Still Lives

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Marilyn Garson was an experienced aid professional who created jobs at the edge of war. In 2011, she was asked to join an aid project in the Gaza Strip. Friends warned her that nothing worked behind the Israeli blockade. Unable to resist that challenge, Marilyn became the economic director of a large NGO programme, leading an ambitious young Palestinian team.

Gaza's business owners, technology graduates, and job-seekers (facing the highest rate of unemployment on earth) overturned Marilyn's understanding of aid and justice. Then she volunteered to join the United Nations emergency team that would remain inside Gaza through the 2014 war.

Marilyn witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's urban assault and massive civilian displacement. The UN was prepared to shelter 35,000 displaced Gazans, but 293,000 arrived. Locked in beneath the bombs, they had nowhere safer to go, and nothing but the United Nations flag and international law to protect them.

Neither Marilyn's team nor Gaza itself was the same after fifty days of bombardment.

This book is an account of her four years in Gaza, during which her identity as a Jewish supporter of Palestinian rights was strengthened and deepened.