Articles
WRMEA, August 2010, Pages 46-47
Northern California Chronicle
Children's Plea for Clean Water Inspires MECA's "Maia Project" in Gaza
By Elaine Pasquini
CLEAN, safe drinking water is in extremely short supply in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas of the world. In a student election three years ago at the United Nations Bureij Refugee Camp school, the children chose clean drinking water as the one item they most wanted for their school. Responding to the students' request, made through its partner Afaq Jadeeda Association, the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) raised funds to build a water purification and desalination unit for the school. The Berkeley-based nonprofit then created "The Maia[Arabic for 'water'] Project" to bring life-saving water to Gaza's children. According to the reports of human rights groups, at least 90 percent of the water in the 140-square-mile besieged Palestinian enclave is polluted and unfit for human consumption due to Israel's over-pumping of the common aquifer extending from Israel to Gaza. In one study, 90 percent of the water samples contained concentrations of nitrate between two and eight times higher than the limit recommended by the World Health Organization. High nitrate levels cause methaemoglobinaemia, known as "blue baby syndrome," among other illnesses.
"Everyone embraced the Maia Project," MECA program director Josie Shields-Stromsness told the Washington Report, "so we began a campaign to encourage people all over the U.S. to raise funds in their community to provide more schools with water purification systems and received a great response." Individuals and community organizations from Fresno, California to Portland, Maine have raised money, she said. A large purification unit for a U.N. school in a refugee camp costs $11,300, while a smaller unit for a preschool or kindergarten is $3,750. Students at the University of Massachusetts in Boston raised enough money for a large school and a kindergarten. Residents of Whitefish, Montana invited MECA founder and executive director Barbara Lubin to speak at the local library and formed a group specifically to raise funds for the water project, Shields-Stromsness said.
The Gaza City-based Abdul Salam Yaseen Company assembles the water purification and desalination units. Since 80 percent of the materials are local, the company does not rely heavily on foreign imports. This is important since Israel controls all imports and exports, including water purification parts and supplies. "The units are assembled and installed by people in Gaza," Shields-Stromsness said.
Dr. Mona El-Farra, MECA's Gaza City-based project manager, and the Afaq Jadeeda Association oversee the projects and the contracts between the schools and the company. For more information or to make a tax-deductible donation visit <www.mecaforpeace.org> or call (510) 548-0542.
Joining Hands, MECA Spring Bazaar
At MECA's Berkeley offices on May 1, Joining Hands and MECA held their spring sale of olive oil, embroidery, arts, crafts and clothing handcrafted by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Sales of these items help to provide a livelihood for Palestinians living under Israel's crippling occupation of their land. MECA imports the organic, first-press olive oil from the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a Ramallah-based non-profit organization that supports Palestinian farmers by providing them with markets for their crops.
Also on display was a photographic exhibition titled, "Views of Bethlehem, Then and Now," which featured 19th century photos from Harvard College's Fine Arts Library juxtaposed with contemporary images of the same sites taken by children at the Al-Rowwad Cultural Center located in Bethlehem's Aida Refugee Camp. The unique exhibition was organized by the Cambridge/Bethlehem People to People Project, which provided copies of the old photographs, along with cameras, to the children in Aida Refugee Camp and asked them to photograph the sites as they look today.
Apartheid Wall, Illegal Settlements Affect Quality of Life in Bethlehem
At the May 1 spring bazaar, MECA program director Shields-Stromsness and her husband, Hazem Al-Qassas, the former acting director of Dheisheh Refugee Camp's Ibdaa Cultural Center, spoke to guests about the current situation in Bethlehem, where they reside.
"I think things are consistently getting worse at an alarming rate," said Shields-Stromsness. The myriad problems—including the economy, lack of freedom of movement, land confiscation, arrests, detentions, and settlements—are the direct result of the Israeli occupation. For example, 22 illegal Israeli settlements now surround the biblical city. "The Israelis are building a circle of settlements around Bethlehem in order to connect Efrat with Ma'ale Adumim, the large settlement on the edge of East Jerusalem," she explained. This action would, in effect, prevent any territorial continuity for a future Palestinian state.
"When I look at a map of all of the settlements, I don't understand how anyone can talk about a two-state solution," one audience member commented. Al-Qassas agreed, expressing skepticism that the two-state idea could be successful. "Vacating the settlements would be the only way for a viable two-state solution, but Israel would still want to control the borders with armed checkpoints," he pointed out.
The apartheid wall around Bethlehem is also a major problem, particularly for the residents of Al-Walajeh on the northwest outskirts of Bethlehem. "Eventually they will be completely encircled by the wall and unable to reach either Jerusalem or Bethlehem," Shields-Stromsness said. "The villagers are very uncertain about what their future will be." Extending over the Green Line, the village lost 75 percent of its land in 1948. "Some of its residents have been refugees for 62 years," her husband added. On April 22, 2010, Israeli army bulldozers uprooted more than 100 olive and other fruit trees owned by local residents in order to continue the construction of the apartheid wall in the area which stretches through the village's lands.
Israel's new military order 1650, which requires that anyone born in Gaza but living in the West Bank must return to Gaza, is a major concern of Palestinians on the West Bank. "Everyone is confused about this order, which went into effect on April 14," Shields-Stromsness said. "The language is so vague that no one knows what to expect and it is so broad the Israelis can use it however they want. Tens of thousands of people on the West Bank may be affected."
San Francisco-Amman Sister City Project
San Francisco's Jordanian community realized a long-awaited dream on April 23 when Amman Mayor Omar Maani and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a Memorandum of Understanding to become official sister cities. The two mayors, along with Honorary Consul of Jordan Kamel Ayoub and state and city protocol chief Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, addressed a group of some 200 members of the Bay Area's Arab community gathered at City Hall for the celebration. "Our goals are to contribute to the development of good relations between the cities of San Francisco and Amman and to promote trade, tourism, arts and culture, and develop mutual understanding between people," Ayoub, chairman of the sister city committee, told the audience. "I strongly believe that people-to-people programs will result in mutual understanding among nations and will create more cooperation and peace throughout the world, the peace that is badly needed nowadays."
Noting that Amman was San Francisco's 17th sister city—and the first in a predominately Arabic-speaking country—Newsom said, "Our sister city relationship with Amman will expand our relationships throughout the world and forge new and stronger cultural and economic ties across peoples and borders."
San Francisco is only the second American city—after Chicago—to be a sister city with the Jordanian capital, however, and Mayor Maani thanked Mayor Newsom, committee chair Ayoub and the Jordanian community for making the sister city agreement a reality. Committee members include Mazen Fakhouri, Joel Haddad, Foad Sweis, Majdi Alamat, Maher Soudi, Issa Sweidan, Mwafak Ibrahim and Jordanian American Association president Firas Sweidan.
Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
