I am giving below a message recieved this month from the mother of a family in Gaza. I have twice visited Gaza in recent years.
“I am Um Ali, Hanyya Ibrahim a mother from Gaza. Me and my four children have lived through the enemy’s bombing, occupation and seige and we have survived. They will never break our spirit and we will continue to struggle until we achieve our freedom or die trying.
The latest crime against my family is the cutting off of electricity. A couple of days ago we only had six hours of electriticy followed by 18 hours of darkness. And we fear that the coming days will be four hours of electricity or less, and I don’t know what tomorrow holds for us. Six hours is not enough to wash clothes or cook or even clean the house or teach my children or pack. Everything requires electricity from operating the pumps that draw our drinking water from the wells, to operating our sewage treatment facility – now our relatives’ sewage collection pools are overflowing on to the streets and maybe we are the next. I fear for our patients in hospitals without electcity.
We depend on candles to illuminate the house although I know how it is dangerous but my children fear the blackout and there is no fuel or gas to power a generator. We have to work all the six hours (when there is elecctricity) whether day or night. It is so exhausting, yet we can’t finish everything.”
“Everything requires electricity from operating the pumps that draw our drinking water from the wells, to operating our sewage treatment facility – now our relatives’ sewage collection pools are overflowing on to the streets and maybe we are the next”
Sound ecology in many ways.
Main drains may not be the answer, but if they have sewage ‘pools’ they obviously have not considered individualised dry systems,either.
That means they cannot use their own compost, and as soon as their fecal matter ferments, coming in to contact with water,
the risks of serious infections and diseases are increased exponentially.
What is it all about ? Less complaining, more thinking in Gaza please.
If I shout it might help.
KEEP YOUR SEWAGE SYSTEM COMPLETELY DRY. SEPARATE
FECAL MATTER AND WATER FOR EVER(and ever, amen)
That is just about the most thoughtless letter from a slum that I have ever seen.
Use lesss electricty by having a dry system, which is manually operated, and no foul sewage which requires more water. Less electricty again.
Less electricity in and less electricity out!
I sometimes wonder about Lord Hylton’s practical knowledge.
The finest example of dry composting is provided by a Zulu tribe in Africa, whose chief was educated in UK, and decided to
embark on dry composting, found that everybody was keen on it, and now the whole town is run on dry compost. No foul drains needed at all.
If one family messes it up, the whole village system is messed up, so you can imagine how popular somebody is who does not separate pee and poo…… at origin.
It does sound like the Gazan government, now in the 7th year of its 4 year term, has failed to provide its people with a reliable electrical supply. After all, surely it is the responsibility of every government to ensure that its citizens have a reliable electrical supply?
Perhaps if her government would stop spending money on buying bombs to fire at Israel they might be in a better position to actually look after their people who have no reliable electricity.
It would be difficult for everybody to produce their own electricity with petrol driven generators. The noise would be defeaning. I don’t know how oil is delivered from Iraq.
The provision of dry composting refuse collection might be possible, even in a city slum location, especially if the sewage becomes a diseases problem very close by. It would be worthwhile spending hours of the day dealing with the dry refuse.(poo) Make your home a haven of dry refuse!!!
I feel enormous sympathy for this mother. The men of that part of the world seem to care more about their power on the world stage than they do about their citizens or its future.
Israel is a bully and the Hezbollah don’t know how to use their situation to get the support of those who can help them out of this predicament.
However, my understanding is, the issue between Shia and Sunni Muslims throughout the region is exacerbating their difficulties. You’d think they would be able up unite against the usurpers rather than allow their people to go on suffering like this.
The people in the Gaza are being tortured by all sides, time to get tough with the lot of them. Stop importing their produce until they end this clap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugl9fBUeJlk
the rpobelm with mains foul drainage as almost a humna right, is that it has developed at the same time as a far greater understanding of microbes and bacteria, in the last 130 years.
Now that we all in the first world have mains foul drainage it becomes apparent that if everybody wiped properly, and peed in to a separate compartment from poo, we would not need foul drains, or water-borne effluent at all. The Palestinians do not either, so if they are using electricity to get rid of water-borne effluent there is something drastically wrong with their thinking about fecal matter.
It would be dry. unlike Maude I have no sympathy at all.
What is more if they got delivery of oil to a largish generator they could power a dozen or twenty households at a time. They would know the meaning of value of peace and quiet and the value of electricity. Oil generators for electricity do make a noise.
Lord Hylton, the difficulties are happening because the flow of goods through the Sinai/Gaza tunnels has virtually stopped. The reason is the crackdown on Islamic extremism in Egypt. Whilst the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas pose a threat Gaza will continue to suffer.
There is however another more insidious problem regarding consanguinity and Gaza. The personal tragedy of a baby called Mohammed al-Farra is a case in point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consanguinity
The issue of consanguinity was brought to my attention some years ago via a Chief Constables office in one of the provincial cities. At the time I refused to believe what was happening but in the end there was no denying the truth.
The police are often a first point of contact with the ills of society but this story begins with children who are victims, and it breaks my heart knowing that this is going on. Here the first point of contact is the NHS and hospital paediatric facilities that are quite frankly being overwhelmed by genetic disease and illness in hot spots where Asian communities are concentrated.
The problem is worse in Gaza because people are trapped and as time goes by things can only get worse. The elders of these communities where consanguinity is a problem must raise awareness of what is happening and not bury their heads in the sand.
For traditional Muslims there is considerable shame and women who bear these children are threatened by polygamy with husbands saying they will take another wife and abandon the victim and her child.
Israel acts with compassion for the worst cases but resources are at a premium and there is little or no help at all in Gaza. For us, when spouses are returned to the UK what are we to do if a second cousin marriage is evident, turn them away at the border or bear the financial and human cost of doing nothing?
Perhaps it’s time to look at new laws in a multicultural society to define the degree of consanguine separation because that established under Christianity clearly does not apply to non Christians.
What are we to do with the relationships where people bear children outside of marriage or indeed those that choose a civil marriage without either of them having the protection of a Christian faith?
“do with the relationships where people bear children outside of marriage or indeed those that choose a civil marriage without either of them having the protection of a Christian faith?”
Christianity has no monopoly on human nature!
” now our relatives’ sewage collection pools are overflowing on to the streets and maybe we are the next”
The collection points should be dry. They are asking for death and disease by using wet collection points….. which overflow.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israelopt-gaza-power-crisis-has-compounded-blockade-s-assault-human-dignity-2013-11-29
The answer lies with the individual making the complaint outlined above.
She and all those living on the Gaza strip do have fundamental human rights…… to pee and poo in to separate chambers at the point of departure of fecal matter and urine from the human body!!
then there would be no pollution of the underlying aquifer, they would have less need for electricty from diesel fuel to pump water in and out of their homes.
The answer to the bombing of the power station by Israel in 2006 is to have local power stations even single generators in each invidividual home, although one for every small cluster of homes would be better. One power sation fo everybody is apparently asking for trouble.
They’ve had seven years to think about that. Done anything?
Start with squatting prayers first thing in the morning.
Here is a documentary that gives some insight into the dilemma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4eCimWL7I
Thank you for posting this Lord Hylton. People seem to forget that the Israelis promised in the ceasefire to provide for the Gazans.
Unfortunately, if you were a senator in the States, there’d be calls for your resignation. Keep up the work.
J. McCarthy
Phoenix
Gaza
To thoose who advocate dry composting, I say go to Gaza, and explain to people how such systems work. Quite a few can speak English and the high unemployment means that there are many hands available for basic work. I wonder how composting would work for flats?
Also, the blockade of incoming supplies and of potential exports of fruit, vegetables, flowers and furniture has lasted since 2007. The tunnels only provided an expensive palliative. A public health disaster is now only too likely