Monday, May 18, 2009

What is the impact of the Israeli siege on the Palestinian youth?

By Mohammed El Majdalawi, a MECA volunteer in Gaza

Palestinian youth are living under very difficult economic conditions, due to the Israeli siege on Gaza. Many of them have graduated from university and are looking for work opportunities.

One young man in the prime of his life, Ahmed Abdul-Karim Yousef Majdalawi, is a 29-year-old tailor and father of four. He lost his work because the blockade on Gaza and the closure of the crossings caused the sewing factories to close, and limited the work available to him.

Looking for alternative employment to secure his livelihood, Ahmed started to sell candy to school children in Beit Lahiya, where he lives. But with the end of the school year and the beginning of summer vacation approaching for children in Gaza, Ahmed needed to get better work to support his family. He decide to work underground in Rafah, because he could not find anything else. On Wednesday May 13, 2009, the tunnel he was working in collapsed.

Ahmed is alive, but fighting for his life.

I appeal to lovers of peace and freedom to work to save Ahmed, and also work to break the Israeli siege of Palestinian youth – to save their future and to obtain their freedom and rights, like young people in the rest of the outside world.

1 comment:

Noor al Haqiqa said...

What else can we do? Their goddamn jailers won't let anything happen. They are set on purposefully letting these people slowly starve and begin to in fight as circumstances deteriorate.

They are determined to kill the resistance AND the people. This is nothing to a race responsible for the things they have already done ... the massacres and holocausts they have already created. There is a world of willing people.. all unable to do a goddamn thing!