Gaza…
9 June 2008
in the sewage treatment facilities, the fuel shortages mean that sewage plants can’t operate at full capacity — and remember, there are 1.5 million people here — so millions of gallons of raw sewage are being dumped into the sea, untreated, making the ocean extremely toxic.
giardia, dysentery, cholera — diseases not known just five miles up the beach, in the cities of historic Palestine (some call it Israel), where toilets flush and water is safe to drink, where people lay in the mid-day sun getting tan and drinking pina coladas and speaking a language resurrected just in the last hundred years, unknown to the indigenous and dispossessed here in Gaza — are now common. and once Palestinians get really sick, hospitals try to do all they can to alleviate the pain and eradicate the disease, but, as my friend told me, since the blockade began last summer, there are ninety-five medicines on the “blacklist” — prohibited from entering Gaza.
the number one medicine that is becoming scarce? try to guess.