Aid Worker on Gaza Ceasefire: “We’re All Holding Our Breaths”

BUSHRA KHALIDI, WEST BANK POLICY LEAD, OXFAM: What’s needed right now is full, unrestricted humanitarian access. No more is really restrictions on the entry of aid. No more siege. Crossings needs to be fully open. We don’t need trickles of aid. We need a massive scale up that meets the needs of 2 million people. We need commercial goods to enter Gaza. We need the economy to be revived. We need to see restaurants, cafes, shops reopen. People in Gaza have endured unimaginable suffering for the last two months. Relentless bombardment, forced displacement, as you said it, hunger. We need safe routes. We need fuel for the aid convoys, fuel for hospitals, fuel for water systems. And we need, like I said, commercial goods to flow freely again. You know, right now, for example, we were talking yesterday, Gaza needs soap. We need trucks and trucks of soap in Gaza because people are running out of soap, let alone running out of, you know, basic essentials. So, I hope that this means fully open crossings and no more restrictions on what we can get into Gaza.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: I want to ask you, were you surprised or is it totally natural, Nour was — you know, she’s not jumping up and down and, you know, singing and shouting, she’s very concerned, very stressed, very worried that this might not last. Do you get that?

KHALIDI: I mean, yes, of course, you know, I’m in the West Bank. We’re all holding our breaths. I just spoke to my brother-in-law. I’ve got all my in-laws in Gaza and he said, you know, nobody can believe it. We don’t trust it yet. We can still hear the sound of bombs and Israeli planes and drones above Gaza. So, for us, it’s yet not real. But of course, you know, I mean, from, from my perspective here in the West Bank and as a humanitarian worker and having worked on this response for two years, we absolutely welcome the ceasefire, the release of the hostages, but the unlawfully detained prisoners, the Palestinian prisoners as well. So, it has to be — this has to be the start of a real, real effort to restore Palestinian lives, you know, restore their rights and end this absolutely horrific, horrific assault on Gaza.

AMANPOUR: Bushra Khalidi, can I ask you also, you have said that Gaza is, quote, “a petri dish of disease.” And I read something in our introduction, which said that the Israelis or the agreement says that humanitarian aid, i.e., food, medicine, water, basics will start flowing commensurate with previous ceasefires. Is that enough?

KHALIDI: Well, right now, yes, Gaza is a petri dish of disease. You know, when you have 2 million people that are displaced, that are crammed into these overcrowded shelters that with no infrastructure, no clean water, no sanitation, we’re hearing of, you know, children defecating openly in Gaza, we’re hearing of children looking for scraps of food in the bins in Gaza that was never unheard of in Gaza before. There were no homeless people in Gaza before the 7th of October. So, yes, sure. We can talk about the number of hundreds of trucks, but we need to restore dignity. We need to restore, you know, repair materials. People need to be able to return to their homes or what is left of their homes and at least start repairing, start repairing basic water infrastructure. So, it’s not just about, you know, throwing a box of flour and, you know, we’re happy with that. No, it needs a full holistic response that responds to a famine, right? Like we’re responding to a famine. It’s not a normal humanitarian response. So, 600 trucks, thousands of trucks, whatever is needed to restore some sort of basic life in Gaza. I mean, please, you know, I’ve lived this very personally for the last two years, it is truly enough. And so, people are allowed to have soap, at least, you know what I mean, soap, baby formula, the basics.

AMANPOUR: Right. Bushra Khalidi, thank you, uh, from Oxfam based in the West Bank there. I just want to go back to Nour. I think we can still talk to her in Gaza. Nour, you know, just a final thought for you for this moment. You’ve been working — walking around, you, you’ve been in Gaza for all this time. Is there anything that can be rebuilt? How bad is it? Because we can’t see on a big level, but it looks pretty obliterated to us.

ALSAQQA: Yes. Unfortunately, what we keep saying is that, this genocide — or this ceasefire comes after two years of genocide and two years of indiscriminate mass killing and destruction to every aspect of life, whether it’s infrastructure, health facilities, the home, we’ve seen the destruction of literally every aspect of life. And for this to be restored, like, we need to think about the basics, access to humanitarian assistance, while it must not be dependent on a peace agreement, unfortunately, it should be like followed by an urgent and a massive scale up of humanitarian aid to address these overwhelming needs, whether it’s medical needs, whether it’s psychological needs, whether it’s material needs. I mean, we’re talking about every single aspect. But as a medical organization, we’ve hit a point where patients are literally on the floor because there is no bed. The doctors and the nurses are changing the dressing for patients who are literally laying on the floor. There’s no room. We’re working on hospitals and field hospitals that have reached more than 150 capacity or like a bed occupancy rate, which is almost more than two people per bed in a hospital. It’s catastrophic to say the least. We’re not enough of anything, not enough of medical supplies, not enough of medications, not enough human resources.

AMANPOUR: Well, we hope. Nour, thank you very much. Nour Alsaqqa, thank you for telling us what’s going on there.