Living with Rockets: 'There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza'

On September 10 alone, over 89 trucks of international aid and gasoline poured into the Gaza Strip. Since September 1, over 700 truckloads of international aid, including over 1,760,000 liters of gasoline, have been sent into Gaza. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead on January 18, over 2,000 truckloads - over 37,000 tons - of humanitarian aid has been delivered to the Gaza Strip.

As international uproar over the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip continues, Guy Inbar, spokesman for the Israel Civil Administration, which manages the Palestinian Authority's requests for aid, goods and gasoline, says that these are in fact decreased amounts.

"Over the past two to three months we have seen a definitive decrease in the requests from the Palestinian Authority, because they have goods, foods, and medicines that still have not been used," said Inbar, adding that, "As we have said before, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."

While I sat for hours, watching truck after truck drive in and out of the Gaza Strip, Dr. Adriana Katz, director of three of Sderot's mental health and trauma treatment centers, told me over the phone that there has been no change in the lack of funding for the Sderot centers.

The area's five trauma centers, which are constantly treating the victims of this largely psychological terrorism, are being forced to close their doors. The Emergency Center in Sderot, the first aid clinic that treats victims immediately after an attack, was shut down this past July, the director of the Sderot Trauma Center, Dalia Yosef, has been let go and the area's four remaining centers are all set to be closed by December 1.

How can a world that prides itself on slogans and political jargon about "both sides of the conflict" and "two states for two peoples" completely turn its back on Sderot?

After a letter from the Sderot Media Center to the European Union calling for international aid to the victims of rocket fire in southern Israel, British Ambassador Tom Phillips visited the centers in Sderot with Sderot Media Center on June 4. Ambassador Phillips met with both Dr. Adriana Katz and Dalia Yosef regarding the situation of the trauma centers, but the centers still have not seen any allocation of aid.

On August 5, five top Australian Parliamentarians visited the closed Emergency Center in Sderot, but the centers still have not seen any allocation of aid.

On August 11, Texas Governor Rick Perry and ranking Republican member of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen visited the closed Emergency Center in Sderot, but the centers still have not seen any allocation of aid.

There have been over 240 aerial attacks from the Gaza Strip since the end of Operation Cast Lead - eight in the past week alone - but "it doesn't seem that there will be any quiet even though I am only slated to work until December 1," said Katz.

An average of 80 truckloads a day of international aid and gasoline, all materials frequently used to produce the fuel for the kassam rockets, continue to pour into the Gaza Strip with no end in sight as the world turns its back on the thousands and thousands of Israeli victims of a near-decade of rocket attacks.