However, when looking at statistics of the number of people killed, we often times reduce the deaths to simple numbers and forget that each had a name, a story, and people they loved. Names of many of the Palestinians killed during that war were compiled in this list.

Moreover, 6 people who have suffered greatly during the war tell the stories of what they lost during the war and how they coped.

The UNRWA, the UN agency that provides relief for the Palestinians refugees, also launched a project where they feature the 50 brief personal stories, one for each day of the war.

A year has passed since the beginning of that war, making it a natural time to ask ourselves and examine how the situation in Gaza has changed in the year since the war. Twitter has adopted the hashtag #GazaOneYearLater to compare the situation today to one year ago.

The deaths of the 2200+ people in the last war are still fresh on their families' minds, who still struggle to cope with their loss.

The experiences of the last war as well as the two other wars in Gaza in the last 7 year have left deep, long term psychological scars on the population of Gaza, especially the children. PTSD has become very common: over 30 percent of children in Gaza show signs of severe PTSD, about 92 of children show signs of moderate to severe PTSD, and only one percent of children show no sign of PTSD. Bed wetting, frequent crying, depression, and anxiety are also still very common in Gaza. More detailed information can be found in this article and in this article.

In additional to long term psychological effects, Gaza has also suffered huge infrastructural damage that shows no signs of recovery because of the ongoing blockade. Even though the military attack ended and Gaza is in dire need of supplies, aid to Gaza is still very much blocked. The blockade restricts exportation from Gaza, which has led to a total decrease in export to 7% of pre-blockade levels, and also restricts importation into Gaza. It would 19 years to rebuild the 19,075 homes that were destroyed during the war if imports were possible, but because of the blockade, it would take 76 years to rebuild. None of the twenty schools destroyed have been repaired yet, and none of the 12,620 homes that were completely destroyed have been rebuilt. More details can be found in this article.  

This article published 6 months ago gives details about the resource blockade and the effects it has had. 6 months after the war, 100,000 people were still homeless, largely Israel restricts import of items that have dual purpose (ie military) including steel, concrete, cement, beams, plastic panels, and construction vehicles. This has lead to very little construction material entering Gaza and inadequate reconstruction. The lack of resources entering Gaza and subsequent homelessness has led to four infants dying from complications caused by the bitter cold in Gaza in January, and an increase in fire related deaths (ie lack of electric power).

The ongoing blockade not only blocks the importation of resources to repair factories destroyed by Israel in the war, but it also prevents surviving businesses from functioning and exporting properly. A personal narrative of the harm Israel's ongoing blockade has caused to Palestinian business over the years can be seen here.

For more information and reading on the blockade as well as some personal narratives, see here and here.

To help visualize the damage Gaza has faces and the lack of reconstruction, The Guardian has compiled pictures of some of the destruction in Gaza and Israel and compared them to what the areas look like one year later.

This economist article provides some data on the reconstruction while also offering some political context.

More in-depth political context is provided in this article.

In the context of BDS and pro-Palestine activism, it has also been 10 years since the call for BDS, and we can see that the movement has made progress, but is needed more than ever.

2014-2015 was a momentous year for our organization, which accomplished many of the long-term goals that activists had been working towards for several years. In the following post (as in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014), we try to re-cap the most important moments for our organization this year. 

SJP has worked to pass a divestment resolution at UCLA for several years. In February 2014, the campaign put forward a vote that narrowly failed to pass, gaining 5 of the required 7 votes to pass. However, by bringing the issue to the public in this manner, SJP was able to garner a great deal of public support and broad awareness about the issues at stake. This momentum carried into the fall of 2014, prompting SJP to attempt once again to pass divestment. 

During Fall 2014 quarter SJP UCLA held Palestine Awareness Week, an annual tradition. This time around, however, the decision was made to incorporate PAW into our next divestment campaign. In addition to a screening of the film “Roadmap to Apartheid” on the first night, there was also a panel featuring Sherene Seikalay and Nasser Barghouti on the moral imperative to support BDS, of which divestment is one component. These events, coupled with the daily presence of the mock wall that includes facts about what Palestinians experience under blockade, occupation and legal discrimination, and which also focused on the effects of the 2014 Israeli attacks on Gaza, allowed for us to utilize diverse and creative ways to educate the general student body about the importance of supporting divestment in particular, and BDS more broadly.

Following PAW, we continued our divestment campaign. In an attempt to increase transparency and reach more students from across the political spectrum, we both held a town hall where students were able to come and voice their concerns and make requests about what would be included on our divestment resolution, and created an online forum where additional feedback could be provided. These efforts, as well as the years of work put in by members of SJP in years past, were vindicated when, by an 8-2 vote, USAC passed “Resolution Calling for the UC Regents to Divest from Corporations Violating Palestinian Human Rights” on November 18th, at that time making UCLA the 6th UC to pass a resolution calling for divestment (Since then, UC Davis has become the 7th UC to pass divestment). The overwhelming show of support from the students who came out to provide public comment as well as the fact that 32 student organizations endorsed our resolution and 15 co-sponsored it as equal partners was a definitive blow to the tired myth of divestment being “divisive.” It’s impossible to even count how many students contributed to divestment's success in some way - through educating their peers, sharing information, attending the town hall, talking to council members, presenting to student groups, and so on. Tellingly, groups opposed to divestment failed to make a case against the substance of the resolution itself, resorting instead to attacking the process and organizations supporting this cause. 

This victory culminated years of campaigning that began in earnest in 2012. Long thought to be one of the most difficult UCs for the Palestine solidarity movement, the resounding and bi-partisan victory was one of the most impressive indicator of how significantly public opinion has shifted in support of Palestinian freedom. 

Two more winter quarter events further emphasized additional aspects of Palestine solidarity activism; the first, “BDS in Action,” featured Rabbi Alissa Wise from JVP and Nancy Kricorian from Code Pink, and delved into how increasing BDS victories across the nation reflect that public perception about the Palestinian struggle is changing for the better, using various boycott campaigns undertaken by groups like CodePink as cases in point. Our final event that quarter, “Artists Against Apartheid: Fred Moten and David Shorter in Conversation,” explored, among other issues, how and why it is incumbent upon all of us as students and academics to respect the Cultural and Academic boycott of Israel as another means of calling attention to the systemic disenfranchisement the Palestinian people are currently facing.

During week 5 of the Spring quarter, following a General Body meeting about SJP elections, we had a talk by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled; titled “Beyond Zionism: Hope in Peace for Palestine,” the presentation was a frank assessment of the untenability of the status quo regarding Israel/Palestine, and the subsequent need for a radical reformulation of state policy and international involvement.

After this came SJP’s “Nakba Week:” the first event of its kind put on by SJP UCLA, “Nakba Week” featured both a teach-in about the current situation of Palestinian refugees that emphasized the necessity of Israel respecting the Right of Return, in addition to a panel of Palestinian UCLA students discussing their families’ experiences of displacement, as well as reflecting on being a Palestinian in the diaspora and what the Nakba means to them. With Nakba week, SJP UCLA sought to bring a new dimension to its work, allowing for more of a focus on the plight of the Palestinians outside of the occupied territories. It is our hope that the conversations we began on these issues will continue to be explored in the following year.