeli troops, his relatives say, the youngest of 30 Palestinians killed in an ongoing protest at the border with Israel.

on April 10, 2018

Ahmad Abu Rtemah, The Nation

With the Great Return March, Palestinians Are Demanding a Life of Dignity

Over the past eight days, tens of thousands of protesters in Gaza have breathed life into a place that is slowly being depleted of it. We have come together, chanting and singing a lullaby we’ve all longed for—“We will return”—bringing all that we have left to offer in an attempt to reclaim our right to live in freedom and justice.

on April 6, 2018

Saree Makdisi, Los Angeles Times

The Bare Facts About the Gaza Demonstrators Are Correct, but the Rest of the Story Is Missing

Media coverage of Israel's massacre of Palestinian protesters during the first weekend of multiweek demonstrations in Gaza offered textbook examples of how syntax and word choice shape, and even distort, representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if the facts are accurately stated, the ways in which sentences are constructed, and the extent to which details are contextualized, can subtly lead readers astray.

on April 6, 2018

Diana Buttu, Washington Post

After the Gaza Killings, It’s Time to Crack Down on Israel

Israel’s killing of 18 Palestinian protesters in Gaza last Friday was entirely predictable. It was also entirely avoidable. The victims were taking part in the annual Land Day march commemorating the 1976 killing of six Palestinians who were protesting Israel’s confiscation of thousands of acres of their land.

on April 4, 2018

Ma'an News Agency

On Land Day, Israeli Forces Kill 14 Palestinians, Injure Hundreds More in Gaza

Israeli forces shot dead 14 Palestinians and injured over a 1,000 more along the Gaza border on Friday, as thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in “The Great March of Return” on the 42nd anniversary of Land Day. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed that 14 Palestinians were killed on Friday.

on March 30, 2018

Omar Barghouti, Nesweek

Balfour Sparked a National Tragedy for the Palestinian People—with BDS, We Are Fighting Back

When Zionist militias forced my grandmother, Rasmiyyah, and her family out of their home in Safad at gunpoint during the 1948 Nakba, the process of settler-colonialism that was propelled by the Balfour Declaration and that culminated in ethnic cleansing became more than just a national tragedy for the indigenous people of Palestine. It became personal.

on November 2, 2017

Q&As

IMEU

Expert Q&A re Latest Palestinian National Unity Efforts

Political analyst Diana Buttu weighs in on the national unity talks between the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas.

on October 9, 2017

Videos

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Gaza: Can You Imagine?

Israeli bombs. Israeli drones. Israeli-imposed power cuts. And no way to leave. Everyday life in Gaza is shaped by Israeli policy, which has turned the coastal enclave into a maximum security prison where the inmates are fathers, mothers and children whose only crime is being born in Gaza.

on July 19, 2017

Muhammad Shehada, Haaretz

My Family in Gaza Tells Me: We Can’t Breathe

I talked to my family in Gaza earlier this week and asked them: "How do you sleep at night when you don't have electricity?" The temperature at night there doesn't go below 74 degrees Fahrenheit, and humidity is high. My 12-year-old sister answered: "We don’t." She explained that even if they try to sleep, open all the windows, drink a lot of water - still, they can’t breathe.

on July 16, 2017