Says NGO Head/Ex-CNN Journalist Arwa Damon
“The zone needs to be flooded, not only with aid … but also with humanitarian workers,” concludes Arwa Damon.
HAVANA TIMES – Award-winning journalist Arwa Damon has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Gaza in her capacity as the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children. Damon describes the overwhelming need for aid under Israel’s siege of the territory. “Nothing goes in and out of Gaza without Israel’s approval. That includes aid, and that includes people,” she says, calling the Israeli military’s rules for what is allowed in “illogical” and arbitrary.
“The zone needs to be flooded, not only with aid … but also with humanitarian workers,” concludes Damon. We also discuss the mental health crisis gripping the population, U.S. military assistance to Israel and how anti-Arab racism and fearmongering in Western media coverage has and hasn’t changed in the post-9/11 era.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli warplanes bombed areas across northern Gaza today while ground troops conducted raids as the assault on the territory entered its seventh month. Forensic experts from Gaza’s Health Ministry are still removing bodies from the yard of Shifa Hospital, once the largest medical facility in Gaza, that was burned down and destroyed by Israeli forces. Health officials say the number of dead following Israel’s raid on Shifa is still not known, but is in the hundreds.
Meanwhile, in the south, Palestinians who tried to return to Khan Younis, Gaza’a second-largest city, following the withdrawal of Israeli troops Sunday, say it is now unlivable. An estimated 55% of the buildings in the Khan Younis area, around 45,000 buildings, have been destroyed or damaged, according to two mapping experts at City University of New York and Oregon State University who have been using satellite imagery to track destruction.
This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated his pledge to invade Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians — well over half of Gaza’s population — are sheltering. In a video statement Monday, Netanyahu said, quote, “It will happen. There’s a date,” he said, without elaborating. He spoke as Israeli negotiators were in Cairo discussing international efforts to broker a ceasefire deal with Hamas.
The official death toll has now topped 33,300, including over 14,000 children. That number does not include thousands missing under the rubble and presumed dead. Nearly 76,000 people have been wounded.
Israel has been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where the spread of hunger and malnutrition has been described as unprecedented, with famine setting in.
For more, we’re joined by Arwa Damon. She just returned yesterday from a humanitarian trip to Gaza. She’s an award-winning journalist and the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza. Arwa Damon is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. She previously spent 18 years at CNN, including as a senior international correspondent. Arwa Damon joins us now from Istanbul, Turkey.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Arwa. Can you start off by talking about what you saw in Gaza and what you think needs to be done?
ARWA DAMON: You know, on the one hand, that would seem like a simple question. And yet, on the other hand, it’s so extraordinarily difficult to actually put what I witnessed into words. In fact, Gazans themselves can’t actually grasp the fact that this has become their reality.
In Rafah, in the southern area of Gaza, where you have a crush of about 1.5 million people, it feels as if you’re moving through a sea of misery. There is no empty space left. Tents are spilling out of both U.N. shelters and other makeshift shelters that have emerged. They’re spilling out onto the sidewalks. There’s stalls that have been set up. The movement of people clogs the streets. You have people having to move around on donkey carts because there’s not enough fuel or diesel to power vehicles. And then you just have the sheer need of this entire mass of humanity that is — to a certain degree, feels as if it’s absolutely suffocating, because they need everything. They are reliant on others for just about everything, from food to water to medicine to baby formula to diapers.
We stepped out in this one area called Mawasi, which is sort of a beachy area. It was Gaza’s beachfront. And there, it’s just tent after tent after tent in the sand. There’s no sewage systems, and so sewage is sort of running along these makeshift canals. There’s no proper toilets. There’s no nothing. And all of the mothers there are just shoving these emaciated babies at you, you know, begging for proper formula, begging for proper care. They’re begging for medicine for children who are epileptic. You walk into a tent, and with each step your foot takes, a cloud of mosquitoes and flies just swarms up. I mean, it’s inexplicable.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Arwa, Israel has in recent days said that it’s opening up new entry points into Gaza for aid. Could you talk about the aid that you saw coming in, which still has not reached the level, the number of trucks per day, before the war even started?
ARWA DAMON: Right, and there’s a number of things that I think everyone would be best served to understand about aid and distribution. So, yes, if more aid is able to get in, absolutely that is going to help. However, when it comes to getting aid to those who need it, it is beyond just opening up additional crossings. The aid trucks that come into Gaza all get searched by Israel, and that is a process that can take around two to three weeks to begin with. You do see aid being distributed. The problem is that the quantity of the aid is insufficient.
Additionally, it’s important to note that once the aid gets inside Gaza, getting it distributed within this, you know, tiny little space, yet at the same time extraordinarily difficult to navigate area
