Mia Farrow visiting a Palestinian refugee camp school in the West Bank. AP

Acting as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, American actress Mia Farrow just completed a week-long visit to Gaza and the West Bank. Reuters and the Christian Science Monitor blogged her trip.

Reuters:

Farrow visited a hospital and an artificial limb center and met children at a northern Gaza school last Thursday, deploring the living conditions in the Gaza Strip.  The next day Farrow traveled to Sderot, an Israeli city just a few kilometres (miles) from the Gaza border that was regularly targeted by rockets fired by Palestinian militants, and a nearby kibbutz.

Farrow ended her official schedule on Saturday with a visit to Jenin refugee camp, site of the fierce 2002 battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. She toured the camp’s women’s activity center and spent time with the children, dancing traditional Palestinian dances and playing games. She visited a home in the refugee camp and toured the streets to meet more residents.

She declined to comment on the political situation, except to voice support for Justice Richard Goldstone, who led a U.N. commission that found that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the December-January Gaza war.

“I’ve read facts lifted from the report, and I’m using the word facts, because it’s an independent investigation and I believe it is. I believe Justice Goldstone is an incredible man and he found fault on both sides,” Farrow said. “But I thought that Israel’s response was overwhelming and catastrophic. And I’ve seen that.”

As the children watched Farrow drive away from the refugee camp I asked Reema, a seven-year-old girl wearing braided pigtails, if she knew who the former fashion model and veteran actress with 40 films under her belt was. Her response: “I don’t know who she is… someone who likes kids and came to visit?”

Christian Science Monitor:

Farrow focused largely on the current conditions of Gazans, particularly the “apparent trauma” of children with whom she spoke, but also criticized Israel for having attacked a population that could not flee.

“It is unacceptable to confine a population, dropping leaflets of warning that you are going to attack and bomb and so forth, and leave them nowhere to go, and then continue to confine that population,” she said.

She said Gaza’s children – who make up almost half of the 1.5 million population in the strip – were deeply affected psychologically by the 22-day war last January and the wider siege.

“A teacher said that when they hear a loud noise they look at the sky and scream and run and some will cry,” said Farrow, who also related stories of children whose houses were bombed around them, whose relatives were killed, and one who was placed by Israeli soldiers with her family in a hole and worried they would be buried alive. “A little girl said I don’t know what will happen next, and yet I was told by a group of children I want to be a doctor, I want to be a teacher. The children were full of hope and determination.”

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