The Southern Cross | August 2024

Jodie Clark has quite possibly the toughest job in the world. As head of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, she is responsible for getting desperately needed food, medicine, fuel and other supplies to more than 2 million Palestinians.

The South Australian woman and Sacred Heart College old scholar spent 21 years in the Australian Army before working for humanitarian agencies around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. But she says the situation in Gaza is “by far” the worst she’s seen and “beyond imaginable”.

“There is no conflict in the modern age that reflects what’s happened in Gaza,” she told The Southern Cross while back in Adelaide on a short break.

“Every school has been flattened, every infrastructure has been flattened, every mosque has been flattened, there are only two hospitals left and they’re severely damaged…when all this is over the kids won’t be able to get back to school because there are no schools, people won’t be able to follow their faith because there are no mosques, there’s no sewerage, there’s no electricity, there’s no water, so even when Israel pulls out, what have they got?”

As more of Gaza is evacuated, Jodie said the people “just keep moving”, setting up tents wherever they can. Many have moved multiple times and have a family member with injuries or a disability.

“Imagine, in the first six months you’ve lost everything, you’ve moved somewhere you don’t normally live, you’ve not taken a shower in six months, you’ve not had electricity for six months, you haven’t had access to medicine or doctors; there are women having their babies in tents, in the sand, in the dirt…children get sick with diarrhea and vomiting and there’s nowhere to clean them off.

“You have a tent for 10 people and 25 people of all ages are living in it and pooping in a plastic bag.”

Working out of temporary warehouses, Jodie is in charge of all United Nations and non-government organisation (NGO) supplies coming in and out of Rafah, which was the only entry point into Gaza until Israel re-opened the Erez crossing recently.

She has at her disposal 150 semi-trailers, 20 forklifts, about 50 Palestinian labourers and “lots of other people who do different things”. Under her care are nearly 1000 Palestinians detained by Israel on suspicion of terrorism and allowed to return to Gaza after being tortured and interrogated.

Jodie said the biggest challenge was the constant looting and violence against truck drivers bringing aid into Gaza.

“Initially when we brought food trucks in they were getting through without too many problems but as the Israelis cleared northern Gaza, more and more people were pushed into Rafah,” she said.

“With 1.5 million people living in Rafah, people who had nothing, they started getting these gangs together to stop the trucks, then it got into a bit of an enterprise and the mafia got involved.”

She said a black market for cigarettes, which sell for $US20 a stick, had compounded the problem.

What upsets her most is it’s Palestinians against Palestinians.

“It’s the unfortunate side of humanity…one of my drivers was knocked unconscious and was in a coma; now he walks and talks like he has had a stroke, he can’t work. And he was bashed by other Palestinians, even though he stopped his truck and said, ‘take it’, they still bashed him.”

Known fondly as ‘Mama Jodie’ by her co-workers, she said one of her first tasks was to set up a kitchen to feed the workers who, like most of the population, were living in tents with no water, electricity or sanitation.  By the time she left on her break, 600 people working at the Rafah crossing were being fed each day with the help of an NGO called the World Central Kitchen.

When the Hamas attacks on Israeli settlements occurred on October 7, Jodie was working remotely as a procurement advisor for Australian Government funded projects in Tonga.

Having worked in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from 2008-2012 and during the conflict in 2014, it wasn’t long before she received an email from an UNRWA colleague saying, “I really need you if you’re available”.

Click here to read more.