days there are warnings that fresh rain on higher ground could also cause more flash flooding downstream chemicals have been sprayed to fight against diseases like malaria with many people also risk of malnutrition. thousands of people have protested against the thai government and what organizers said was the largest demonstration there in years they gathered at a university in bangkok to demand the removal of the prime minister a former army general who came to power in a coup it's part of a well established pro-democracy movement but the country has strong laws to protect the royal family. and authorities in batteries of crack down on a women's protest march in the center of the capital minsk and demanding president alexander lukashenko step down after last month's disputed election. oh the headlines that set for myself in the team here in london rewind is coming up next. i am sequences i support it because these days it's hard to filter out the noise and keep track of what's really important if the bottom line tackles the big issues

this is shaping the united states its people its economy and the way it deals with the rest of the world the bottom line only on al-jazeera. alone welcome again to remind i'm elizabeth purana since we launched al-jazeera english over a decade ago we haven't been afraid of tackling difficult and sensitive stories through powerful award winning documentary us to day we rewind into 2010 and a film that examines an unintended consequence of the continuing israeli blockade of gaza is growing opioid problem the gaza strip at points just 10

kilometers wide is an hour piece of land along the eastern mediterranean coast that's palestinian population a sealed behind a separation barrier and tightly controlled checkpoints gaza is home to more than 1500000 palestinians maybe half of them under 15 unemployment is among the highest in the world and every day is a struggle to survive. it's not surprising therefore the thousands of young people risk their lives by protesting against the occupation by israel at the border fence but as discovered when she traveled to gaza for al-jazeera back in 2010 more and more of them turning to drugs to escape from the harsh realities of life his anus disturbing film on comfortably not a film. over the summer.

this is gaza's lifeline the tunnels on the border with egypt. they punch through the blockade that cuts gaza off from the outside world. the search. for. the money far away from israel. around the clock to smuggle in vital supplies from deep within. this tunnel is 18 meters below ground and it's really quite warm in here even though it's in the middle of winter there are 8 guys who do the evening who are

working as we speak and they're bringing in all sorts of merchandise it's one of thousands of other tunnels he supply routes for gaza. but a longer shipments of furniture clothes and food a steady supply of the dangerous drug is coming in from a dog or trauma as it's known in gaza. it's a painkiller similar constituency to morphine used to relief physical pain and it's one that many go. resorting to. tramadol is illegal without a prescription but as. a self-confessed long term drug user explains there's always a way to get a hold of it. i buy fake prescriptions here's a doctor's prescription it says 2 strips 20 pills and 20 pills for another painkiller also for $5.00 if i don't get this prescription there are other ways to

get the pills dealers bring in boxes of trauma through tunnels every day there are thousands of boxes seized by the police but for every 1000 seized there's another 1000 that gets in so i go to people i know who can find it for me it's a bit more expensive than the pharmacy but i buy from them. tramadol is dangerously addictive if taken in large quantities unsupervised. 29 year old comer is among a growing number of gazans hooked on it his name and face are hidden because he does not want the police to identify him i want help with our law the law. the 1st time i took trauma was a 200 milligram pill a red one. i had. we were invited to a relative's wedding. when i take it so i feel completely relaxed i forget about all my feelings and emotions. i feel total release when i take one or

2 pills the higher the dosage the better i feel the more relaxed wilma's it is that the end can. come out struggle with addiction has brought him here to gaza skum unity mental health program it's one of the few places for drug addicts to get treatment every week he meets with his psychologist dr samir is a quote for whom come else case is far from unique more women would many and. most of the addicts are between the ages of 18 and 30. the incentive. of all my cases are in that age bracket and herein lies the danger the danger is that those who are supposed to build our future are the most affected. young can and dublin was done. and if the number of cases i've seen are 150 there are hundreds of others that i have not seen and who would never seek the help of

a doctor why because we live in a traditional society that fears the stigma attached to mental illness and addiction is not just considered to be a mental health issue it's seen as even more serious. bottom in a lot of enough the. united nations april 2009 survey found that 8 percent of gazans questioned were doing more due. the before the war. for chemical pills offer an escape from the reality surrounding him. since the war we have been in a miserable situation. no jobs how massive for the fighting no reconciliation nothing to get a laugh a small hell of it we were promised that things would open up more jobs would become available for me and others but they are that we want the world to be open

we don't want the siege on the national. and dr is a good believes the problem is growing huge at hal at the data i've had about as the number of addicts went up after the war in gaza because that was unprecedented . marceau if you have. the occupation employer reform discriminant indiscriminate killing leaving the palestinians here feeling insecure and at risk wherever they are. minute. it's not just the. israel suffocating siege has cut gazans off from the outside world and made hundreds of thousands of them jobless. gazans are becoming poorer by the day and. 8 out of 10 i

know dependent on some form a few and handouts as the blockade continues to by the repetitive daily grind becomes more difficult to bear. these recent university graduates spend much of their free time at this upscale restaurant one of the few refuges they have. the war has deeply affected us our spirit is destroyed we have not left since the war nor had a break and we're still carrying it all inside us they say illegal substances are finding their way into all social circles and across age brackets in gaza for years living with. my 15 year old brother brought some pills home from school he thought there were diet pills i took them to my father who is a doctor my father said the pills were true he granted my brother and we went to school and cause a fuss about it it turned out that there was a kid at the school who was distributing them some of the students thought these

pills were to whiten your teeth even the kid who was distributing the trauma said he didn't know what it was he was just selling it and it seems there is no shortage of buyers. when i would get work or take my daily wage. for example i wouldn't buy fruit. even though i should've i used to prioritize trouble over fruit. and one time my wife and i spent 3 days with nothing but a tomato that will look at about one and have at it as gary i worked for the government for 7 years they still help me a little my pension is $200.00 a month which helps to issue a. again on fridays i go to any mosque and explain my situation to the mom the mom tells people that there is a brother in need and then i live with an amount ranging from 40 to 100 dollars the

day before yesterday i had no money and i asked my mother for $5.00. 20 pills but needed to make sure i had a steady supply. as drug dealers stubbornly pursue new markets. the how mass run through lease continues to battle them for control of the streets of gaza. the hamas government is widely credited for clamping down on criminals. ending years of knowledge on the streets of gaza. but then it would be a democrat the. underfed just ruled there was an excess of democracy. and drugs were prohibited but when on the ground. and there they asked

dealers to stop but the dealers were addicted to the money so they were all shot dead at their doorsteps when the gun one of them had. the one that they were big merchants and people were coming in and out it was like a supermarket. market. despite its crackdown. with the belief that now they've been tipped off and on their way to doing drugs. they say this young man is dealing drugs with his brother he's taking them to his house where they planned to search for narcotics.

this is all they find this time around roughly a gram of. which will result in a charge of possession rather than distribution. but it's clear that such tactics can pay dividends the police showed us some of the drugs they have seized on previous raids. pills of ecstasy hashish and upon tramadol. unfortunately there is a big difference between the number of arrests in 2009 compared to 2008 drug cases have gone up in the last year in 2009 we had close to 1200 then 4 cases of which 500 the 91 war tramadol related and i will carbonell from within

a lot of we seized close to 2 and a half 1000000 trammell pills compared 255-0000 in 2000 and. 10 says gaza stunnel i think t. conduit for illegal substances into constrict. the drugs are mostly supplied by israel in directly via egypt and the tunnels some drugs also come directly from egypt the profits young people who want to get rich quick. we have called dealers between the ages range from 20 to 23 with a huge quantities of drugs and they are considered among the biggest dealers in gaza. there's radios are the main source of drugs to gaza and their aim as our evidence from official cases shows is to flood gaza with drugs. we had some.

the growing problem has prompted the police to push for stiffer sentences but there's only so much that a government can do. some things will slip through the net in the shadowy underworld where thousands of gazans risked their lives every day to earn a living. these young men told us they regularly work overnight sometimes sustained by the illegal pills they help transport or give up the tab key for the left. so. there are. many. things that. if you showed 100. for the 1st time the would have.

but for those who do get caught this is the lot that awaits them. this is gaza central jail and this is the section where they're holding prisoners on drug charges on both users and dealers here is 120 of them are in 3 different cells. some of the men have been charged and convicted others are still waiting court proceedings. have. given him the. notion that i was put in prison 2 months ago i was playing the role of the middleman between a trader and a buyer. and i also take drugs. but after that i have been taking drugs for

a long time since $99.00 to. start to taking drugs when i went to tel aviv and israel. so i know that is going to share this experience is humiliating as you can see 35 people sleeping in the same room is not healthy more learned that. the police say their prisons are part of an imperfect yet effective strategy to clamp down on trafficking. in what. we stop 80 percent of the drugs before they entered the gaza strip then we start an investigation depending on the information we get the confessions we get from people the letters lead us to the major dealers who try to get the drugs from russia. but some question the methods used to extract information. as

a habitual drug user callous claims he's experienced these methods 1st hand on more than one occasion. bad. they just beat you up they tie you up like this they raise you up on a chair i swear and hide you from a chain for a day or 2. with the blindfold you play one recognize the person beating you and then go after them in the streets. but when they let me down of the chair i couldn't feel my arms i swear i could not feel them. the ministry of interior denies physical violence is being used against drug offenders but it's allegations tapped into a longstanding taboo in palestinian society and in law. there are links between drug addiction and spying if you are an addict you're on the side of

the occupation and as long as you're with the occupation then you are against palestinian society you're a suspect. fattal used to link it to action with collaboration on addicts get no sympathy. when the new government came to power they followed the same post out of and then. the other that's why when an addict falls in the hands of the police you find that the most junior to the most senior in the police hierarchy will beat him as a form of revenge. i heard. the doctor says this suspicion is fueling police behavior it's aggravating and already serious problem. and to say do i lef psychologically torture will only increase the person's addiction so you're making matters more complicated by beating him if the addict does not feel that society sees him as a human being and he or she will become more depressed than of us so we'll wait then of out of the you know what suffolk where then of out of the way you never

thought i'd hear is difficult trauma siege and on top of that torture from your own people from the people you expect to be on your side that only increases the trauma and of the addict takes 2 pills of trauma he was she'll start to take for her off what about that is that when her off with. the 6. with this huge that continues to tighten its grip on people some have resigned themselves to accepting the reality that it's gaza today. and they did the planning i did i would like to be able to stop taking drugs because i'm tired i'm depleted from the inside. i'm talking to you and all my internal organs are god's mercy sometimes i feel that my wife will try to wake me up but i won't wake up at the. i will be gone and meet god almighty with. ready ready ready

ready continues to see his doctor on a weekly basis ready he has not given up on his hopes for a better future ready one day. 'd the 1st thing i wish for is a job. the 2nd dream i have to settle in a house of my own. that i could have a nice home to live in and to live the channel pills behind. 'd on comfortably numb from 2010 that was the situation a decade or so ago and conditions in gaza have if anything got worse since the palestinians began their fight a protests at the border fence a recent report by the un human rights council logged 189 killed and more than 6000 engine in 2018 alone it wouldn't be

a surprise then if the opioid problem had to tear rated along with the political and humanitarian situation rewind returned recently to gaza to find out. gaza's drug problem hasn't gone away in the last 10 years if anything the recent upsurge in violence at the border has made the painkiller problem worse. 10 years on dr samir says there's still a reluctance to come forward to be treated as community mental health program for fear of reprisals. had a live in a minute man i did. well in a lie that they'll have. the been of see ya know your

journey been because 4000000 mccollum and i. was middle are. as the authority come down on tramadol other painkillers with brand names such as lark and furious that are becoming more popular. now but to call our bill. will be overwritten. apart from the law pay pressure to isn't it the key reason why young people are taking these drugs a 3rd. of the tower can tell me. some of the shovel. come out of the bottle to remain drug free is ongoing conwell he did. tell us the. battle in cern allocate more have.

the most. cherished. memory in general carson or in could have been inserted with our. movie. the medical. community. because this economic deprivation and lack of employment opportunities has led to a new more worrying problem women too are now becoming addicted. many. comes or a serene center where i come most that they are minute for hunters reason. bob. said well like a trial should not have married man well added but there it is. in the past few years the palestinian authority targeted to drug traffickers. however i've

excess are seen as criminals rather than patients. non-voting member are in the ramah well is a value in. imprisoning the growing number of addicts is clearly not the answer so causes germs problem. doctors are believes that therapy is the only way to address the issue now. is sarin. and just how many and houses. survive in the fuck out in the manner of a walk on. every market will insight into the side effects of israel's continuing blockade of gaza well that's it from us to join us again next time and you can check out the rewind page at al-jazeera dot com for more films from the series but for now thank you for joining us and see you again soon.

examining the headlines that said to me business wire is going round and watch it on the news and i think implies the communal good for unflinching journalism how relevant is the debate here in this day and age how he characterized the protest movement i would say that 3 observes a awakening of a nation sharing personal stories with a global audience. explore an abundance of world class programming the world is watching on al-jazeera. does lumps of manila home to extraordinary talent and move liliana dedication and hard work to transform child scavenger jessa into a professional on the arena she has the strengths technically she's a very strong and mixed martial arts fighter just

a bunch of his way from the streets to success in the ring so i could barely hear this is your stepping stone. just log on al-jazeera. close your eyes. listen. to blossom i never thought i'd be singing in parliament with the foyer i never dreamt of that where the words fail music speaks to short films about how music can knock down the rules and inspire hope for a better life a.j. selects on al-jazeera.

al-jazeera. and. president trump says he could nominate a successor to supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg as early as next week. i wonder in jordan this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up risking diplomatic isolation the u.s. has to reimpose sanctions against iran within the hour and a move that's out of step with all major world powers. colombia's president calls for his venezuelan counterpart to be prosecuted as a war criminal during a visit by the u.s. secretary of state. and called.