Human Rights Watch’s research assistant recounts Gaza horror during lockdown

Human Right Watch Image Courtesy:reuters.com

Abeir Almasri, Human Rights Watch’s Gaza-based research assistant has recently shared her experience of being locked out of home during the lockdown in a blog on the organisation’s website. She says, “Two years ago, I obtained a rarely issued permit to leave Gaza for the first time in my life, at age 31, to travel to New York for Human Rights Watch. I’ve since obtained several other permits, including one earlier this year to attend meetings in Paris. My first time in Europe, I planned my first real vacation.”

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not a secret. Almost 1.5 million people are trapped in despair. The United Nations wrote about the same saying, “The restrictions on the free movement of people and goods imposed by Israel and Egypt and their drastic economic consequences are the main contributing factors, besides the military attacks, to the current humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, as they seriously compromise people’s access to food, housing, energy and basic public services. It is also a violation of human rights.”

The people of Gaza have been living under an Israeli blockade. Civilian infrastructure has been damaged and any movement is fraught with risks and restrictions. Civilians are mostly dependent on international aid and the hope of a better future is dim.

So when Almasri travelled through Paris, she felt like a free bird, a prisoner out on bail. She said, “Friends and colleagues warned me that the Covid-19 pandemic could ensnare me in government-imposed lockdowns, but I was not bothered. After a lifetime caged in Gaza due to the generalized travel ban that Israel has enforced since 2007, which, with rare exceptions, robs two million Palestinians of their right to freedom of movement, and Egypt often sealing its border, what did I have to fear from some travel restrictions?”

However, with worsening conditions, the warnings grew dire and Almasri had to cut her trip short and decided to fly through Jordan to return to return to Gaza as Israel bars the entry of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank from using the Ben Gurion Airport without a permit.

However, she found herself locked in as soon as she arrived in Jordan after it imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, banning the public from driving without a permit or leaving the house on foot some days, barring inter-city travel, and effectively closing its airports and border crossings.

Almasri is now stuck in Amman, where the almost nightly air raid sirens that signify the beginning of the curfew, remind her of repressed memories of the buzzing Israeli drones and F16 warplanes during the 2014 fighting in Gaza that left her “sheltering in place” for long stretches.

She’s unsure of when she’ll reach home. This lockdown will eventually open again, she says. “But Gaza’s two million Palestinians will remain in a man-made lockdown so long as Israel continues to impose its cruel closure,” she reckons.