they don't need the oil they get they were also from a check box upstream this dominance has been challenged by countries who want to upgrade to the i know that some people in egypt on fashion i.d.'s this circumstances have changed and changed quite a struggle over the nile on al-jazeera. hello and welcome again to rebind i'm elizabeth purana since we don't want to al-jazeera english over a decade ago we haven't been afraid of tackling difficult and sensitive stories through powerful award winning documentary he's today we rewinding to 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 it'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 a turning to drugs to escape from the harsh realities of life his anus disturbing

film on comfortably not a film. over a hot summer sun. 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. from. 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. shipments of furniture clothes and food a steady supply of the dangerous drug is coming in from a dog or true as it's known in gaza. it's a painkiller similar constituency to morphine used to relieve physical pain and it's one that many. 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 try melt 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 the tunnels every day there are thousands of boxes seized by the police but for every 1000 seized there is 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 don't add. tramadol is dangerously addictive if taken in large quantities unsupervised 29 year old coming 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 1st time i took trauma was a 200 milligram pill a red one. we were invited to

a relative's wedding and. when i take it 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 wellness is that the end can. come our 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 chords for him come else case is far from unique more of a man with many and. most of the addicts between the ages of 18 and 30. 11 the insanity. 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

before i let you walk in and dublin wisdome a halo stuck back 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 than a lot of enough bottom in a lot of enough the. united nations april 2009 survey found that 80 percent of gazans questioned were doing more drugs than before the war. for camel the pills offer an escape from the reality surrounding him. since the war we have been in a miserable situation. no jobs hamas and fatah fighting no reconciliation nothing to get

a laugh and. we were promised that things would open up more jobs would become available for me and others. we want the world to be open we don't want the siege on the national. and doctor is a good believes the problem is growing you would have had a bad. as the number of addicts went up after the war in gaza because that was unprecedented. marcel. the occupation employed every form of discriminant indiscriminate killing leaving the palestinians here feeling insecure and at risk wherever they are. 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 now dependent on some form a few on handouts and as the blockade continues to bite 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 still they say illegal substances are finding their way into all social circles and across age brackets in gaza for years limitless and i mean 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 and buy trouble for example i wouldn't buy food. even though i should've. i used to prioritize trauma over food. and one time my wife and i spent 3 days with nothing but a tomato there will look and i bought 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. 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 that's run felice 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 easier than usual underfed just ruled there was an excess of democracy. in 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 one of them had. a hand that they were big merchants that people were coming in and out it was like a supermarket. market. despite its crackdown. on the wrong. way with the belief that now they've been tipped off and they're on their way to drug bust and. 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.

and 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 hasheesh 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 my okada been ill from it in a lot of we seized close to 2 and a half 1000000 trauma 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 and directly via egypt and the tunnels some drugs also come directly from egypt the prophets 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. this radius 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. in. the. one. thing that.

if you showed 100. 5 of them the 1st time there would have come. forward. but for those who do get caught this is the law that awaits them. this is gaza sent from jail and this is the section where they're holding prisoners on what charges users and dealers here is 120 of them in 3 different cells. some of the men have been charged and convicted others are still waiting court proceedings. were given him and.

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. i have been taking drugs for a long time since 99. i started taking drugs when i went to tel aviv and israel. that is and 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 and. we stopped 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 drug user can it claims he's experienced these methods 1st hand on more than one occasion. and bad. they just beat you up they tie you up like this they raise you up on a chair i swear and hang 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 can feel my arms i swear i could not feel them. the ministry of interior denies physical violence is being used against drug offenders but can its allegations tapped into

a longstanding taboo in palestinian society. and i recollect in law. there are links between drug addiction and spying but 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 but facts are used to link it to action with collaboration addicts get no sympathy. when the new government came to power they followed the same pose out of and then. i think 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 we have heard. the doctor says this suspicion is fueling police behavior it's aggravating and already serious problem. and to say to our left 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 if the addict takes 2 pills of trauma how he was she'll start to take for it off what about that as i can have off with. the. with the siege that continues to tighten its grip on people some have resigned themselves to accepting the reality that it's gaza today. and i did the planning i did i would like to be able to stop taking drugs because i'm tired that 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 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 'd 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 find a protests at the border fence

a recent report by the un human rights council logged $189.00 killed and more than 600-2018 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 doctor. 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 had that. well i can allow that they'll have to limit their layer to illyria that. the been of see ya know your own men journey because 4000000 more power man and woman. was middle are. as the authority come down on tramadol or the painkillers with brand names such as lark and furious that are becoming more popular and better 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 shall. come out of the bottle to remain drug free is ongoing.

tell us the. battle in cern allocate more have been here or the. charity charity. in general. could have. moved. the medical community. gaza's 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'd come as that they are fucked up for hunters reason fertile. barber. said one week a trial should not have married man well added but 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 jerks problem. doctors are believes that therapy is the only way to address the issue now. sorry in. the us who how many and how so shut up survive in the fuck out in the mail and have 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 for now thank you for joining us and see you again soon. rewind the time. object on the backs of al-jazeera is documentary. to be called to. the gift of sight. just so sickly intervention is one of the few where you will see patients like this says at least 10 years younger than she was yesterday just within 24 hours on al-jazeera.

talk to al-jazeera. is the government the necessary action to really address some of the structural issues we listen i still think that travel is the safest mode of travel and to spend that we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on the road is their own overthrow and exiled their point again saying it will halt this race let me tell you an intimate film about the struggle of the elected leader of madagascar to return to his country and reinstate his presidency he knows that the truest fish to buy and leave a note to get you think is the interesting case return of the president on al-jazeera. be the hero the world needs.

washing. the air the in. the air. you are not in saudi arabia you are in the united states of america it is a democracy rebukes from democrats and distancing from republicans but us president downtown busier with using to commit to peaceful transfer of power if he loses an event very large. player watching al-jazeera live from doha with me fully back also ahead more protests planned in the u.s. city of louisville over the decision not to charge police officers responsible for the death of a blog.