News Service from House Harris

MID: Israelis rally aid for bombed-out Palestinians

JERUSALEM, Jan 22 AFP - Since a suicide bomber killed her best friend in Jerusalem in 1997, Hadas Bacas has tried to ignore the Middle East conflict.

But Israel's war on the Gaza Strip changed everything for the Jerusalem theatre producer.

Bacas says the massive 22-day assault targeting Hamas Islamists on the heavily-populated Palestinian territory "awoke" her to the point of wanting to do something about it.

The 25-year-old finally started to do something on Sunday, the day the offensive ended with a ceasefire after more than 1,300 had been killed.

Thousands of Israelis have answered her internet, email, telephone and word of mouth appeals to help bombed-out Palestinians.

Bacas and friends are now squatting in someone else's office in Jerusalem amid piles of blankets, shoes, clothes, tins of food, pasta, toothpaste and just about anything people who have lost everything might need.

She spends the morning with a phone stuck to her ear and at the same time talking to dozens of volunteers trying to find a way through the mountains of cardboard boxes.

When the offensive started, "we thought we'd fill two or three truckloads of aid," she says.

But in the coming days, "we are going to send six trucks and three more are set to go next week."

On top of that more than 80,000 shekels ($A30,000) has been collected via the internet, in Jerusalem, and in Tel Aviv, Haifa in the north and Netiv Ha-Asara in the south.

Mira Meshulam walks in struggling with a box that looks too heavy for her to carry. She has brought baby clothes, coats, towels and soap.

"When I see how the population of Gaza is suffering .... this country has to rediscover its humanity, not be war crazy. We have to show the world and the Palestinians that people here have a heart."

Twenty-four-old volunteer Hila Erlich says the fund raising "gives Israelis a chance to express themselves" through gifts.

And she supports the non-political stance of the initiative, saying: "We don't know and it doesn't matter to me" if the donors were for or against the war. Whatever the case people can still "feel the suffering of the Palestinians," Erlich says.

Aaron Shneyer, 25, says he prefers not to talk about the fighting, but goes on to say: "The only way to settle the conflict is to communicate" with the Palestinians.

"We both need each other. For as long as we remain separate, the war will go on."

The trucks of aid should enter Gaza from Thursday after completing the lengthy checks demanded by the Israeli authorities at the crossing points into Gaza, which have been closed for months to all but basic humanitarian supplies.

UN officials are demanding much more than the trickle being allowed through to the 1.5 million population who rely on the border crossing for virtually everything.

"We don't want to talk about five more or 10 more trucks going in, we want it to be totally open," said Baptiste Burgaud of the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs.

Bulk grain is a priority along with construction material to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed, he said.

Since December 27 when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, the army has let some 54,000 tonnes of humanitarian supplies into the strip aboard 2,284 trucks, said army spokesman Peter Lerner.