MEDIA RELEASE: Multinationals in Gaza

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 12, 2009
CONTACTS: IN GAZA: Inaya Khalil 011-972-59-706-1774
IN US: Kim Hill 440-884-0936

Multinational Humanitarian Delegations Converge in Gaza

The US Gaza Delegation for Medical/Mental Health and Relief spoke with dismembered and disfigured children and their parents, survivors of Cast Lead, Israel's recent 22-day bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, yesterday.
"Our visit to Gaza is difficult and wonderful," said tearful Cleveland activist Don Bryant.
"Our country paid for this horrific attack and I feel great shame. But the Palestinian people have welcomed us with great generosity."
Since entering Gaza on March 7, the American delegation has toured the Strip's destroyed homes and listened to and listened to accounts of the bombing by the surviving members of families who were buried in the explosions.
The Samouni family lost 28 people in one night. The surviving group of eight women and children sat under a few sticks and a torn blue tarp on a field of rubble that had been their homes. The mother of five-year-old Mahmoud Samouni, whose face had been scarred, blocking his nasal passage, said her son had expressed suicidal wishes.
The delegation had waited four days to enter Gaza through the Egypt border, which has been largely closed to journalists and aid workers since the bombing ended. They camped at the border, together with an Italian delegation of psychologists and social workers. The two groups were allowed into Gaza on March 7, along with a team of British orthopedic surgeons. The American anti-war group Code Pink and British George Galloway's convoy of 200 ambulances and trucks bearing donated supplies followed shortly thereafter.
The siege on Gaza, in effect since 2006, has made basic supplies like tomato paste and children's clothes nearly impossible to come by. Since the end of the December-January attacks, journalists, UN workers, and humanitarian aid workers have been denied access into the Strip.