The unflappable Aussie humanitarian amid the Gaza storm

If there is a quiet place in Gaza, it is Jean Calder’s neighbourhood in Khan Younis at the bottom end of the crowded strip, 40 minutes’ from the Egyptian border.

Jean Calder at a vocational training session in embroidery.

If there is a quiet place in Gaza, it is Jean Calder’s neighbourhood in Khan Younis at the bottom end of the crowded strip, 40 minutes’ from the Egyptian border.

Yet as the 85-year-old Australian knows too well, nowhere is safe. As we are speaking, an explosion booms outside, startling the normally unflappable Dr Calder.

“That sounded a bit close,” she said. “Not close close but nearer than we have had before.”

Sadly, the situation is all too familiar. In her three decades as a humanitarian worker and educator in Gaza, Dr Calder has experienced three full-scale wars, innumerable skirmishes, travel restrictions and the impositions on daily life that go with sanctions imposed by Israel in its longstanding conflict with Hamas, the Islamist militants who call the shots there.

As ever, the two million-strong population of Palestinians is the proverbial meat in the sandwich: at least 212 have died since missiles and rockets started flying on May 10, 61 of them children.

Near-overwhelmed hospitals are packed with more than 1000 of the seriously injured on top of COVID patients.

The toll is also climbing in Israel, where the deaths of two Thai food packers in a Hamas strike near Beersheba overnight on Tuesday took the count to 12, with dozens hurt as the barrage from both sides continued.

Dr Calder said she steered clear of politics in Gaza, where dissatisfaction with Hamas was on the rise over corruption and economic mismanagement before it opened fire on Israeli last week, ostensibly in response to violence between ­Israeli police and Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque.

But there was no avoiding the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the grindingly poor enclave.

Sewage systems and water mains had been wrecked in Gaza City, pouring filthy waste water on to unpaved streets; 13 hospitals were damaged by one count; tens of thousands had fled their homes; and a desalination plant that provided drinking water to 250,000 people was offline, potentially for the duration.

“People are somewhat afraid … you can hear the noise of the drones overhead, sometimes the planes and then the bombing,” Dr Calder said.

“It’s a very unsettled time. We are not going out, and people are not going out unless they have to get in food or medicine or something else they can’t do without.”

While the Israelis have focused on targets in Gaza City, the towns and villages of Khan Younis to the south, set back from the glistening Mediterranean Sea, have not been spared. At the weekend, Israeli warplanes bombed the home of Yehiyeh Sinwar, the most senior Hamas leader inside the territory, and his brother, Muhammad, not far from Dr Calder’s building.

As the crash of the latest blast died away, she chuckled grimly and said: “What can you do? It may be a plane or a rocket going somewhere and you just have to hope it’s not in your direction.

“We are very conscious of trying to keep up with the news so if something does happen, we can be a ready as we can be.

“That’s all we can do. You just get on with things otherwise.”

A former schoolteacher from Mackay, Queensland, she earned a PhD in the US in physical education before devoting herself to helping disabled Palestinians.

She shares a flat with her adopted daughter, Dalal, who overcame blindness to secure a master’s degree from Edinburgh University and teaches at the college Dr Calder founded in Khan Younis to train physical therapists.

Her adopted son, Badr, a hemiplegic, lives with his wife downstairs.

Dr Calder’s University College of Ability Development, with about 150 students, closed last year as COVID-19 ripped through Gaza, killing hundreds.

She counts herself lucky to have had Russia’s Sputnik vaccine.

As bad as the back and forth barrages are, the real worry is that the Israelis will launch a ground invasion as they did in 2014.

The casualties of an out-and-out war would be horrendous, Dr Calder said.

“I think they (the Israelis) will think twice about it because of what happened last time,” she said, referring to the 2300 Palestinians and 67 Israeli soldiers and civilians killed in the vicious fighting seven years ago.

“Hopefully, we are not going to get to that point again.”

For now, neither side will back off. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off Monday’s demand by US President Joe Biden for a ceasefire, telling security officials that Israel would “continue to strike terror targets” in the Gaza Strip “as long as necessary in order to return calm and security to all Israeli ­citizens.”

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, who was supposed to ­alternate as prime minister with Mr Netanyahu before their power-sharing deal fell apart, warned that the Israeli military had thousands more targets in their sights.

“No person, area or neighbourhood of Gaza is immune,” Mr Gantz said.