"We gather here as Russian wives who are married to Gazan husbands, to preserve our culture, language and some of our lifestyle, particularly under these bad conditions in Gaza," said Jamila Assersawi, a Russian music teacher who has lived in Gaza for the past 15 years. Jamila and other Russian wives in Gaza gather at a health club in Gaza City twice a week, where they meet, chat and practice some exercises. They also let their children intermingle to preserve the Russian half of their culture.

There are roughly 5,000 Russian women in Gaza. Many, like Jamila, have been living in Gaza for many years. For Jamila, having two children and running a married life has proven difficult with the situation in Gaza, where conditions are totally different from those of her own homeland or maybe any other country in the world. "Prior to the outbreak of the intifada, I used to feel more comfortable. But since 2000 and particularly the last year, things have become much worse. There is no gas, there is no fuel, there is nothing," she explained.

According to Palestinian statistics, the number of foreign wives in the Gaza Strip is estimated at 15,000, comprised of Russians, Romanians, Filipinos, and other nationalities. These women came to Gaza several years ago with their Palestinian husbands, who, like many Palestinian men traveled to work or get a better education outside of Gaza.

Irina Lozon, another Russian wife in her thirties who also visits this club; echoed Jamila's sentiments. An unemployed designer, Irina says that the situation in the past year in Gaza has become unbearable, especially for her three children. "I come here to let my children enjoy some time away from the violence outside, especially the non-stop Israeli shelling for the past several months. We hope the situation gets better."

Asked whether she thinks of returning to Russia, Irina replies that "some people left Gaza and were successful, others were not, for me sometimes I think of that, but what can we do after nine years here. I have been trying to live as hundreds of thousands of Gazans, especially for my husband."

Originally from Romania, Monica Al-Afaghani, a 35-year-old staff nurse at Gaza's Shifa hospital, says that she has become half-Palestinian half-Romanian since coming to Gaza ten years ago. Monica explained that "The last year has been the worst ever in the past ten years since me and my husband settled here. Prior to the last blockade on Gaza, we used to have some fun outdoors, especially my two children. But for the time being, we are confined to our houses, from house to work and from work to house. There are no encouraging signs outside, there simply is no life."

Monica smiled broadly and added "If I were in Egypt, for example, I wouldn't have noticed a great change in lifestyle from Romania. We might have enjoyed some time out in the Red Sea resorts." Asked what makes her stay, Monica explained "I have become a Palestinian citizen. I have a job at the hospital, and moreover I am now half-Palestinian; Shija'iya, Sabra, Zaytoun, etc." again smiling in reference to Gaza's densely-populated and impoverished neighborhoods.

Her neighbor, Livia Qufe', a 43-year-old pediatrician at Gaza's Children's Hospital originally from Romania, had a similar response. "I spend most of my time at the hospital, where I can enjoy something useful among my patients at this hospital. The situation in here is completely different, especially over the past year." Livia settled in Gaza in 1994 and says that her life was better then. She added "I remember that before the intifada broke out, we used to enjoy some sort of lifestyle in Gaza similar to that in my homeland Romania, but things have become much worse over the past three years, particularly the last year under the crippling Israeli blockade."

Asked if she might leave Gaza for a better life in Romania, Livia replied that "I wish it could work, but it can not. So I prefer to stay here as I have a job and some sort of stable life, and also my husband and I can not begin from zero, at least my husband is an employed physician here."

Less than two weeks ago, Israel and the ruling Hamas party in Gaza agreed to an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire deal to end the year long siege and crippling blockade of the coastal territory. It remains to be seen if this truce will lead to better conditions for locals and foreigners alike or if Gaza's 1.5 million residents will remain trapped between Israel's blockade and attacks.

The tour of Hebron and its settlements, organized by the organization "Breaking the Silence" was once again disrupted by a group of settlers on Friday, 27 of June. "Breaking the Silence" is an organization made of discharged Israeli soldiers who work to expose the reality of the occupation in the Palestinian territories.

Even before the start of the tour, the organizer warned the group that it was not certain that the tour could proceed as planned. In the previous visit, the settlers attacked the group and threw some boiling liquid to the group, injuring one Spanish photographer. He also asked the participants not to answer to settlers' provocations no matter what happens.

At the first stop in Kyriat Arba settlement, located next to Hebron, a whole groupe of settlers, including children, were obviously waiting for the bus of Breaking the Silence . They quickly surrounded us and started to shout and prevented the organizer, Yehuda, to move around. The police intervened but let the settlers continue their show. One of the settlers had a loudspeaker blasting that made the tour guide comments impossible to hear.

We were not allowed to visit the grave of Barush Goldstein, a Jewish settler from Kyriat Arba who committed a massacre in 1994 when he entered the Tomb of the Patriarch on the Muslim side and shot 29 Palestinians to death.

He is looked upon by many settlers as a jewish hero and his grave his cherished as such. The group went back inside the bus, while the organizer was trying to negociate with the Israeli police in order to continue legally authorized tour.

The settlers sat on the road and stood in front of the bus to prevent the tour to continue to the Old city of Hebron. The settlers were blatantly disrupting public order but the police had not intention to fine them.

The residents of the illegal settlements of Hebron proved once again that they are above all international and Israeli law and that both the army and the city police are there to protect them and silence the impossibility of daily life for the majority of the residents who are Palestinians.

The 700 Jewish settlers use violent intimidation techniques not only on the 150,000 Palestinians that live in Hebron, especially on the Palestinians who live in the Old City which has become a "ghost town" but also on the visitors both Israeli and internationals that try to visit Hebron peacefully .

After around one hour of negotiations, the bus could finally pass through the gate of Kyriat Arba and we continued our "not so pleasant" tour to the Old City of Hebron. We reached the Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy place both for Jewish and Muslims and we found the same settlers waiting for us. They used some barriers to try to prevent us from getting down from the bus, and then they ran to the toilets to close them when they understood that some of us wanted to use the restrooms.

They verbally abused us, calling us "nazis" and "traitors". The Jewish settlers continuously interrupted the "Breaking the Silence" tour and caused a huge commotion between themselves, the organizers, the visitors and the police.

The photographers were harassed and it became impossible to document the tour due to the violent language and attitude the settlers used towards the others The police made a rather timid attempt to remove the settlers from the road but they failed. The police asked the group to go back to the bus, and as the bus drove away the settlers were dancing and cheering the ending of the "Breaking the Silence" tour in Hebron.

Nevertheless other tours are planned, and if the aim of the journey was to expose the public to the brutal reality of what is happening in Hebron, the "Breaking the Silence" tour was certainly an eye opener not only for the many foreign visitors but also for the few Israelis that want to see the other side of the story and understand the gravity of the situation in the city of Hebron.

One of the most disturbing things was that the Palestinians were barely seen throughout the tour. The Palestinian residents of the city have become the ghosts of the area at the luxury of the settlers' new way of life that is destroying the heart of a once vibrant town.

As the guide of the tour said in his introduction, "what you will see in Hebron is a laboratory". As long as the settlement enterprise continues, there could be no peace in Israel/Palestine, no solution, and no future for the Palestinians apart from becoming ghosts in their own country. If anyone doubts it, the "Breaking the silence" certainly helps to come to grips with reality.

Anne Paq is a free-lance photographer, member of the collective Activestills (activestills.org).
www.annepaq.com

Settlers trying to stop people from taking photos at the tour - Anne Paq Activestills 2008

Black burn spots covered vast areas of farmlands that belong to residents of Boreen and Aseera Al Qibliyya villages, south of the northern West Bank city o Nablus; hours after Israeli settlers burnt their lands and uprooted hundreds of trees.

Feature Story by Amin Abu Warda - Nablus

The residents managed to enter their lands several hours after the settlers, who came from Yitzhar settlement, return to their colony after vandalizing the Palestinian lands while the Israeli army watched and listened without any intervention.

The soldiers were there, and eyewitnesses said that the army just stood there and watched the settlers burning the lands. They even bared for several hours Palestinian fire-trucks and civil defense teams from entering the area in an attempt to distinguish the fire .

After the firefighters were allowed through , they started fighting the blaze which already ate most of the lands that became a daily target for those extremist settlers.

Resident Minwir Abu Zahir, from Huwwara village near Nablus, said that this attack was carried out in broad daylight as most of the attacks by the settlers are carried at night.

Abu Zahir added that a reporter, identified as Romel Al Sweity, who lives near the area, managed to film the attack and managed to film this huge thick black cloud which caused suffocation to several residents.

Meanwhile, Nablus governor, Dr. Jamal Mheisin, and Adnan Ateera, head f the Public Affairs Committee at the governors’ office, headed to the attacked area and were attacked by the settlers who apparently did needed “a further dosage of ecstasy” by not only burning the Palestinian lands and destroying the property but also by “getting high on watching the damages and destruction they caused”.

On 11 June, eight-year-old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in southeastern Gaza was shelled by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight-year-old Aya Hamdan al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter. These two young girls had been living just a few kilometers apart, both in villages in the southeastern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel.

Their violent deaths highlight both the continual dangers facing families who live anywhere near the Israeli border -- and the grim and rising child death toll in the Gaza Strip. Sixty-two children have been killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip this year -- almost double the number of children who were killed by the IOF in Gaza during the whole of last year.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is still investigating the circumstances of Hadeel al-Sumairi's death. Her uncle, Amin Suleiman Ahmad al-Sumairi, has given PCHR an eye-witness account of the IOF invasion of al-Qarara village near Khan Younis, where Hadeel was killed. "I was at home when I heard a huge explosion. I ran from my house and saw fire coming from the home of my brother, Abdul Karim. As I ran towards the house I could smell burning flesh." IOF had just fired two tank shells into al-Qarara village, and both shells struck the house where Abdul Karim al-Sumairi and his family lived. His daughter, Hadeel, was killed instantly, her small body dismembered.

Six days earlier, on 5 June, Zahra Ibrahim al-Najjar was at her home in nearby Khizaa village with her young daughter, Aya. "My daughter had finished school just one week earlier and was waiting for her friends to come and join her" says Zahra al-Najjar. "At about 2:00pm I heard the sound of [Israeli] drones and helicopters. I went to the window to see what was happening, but I didn't see anyone outside. I thought Aya was inside our building, or with a neighbor. Then there was a loud explosion."

The helicopter had just fired a rocket, which, with pinpoint accuracy, hit Aya as she stood just three or four meters from her own house. Zahra al-Najjar, who was struck in the head by shrapnel from the rocket, did not know her daughter had just been killed. It was the neighbors who found a small hand in the rubble outside. After collecting the other parts of Aya's body, which were scattered over a distance of more than 150 meters, they then had the grim task of telling Zahra and her husband, Hamdan Hamdan al-Najjar, that their daughter was dead.

Zahra and Hamdan al-Najjar believe that Aya was deliberately targeted by IOF in retaliation for the death of an Israeli civilian earlier the same day. The Israeli man was killed between 11:00am and 12:00pm, by mortar shells fired from inside the Gaza Strip that struck the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. "The mortars [that killed the Israeli] had been fired at least two hours before Aya was killed" says Hamdan al-Najjar. "But those mortars were not fired from here, there was no shooting in our village, and there was no one outside our house except for my daughter. She was not carrying a gun and she did not fire a rocket. They wanted revenge for the death of the Israeli."

Parents of other children that have been killed by IOF in Gaza this year have also consistently alleged that their children were deliberately targeted by IOF. On 20 May, 12-year-old Majde Ziyad Abu Oukal was killed in Jabaliya in northern Gaza by a missile fired from an IOF drone. His parents, Ziyad and Tahariya Abu Oukal, believe he was deliberately targeted in order to put pressure on local parents to stop resistance fighters from launching rockets towards Israel.

The deliberate targeting of civilians is illegal under international human rights law, and constitutes a gross violation of human rights amounting to a war crime. PCHR is investigating these allegations in depth, and this summer will publish its findings in a report on child killings committed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.

Driving along the eastern border of the Gaza Strip is a sinister experience. In between villages like al-Qarara and Khizaa are vast tracts of empty land and hundreds of boarded up and abandoned houses. IOF make frequent incursions here, and local Palestinian villagers are fleeing in fear of their lives, and the lives of their children.

"The Israelis can see everything from their planes," says Hamdan al-Najjar. "They could see Aya was alone outside, and they could see she was just a small child. When we finally saw [the remains of] our daughter, there was almost nothing left of her. We could not even bury her properly, because her body had been completely destroyed." All that Aya's parents have left of their daughter now is one small, grainy photograph.

This report is part of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights' Narratives Under Siege series.

Marzouq Mo'amar's smile has returned to his face after he had almost lost hope because of thyroid cancer that had spread to his neck. Just a few weeks ago Palestinian doctors at the Gaza European Hospital in southern Gaza, were able to perform a life-saving surgery for the 62-year-old from Rafah.

"I risked my life undergoing surgery under such hard circumstances with no proper medical care and inadequate medical staff as well as a crippling closure," Mo'amar said while sitting at his house in the Alghosain tribe's village in Rafah city in the south of the Gaza Strip.

"When I decided to undergo surgery, despite all the risks involved, I had no choice because I have no travel document," Mo'amar explained.

"However, Thank God, for God has saved my life, with the help of great local doctors and under extraordinary conditions in the besieged Gaza Strip. I appeal to all free human beings in the world to stand by Gaza's patients who die one after another because of the Israeli closure," the recovering Mo'amar said.

The surgery on Mo'amar's tumor was the first of its kind in many years, because of Gaza's poor health services during the last four decades of Israeli military occupation. The surgery took place despite a lack of essential medical equipment and staff that has worsened since one year ago when Israel tightened its siege on the coastal territory, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.

Dr. Ehab Zayyan, a young head and neck surgeon from Gaza City, led the difficult and risky eight-hour operation.

"We used to undertake other smaller surgeries for hazardous ear infections, and they proved successful, but this tumor surgery was the first of its type," Dr. Zayyan said, "Thank God we were successful and our patient's condition is stable."

Dr. Zayyan added, "The Gaza European Hospital is modernized and we have the right equipment," but "what is required is more trained and qualified medical staff. With more staff I am confident we could stop sending our patients abroad."

Khaled Radi, a spokesman of the Health Ministry in Gaza, run by the Hamas government elected in January 2006, said that the medical situation has deteriorated since Israel tightened the siege. Many foreign medical experts who used to visit Gaza to perform critical surgeries have stopped coming he explained. "There was an agreement with 31 Egyptian professors to come to Gaza to train our local stuff, but they were unable to come because of the current conditions," Radi said.

Although the Israeli closure has hampered much essential equipment from reaching Gaza, Radi said that the health ministry was able to install an MRI scanner. "What we are concerned about nowadays is ensuring the essential medical care for our patients."

According to medical sources in Gaza, more than 180 Gaza patients, who needed urgent medical care or life-saving treatment have died so far due to the tight Israeli closure of Gaza's travel and commercial crossings over the past year.

The death toll is on the rise, as the Rafah crossing remains closed, which was the only outlet for many of Gaza patients to reach hospitals across the border in Egypt.

"Thank God, my health is more than okay now, but I am appealing to all those concerned to solve the problem of many patients like myself, who are in need of life-saving treatment," Mo'mar said while kissing his hand, a sign of thanksgiving in Gaza culture.

Rami Almeghari is contributor to The Electronic Intifada, IMEMC.org and Free Speech Radio News. Rami is also a former senior English translator at and editor-in-chief of the international press center of the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Service. He can be contacted at rami_almeghari A T hotmail D O T com.