Category Archives: International issues

Nada – a Palestinian Woman

Argus title : We must help ease Palestinian despair

Nada is a Palestinian asylum seeker who came to this country in May 2004. When she telephoned me last week, her desperation was obvious. “I think I can’t go on” she said. “I think I will have to die”.

I had first met Nada a few days earlier. At that meeting she had been shy and self-controlled. Only at one point did her grief become evident – when she began to speak of her 16 year old brother’s death by Israeli sniper fire, as he walked to school.

So when, a few days later, she learned that the Israeli army had fired into the classroom of a United Nations run school in a Gaza refugee camp and killed an 11 year old girl – only a month after a young female school mate had died in the same way – it brought back terrible memories. Continue reading