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2006-06-11 Ramallah, 11-06-06: For a few hours at least, the heart rending images of
12-year-old Huda Ghalia sobbing uncontrollably over the limp body of her
father drew the world’s eyes towards the daily tragedy of life in Gaza under
continued Israeli occupation [see the
picture].
Huda’s entire family, including her father, mother, and five siblings - Ali
(25), Ilham (15), Sabreen (4), Hanadi (1), and Haythem (6 months) – were
killed when an Israeli gunboat fired seven successive shells at families
picnicking on the beach. Huda herself was saved only because she had been
swimming in the sea when the shells hit.
TV images broadcast around the world showed the aftermath of the
devastation, which destroyed a tent and sent bloody picnic rugs and
children’s toys flying into the air, and of Huda screaming ‘father, father’
over a man’s lifeless body.
This is not the first time tragedy has struck the Ghalia family. Less than
two years ago, four members of the family were killed when an Israeli
military shell hit their farm in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
Huda’s plight is perhaps the most tragic of the events depicting the reality
of everyday life in Gaza.
In this impoverished, overpopulated prison, daily life is characterized by
continuous shellings and sonic booms wrought on the Gazan population by the
Israeli military; where prolonged Israeli border closures and the decision
by some members of the international community to halt funding to the
Palestinian Authority, which formerly paid the salaries of 37 percent of the
entire Gazan workforce, have resulted in crippling levels of poverty and
unemployment.
Yet once the more newsworthy story of Hamas ending its 16-month ceasefire in
response to the Ghalia killings had broken, Huda’s personal catastrophe
became invisible.
It would appear that even the decimation of an innocent family is not enough
to galvanize the apathetic international community into action in calling on
Israel to put an immediate end to such daily atrocities, and to ending its
39-year-old occupation of Palestine.
In such a context, we, the Palestinian people, dare not even think of the
disaster we must undergo before the world finally wakes up to our plight.
The Palestinian National Initiative calls on all its friends and supporters
around the world to take immediate action to bring the situation of Huda
Ghalia, and of all Palestinians, to the attention of their respective
governments. Only through decisive and concerted action on the part of the
international community can the 39 years of suffering which the Palestinians
have endured under Israeli occupation, ever come to an end. | 
