Gaza seen from above: How life and colour has been stripped from a once bustling port city
Strawberry fields in Beit Lahia, olive and citrus groves, wheat fields, and the agricultural university in Beit Hanoun.
It seems impossible even to imagine that now.
We flew down across the northern border on a Royal Jordanian Air Force plane, with a meagre eight tons of humanitarian aid ready to go.
Eight tons, when the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the body that has classified Gaza as being on the brink of famine, estimates the population needs 2,038 tons daily.
What was once cropland is barren and scorched. Villages and agricultural structures are in ruins.
There was a ragged uniformity to the greyness as we flew south and past Beit Lahia towards Gaza City, as though dust from the rubble of a million ruins has sprinkled over the land like ash from a volcano.
Gaza City is Benjamin Netanyahu 's next target. Not that he hasn't savaged it to date, but there is a cityscape left standing.
Buildings ripped and torn by the monstrous force of artillery, no life or colour or vibrancy from the sky in what was once a bustling port city, with ancient mosques and churches, bookshops, villas and cafes along the seafront.
Now, like a rash of giant pebbles, a mass of tents stretches down towards the Mediterranean, home to tens of thousands of the 800,000 or so people who are still living here.
People who Israel plans to displace once again, before the IDF seizes full control.
There is an anonymity from the sky, though.
You cannot see the excitement that our camera teams capture on the ground as young children point to the planes.
You do not see the balcony collapsing after an aid package lands on it, and the sheer weight of too many people desperate for food causes them all to fall.
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You do not see the misery of a disabled father whose son was hit by a falling pallet, who our camera crews locate as he lies in intensive care.
Aid drops are dehumanising and cruel. It is not the fault of the countries that deliver them. They are doing what they can. But they are a terrible way of delivering aid.
"Are we dogs to them? They're throwing aid at us from the sky, are we dogs? They're hunting us" - that's what Fadia al Najjar, a mother who had lost her son in a shooting at an aid distribution point, told our Gaza crew in al Mawasi earlier in the week.
As I looked down over the apocalyptic catastrophe that is Gaza now, I could not forget her words.
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The Independent
12 hours ago
- The Independent
NHS paramedic recalls ‘heartbreaking' moment he put children into body bags in Gaza
A British paramedic has recounted the "heartbreaking" moment he was forced to place two deceased children into body bags shortly after his arrival in Gaza. Sam Sears, 44, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, described his three-week deployment with frontline charity UK-Med as a "conveyor belt of carnage", dealing with a "steady stream" of patients suffering from blast, shrapnel, and gunshot wounds. Mr Sears explained that he was immediately thrust into a mass casualty incident upon landing, where two children, aged nine and 11, succumbed to blast injuries. He stated: "I was tasked with moving the two deceased children out the way to make space for other casualties coming in. I put the children in body bags and zipped them up." 'In the UK, I've had to deal with a number of deceased children, but the difference was I'm never involved with putting them in a body bag. It's normally a very calm, slow situation, allowing parents time to grieve. 'So it was particularly heartbreaking putting a child in a body bag, seeing their face for the last time, then moving them out of the way so we could treat more people. 'Part of me felt guilty that there was no dignity for them because the emergency situation meant it was a case of 'they are dead, let's get them out of the way to free the beds'. 'But there was simply no alternative because with such a high volume of casualties, we had to focus on people we might be able to save.' Mr Sears, a paramedic with East Midlands Ambulance Service, who has also carried out humanitarian work in other countries, said that Gaza is like the Ukraine conflict or the earthquake in Turkey 'times one thousand'. He told of seeing a boy, aged about eight, who was 'lifeless behind the eyes – just numb' after losing his whole family in an explosion. The paramedic said a 16-year-old boy was left paralysed and needing amputation after suffering blast and shrapnel wounds and that his 18-year-old brother wept when told he would now have to care for him alone. He also told of seeing more pregnant women and newborn babies suffering severe malnutrition because the mothers lacked the nutrients to breastfeed. Mr Sears, who returned to the UK on July 31, added: 'It might sound weird, but I am keen to return to Gaza. What keeps you going is that you really are making a difference and saving lives. 'That first night, another child came in with shrapnel embedded in their stomach and bleeding internally. I was personally convinced they would die, but we got him to surgery within 20 minutes. 'Next day when I saw them they were recovering well and the prognosis was really good. Gaza's the hardest thing I've ever done but moments like that keep you going. We have saved that child's life.' Some £19 million of funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) has enabled UK-Med to treat more than 500,000 patients at the two UK Government emergency field hospitals in Gaza. The conflict in Gaza began when Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The Prime Minister also urged Hamas to disarm, release its remaining Israeli hostages, and accept it will have no part in the future governance of Gaza. On Saturday, the UK announced another £8.5 million for UN aid to Gaza. The money, to be delivered through the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is part of a £101 million UK commitment to the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year.
Times
a day ago
- Times
The DVLA has stalled our £8k aid trip to Ukraine
I am part of a small team of part-time volunteers based in Devon. Our organisation is called Nightingales UK and for the past two years we have been buying vehicles and filling them with medical aid, which we then deliver to Ukrainian hospitals and directly to the front line. So far we have delivered 12 vehicles, mainly 4x4s, which we have left in the country to be used as medical response cars. In March the charitable trust that we work with in Ukraine asked if we could supply a minibus so that wounded soldiers and elderly, injured and unwell people could be transported to shelters and hospitals. We accepted its request and bought a minibus for £3,000. Before we embarked on the journey, we sent the vehicle's logbook to the Ukrainian authorities, only to find that it contained insufficient information, which means that the minibus isn't allowed to enter the country. In April I wrote to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) explaining what information was required in the logbook. We are not asking for additional sections to be added, only that the existing sections are completed. The DVLA told us that it would take four weeks to get a new logbook, but it has been 12 weeks and we still don't have it. I called the DVLA and was promised a return call that didn't materialise. I called again and was left on hold for 85 minutes before I eventually spoke to someone who seemed to appreciate the urgency and promised that I would get a call from a case handler. But once again I have not been called. • Sally sold her car, but is still being stung for Ulez charges The frustration is enormous. We have tried to get the Ukrainian authorities to reconsider but they won't budge. In the meantime, we have delivered another smaller vehicle, but this isn't really suitable for transporting elderly people. The other volunteers and I have busy lives and limited resources, in financial terms and the time available to raise funds. We transport roughly £5,000 of medical supplies per trip. We therefore have about £8,000 pounds tied up in this minibus, which has been stuck in the UK for months when it could be saving lives. That is nothing short of scandalous. I have spent a lot of time trying to get a meaningful response from the DVLA but we have been left in Devon Your team have been making a valiant effort to get much-needed help to the front line in Ukraine. Yet it was incredibly frustrating that red tape, and false promises from the DVLA, had stalled your efforts. Your problem was a relatively simple one which should not have taken longer than a month to solve. Yet three months down the line you were still waiting, despite the DVLA assuring you that your case had been prioritised. A logbook, also called a V5C certificate, contains information about a vehicle and the registered keeper. You showed me the minibus's logbook, which was missing several pieces of information, including the vehicle's model, number of seats, weight and the maximum load it could carry. It is the manufacturer that gives the DVLA this information, but when the vehicle was registered in 2003 this was missing. Either way, you should not have had to wait this long for the DVLA to sort it out. You had done your own research and supplied the information to fill the gaps but sadly this didn't speed things up. To amend the logbook the DVLA needed to carry out extra checks and get evidence from several sources to make sure the information was accurate. Thankfully after I spoke to the DVLA things started moving quickly and I was pleased when, five days later, you received the amended logbook. But that wasn't the end of your saga because after checking the document you realised the DVLA had got two of the entries the wrong way around. I spoke again to the DVLA, which then corrected the mistake and sent you a third logbook, but this was a frustrating end to a sorry saga. • Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts The DVLA said: 'We try to process applications to update or amend a V5C as quickly as possible, but sometimes further information may be required or further checks needed. We have apologised to the customer involved and an updated book has been issued.' You said: 'It is strange that the DVLA seem very efficient in sending out logbooks for change of ownership, but seem incapable of pushing through other amendments with any degree of urgency. Thank you so much for your efforts and support, which clearly broke the log-jam. I know our Ukrainian partners will be thrilled.' • £1,497,879 — the amount Your Money Matters has saved readers so far this year If you have a money problem you would like Katherine Denham to investigate email yourmoneymatters@ Please include a phone number
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘Restoring humanity': Paris exhibition showcases 5,000 years of history in Gaza
An exhibition tracing more than 5,000 years of cultural and archaeological history in Gaza has become a summer hit in Paris, as visitors flock to discover the heritage of this strip of land along the Mediterranean, whose multilayered past has been eclipsed by modern tragedy. While Gaza faces a humanitarian catastrophe of starvation and war, the exhibition, Saved Treasures of Gaza, at Paris's Institut du Monde Arabe brings what curators called a sense of 'urgency' to explain the rich history of a place that has been a crossroads of cultures since Neolithic times. For thousands of years, Gaza's location on the eastern Mediterranean made it a prosperous oasis. It was a trade hub, intellectual powerhouse and centre of learning, sitting at one of the world's great geographical crossroads between trade routes from Asia and Africa. Many cultures and empires left their mark – including Philistines, Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines, Persians and Mamluks – as depicted by more than 100 intricate objects on display from statuettes, oil lamps and ceramics to inscriptions, imported marble and a vast Byzantine floor mosaic. 'We wanted to give Gaza its history back,' said Élodie Bouffard, the lead curator. 'It was about restoring the humanity of Gaza and making its long history visible again, rather than reducing it to a discourse dominated by contemporary history. The focus on contemporary history risks depicting Gaza as a zone of tragedy, a bubble where only devastation is possible, when in fact there is a long human history in Gaza built upon thousands of years as a great centre of connection.' Bouffard said: 'Gaza was the most open space in the Mediterranean. It was a territory that was extremely rich, that produced a lot of food and whose connections to Africa and Asia made it a place of festival and celebration that was much talked about and written about, and a place that was continually inhabited.' The pieces on show have been largely locked away in storage in Switzerland for 17 years: after an exhibition in 2007 at Geneva's Museum of Art and History, the works could not be safely returned to Gaza because of the security and political situation. 'Their exile saved them in a sense,' said Bouffard, noting that otherwise they could have been lost in the current Israeli bombardment. But she said this also meant the pieces had mostly been sadly 'hidden and locked away from view' and from public understanding. One of the key pieces in the show is a small marble statue of a goddess, thought to be either Aphrodite or Hecate, dating from the Roman or Hellenic era, who would have once sat in a temple. Bouffard said the statue's fate is symbolic of the layers of history and archaeological challenges in Gaza. 'She is a masterpiece. She must have disappeared during the forced Christianisation of Gaza in AD402-AD405, taken from her alcove in a temple. She was maybe thrown into the sea, where she disappeared for 1,500 years, until a fisher found her off Blakhiya, a neighbourhood that has now been destroyed. He chose to give her to a Palestinian collector – so she was saved.' Bouffard added: 'Then she was brought to Europe, shown in Geneva in 2007, just as an effort was being made to raise funds to create an archaeological museum in Gaza. No museum has been built in Gaza and she has never gone home. Hers is a story of many tragic moments of appearing and disappearing … She looks at us and is still waiting to return to the place where she was created.' The Paris exhibition also traces archaeological excavation work in Gaza and the sites of cultural and historical significance damaged in military strikes since 2023, including mosques, churches, archives and the archaeological site of Anthedon harbour, Gaza's first known seaport. Bouffard said this was not to suggest heritage sites were more important than human lives: 'Between old stones and humans, it is always humans who are the priority.' But she said that learning about thousands of years of history that had connected people was a way to bring perspective and potential hope. 'If history is not spoken about, then the discourse focuses on a feeling there is no solution,' she said. Jack Lang, the head of the Institut du Monde Arabe and a former French culture minister, said at the exhibition's opening that he hoped the show could 'restore some hope in the future of Gaza'. He said: 'Nothing is worse than abandonment and forgetting.' Saved Treasures of Gaza is at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, until 2 November
